I’m not usually a guy who pounds his chest and says, "I told you so."  But there are others involved here, especially, the dedicated pollsters at M4 Strategies in Costa Mesa that produced a poll for the Small Business Action Committee at our request.

That poll found Meg Whitman leading Steve Poizner by 17 points in mid-May. It came out a couple of days before the Public Policy Institute poll, which had Whitman up by 9. While practically all the media was headlining a collapse of the Whitman campaign from the previous PPIC poll, our poll indicated a momentum shift back toward Whitman.

We did not dismiss the PPIC poll but pointed out ours was conducted for the most part after that poll and showed how Whitman was coming on fast at the end of the polling period.

Cross-posted at CalWatchdog.com

California’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high, at 12.6
percent. That’s 2.7 percentage points above the national average. The
persistence of unemployment also is something Californians haven’t seen
since the Great Depression. The May 30 Sacramento Bee reported:

To a degree not seen in recent recessions, unemployment has become a drawn-out affair.

About 6.7 million Americans have been
unemployed for at least 27 weeks, including nearly 880,000
Californians. The ranks of the state’s long-term unemployed more than
doubled in the past year and now account for about 40 percent of all
those out of work, according to the Employment Development Department.

I have a confession … I drink alcohol.

I enjoy soda, too. Potato chips? Love ‘em.

So why are politicians posing as moral leaders and digging into my wallet over these simple pleasures? Well, simply because their vision is just as simple. City,
state and federal government officials have locked into the mindless
notion that these "sin taxes" are either morally or economically
logical.  They couldn’t be more wrong.

There
is rarely good news out of Sacramento. The perpetual budget crisis,
political stalemates and continuing cuts to vital programs can make
even the most optimistic of us wonder whether things will ever change.
So why, you might ask, is the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce
investing the time, money and energy to take 100 business and community
leaders to Sacramento next week to meet with legislators and members of
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s administration?

We are going to remind Sacramento that all the solutions they seek
hinge on building our economy and creating more jobs by making
California more business-friendly. It is people with jobs and growing
businesses that generate the tax revenue that legislators in Sacramento
need to balance the budget.

For most in the private sector, we’ve been operating our businesses and
homes differently for more than two years. The global recession forced
us to reevaluate our business models and the decisions we make around
the kitchen table at home. We immediately reduced expenses and found
more efficient ways to meet the needs of our businesses and our
families. We did not have the option of operating in the red. The focus
turned to implementing long-term plans that brought us back to basics
with a strategy on how to survive – and thrive – once the recovery
begins.

The UC Berkeley Center for Labor Research and Education issued a policy brief arguing that raising taxes will result in fewer jobs lost than would occur under the spending cuts in the governor’s budget proposal.

The brief indicates the best alternative to deal with job losses is to avoid the governor’s proposed cuts and instead raise taxes on oil severance, corporations, and top bracket income tax payers, which will produce billions in new revenue and fund the public sector. The report acknowledges the tax increases would slow economic activity and come with job losses in the private sector.

I’m trying to figure out how reducing jobs and economic activity in the private sector will benefit California in the long run.

The proposal to
divest and boycott Arizona over the state’s passage of SB 1070, making
illegal federal immigration law a violation of state law is stupid.

As elected officials, we take an oath to uphold the federal and state
constitutions.  To boycott a state for enforcing our federal laws is in
direct violation of that oath.  

The propaganda by both the media and
others is intentionally misleading because Arizona’s law mirrors
federal law.  Rather than debating a boycott, this Board of Supervisors
should hold our federal representatives accountable for their failure
to act on immigration reform but also for their failure to reimburse
costs incurred by local governments.

You may not have felt it, but the earth shifted this week while
candidates up and down the state were busy with their final push toward
Election Day.

The epicenter of that shift?  L.A.

The Republican Party of Los Angeles County (RPLAC) scored a major
victory this week as a Judge ruled in the organization’s favor –
throwing out a frivolous lawsuit brought by a wily group of Ron Paul
activists that claimed they had legal rights to run the Party, even
though they handily lost their Board elections last year.

The California Department of Insurance recently cracked down on an
insurance company that has been overcharging motorists, including men
and women serving in the military, for 15 years.

 That same company,
Los Angeles-based Mercury Insurance, is bankrolling Proposition 17 on
the June ballot. Mercury wants you to trust it when it says that its
measure will save everyone money.

When was the last time an insurance company spent $14 million on a ballot initiative to lower your rates?

"These are the times that try men’s souls." – Thomas Paine’s The Crisis

Going ‘from bad to worse’ is a much overused expression.  For those who have not entirely given up on the 24-7 Media coverage of all the nasty things going on lately, some have begun developing traumatic associations and now avoid news like the plague,  how many disasters does it take . . . . let me count them.

The Gulf is filling with what looks like melted chocolate and even mighty BP is clueless how to stop it, having started on live video feed, no less, it’s latest, Top Kill (think: life as comic book) solution to the month-old spewing of oil into the pristine Carribean waters and beyond, involving something with old sneakers, tennis balls, cement, what have you.  Lousiana’s bayou and wetlands country is smothered in what we only wish was butterscotch syrup, some twelve miles in now.