Ventura County Supervisor Peter Foy of Simi Valley, who has been busy traveling the state rallying opposition to the May 19 special election ballot measures, is scheduled today to be a speaker at an "anti-socialism rally" in Pasadena.

The rally is sponsored by a group called the Pasadena Patriots. In its press announcement of the event, the group assails the ballot measures. "Pasadena Patriots want to draw attention to the real cost of this path to socialism, both in dollars and in liberty. The Pasadena Patriots encourages citizens to join the Pasadena May Day rally and fight for capitalism, a free-market, lower taxes, lower regulations, less government and freedom of the individual."

How serious are these guys? The group invites spectators to come to the event "dressed like your favorite communist dictator."

Speaking to Foy last week, I got a sense that his on-the-road speech against the ballot measures has become very polished and practiced. One of his standard lines is how, "In my county" there is a policy that whenever a program is funded by special one-time funding, it and the employees associated with are automatically terminated after the funding source dries up.

When he said that in an interview, I pointed out that he was speaking to his hometown newspaper, so it was probably all right to go ahead and say the name of the county he is referring to. Foy didn't miss a beat. He backed up, started the sentence, "In Ventura County," and then repeated the rest of the line word-for-word the way he said it the first time.