Free Republic

Republican political strategists had harsh criticism for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's campaign team in the wake of a special election that saw all of his measures go down to defeat. After an election in which five key advisers have already been paid more than $900,000 for their work, they said the governor should now be asking what he got for his money. "I think the governor would want to audit how the money was spent," said longtime Republican political strategist Ken Khachigian. "Was anybody raising their hand and saying, 'Maybe we shouldn't be doing this?' " As Republicans came to grips...

The monthly cost to the US of the war in Iraq is now greater than the average monthly cost of the Vietnam War, a report by two anti-war groups says. The report put costs in Iraq at $500m (£278m) a month more than in Vietnam, adjusted for inflation. This makes Iraq the most expensive US war in the past 60 years, they say. But an analyst from the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) said the cost was small in the context of the whole US economy. The report by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and Foreign Policy in Focus...

WASHINGTON - Forty-four members of Congress flew to Cape Canaveral for the scrubbed launch of space shuttle Discovery at a cost of more than $73,000, according to figures provided to The Associated Press on Thursday. Some lawmakers would be willing to try again once NASA sets a new launch date, but it depends on the congressional schedule. The Air Force flew 35 lawmakers to Florida on Wednesday in two C40B aircraft, the equivalent of a 737-700 business jet. The cost, based on an hourly rate of $7,960, totaled $63,680, the service said. The round trip is about four hours. NASA...

Gov. Schwarzenegger is fighting the good fight, so we can forgive him when he occasionally misfires. His "Million Solar Roofs Initiative" to subsidize photovoltaic (PV) systems is one such error. PV systems convert sunlight into electricity. This is great but for a few problems: the systems are costly; they rarely produce the electricity claimed; and, even with subsidies, PV does not pay for itself. Senate Bill 1 is the legislative vehicle for the governor's initiative. It passed the state Senate on a 30-5 vote with only Republican opposition. The next stop is the Assembly, then the governor's desk. California has...

Alek Boyd at VCrisis has an interesting new article out about what London's oil traders say about Venezuela's Marxist president, Hugo Chavez who controls one sixth of our oil. Boyd points out that not only does Chavez raise oil prices by his trash talk, but also by cutting available supply. He's doing the latter through the destruction of existing oil contracts among U.S. oil companies and general neglect of his state oil company. At The American Thinker, we also have noted how Chavez's abuse of oil workers is hitting world oil prices. And Chavez, through his current actions, is doing...

<p>A California commission has picked a new state building code favored by a firefighters union that is among the biggest donors to Gov. Gray Davis' anti-recall campaign.</p> <p>Critics say the new code will lead to delays and higher costs in construction.</p>

<p>Democratic State Controller Steve Westly on Monday urged California voters not to recall Gov. Gray Davis, calling the Oct. 7 election ``a distraction from good public policy'' that could cost the state an extra $1 billion in higher borrowing costs over the next three decades.</p>

<p>SACRAMENTO - Gov. Gray Davis is so unpopular that his advisers don't plan to persuade voters to like him. And he may face so many rivals in the Oct. 7 recall election that he won't be able to win the way he's always won before, by attacking his opponent.</p>