It is a good thing that Senator Pete Knight isn't around to see the mess that the California State Supreme County has wrought today.  In a 4-3 decision by a court that has a supposed 6-1 "Republican" majority, they have overturned Knight's Proposition 22. 

Get ready for an initiative to roll out that will ban gay marriage in the California State Constitution.

The more and more Obama speaks the more and more it seems like he is going to be fulfilling the second term of Jimmy Carter's Presidency.  The RNC has just posted a new video of theirs on YouTube that sums it all up nicely.

"As American families face higher prices at the pump, Barack Obama opposes immediate relief and lower taxes on fuel. Instead, Obama has proposed new tax increases that will reduce oil production, increase dependence on foreign oil, and hurt American consumers. Obama's proposal was tried before by former President Jimmy Carter, resulting in a substantial reduction in domestic oil production, higher prices for gas at the pump, and increased U.S. reliance on foreign oil."

Really?

Peter Day with the Hesperia Star wrote an article about the race between Rita Vogler and Brad Mitzelfelt and the "importance" of the SB Sun's endorsement of Vogler.  Day compares the race to "Rocky versus Apollo Creed."

FYI - For those of you who have had the luxury of watching any of the Rocky films (if you haven't watch all of them up until Rocky IV, the rest suck) you can agree that this makes no sense. 

Rocky Balboa and Apollo Creed fight to a split decision in Rocky, Creed loses to Balboa in Rocky II, Creed trains Balboa in Rocky III to fight Mr. T, and then the end comes for Apollo Creed when he is killed by Soviet boxer Ivan Drago in Rocky IV and Rocky travels to the USSR to avenge his death.

So are we to take from Day's article that the loser of this race will go into retirement only to come back to help the other defeat a common enemy, perhaps the Soviets ala Rocky IV? Maybe we will find Brad has the Eye of the Tiger.  Will Rita be running up the steps of SB County...

Here is a story that you won't see on the nightly news:

"The approval rating of the U.S. Congress dropped to near-record levels and is lower than U.S. President George Bush's mark, a Gallup poll indicates."

Every time this same poll publishes the President's numbers CNN, LA Times, etc. trumpet it.  When 18% of people approve of Congress, it will probably get lost in the shuffle in newsrooms while they work on the Barack Hussein Obama coronation coverage. 

Jim Ledford is the Mayor of Palmdale. He is a registered Republican. Ledford also likes the car tax and catering to union bosses.

Ledford also like running for the 36th Assembly District. In 2006 he took on incumbent Sharon Runner. In full diclosure, I'm currently President of the California Republican Assembly. The CRA IE PAC has produced an independent expenditure to highlight Jim Ledford's support of the car tax and his cendure by the local GOP.

Chris Jones gets credit for the consulting work on this.

I scheduled this piece to post on the day it was suppossed to hit. Hope I'm not early.

Either way, Bye Bye Jim.

AD 36 - Ledford Loves Taxes.pdf

 

This week area newspapers targeted the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisor's for benefit improvements they quietly approved in June 2007, on a split 3-2 vote. The improvements gave San Bernardino County Supervisor's some of the most lucrative benefits in Southern California. First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt voted against the largess, and was the only member of the Board to decline the increases.

 

Third District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger voted against the benefits increase, but later accepted the vastly improved package.  

 

The Sun Newspaper published story for May 6, 2008 is available for viewing here.

 

The Press-Enterprise published story for May 8, 2008 is available for viewing here.

 

Interestingly, the Editorial Board for the Press-Enterprise didn't quite agree with the take of their reporters. Today's strongly-worded editorial reads as follows.

 

Selfish stealth

 

03:19 PM PDT on Saturday, May 10, 2008

Supervisors in a county with a recent history of insider dealings and corruption scandals should understand the absolute need for transparency in government decisions. But San Bernardino County supervisors still fail to grasp that point, as a vote on supervisors' benefits last year shows.

The board voted in June to...

All the spin, all the denials, and all the posturing, won't help.

 

The California budget deficit rapidly moving towards the $20 billion mark I estimated some time ago, will have a cascade effect on the finances of every city and county in the state.

 

Make no mistake about it.

 

While republicans, democrats, and the Governor gush out volumes of political speak, the situation worsens everyday. While local governments sit back and wait.

 

California has a structural budget problem that this Governor promised to remedy during the Davis recall effort. This has not occurred. And as long as a permanent solution isn't found, such as rebalancing the property tax and sales tax distribution formulas, revisiting Prop 98 and other mandates, the problem will balloon further next year as yet another round of Prop 8 property value assessment reductions occur.

 

The iceberg in the water is the fact that one time fix's will not work anymore. And as the 10% across the board reduction the Governor called for a short time ago approaches 14%, the call for tax and fee increases will gain momentum, as will pressure on weaker republicans in the Assembly to cave.

 

Expect a...

The San Bernardino Sun Newspaper this morning announced their endorsements of County Supervisor Dennis Hansberger to reelection in the Third District and Hesperia City Councilwoman Rita Vogler for election to First District County Supervisor.

 

Five term incumbent Dennis Hansberger is being challenged by two term San Bernardino City Councilman Neil Derry.  Vogler is challenging First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt, who was appointed in January 2007.

 

Unfortunately, due to ongoing technical difficulties at the Sun Newspaper's website, this editorial is not avialable for inclusion in this story, but will be posted when that occurs.

The Faith, Family, and Freedom Association has notified the Derry for Supervisor Campaign that the group has dropped incumbent Supervisor Dennis Hansberger from its slate for the June 2008 Primary Election. In doing so, the Association indicated that Hansberger's challenger, San Bernardino City Councilman Neil Derry will now appear.

 

Hansberger was removed due to issues surrounding his voting record.

Rumors have surfaced in the county's westside that Supervisor Dennis Hansberger has dropped Long Beach based Adler Public Relations as his campaign strategy Consultant.

Apparently, the supervisor's campaign has enlisted the help of Consultant Christopher Crotty. Crotty a consultant of some twenty years experience in predominently San Diego County has handled mostly Democratic campaigns, and he appears to have no history in the Inland Empire.

Several businessman have confirmed this development, which occurred last week. Crotty is said to have assumed responsibility for the campaign last Wednesday.

Adler Public Relations also caters to Democratic candidates.

Developing........

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR:
Attention readers and SB VERITAS: This post is false.  According to Supervisor Hansberger's Campaign Manager, Adler Public Relations is still Hansberger's campaign strategy consultant. There have been no changes. SB Veritas, please be factual in your postings.  Posts like these diminish credibility. 

San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors candidate Neil Derry's hypocrisy in his effort to oust popular incumbent Supervisor Dennis Hansberger has entered into the realm of the absurd. A recent mass mailing from the supervisorial hopeful (described here) blasts alleged ethical lapses in both the supervisor Derry wishes to replace as well as current news surrounding the Office of the County Assessor.

In issuing the campaign mailer referenced above, Neil Derry becomes the first  - and so far, only - candidate for the Third District to begin a negative mail campaign against an opponent.

What makes Neil Derry's attack piece unique is the rank hypocrisy he displays in it by highlighting the recent news surrounding County Assessor Postmus' office.

Although it is premature to speculate on the nature of the county district attorney's office inquiry into the assessor's office, it should not go unnoticed that Dennis Hansberger was the lone supervisor to NOT endorse Bill Postmus' candidacy for assessor back in 2006.

Neil Derry has ties to Bill Postmus and his political machine. Neil Derry's first campaign consultant was MPR Strategies - a political consulting firm that area media have identified as being closely associated with Assessor Postmus. A...

San Bernardino is the wild west of political arenas in the Southern California area. To help us keep tabs on all of the political shenanigans and to wrangle the herd of editorial contributors, Red County welcomes Jessica Austin to the team. Jessica will serve as editor of Red County San Bernardino.

Jessica Austin is a Republican activist on the local, state, and national level.  She worked with the Rudy Giuliani campaign and currently volunteers with the Hansberger re-election committee. Awards include being selected as one of America's Top Conservative Activists in the nation for 2007, and receiving the national Ronald Reagan Leadership Scholarship Award.

Jessica is entering her final year at University of Redlands where she is president of the Redlands College Republicans and majors in government and philosophy.

Welcome aboard Jessica!

The Press-Enterprise has announced its endorsement of First District Supervisor Brad Mitzelfelt over three other challengers, and San Bernardino City Councilman Neil Derry to replace five-term incumbent Third District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger.

 

2 for supervisor

07:47 PM PDT on Thursday, May 1, 2008

San Bernardino County needs supervisors who can bring a more professional approach to county government and adhere to a higher standard of ethics. The corruption scandals of the late 1990s are over, but the county still falls short of the model government that a fast-developing region requires.

Filling that governance deficit will take more than a single election, of course. But voters can make a start in June by electing the candidates who offer the best hope of improving the county's standard of government: Neil Derry and Brad Mitzelfelt.

Derry, a San Bernardino City Councilman, faces incumbent Dennis Hansberger in the 3rd District. Ousting a supervisor who has been on the board since 1996 and served two terms in the 1970s is not an easy choice. But real change...

Did you know that the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (the Longshoremen) have said that they will not be moving cargo along the West Coast, today?

To quote an opinion piece in the SF Chronicle, the ILMU passed a motion that called the war in Iraq an:

"imperial action for oil in which the lives of working-class youth and Iraqi civilians were being wasted and declared May Day a "no peace, no work" holiday. Angered after supporting Democrats who received a mandate to end the war but who now continue to fund it, longshoremen decided to exercise their political power on the docks."  It continued to say: "A U.N. Human Rights Commission investigator characterized the Oakland police attack as "the most violent" against anti-war protesters in the United States."

So happy May Day or International Workers' Day, whichever you call it, today is a day that Communists and anarchists around the world celebrate with vigor.  Too bad the news tonight will be filled with marches here and no media outlet will actually give you the background of this noted leftist...

In politics, people have said your past can haunt you.

In the case of Third District Supervisor Dennis Hansberger it sure can. In this instance the heat has commenced via the mailbox.

With only 33 days until Election Day, Hansberger challenger, San Bernardino City Councilman Neil Derry has hit the mailbox today for the third time in less than three weeks. The new campaign piece is a high quality candidate compare and contrast mailer that pressures the incumbent supervisor on publicized lapses during Hansberger's current term, a current county scandal, and credit card abuses.

The overall theme of the mailer and Derry's campaign appears to be "It's time for a change". With a major component being that of hammer away at Hansberger's incumbency and record.

One significant issue highlighted is a $6,000 FPPC fine levied against the five-term supervisor for a disqualification violation of the Political Reform Act. As the complaint reads, Hansberger while acting as a member of the San Bernardino International Airport Authority, improperly voted for a contributors contract within a timeframe prohibited by law. The supervisor should have disqualified himself from the vote.

Author's Note: Please keep in mind that California State...

Two relatively-sophisticated and well-produced video presentations have recently begun circulating on the internets. The target of the video clips is Fontana's two-term Republican mayor Mark Nuaimi.

The videos were first posted in popular internet website YouTube, where members of the electronic forum are allowed to contribute videos they self-create. YouTube management does not verify indentities of site members who wish to contribute videos for public viewing, and thus, a culture of anonymous members creating videos and posting them for increased awareness has been spawned on their website.

Viewers can easily access and watch hundreds of thousands of video presentations - including the two visual shorts aiming to discredit Mayor Mark Nuaimi.

Not much is known about who or what organization is behind both of the anti-Nuaimi videos which each last no more than four minutes. The YouTube member who created and posted the visual indictment of Mayor Mark Nuaimi's performance as Fontana's directly-elected mayor is only named as "fontanafirst."

An extensive internet and public records search for an organization calling itself fontanafirst or any derivation thereof reveals no such entity prior to the first posting of the videos on Monday April 21, 2008.

See the anti-Nuaimi clips here. One video...

San Bernardino County First District Supervisorial candidate Rita Vogler has issued her first direct mail piece in support of her campaign to defeat appointed incumbent Brad Mitzelfelt. Vogler, currently a Hesperia city councilmember, is among three challengers to Mitzelfelt's bid for a full four-year term in the district that includes the High Desert region.

The election for the seat is this June. If no candidate receives over 50 percent of the vote a runoff will be held in November between the top two vote-getters.

H/T to Hesperia City Planning Commissioner Paul Bosacki's weblog Pave Roads First for being the first website to offer a PDF file of Rita Vogler's mail. Bosacki is a supporter of Vogler's campaign for the First Supervisorial District seat.

The mailer is simple and straight-forward and all positive. A full-colour two-sided introductory/bio piece that stresses her roots in the area and her five-point platform for the county, should she prevail in the upcoming election.

Vogler's mailer includes a quote from the candidate in support of her candidacy (which is an accepted standard for all political campaigns); yet the presentation of the quotation appears awkward in that she addresses herself in the third person - not to mention an...

This is from the UK: 

"Joe Baca, the chairman of the congressional Hispanic caucus, told the Guardian that CNN's parent company should be held accountable for the content of programmes the network airs."

"Words matter and words have power. One-sided rhetoric can lead other programs to cite opinions as fact and adopt polarising word choices as the standard," Baca, whose caucus is influential within the Democratic party, said.

Thank you so much Congressman Baca for being offended by the First Amendment.  Reverend Wright and the Obama campaign better steer clear of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, just like the Sanchez sisters are doing.   Nothing that could be called offensive will escape the hypersensitivity of Joe Baca.

This just shows what Nancy Pelosi and her do nothing Congress can do when they ignore real problems. Baca has done NOTHING while in Congress, except place his heirs into places where they can fail.  Bravo!

The San Bernardino International Airport Authority award of a no-bid contract has led to the publication of an extensive article in the Press-Enterprise this morning. While the story discusses some positive outcomes, the cast of charcaters is like a trip down memory lane for those individuals that remember the San Bernardino County corruption scandals of the late 1990's.

This depiction of events places the entire operation under the microscope of not only local officials, but federal as well.

The political and economic cost for any negative result will be great.

 

Putting Troubles Behind Them
San Bernardino airport officials give no-bid contract for renovation to aviation insider with checkered past

08:55 PM PDT on Sunday, April 27, 2008

By JOSH BROWN
The Press-Enterprise

He spent four years in prison for bankruptcy fraud, oversaw a string of failed aviation ventures, and could be banned from the aviation industry altogether.

Yet, San Bernardino International Airport officials put Scot Spencer in charge of one of the largest redevelopment projects there in years -- a $38 million terminal renovation on schedule for completion this summer. No one else was considered.

The complicated...

Absent a total disintergration, Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) at this point has the definite edge this November.

 

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-New York) and her temporary resurgence should in no way provide so-called Democratic Super Delegates the staying power to decide their party's nomination in favor of Clinton over Senator Barack Obama (D-Illinois) for one simple reason, party division.

Think about it. Will the Dem Super Delegates take the Obama nomination away? The answer is no way. Why? The damage will be too great.

Analyzing the Democratic primary map, Obama and Clinton are appealing to clearly different voter bases. Clinton, states with traditional white and blue collar suburbanites, and Obama, those states with populous industrial inner-cities. Remember, the caucus voting format has been skewed towards Obama's advantage, so a Presidential Election ballot dramatically alters the status quo. Under a no-caucus structure would Obama be the topic of conversation today? Probably not. While the view is still somewhat hazy, it is becoming more likely the potential exists for a more centrist McCain to pull away Independent and Democratic voters unwilling to move to Obama.

It's a very interesting equation to say the least. Republican conservatives questioning McCain, and conservative democrats increasingly leary of Obama.

The question...