-By Warner Todd Huston

When Howard Dean became a surprise front runner in the Democrat primary of 2004 doing so on the basis of a strong Internet-based campaign effort, tongues began to wag that the Internet might replace old fashioned retail politics. This time 'round Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich served to get people to question the old way of organizing a campaign.

But this week we've seen in Virginia why these airy claims of the Internet's new dominance is a bit chimerical. We see that old fashioned, boots on the ground politics is still the best method to election.

By all methods of measure, Texas Governor Rick Perry is still a strong candidate in the 2012 GOP Primary race. He sometimes comes in second, third or fourth in polls, but is still considered a top contender for the nomination. Yet as the time came to file his petition signatures in Virginia, it turned out his campaign could not collect enough to get his name on the ballot. So, a reputed front running candidate for the nomination, Rick Perry, will not even appear on the Virginia primary ballot.

Perry isn't the only one. Neither Bachmann, Huntsman, nor Santorum had the organization in the Commonwealth to gather enough signatures to make the ballot. Further, it was thought Newt Gingrich barely had enough to make it but as the final tally was made he didn’t have enough to make the ballot, either. And Newt is a resident of Virginia!

In the end, as the file date came and went only Mitt Romney and Ron Paul ended up clearly succeeding in turning in enough signatures to make the ballot.

So, what happened here? It all comes down to retail politics. Both Romney and Paul had the organizations with enough people right there in Virginia to pass around their candidate's petitions and gather the requisite number of signatures. The others simply did not have the campaign staff or enough support in individual workers ready to hit the streets for them that Romney and Paul had.

This shows that the Internet really isn't enough. It shows that organization still reigns supreme in the primary process. After all, if one can't even get his name on a ballot, how does one take the next step toward becoming the nominee?

Since the beginning of this primary race there were only three candidates with a ground game. Mitt Romney who spent the last four years creating his organization, Ron Paul whose absurdly young army of acolytes will do anything for him -- and which Paul spent six years assembling -- and the first major candidate to quit the effort, Tim Pawlenty.

All the rest have been flying by the seat of their pants with little money and fewer numbers in their state-to-state organizations. They've been relying on good showings in the many debates -- which has been a bigger factor than it has in the past, admittedly -- and the Internet to make their dent.

Clearly it hasn't been enough for the lower tier, however. Regardless of their suitability for the nomination, only Ron Paul and Mitt Romney have the ground game to appear on every state's primary ballots. It's the old fashioned game of retail politics that has made the difference for them. Both spent years and tons of cash to make that happen, too.

Fair or not, until there is some major change in our primary system the ground game will make all the difference.

Tis the season for buying books for your loved ones and as always the The New York Times Sunday Book Review is here to help. And as always the Sunday Book Review is there to help us understand that anything from the right side of the aisle, especially the Tea Party, is to be put in the worst possible light at all times.

So, what is it this time? Book reviewer Kevin Boyle lets us all know that he thinks that the folks of the Tea Party movement are somehow just like the Ku Klux Klan. Nice, huh? That'll get the holiday season started right.

In his Sunday book review Boyle reviews a pair of books actually on the KKK -- meaning that for the first time bringing up the KKK in a New York Times article isn't wholly gratuitous. So he has that going for him, which is nice.

But what was totally gratuitous was the way Boyle opened his review, slamming by inference the whole of the Tea Party and making of it a the modern day KKK.

Imagine a political movement created in a moment of terrible anxiety, its origins shrouded in a peculiar combination of manipulation and grass-roots mobilization, its ranks dominated by Christian conservatives and self-proclaimed patriots, its agenda driven by its members’ fervent embrace of nationalism, nativism and moral regeneration, with more than a whiff of racism wafting through it.

No, not that movement. The one from the 1920s, with the sheets and the flaming crosses and the ludicrous name meant to evoke a heroic past. The Invisible Empire of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, they called it. And for a few years it burned across the nation, a fearsome thing to ­behold.

Yeah, cuz today's era and the Tea Party is so dang similar to the KKK and the era of the 1920s, right? What is a more natural fit, anyway? What left-winger could doubt Boyle's hatemongering?

But this is obviously absurd. Even if you accepted that some Tea Partiers are racists -- and there is not a scintilla of proof of this -- comparing the Tea Party to the KKK is as idiotic as comparing the local town grouch to Hitler!

Of course, unlike the KKK, the Tea Party movement has precisely nothing to do with racism. So, there is no comparison at all between the two groups. The Tea Party movement is one based wholly on public policy. Quite unlike the KKK the Tea Party has not tried to cloak itself in racial purity nor religion. In fact there isn't anything in the Tea Party even based on social issues. The Tea Party has almost to a group rejected social issues because their point has been mostly fiscal policy and they feel that adding social issues to their operations would dilute the message and make of it just another vaguely conservative movement with no central focus.

In the end, though, Boyle's review is made less for the back hand to the Tea Party. It wasn't necessary and he wasted two paragraphs of precious column space doing it.

His ending wasn't so hot, either. At the end of his piece he makes another idiotic, childish, and ill-fitting comparison. He compares past eras of social strife to today's "modern anti-­Islam bigots."

At the end of the book, though, Baker steps back from her texts. Suddenly her analysis becomes more pointed. Yes, the Klan had a very short life. But it has to be understood, she contends, as of a piece with other moments of fevered religious nationalism, from the anti-Catholic riots of the antebellum era to modern anti-­Islam bigots. Indeed, earlier this year, Herman Cain declared that he wouldn’t be comfortable with a Muslim in his cabinet. It’s tempting to see those moments as Pegram does the Klan: desperate, even pitiful attempts to stop the inevitable broadening of American society. But Baker seems closer to the mark when she says that there’s a dark strain of bigotry and exclusion running through the national experience. Sometimes it seems to weaken. And sometimes it spreads, as anyone who reads today’s papers knows, fed by our fears and our hatreds.

Once again Boyle and the author he's reviewing make themselves look foolish. To compare what weak "anti-Islam bigotry" we see today -- after Muslims killed thousands of Americans in a religious-based jihad -- to the slave era, the Civil War, Jim Crow South, anti-Catholic fervor, or any other past era of bigotry is just plain nonsensical. In those other eras ethnic strife ended up killing people not to mention characterizing whole segments of the population, whether it be Irish, blacks, or Catholics, as the evil "other," ostracizing from good jobs and education. Today we may have a few Americans calling Muslims name, but there is NO perceivable discrimination against Muslims in America and no crimes against them.

Unfortunately, I guess we can't expect anything more than grubbing around in false stereotypes of their own making at The New York Times, even in book reviews.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Despite all the talk of fixing it, California’s budget is still a mess. One of those "fixes" was implemented last summer when the state Legislature increased revenue projections by $4 billion to avoid balancing the budget. Of course, the problem with using such "phantom money" is that it often has a habit of disappearing when you need it most. And it has disappeared just when money for schools is needed. Now deep cuts are on the table. The people lose again.

Naturally the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office recently reported that the state will receive virtually none of the $4 billion in projected revenue, forcing the state to make some tough decisions in the coming weeks. On the table are major cuts to the education budget, including shortening the school year by a week, not to mention cuts to in-home healthcare programs, and programs for people with developmental disabilities.

Obviously Californian’s budget needs all the help it can get but it looks like it's business as usual in Sacramento. For instance, an upcoming ballot measure sponsored by a career politician would baffle anyone that truly understands the mess California is in. The so-called California Cancer Research Act coming before voters in June, asks California voters to raise taxes by nearly $1 billion for a whole new perpetual bureaucracy. That is unacceptable to voters. Maddeningly this new program doesn't even guarantee that the money will be spent in the state! Apparently former state Sen. Pro Tem Don Perata, the career politician pushing the measure, thinks Californians who already paying some of the highest taxes in the nation should reach deeper into their pockets just to potentially send that money across state lines to benefit others. And all the while the budget for the education for those same taxpayer's kids is about to be slashed.

So, what is the "solution" proposed by Democrats in Sacramento? Raise taxes, of course.

"Today's numbers make it clear that the state's first priority must be to get to the ballot in November and raise needed revenues to avoid any more damage to Californians," said Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento. "The notion of cutting deeper into education, public safety and services for those in need is unthinkable. I imagine an overwhelming majority of Californians agree."

The "damage" to Californians is not too little "revenue" (the Democrat's favorite new word for high taxes) being raised. It's waste and abuse coming right out of our state houses and Washington.

Raising taxes during record unemployment and massive budget deficits and creating whole new bureaucracies when government is already strangling the state just to potentially ship the money out of state is exactly the sort of dysfunctional thinking that got California into the mess it’s in today.

By Matthew Cunningham

Think you came up a bit short trick-or-treating this year? It’s nothing compared to California, whose revenues in October came in $800 million below projections. Overall, California is about $1.5 billion in the red for the current fiscal year, which may trigger some nasty cuts to schools and public safety if revenues don’t start pouring in soon.

Of course, California didn’t get into these dire straits by accident. Years and years of reckless overspending pushed the state over the fiscal precipice resulting in the sorry state of affairs we’re seeing today. Apparently, despite billions in cuts to education and other critical programs, some people still haven’t gotten the message. Consider the so-called California Cancer Research Act, pushed by a former legislator. This nearly billion dollar tax increase not only would duplicate existing programs, but would spend up to $16 million annually on additional overhead and up to $117 million a year for new buildings and facilities. In short, it would create another new bureaucracy to pay for, even though we can’t pay for the programs already on the books.

California dug itself into the hole it’s in by giving in to wild spending schemes time and time again. Perhaps this June, voters will finally get the message.

Matthew Cunningham is a writer and new media pioneer in the public and private sectors. In 2004, he founded Orange County’s first political blog, OC Blog, which spawned the most influential regional blogosphere in California and evolved into a national network of more than 30 local blogs under the RedCounty.com banner. He’s also a contributor to the FlashReport Blog, California’s leading statewide conservative blog, and a regular guest on “The Filter with Fred Roggin,” NBC 4’s daily public affairs program.

-By Warner Todd Huston

I cannot support Mitt Romney in this coming GOP primary. The one reason why can be summed up simply as this: he flip flops. Romney has more flip flops than a California beachfront. Mitt has been proven a man without anchor adrift in a sea of issues that push him and pull him with the tides. Even worse, maybe, is that he jumps from one ship to the other on those political tides with the sole purpose of scoring a political win. So, how could I say that such a rudderless sailor could be an OK president?

Well, there is one way that a shiftless Mitt Romney might be good for both the country and the conservative cause but it certainly isn't because he cares at all about conservative issues. It isn't that he'll champion them himself, either. But think about this. What does an unmoored boat do but drift with the tide? This is where, if played correctly, Romney could actually work for conservatives.

In fact, a President Romney could be good for Congress no matter which side of the political divide is in control. And control is the word, too.

For far too long Congress has been slowly giving away its Constitutional powers to legislate. Through sloth and selfish re-election needs Congressmen have been allowing the courts to take an unconstitutional role in determining our legislation as well as standing aside as one president after another grabs power unto the executive branch that he wasn't supposed to have -- the latter of which both left and right have complained about for decades.

Up until today we've had presidents with strong ideological principles that serve as the guide by which they've made policy. Clinton had a liberalism tempered by some centrism, George W. Bush the opposite. Reagan came to Washington with specific ideals on what he wanted to achieve and Obama has too, though in the entirely opposite direction as Ron's.

But Mitt Romney is a marshmallow. He's been on every side of every issue throughout his decades as a politician. These days, of course, he's edged toward conservatism and this gives conservatives an "in" if you will.

I am not suggesting that Romney will stay with these principles. A recent Romney apology by Michael Gerson weakly claimed that because Romney has switched to conservative ideals this time around he'd look too foolish to switch again. But that is simply poppycock. Once a flip flopper always a flip flopper. He'll easily justify the next flip flop and it will only be Gerson left looking foolish.

So, here is the good news. The fact that Romney is easily led by the political winds gives Speaker Boehner as well as Congressional conservatives the opportunity to become an unmoored president's pilot. If Boehner and conservatives make their issues winners, this will lead President Romney by the nose down the right path.

The best thing is it gives Congress the opportunity to again take back some of its powers and begin to right the ship of state (if I can get nautical again for a moment).

But it will take a concerted effort to push these conservative issues. None of this working with the left business will do. Romney, will likely start bending his newfound conservative ideas the first time the intelligentsia at The New York Times squawk at his policy ideas. He'll likely rediscover his linguine spine the second some Democrat calls his conservative policy ideas "racist." He'll suddenly want to "work with" every left-winger that comes down the pike.

But because he has no real principles he'll be apt to pushes from conservatives, as well. If we mount a strong campaign of conservative ideas, budget cuts and all, we can keep a President Romney on the straight and narrow. But it will require a very active Congress not a Congress content to let everyone else take the lead so that at election time they can point fingers everywhere else.

Conservative ideas are winners with the voters. We've seen many issues come our way in the last few decades. Abortion is becoming less popular every year. Pro-Second Amendment issues are such winners that the Democrats hardly even talk about their gun banning ideas any more. People are down on unions, agree that government is too large, and think that taxes are too high. These winning issues can only get stronger if Congress pushes them hard. And a weak President Romney will give conservatives the opportunity they need to push his presidency in the right direction.

But I'll leave you with this reiteration: the left will have the very same opportunity to push a weak-willed President Romney. So, we can't just sit back and enjoy a win if Romney should happen to win both the GOP primary and the 2012 general election. The second Romney enters the White House our work must begin in earnest. Don’t wait for this flip flopper to take the lead. Push him, conservatives, push him. If you don't you'll be on the outside looking in as Romney is bent, twisted, and mutilated by the political left.

I’ll work to defeat Mitt Romney in the primary. But if he wins I’ll work to make his presidency a conservative one despite him.

A popular, longtime Doctor from central Illinois has been sidelined by employer Springfield-based Memorial Health System because he has not become proficient with the electronic medical records system, named EPIC Systems, that they purchased and implemented. Patients are so incensed that they've started a Facebook page as well as a blog to rally to his defense.

This situation brings into focus the problem of top-down medical solutions, calling into question the efficacy of healthcare by committee, not to mention Obmacare itself. Do we really want to sacrifice good doctors in favor of good followers of top-down rules? Do we want good users of computers or excellent doctors?

The doctor, Steven Kottemann, 63, was placed on paid administrative leave in September because they felt he was not properly utilizing the new electronic medical records system that his employer, Family Medical Center, instituted.

Kotteman initially tried to upload verbal recordings of his notes made when meeting with patients, but the system failed to accept the recordings. The only other option was to type in by hand all his patient notes. Kottemann tried to input the notes while actually with his patients but eventually came to feel that typing at a computer while trying to give care to his patients was not conducive to good care.

Dr. Kottemann then began staying late after office hours to type in all the notes but due to a stroke of his own the effort became too much for him.

“It got to the point where I was going in seven days a week to keep up,” Kottemann told the State-Register newspaper.

For its part, the employer says that Kottemann’s lack of proficiency with the computer system was not the only reason they fired him but Memorial Medical Center refused to comment further on this story when I contacted them.

Kottemann’s patients, though, are not as reluctant to comment. His patients have become incensed that their favorite doctor has been fired merely because he doesn't meet administrator's expectations for computer savvy.

They started a blog to come to his aid. There blog one patient praised Dr. Kottemann saying, "I don’t need a 15 min Dr, or a computer whiz… I need a doctor that cares about me and my family. I have that in Dr. Kottemann."

There are other equally laudatory entries.

Kottemann is now afraid to say much about this incident because lawyers are involved, so he demurred fro offering a comment for this story.

But the upshot of this whole thing is that good care seems to be being sacrificed to push electronic medical records systems. This is happening across the country, too. We have hospital administrators driving hard to implement Obama's medical records solution -- such as the one called EPIC Systems being pushed by his medical records czar, Judith Faulkner. In an “epic” act of self-interest, Faulkner is also the CEO of EPIC Systems. And in so doing they are acing out excellent doctors whose only deficit is that they are not proficient with the new records technology.

Are we really willing to stand by as Obama's representatives bully those good doctors that criticize these electronic medical records systems? Are we willing to sacrifice good doctors for merely competent computer jockeys?

-By Warner Todd Huston

As a result of years of budget deficits and wasteful spending by the state legislature, California faces difficult budget challenges for the next ten years. This bad news is courtesy of a recent analysis of the state’s long-term debt obligations by state Treasurer Bill Lockyer (Download .pdf of Lockyer's Report). The analysis adds to a growing list of bad fiscal news for California, a state already struggling under the nation’s worst credit rating not to mention suffering the highest unemployment in the country at 12%.

Even as California deals with this financial crisis, a career politician is pushing a ballot measure that would raise taxes by nearly $1 billion -- but doesn’t allocate one penny to balance the state budget, pay down its debt, or to fund existing critical programs like education and public safety. This measure, the so-called California Cancer Research Act, would mandate a new bureaucracy with six political appointees that can spend tax money on buildings and salaries and benefits. This includes $16 million spent on overhead and $117 million on new buildings and facilities. These are no one-time expenditures as such spending will continue year after year.

The Golden State is already on the verge of bankruptcy, to be sure, and California can’t afford this kind of spending right now. Californians should expect their legislature to fix the deepening budget deficit and fund existing programs before starting new costly spending programs like this.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Another in a long line of explosions and other catastrophic safety failures occurred at the end of September when a natural gas pipeline built and owned by Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E) ruptured in Roseville, California. This is just of a piece of the failure of PG&E to ensure public safety, a failure that the so-called government watchdog agency set up to watch the utility, the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), has seemingly done little to mitigate.

Now, not only has PG&E failed to safeguard the public, but the company is insisting that ratepayers foot the bill for repairs and new safety programs to the tune of some $2.2 billion. Government watchdog CPUC seems wholly content to stand aside while they do it.

Michael R. Peevey, President of the CPUC, has been at the helm of the regulatory commission during many of the worst failures of public safety. Yet, even as he's claimed he intends to make major changes in the agency, Governor Jerry Brown has not sacked Peevey whose term ends in 2014. The question is, why?

Peevey has been a disaster. Peevey has reigned over some of the most disastrous failures which have caused the deaths of nearly a dozen Californians, his softened stance seems to have allowed PG&E to act with impunity and arrogance, all to no good effect for ratepayers pocketbooks and their very safety.

Mark Toney, executive director of TURN, a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization, is one of those demanding that Gov. Brown fire Peevey before the end of his 2014 term as head of the CPUC.

Toney charges that the CPUC "has been guided by a misguided philosophy" under Peevey.

The commission has rubberstamped millions in unjustified rate hikes, pushed PG&E into spending billion on an unpopular smart meter program that so far has delivered no benefit and allowed energy efficiency to become a utility slush fund, while insulating PG&E from its mistakes with guaranteed high profits. Granted, Peevey has presided over some new and needed environmental initiatives, but that doesn't justify his continuing as president.

Toney ends his piece saying, "It is time for Gov. Brown to step in and replace Peevey with a president who prioritizes protecting the safety and pocketbooks of Californians over creating inflated profits and pay for utilities and their executives."

It's hard to deny Mr. Toney's logic. After the disaster in San Bruno where a PG&E gas pipeline blew up killing 8 people destroying multiple homes. It has since been discovered that the power company has for decades failed to inspect the bulk of its pipelines for safety violations and structural integrity. It was also discovered that the company had no emergency plan in place and that caused the company to waste valuable time in handling the San Bruno disaster.

After repeated findings of additional failures to keep detailed and proper records on safety issues and several other accidents where others have been killed -- right up to the recent explosion in Roseville -- Peevey has still done little to hold PG&E to account.

Worse, he seems to be assisting PG&E to soften reporting requirements. For instance, in February, Peevey proposed new rules that would allow utilities to wait as long as three months before reporting illegal pressure spikes on natural gas lines. And this after so many catastrophic failures.

After all this failure and after PG&E has put the safety of the public at risk, what did Mr. Peevey do upon returning from a nice vacation in August? Unbelievably, Peevey served as the master of ceremonies for an industry-sponsored retirement party for Southern California Edison's chief lobbyist.

Peevey seems pretty content to mix his CPUC, which is supposed to be a watchdog agency, with the very industry he's charged with watching. Back in March, for instance, Peevey thought it would be a great idea to have PG&E help him pay for expenses of his own efforts. It was such an outrageous idea to have the industry help fund the watchdog's expenses that Peevey was forced to unceremoniously drop the idea.

It all leads to a watchdog that is just a bit too cozy with those he's supposed to be watching.

So, while Peevey is hobnobbing with industry lobbyists and other bigwigs, PG&E is trying to force ratepayers to pay for the company's failure to implement safety programs. Suddenly PG&E sees the need for such programs -- after multimillion dollar fines have been levied against it -- but instead of footing the bill for things it should have been doing all along, the company wants to stick customers with the bill.

That isn't all the PG&E is doing. The accounting failures are all across the board and ratepayers are expected to pick up the tab.

All this after Peevey has helmed some of the biggest increases in ratepayer's burden. Again, where is Peevey in all this? Enjoying the food at dinners for lobbyists, apparently.

Just what the heck is going on, here? Governor Brown should start paying attention.

-By Warner Todd Huston

Every time we turn around these days President Obama is touting the idea that the "future" of America lies in green energy and one of those greenie ideas is an Obama favorite: electric cars. Not to let him down, Government Motors has obliged by pushing the Chevy Volt as the car of the future. But thus far the future looks a lot like GM's present; a whole lot of failure leaving a whole lot of questions.

While Obama continues to tout his -- meaning our -- investment in GM others are not so sanguine. For instance, billionaire Warren Buffet has invested in a Chinese electric car company instead of putting his considerable investment acumen to use with the Chevy Volt. Buffet may be a dolt on taxes, but apparently his investing senses haven't gotten any spark from the Volt.

One of the reasons that Buffet went for the Chinese company is that some of its technology seems superior to various systems of the Chevy Volt. According to Forbes, Buffet has targeted the company because the, "car can travel 186 miles, more than the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt, on a single charge with a top speed of 87 miles per hour."

Naturally, sales of the Chevy Volt are dismal and have been for quite some time. Sadly, some reviewers are saying that the Volt is overly flashy and techy and isn't a good value for the money, so no help for GMs sales record there.

Even lefty profs at Berkeley could see that the Volt was a horrible investment. Berkeley physicist Leon J. Schipper, for one, was not enamored of the Volt.

Analyzing the Chevy Volt, the new sedan that is supposed to go 40 miles on batteries and then use a gasoline engine, he calculated that because of inefficiencies in electricity generation, its fuel economy was no better than a Toyota Prius hybrid running on gasoline, while its price was roughly double that of the Prius.

"Does the extra $20,000 justify the overall fuel and possible carbon dioxide savings?" he asked. "If two drivers switched to Prius, the overall savings of oil likely would be larger than one driver switching to a Volt, for the same money."

So, why should the American people sit idly by while GM pumps even more money into the Volt, a car consumers don't want? Maybe because wealthy environmental activists think it's wonderful and seem to imagine that sales will grow up from the ground as if by magic.

Great, isn't it? We have political considerations programming GM instead of having sales and technological reasons guiding the company We The People bailed out. Sounds like a good deal for the American people's Government Motors, doesn't it?

When all is said and done, it seems that even as GM execs are talking up the Volt, GM CEO Dan Akerson, a Chevy Volt evangelist who refers to GM's newest EV as "not a step forward, but a leap forward," led the kick-off parade at a recent event riding in…..a gas-guzzling 1960 Corvette!

When he had a chance to tout his supposedly favorite new car, Akerson instead went for an old gas hog that gets 12 miles to the gallon.

Whatever is going on, none of it sounds good for Government Motors' Chevy Volt, now does it?

Back in September of 2010, a gas pipeline running underneath the city of San Bruno, California ruptured. The resulting explosion killed eight people. A recently finished investigation has revealed safety and engineering failures at many levels but, sadly, even the state agency charged with investigating seems to be hoping that the failures are hushed up. Why? Politics, of course.

Dennis Wyatt of the Manteca Bulletin read the new report issued by the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), the government agency charged with investigating the failures that led to the disaster, and he finds that the CPUC report "comes off more of a lapdog" than it does a watchdog of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E).

The failed pipeline was built in 1956 and ran under the intersection of Glenview Drive and Earl Avenue in a residential section of the city. The section that failed (Line 132) exploded killing eight people and destroying 38 homes. 70 more homes were damaged by the explosion, 18 were left uninhabitable.

But even though the pipeline was laid in 1956, the investigation found that the welds and engineering of the project did not even meet the safety and other standards of the 50’s nor was the pipeline been properly assessed for safety today. Other failures were discovered, as well.

The government found that dealing with PG&E was difficult because of the obstinate "culture" of the energy producer, PG&E had a deficient system of records keeping, PG&E was admirably focused on the safety of its employees but was not as interested in the safety of the public, training of third party vendors was lacking or nonexistent, and post earthquake inspections went unperformed. There were many, many other systemic failures, was well.

Wyatt reports that PG&E did not fund many safety programs that it should have. Yet, the energy provider spent at least $46 million on Prop 16 in a "failed attempt to get voters to amend the California constitution to provide PG&E with a guaranteed monopoly."

This $43 million is on top of the many millions in fines that PG&E had already paid for other safety violations going back several years.

What ever is going on between PG&E and CPUC, it certainly seems that the citizens of California are the last ones being considered.

-By Warner Todd Huston

The New York Times is never one to let a good tragedy go to waste when it can turn that sad incident into a bludgeon with which to bash American conservatives, even if the incident doesn't have a thing to do with conservatives, D.C. politics, or even the U.S.A., for that matter. And so, not to disappoint, the Gray Lady incongruously used the terrorist incident in Norway to attack conservatives in America.

Anders Behring Breivik, the killer in Norway, released a manifesto of sorts explaining his actions and in that document he quoted several American bloggers and national security activists such as Islam terror expert Robert Spencer. This, the Times decided, was enough to blame American conservatives for the incident.

Of course, the Times was practically silent about the influence of radical Islam on Major Nidal Hassan who killed 13 U.S. soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009. The Times also did its best to ignore radical Islam in its reports about the Fort Dix six that planned a major terror attack in New Jersey. More recently the Times neglected to mention the radical Islam influence of the pair of homegrown terrorist wannabes arrested in Seattle in June. This is a pattern seen at The New York Times, too. Whenever radical Islam is at the root of a terror attack, the Times routinely fails to note the fact.

Not only did The Times saddle American conservatives with the murderous incident in Norway, but Times writer Scott Shane also brought up the left's favorite shibboleth -- the 1994 Oklahoma City bombing -- and equated it to conservatives.

More broadly, the mass killings in Norway, with their echo of the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City by an antigovernment militant, have focused new attention around the world on the subculture of anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing activists and renewed a debate over the focus of counterterrorism efforts.

First of all, the incident in Noway has no connection whatever with the 1994 bombing in Oklahoma except in the most vague of ways. Unlike Norway's Breivik, Timothy McVeigh had no complaints about the influence of radical Islam on the national government when he destroyed the Muir Federal building in Oklahoma City. But more importantly, neither today's American conservative movement -- nor yesterday's for that matter -- have any connection whatever to McVeigh's act of domestic terror. Yet, here we have the Times linking McVeigh directly to both the incident in Norway and today's American conservatives.

Shane's next paragraph almost seems to be parody.

In the United States, critics have asserted that the intense spotlight on the threat from Islamic militants has unfairly vilified Muslim Americans while dangerously playing down the threat of attacks from other domestic radicals. The author of a 2009 Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism withdrawn by the department after criticism from conservatives repeated on Sunday his claim that the department had tilted too heavily toward the threat from Islamic militants.

Catch the irony of this statement. While Shane is lamenting that "Islamic militants" are being used to smear all of Islam, and apparently he feels this is a bad thing, he, himself is using the incident in Norway to smear all American conservatives! Talk about obtuseness. Talk about hypocrisy.

Shane wasn't done smearing conservatives, either. He dipped back into the skewed Homeland Security domestic terror report from 2009 that was so far off base that even the left-wing Obama administration had to retract it. Despite the utter lack of proof, Shane relied on that flawed report to warn readers that a Norway-like incident could happen any minute, perpetrated here by American conservatives.

You might recall that the absurd 2009 Homeland Security report claimed that returning U.S. soldiers were likely to become domestic terrorists upon returning home. Obviously we've never seen any proof of such an outrageous claim.

In any case, the irony of the Times' report is that Scott Shane scolds people for using the many thousands of incidents of Islamic terror as a basis to warn about radical Islam yet himself uses the only two terror attacks even remotely connected, no matter how tangentially, to the right as an excuse to warn that conservatives are somehow more dangerous than radical Islamists.

Scott Shane and The New York Times indulged in some amazing hypocrisy with this skewed piece.

-By Warner Todd Huston

The nonsense going on in the DuPage County GOP is a perfect example of all that is wrong with the Illinois GOP. It all rather shows why the GOP is useless in the state of Illinois. The DuPage party organization took what could have been a great public relations opportunity and turned it into yet another secretive, back-room dealing that cut out voters and proved that even its own party rules make no difference to party powerbrokers. Worse, this isn't the first time DuPage GOP has mishandled the same situation.

On July 18, a Monday, DuPage GOP Party Chairman Dan Cronin abruptly resigned from his post as chairman. It doesn't seem to have been a long planned resignation -- though Cronin had mentioned he would not run for reelection to the chairmanship -- and it certainly was not one enacted with public note. In fact, no one outside of Cronin's inner circle even knew it was coming until several hours beforehand when Dave Diersen reported the coming resignation the Sunday before Cronin stepped down.

After Cronin left his post that Monday evening, the nine GOP township chairmen in DuPage County unanimously voted to replace Cronin with Randy Ramey, the state representative for the 55th district as well as Wayne Township GOP Chair. Ramey is also the stepson of famed GOP politico Pate Philip, onetime powerful leader of the Illinois senate.

Of course, the problem here is that Cronin resigned and within hours the DuPage township chairmen simply replaced him in a closed-door session. No other candidates were discussed, no one was given any notice, no open discussion among Republicans was had. It all turned over before most were even aware a resignation even occurred.

What did DuPage Republican voters think? These powerbrokers sure didn't care.

Now, Doug Ibendahl looked up the rules for such a situation and found that the secretive, backroom method employed by the DuPage Party bosses violated their own rules.

When Cronin stepped down, so did Pat Durante, his Vice Chairman. The rules say that Durante would have taken over in the case of the Chairman's resignation. Obviously they convinced Durante to quit just so they would be able to anoint Ramey as Chairman. But Ibendahl found that if both the chairman and the vice chair were to resign, party rules say that the next chairman is to be appointed by the same method as the one that stepped down.

Cronin, the one that stepped down, was appointed by a vote of all the precinct committeemen in DuPage. He did not get his seat by a secret vote of only the nine township chairmen like Ramey just did. Yet, the precinct committeemen were not given the opportunity to have a voice in Ramey's immaculation.

This isn’t the only time this has happened, either. Secret deals abound in DuPage County GOP history.

Naturally this is all a missed opportunity. The DuPage GOP really missed the chance to show Illinois that it was the party of the people by arranging a public show of its fairness and desire to do things in an open and transparent manner. They could have made this quite a show to attract voters in a county that has been losing its Republican voter base for some time.

But what did these people do? They picked a crony Republican that is connected back to decades of insider deals, they ignored their own party rules to anoint him chairman, and they did so in secret without any input even from their own committeemen much less the voters.

This is yet one more example of everything that is wrong with the Illinois GOP. It shows that the Illinois GOP is a closed loop of inside dealers, a tiny coterie of connected cronies, an insular group of out-of-touch, toothless good ol' boys that simply aren't interested in fixing what's wrong with their party. And they most certainly aren't interested in sharing power with nobody, nobody sent.

-By Warner Todd Huston

It is a sad truth that from coast to coast our departments of children and family service (DCFS) agencies are in disarray. All too often they ill serve the children they are supposed to be helping and they almost always step on the rights of parents without much bothering to give a good reading of the situation before action is taken. The travails of 13-year-old Chloe Faulkner is another such story. Taken from her parents, isolated in a world of faceless bureaucrats, used as a cash cow for state aide, abused, repeatedly raped, and eventually impregnated without her loving parents being given a chance to be heard, this tale is another DCFS/State intervention horror story.

In 2009 Chloe was a 13-year-old, home schooled, bright-eyed girl who had been diagnosed with the serious medical condition of Type 1 diabetes. Like many 13-year-olds she was in a rebellious stage, pushing back at a world of parental rules and the constrictions that her medical condition unfairly imposed upon her. And, like many rebelling teens, Chloe ran away one day, refusing to return home.

Her worried, loving parents involved the police because they feared that young Chloe's medical condition would make her running away far more dangerous than it might for the average teen. The police found Chloe and brought her home with no incident.

But soon things began to go terribly awry. Because the police were involved the DCFS came knocking at Chloe's parent's home. After some interaction between Chloe and the state, DCFS took Chloe away from her home and into state custody under the auspices of a law called MRAI, Minor Requiring Authoritative Intervention (In Illinois it is ILCS705, 405, 3-3-1(a)).

Part of the MRAI laws, give teenagers the right to decide if they want to go home to their parents. In her rebellion, Chloe decided that she didn't. This gave the state the right to take Chloe away from her parents, exclude parents from the decisions about any treatment given their daughter, and to fully control the girl's life.

Even though there was no history with Chloe, her parents and DCFS, even though there was no evidence of abuse, no medical emergencies while in the care of her parents, and no evidence that her schooling was lacking, the state allowed a rebellious, naive 13-year-old girl to make the sort of decision that could seriously harm her and send her down a path of abuse. And the worst happened.

Once Chloe was taken away and her parents shut out from being able to help their own daughter, the girl's life began to get worse by the day.

As the year during which Chloe was forced into the state DCFS system wore on, she was placed in mental health wards --where state money naturally followed her internment -- even though there was never any determination that she had mental problems, she was given birth control pills by planned parenthood against her religious parent's desires, she was sexually exploited by the 20-year-old male friend of a "foster parent" -- and was raped three times by this man who lived in the same apartment complex as the foster family -- and finally, after getting out of the system, left state custody pregnant.

Chloe's mother, Shelley, fought long and hard to get her daughter out of this abusive system and is now trying to get people to understand just how dangerous and ill-advised the MRAI laws are.

The state seriously failed young Chloe and fails all too many others. Chloe's experiences must serve as a warning to us all that we need to seriously overhaul the misdirected DCFS regulations and laws regarding troubled children.

For more information and for ways to contact the Faulkers, see http://standup4chloe.org/index.htm or their facebook page, http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=118257284892107.

-By Warner Todd Huston

F. Vincent Vernuccio had a great piece in the Washington Times a few days ago revealing the the handbook written by the SEIU that teaches union thuggery to union operatives.

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has a 70-some-page manual that came to light in a recent court case.

SEIU is in federal court defending itself against charges of racketeering and extortion filed by one of its unionizing targets, the catering company Sodexo Inc.Sodexo's court discovery recently revealed an SEIU "Contract Campaign Manual" on "Pressuring the Employer." Union pressure is nothing new, but what SEIU recommends is not limited to organizing drives and strikes. Rather, the pressure takes the form of a so-called corporate campaign, whereby the union allies itself with outside third parties to raise intimidation to a new level.

Vernuccio explained that the most recent efforts of the SEIU to push businesses to the edge of bankruptcy so that they are vulnerable to being taken over by union operatives even going to the point of secretly getting the businesses to agree to work with the SEIU to prevent other unions from trying to contact its employees.

The manual is meant to guide the SEIUs thugs to win the battle.

SEIU’s manual details how “outside pressure can involve jeopardizing relationships between the employer and lenders, investors, stockholders, customers, clients, patients, tenants, politicians, or others on whom the employer depends for funds.” The union advises using legal and regulatory pressure to “threaten the employer with costly action by government agencies or the courts.”

It details the use of community groups to “damage an employer’s public image and ties with community leaders and organizations.” SEIU recommends going after company officials personally. Not mincing words, SEIU states, “It may be a violation of blackmail and extortion laws to threaten management officials with release of ‘dirt’ about them if they don’t settle a contract. But there is no law against union members who are angry at their employer deciding to uncover and publicize factual information about individual managers.”

Mr. Vernuccio goes on to give several examples of how the SEIU has used the tactics in the manual. But what we have here is the perfect example of the thuggery perpetrated by the SEIU.

Now, we have to remember one other thing that is important. The SEIU is one of the biggest government employee unions, too. These same thugs are running our government through the back door with their union rules and contracts.

Also, don’t forget that the SEIU was one of the biggest supporters of President Obama, too.

This is why government unions should be made illegal like they used to be.

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R, OH) takes his case for the Republican plan to the people.

But, whether you like him or agree with him or not, the fact is that the GOP is the only party offering a plan, here.

Obama has no plan. He's made all sorts of vague claims about how he's ready to "make compromises" but he has not once offered an actual plan. Not one concrete idea has come from the White House.

But at least Obama is making vague promises. His party isn't even offering that! The Democrats in Congress have offered nothing but a firm refusal to work with the Republicans. These idiots haven't even offered a budget at all for well over a year, now. Even when they controlled congress they didn't offer a budget.

The president and the Democrats have offered nothing to us. Not one single idea, no firm policies, no plan.

They've offered nothing. They have nothing.

Meanwhile, the House GOP Women take to the floor...