Field representatives for Ventura County elected officials will attend this week's Ventura County Tea Party general meeting, according to the group.

Jeff Gorell, Tony Strickland--and yes, Das Williams--will be represented at the meeting, which will include a discussion by the Vice Chair of the local Libertarian Party on the state of Progressive organization in the county.

One wouldn't expect Das Williams' office to have much in common with Tea Partiers--in fact, the Tea Party noted that other prominent local Democrats spurned the offer to participate. But Williams's people and the Tea Party seem to have built up a small amount of rapport with eachother, at least enough to bring them together for a discussion--and who can ask for more than that?

The meeting will take place Wednesday, March 2^nd at 6:00 p.m. at Pirates' Grub and Grog in Ventura. RSVP is requested.

With the world seemingly teetering on the brink, I think more people are going to become politically activated. If you're a Republican looking to get or stay connected, there's no better place to get going than at one of the GOP city clubs that are in each city in the county.

Way back when I was looking to dip my feet into the world of politics, these city clubs didn't exist and it wasn't easy to find a good, casual starting point.

Now, there are meetings every month. The Simi Valley club meets on the first Tuesday of each month at the Junkyard Restaurant near the Los Angeles Ave./Erringer intersection.

The March meeting will be next Tuesday, March 1^st at 6pm. It's casual, so just show up, grab a chair, and meet some fellow Republicans.

If you think about valuation of companies in terms of their long-term sustainability, you must first think of the market in which they offer their product.

For four-year colleges, their prices have skyrocketed. But is their product worth it?

Anecdotally, if you ask most people what they learned in college or if it applies to their career, I think they'll say not in the slightest.

Why are prices skyrocketing? For one thing, there's lots of demand. Everyone thinks you need a college education to be successful. That's true only in that having a degree is a common job requirement, but once your in I doubt the degree does much of anything. Another reason prices are so high is because they are subsidized by the government. Almost anyone can qualify for low-interest loan and go to college. Colleges respond by jacking up tuition, raking in the dough while plunging students into a hundred thousand dollars in debt. [continue reading]

A little quest of mine is to determine the most succinct way of articulating the difference in worldviews between someone like me and a progressive--discovering a singularity in belief that sends someone down the left or the right path.

Of course, I'm trying to keep it out of the "they-are-dumb-we-are-smart" realm and instead would rather have something that people both sides could look at and agree on.

I always criticize the Left for their reliance on bloated, wasteful, fraud-riddled, and unsuccessful big government programs to socially engineer society. For example, progressives are just learning that kids don't like vegetables. But why do they support this kind of nanny-state stuff and I don't?

For someone that spends a good deal of time complaining about people who can't manage their own lives, you'd think I'd hop on the nanny state train and force people to conform.

Progressives and many conservatives can agree on one thing, I think. People are generally ignorant, discourteous, uninformed, and lazy.

Progressives like to throw around a country bumpkin caricature with a thick southern accent to represent the common man. Obama Regulation Czar Cass Sunstein calls us Homer Simpson. President Obama says cling to our guns and religion. His wife doesn't think we can feed our own children properly.

They're right about that more often than I prefer--I run into many more Homer Simpsons during my day than people who've mastered the art of self government.

Where we differ, however--and hopefully I'm at least approaching a singularity--is what we want to do about it.

I want people to be rewarded naturally for making the smart choices and to accept the consequences of making the dumb ones. If you work hard and make a lot of money, you get to keep it. If you invent a product that people want to pay you for, keep it. If you don't want to work or think, then your life isn't going to be very good. Sorry.

Good behavior, thus encouraged, would increase. Likewise, bad behavior would decrease. And we wouldn't need government overlords to decide who wins and who doesn't. In a paragraph, I've summed up laissez faire economics.

Progressives start out at the same place. There are societal problems and they largely have to do with people making poor decisions. But rather than let people get their just desserts, they want to harness the power of government to eliminate poor decisions through regulation. We're going to make it illegal for you to own guns. We think you aren't smart enough to see through the lies of talk radio or Fox News. You can't be trusted to raise your kids without government's help so we're just going to have to feed your kids for you. You really aren't responsible enough to spend your money in a way that benefits society so we're going to take half of it and spend it for you. You're not bright enough to save for retirement or have savings for periods of unemployment, so we'll have trusts that do that for you.

It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People become so dependent on unemployment and retirement benefits that they don't save for a rainy day. Shielded from the consequences of their bad decisions, they simply make more of them. Single mom on welfare with three kids? You get more money the more kids you have, why stop there?

Good behavior--being productive members of society--is punished because their incomes are transferred to those on social programs making poor decisions. Many of those people made bad decisions and then get a check in the mail to boot. Society gets worse, increasing the need for government solutions in the eyes of progressives.

However, I'm getting a head of myself. The point here is to simply summarize the difference between us, not analyze whose worldview is superior.

Both sides can agree that people make poor decisions .But while progressives want government to externally influence the individual's decisions via regulations, conservatives want the individual to internally make better choices.

In other words, progressives want to limit choices by making things illegal or heavily taxing them, while conservatives want people to make the correct choice from a wide field of options.

Forming it into a sort of singular definition then, we get this. Progressives think government imposition is necessary to achieve the best result while conservatives think that imposition is precisely what prevents the best result from occurring.

I don't think either side would find anything too distasteful about that statement.

Of course, I can always be trusted to take it one step further, however I lose any chance of getting a definition both sides can agree to.

But I can't help but say, that at the root of it all is that the progressive wants to maximize control, and the conservative wants to maximize freedom.

I think we've lost all meaning of the word freedom, but when you spell it out in terms of limiting choices versus maximizing choices, it becomes clear. The world suddenly rotates from right versus left to up versus down, freedom versus slavery, light versus dark, and good versus evil.

The Party for Socialism and Liberation, a self-proclaimed militant Marxist group, is getting more attention from conservative thinkers in light of their support for protests in the Middle East as well as for unrest domestically, as in Wisconsin. The fact that hard leftists are playing a prominent role in the street is hard for some to admit, but it's undeniable.

There aren't fly-by-night operations, either. The PSL, which has offices across the country, has a pretty robust website with high-quality writing, holds regular classes and seminars (mostly on the evils of capitalism), and even has its own Droid app.

The PSL recently sent organizers to Wisconsin who wrote about their experience.

This writer, a member of the Illinois Education Association union and a Midwest organizer for the Party for Socialism and Liberation, joined the protests this week, along with dozens of other PSL members.

He's in a teachers' union and a revolutionary Marxist group, and is taking a part in a union protest. This stuff isn't hard to dig up, folks. The case that hard leftists are mixed up in protests from Egypt to Wisconsin makes itself.

A significant portion of the handmade signs at the protests referenced the Egyptian revolution. From talking with the students and workers on the ground, it is clear that the example of Egypt is very much on people's minds. It has had a material impact on the Wisconsin struggle.

The PSL fashions itself as the anti-Tea Party and is flying high over the Wisconsin protests.

When the right-wing, anti-worker Tea Party decided to mobilize explicitly for the purpose of taking away the basic right of collective bargaining, many people around the state saw the danger and the necessity of coming to Madison. With 100,000 people on the side of labor and a dismal fraction of that with the Tea Party, one thing was clear: the active and conscious people of Wisconsin want to move forward, and not backward 100 years.

In the PSL and the Tea Party, we can see two polar opposite worldviews express themselves. One wants global Marxism spread by violence and chaos. The other wants unfettered capitalism secured by peaceful protests.

Time to take sides.

State Senator Fran Pavley, who authored the business-killing AB32 environmental standards law, thinks that some regulations are unnecessary and harmful.

Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, said the goals of protecting the environment and streamlining government regulations are not mutually exclusive.

"I have to admit, not all regulations are needed, and some may be needlessly hurting our economy," said Pavley, whose district includes Oxnard and Port Hueneme.

Why would Pavley, who AUTHORED the business-killing AB32 environmental standards law, think that!

Has there been some controversy lately about environmental regulations hurting the economy that reached the ears of the senator, who authored the business-killing AB32 environmental standards law? [continue reading]

Borders bookstores announced that 200 stores will be shuttered and the ailing company will file for bankruptcy, leaving a solitary store in Ventura County.

The books on Borders, which will continue to operate the store in Simi Valley, should have been closed years ago as the company failed repeatedly to adapt to a quickly changing environment. The company is a case study on what happens when businesses fail to navigate through storms.

With the price of information dropping rapidly in the Internet age, and the amount of transactions moving away from brick-and-mortar stores, Borders couldn't figure out a way to compete.

Why would I shop at Borders when I could get the same book for a lower price, even after shipping, on Amazon? Borders needed to offer something else--they thought it was overpriced CDs and DVDs that they needed, and they were wrong there, too. I can get those online, too.

Barnes & Noble had the right idea. That company knew that brick-and-mortar bookstores could not compete with online outlets in selling books. Barnes & Noble sold an experience. Comfortable couches invited patrons to sit down and thumb through a book in the hopes that they would like it and buy it. Try to find more than two couches in a Borders store.

Even though I lived in Simi, I would rather drive to the Westlake Village Barnes & Noble than go to the closer bookstore, and I'd drive right past the Thousand Oaks Borders as well (except when I saw Larry Elder give a talk there some years ago).

Barnes & Noble opened cafes in its stores starting a good decade before Borders--by the time that dinosaur was selling Seattle's Best in 2004, Barnes & Noble was already ahead of the game in offering WiFi to customers. Both stores featured speakers and authors and sometimes live music, but Barnes & Noble just did the other things better.

In short, Barnes & Noble sort of became privately owned libraries--centers of cultural activities where you can lounge around and take in some information and/or entertainment.

But will that model continue to work? It will be tough, says Morningstar, given the short-term threats faced by online retailers Apple and Amazon.

Barnes & Noble will benefit from Borders' announcement for now, but in the long-term it's also in trouble unless it can reinvent itself again.

AB962, the misguided law that would make handgun ammunition much harder to buy in California (starting in February) has been struck down by a Fresno Superior Court Judge.

I've been following this law closely since it started winding its way through Sacramento, but I'm a little late on posting this as the law was struck down last month.  In fact, it was struck down 5 days after I made what I thought would be my final purchase of ammo online.

The judge found the law unconstitutional because it is "unconstitutionally vague" on its face.

The lawsuit alleged, and the Court agreed, that AB 962 is unconstitutionally vague on its face because it fails to provide sufficient legal notice of what ammunition cartridges are "principally for use in a handgun," and thus is considered "handgun ammunition" that is regulated under AB 962. It is practically impossible, both for those subject to the law and for those who must enforce it, to determine whether any of the thousands of different types of ammunition cartridges that can be used in handguns are actually "principally for use in" or used more often in, a handgun. The proportional usage of any given cartridge is impossible to determine, and in any event changes with market demands. In fact, the legislature itself is well aware of the vagueness problem with AB 962's definition of "handgun ammunition" and tried to redefine it via AB 2358 in 2010. AB 2358 failed in the face of opposition from the NRA and CRPA based on the proposal's many other nonsensical infringements on ammunition sales to law abiding citizens.

t's also unforgivably stupid on its face. The proponents of the bill say the purpose of it is to cut down on gang shootings. Follow the logic--it's already illegal for gang members to have guns--so if laws solved these sorts of problems why would we need another law taking away their ammo, too, if it's already illegal for them to own guns?

Naturally, the effect of the law would be to further disarm regular folks while gang members continue to illegally gain access to firearms and ammo on the black market.

AB962's proponents were so out of touch with reality that the original version of the law made it illegal to transfer more than 50 rounds of ammo between family members. Think about that--if I take my wife to the shooting range and give her a box of my ammo, I would have committed a crime! Or maybe she would have...or we both would have.

It's no surprise AB962, even in its revised form, got tossed out.

Randy Adams, the former Simi Valley chief of police and member of the "Bell 8"--the group of public officials in the city of Bell that benefited from exorbitant salaries--wrote in an email that he looked forward to "taking all of Bell's money."

"I am looking forward to seeing you and taking all of Bell's money," then-Glendale Police Chief Randy Adams wrote in a 2009 e-mail to Asst. Bell City Administrator Angela Spaccia, according to a 19-page memorandum filed by prosecutors in court Monday.

"Okay ... just a share of it!!," Adams adds, the memo shows.

Spaccia then responds to Adams with another e-mail:

"LOL ... well you can take your share of the pie ... just like us!!! We will all get fat together ... Bob [Rizzo] has an expression he likes to use on occassion ... Pigs get Fat ..... Hogs get slaughtered!!!! So long as we're not Hogs...All is well!?"

Spaccia worked for the city of Ventura. Looks like these little piggies are going to suffer the fate of hogs, after all.

Perhaps one million people are converging on Cairo, if protest leaders are to be believed, as a result of Hosni Mubarak's shocking decision to cling to power. The events that will take place on Friday will likely send aftershocks across the region and the world. From the Star:

California Lutheran University professor of economics Jamshid Damooei said the significance of this revolution goes beyond Egypt's borders.

"It's tremendously significant for the whole area," said Damooei, who was born and raised in Iran. "Egypt is the leader in the Middle East. The sentiment is that Egypt is very much the center of the Arab world."

Mubarak's reversal embarrassed the Obama Administration, which earlier announced he would step down from power. Meanwhile, the media elite seem to be casting the burgeoning revolution as a peaceful, pro-democratic process.

Conservative pundits are more skeptical, worried that Egypt might transform into an Iranian-style terror state.

Egypt has been enormously helpful in fighting terrorism under the Mubarak regime, and the Camp David Accords in 1978 helped bring peace with Israel. Egypt, which also straddles the all-important Suez Canal--an important channel of oil shipments--is a county of enormous strategic importance to the United States.

According to Stratfor, a highly-regarded private intelligence firm, the Egyptian military is in crisis. The military, which is respected by the protesters at this point,  is interested in preserving the government created by Nasser. Now that Mubarak will attempt to stay in power, Startfor reports that the military is left with three options.

First, they can allow the crowds to swell to the point where they might be able to storm the presidential palace. Second, they can fight the protesters. Third is a coup in which the military deposes Mubarak. The military will need to make a decision before the protesters march en masse at daybreak, which has just occurred.

The fate of the country could be decided in the next 24 hours.

"Immigrant advocates" frown upon a video game in which the player tries to prevent illegal immigrants from falling out of a truck as it crosses the U.S.-Mexican border, according to a story from the AP that was picked up by the Star.

The AP's use of the term "immigrant advocates" implies that there are anti-immigrant advocates on the opposing side. I'm aware of those that are anti-illegal-immigration, but I don't know too many people who are just flat against immigration, considering that many of us are here thanks to immigrants.

The AP can't even bring itself to use the term "illegal immigrant" when describing how the game challenges players to use a "smuggle truck" to "navigate through the U.S.-Mexican border over cliffs, mountains and dead animals [sic]."

As the truck hits obstacles, immigrants fall off the truck's bed. Scores are calculated by the number of immigrants helped crossing the U.S. border.

 The AP is either intimidated by the pro-illegal-alien lobby or it is trying to make illegal immigration more palatable for the American public with fluffy language.

Either way, it's lost its credibility on one of the most important social issues of a generation. I doubt the AP would call Sean Hannity a "justice advocate" or Rush Limbaugh a "fairness advocate" after all.

Cities decay from the inside out.

The age of dwellings in the city center and the congestion that surrounds them contribute to downward pressure on their prices. Low prices attract poorer tenants and owners. Businesses that target these residents--liquor stores, erotica shops, and hole-in-the-wall restaurants open up nearby, further driving down home values. Crime accompanies poverty, pushing residents further toward the city limits.

Building low-income housing in a city accelerates this natural process. This is about to happen in Thousand Oaks, as Many Mansions is building a 60-unit housing project for "very low-income and homeless people."

It's a noble cause, but the unvarnished truth of the matter is that housing values in the surrounding areas will be impacted by the Many Mansions project, creating a downward spiral as wealthier citizens leave to make room for poorer ones. The tax base will shrink correspondingly and the demands for social services will rise.

The indirect cost of the project will exceed the up-front price tag of $14 million.

My favorite Marxist group, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, seems to be everywhere these days.

I've followed them closely the last couple of years--the group is partly responsible for episodes of civil unrest that usually follows police violence--and while they seem like a small fringe group at first they have a wider reach than even I anticipated.

Consider this photo of a protest in San Francisco in support of the Egyptian demonstrators. The yellow signs have the PSL's website printed on them.

The PSL--a self-described militant organization--would like nothing more than to ignite similar bloody street protests here in the United States.