By Howard Hyde
[Previously published as the 'President's Message' in the June edition of the Newsletter of the Southern California Republican Women and Men.]
Few things illustrate just how much some California voters are not paying attention than the fact that one candidate for Secretary of State, who had not only withdrawn from the race, but is under indictment by the FBI for bribery and trafficking shoulder-mounted rocket launchers in a high-profile criminal corruption case, nevertheless placed third among eight candidates with almost 290,000 votes, or 10% of the total: California State Senator and leading gun control activist Leland Yee.
All we can say is, those 290,000 voters aren’t members of SCRW&M and don’t read this newsletter, because if they were, they would make better choices.
We pride ourselves here at SCRW&M for being a training ground for leaders, a place for informed voters to become even better informed, from fundamental principles to the particulars of specific races and legislation. Our meetings provide the opportunity for grassroots Republicans to speak and be heard, to learn and to teach, and to connect with other activists, candidates and party officials. There are no low-information voters here.
We recognize that getting good information about what’s going on politically and economically in California can challenging. The typical sources of news are either hopelessly biased toward a liberal-progressive-socialist agenda or they lack important information, focused on local traffic accidents and bank robberies, events in Washington or international geo-politics, diplomacy and war. Good information about our state, the ninth largest economy among nation states in the world, is harder to find.
For this reason we will offer some valuable resources here.
Flashreport.org provides “California’s most significant political news”, compiled from dozens of sources including The San Diego Union-Tribune, The Sacramento Bee, The Santa Cruz Sentinel, the Orange Country Register and more. Columnists published on FlashReport.org include Larry Elder, Dennis Prager, Charles Krauthammer, Thomas Sowell and Steven Greenhut (columnist for the OC Register and author of Plunder: How Public Employee Unions are Raiding Treasuries, Controlling Our Lives and Bankrupting the Nation).
For example, regarding the 290,000 votes for the indicted alleged Mafioso, see Katy Grimes article: Californians Prove This Is The Crazy State: http://www.flashreport.org/blog/2014/06/04/californians-prove-this-is-the-crazy-state/
Another invaluable resource for California politics is California Political Review at www.capoliticalreview.com, at which our featured speaker at the May 24 meeting, Stephen Frank, is Senior Contributing Editor and our own club Treasurer William Saracino has been a contributing editor for 24 years.
The news isn’t all bad. For example, at CAPoliticalReview you can read Carson Bruno’s article: The Week’s Other Political Earthquake – In California, Naturally:
http://www.capoliticalreview.com/top-stories/the-weeks-other-political-earthquake-in-california-naturally/
The California Permanent Employment Statute, which grants lifetime tenure to teachers after just 18 months of service and makes it prohibitively costly (on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars) to fire incompetent teachers, has been declared unconstitutional (violating the California Constitutional rights of students to a quality education) by Los Angeles County Superior Court judge Rolf Treu, in the case Vergara vs. California. It remains to be seen how this ruling will hold up on appeal. Meanwhile, the two surviving candidates for Superintendent of Public Instruction have weighed in. Tom Torlakson, the Democrat backed by the CTA to the tune of $3 million, has expressed ‘support for the teachers’. Marshall Tuck has emphasized the rights of the students.
Finally, for the serious student of California history, politics and political economy, there are the books:
• Crazifornia: Tales from the Tarnished State: How California is Destroying Itself and Why It Matters to America, by Laer Pearce.
• Taxifornia: Liberal’s Laboratory to Bankrupt America, by James V. Lacy.
• Eureka! How to Fix California, by Arthur B. Laffer, PhD
For information on election results in California, see: http://vote.sos.ca.gov
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