Author: Patrick Dorinson

For
years, the California Legislature, Governor Schwarzenegger and
environmentalists have been pushing for California’s investor-owned
utilities to get more of the power they generate and sell to their
customers from renewable energy such as wind, solar and biomass.

On paper, the efforts have produced great fanfare in the media but on the ground they are falling short.

In
2002, the legislature passed a bill requiring the investor-owned
utilities to produce 20 percent of their energy from renewable sources
by 2017. In 2003, the California Energy Commission moved it to 20
percent by 2010.

Every year for what seems like forever, when the Legislature tackles the budget our legislators wake up and say, "How did I get into this hole and what is my favorite shovel doing here?"

Well, your shovel is there Mr. and Ms. Legislator because you are the ones who dug the hole. So as a first step, how about stop digging.

California’s decaying and crumbling state parks and the circumstances that have brought them to this point offer a textbook example of why California chronically finds itself in this self-created budget hole year in and year out.

Originally appeared on Politico.com

President
Obama is neither "pro-business" nor "anti-business". He is "pro-Obama"
and he will do anything to sell and protect his brand.

In a nation of narcissists he is unchallenged for the number one spot even if the brand is losing some of its luster.

Obama’s problem is that he has absolutely no knowledge of how business
works particularly small business, which is the backbone of the
economy.

"Our 11^th Commandment is perhaps more profound than we realize.  "Thou shall not speak ill of any Republican."  To do so means we are inhibited in the support we can give that Republican if he should become the nominee of our party.  Certainly
our task is harder if we must challenge and refute charges made by our
opponents if those charges were first uttered by us…."

"Fight
as hard in the coming primary as you can for your candidate, but be
against only those we must defeat in November of 1968.  Let
no opposition candidate quote your words in the general election to
advance statism or the philosophy of those who have lost confidence in
man’s capacity for self-rule."

Ronald Reagan in a Speech to the California Republican Assembly, April 1967

For those of us who live in California or as we like to call it "Athens-on-the-Pacific", things have never looked bleaker.

Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger released what will be his last budget to the
Legislature and the people. It projects a deficit of $19.1 billion and
will make drastic cuts in social spending.

Right
on cue the Democrats who have had a death grip on the Legislature for
decades began their whining and caterwauling about the destruction of
the safety net and that the "rich" weren’t paying enough and business
needs to pay more.

Every summer a new crop of America’s finest young men and women arrive at a place high above the Hudson River in upstate New York. That place is the United States Military Academy at West Point. It is here that they will take their first steps in becoming our nation’s military leaders of tomorrow. Over the course of the next four years they will learn many things.

But on that first day they will learn 12 very important words. “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do.”

This is the Cadet Honor Code. It is simple, straightforward and “lie, cheat, or steal” at West Point has a broad definition to cover any unethical or immoral behavior.

Recently here in California, we had a video surface that showed two Republican legislators waiting for a formal hearing to begin engaged in a conversation about the sexual exploits of one with a married female lobbyist who has two children. Assemblyman Mike Duvall, the person who made the disgusting comments, is also married with two children. It has been replayed too many times to count and I will not dignify what was said by repeating it here.

You’ve got to love the cable TV pundits, has-been political hacks and bloviators who were “analyzing” Sarah Palin’s decision to resign as Governor of Alaska.

They never saw it coming, but somehow they now know her motives. In fact, they have never bothered to get to know her or try to understand where she was coming from. They are content to talk behind her back and gossip like a bunch of Old World WASPs at a restricted country club, making fun of her because she is not one of “them” all the while vowing to do whatever it takes to keep her and her working class family out of their exclusive club.

I am sure that in the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard over the 4th of July weekend our “betters” in the Establishment are all having a good laugh about the rube from Alaska and how they drove her out of politics. And that includes the establishment people in both parties, better known as the ruling class. Republican or Democrat, there isn’t a dime’s worth of difference between them.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece titled “A Real Lawman” about the potential candidacy of Tom O’Brien for Attorney General. As you might recall Tom is the extremely effective U.S. Attorney for the Central District of California. He has an impeccable record in fighting crime from human trafficking to cybercrimes to white collar fraud. He has also tackled street gangs in Los Angeles.

I have just learned that Tom has decided against a run for Attorney General at this time. That’s too bad. Not just because I think he would have been a formidable Republican candidate, but because all Californians will not have the opportunity to have someone of his caliber and character as their chief law enforcement official.

The California Republican Party is at its lowest point in decades. If ever there was a time for new faces and new solutions to old problems that time is now. Tom would have brought new energy and vitality to a party that desperately needs it.

While almost every politician in America was stumbling all over themselves to be photographed with a shovel or some other tool of manual labor on Earth Day, a California company announced that after 65 years it was closing its doors effective immediately.

Gregg Industries is a foundry in El Monte and it has been in operation since 1944 when California was a critical player in FDR’s “arsenal of democracy”. They didn’t make planes or tanks. But they made some of the critical engine pieces that drove tanks in war and the bulldozers and heavy equipment that built postwar California.

They were due to close on April 30, but decided to close today, a week early.

Why? What was the rush?

Enter the Environmental Storm Troopers of the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD).