400-408 – Jeff Pries (& John Ward), the two creatives behind the awesome Liquid DVD series (experienceliquid.com) – simply the best Christian media I have ever seen! Jeff is the Small Groups Pastor and on the Speaking Team at Mariners Church (marinerschurch.org), a father of 4, and the former 1st pick of the New York Yankees out of UCLA in 1984. John is the president of Bay Ridge Films, and at just 25 was accepted into the Director's Guild of America for his great work, including the film Enchanted. John wrote, produced, and directed the Liquid series. And they just finished The 10 which you can purchase at experienceliquid.com.
413-423 – Jeff Pries (& John Ward)
428-437 – Jay Richards, is a visiting fellow at the Heritage foundation (heritage.org) who has held leadership positions at both the Discovery Institute and the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, and he's been the executive producer of two documentaries, The Call of the Entrepreneur and The Birth of Freedom (due out this year). His latest is Money, Greed, And God: Why Capitalism Is The Solution And Not The Problem (browse). Jay sent me an advance copy, I read it–twice–while taking tons of notes, and it's now at the very top of my must-read books. It is exactly what every American ought to read, and what every Christian needs to read right now as so many are embracing bigger and bigger government as the answer to all our problems.
443-452 – Jay Richards
458-508 – Dr. John Townsend, (drtownsend.com), clinical psychologist, leadership consultant, speaker, and author or co-author of 20 books, selling 5 million copies, including the 2 million copy bestseller Boundaries – and co-host of the nationally-syndicated radio program New Life Live (newlife.com) heard weekdays here on KKLA at 2:00pm. His latest book is Leadership Beyond Reason: How Great Leaders Succeed by Harnessing The Power of Their Values, Feelings, and Intuition. And, his leadership coaching program is under way in Newport Beach, for details go to drtownsend.com.
512-523 – Calls with John Townsend
TH 524 – [2:00] Don Rohde (818) 262-2092. For the past 37 years, Don has been a sales manager at Galpin, the #1 volume Ford dealer in the world for the past 19 consecutive years. Galpin has been family-owned and operated for the past 59 years, and 90% of their business is repeat or referral. Galpin offers Ford, Lincoln-Mercury, Honda, Mazda, Saturn, Volvo, Jaguar, and Aston Martin. Located in the heart of the San Fernando Valley at Roscoe and the 405.
528-538 – Calls with John Townsend
539 – [1:30] Robert Micone/Bill O'Connor aka "The Money Guys" at Applied Financial with 5 offices around the southland, 866-SEEK-COUNSEL, and online at appliedfinancialplanning.com.
544-554 – Calls with John Townsend
558-608 – • LAT (5/21/09) California braces for brutal budget cuts. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sees a voter mandate for his plan to slash billions, and Democratic leaders say they won't hesitate to make deep cuts that could antagonize their allies.
• But the Republican governor delivered at least a bit of good news: Obama administration officials had backed off their threat to rescind $6.8 billion in federal stimulus money. The hacking of government began quickly, by the hand of a little-known state panel that sets elected state officials' pay. Citing a need for shared sacrifice, the group decided to reduce those salaries by 18% starting next year.
•• "People are going to have to figure out: Do they want schools, do they want roads, do they want public safety, or do they want to take care of the less fortunate?" said John Burton, a former state Senate leader who is now chairman of the California Democratic Party. "At some point, that's going to happen."
• Matt Towery (5/21/09) California, Here We Come. Are we going to bail out "minority-owned broadcasting companies and big-city newspapers" too? Is California "too big to fail" too?
• The true whopper of a proposal is the administration's effort to tax "evil companies" that sell their products in other nations, but which, for whatever reason, avoid taxation of those sales in the United States…But here's the problem. Many of these corporations earn much of their income in countries with much fairer corporate tax structures. If they are penalized for their success overseas, guess what? They will move their complete operations out of the United States. Think I'm kidding? Just ask them. There go tens of thousands of jobs and more lost revenue.
•• George Will (5/21/09) The Coming California Bailout.
• "So California may become the next target for the Obama administration, whose dependency agenda involves seizing every opportunity to break things -- banks, insurance and automobile companies, etc. -- to the saddle of its supervision."
• "Now California's mostly Democratic political class will petition Washington for a bailout to nourish the public sector that is suffocating the state's dwindling -- and departing -- private sector. The Obama administration, which rewarded the United Auto Workers by giving it considerable control over two companies it helped reduce to commercial rubble, will serve the interests of California's unionized public employees and others largely responsible for reducing the state to mendicancy."
• These factions will flourish if the state becomes a federal poodle on a short leash held by the president. He might make aid conditional on the state doing things that California Democrats and their union allies would love to be "compelled" to do: eliminate the requirements of two-thirds majorities of both houses of the legislature to raise taxes and pass budgets, and repeal Proposition 13, which voters passed in 1978 to limit property taxes. These changes would enable the legislature (job approval rating: 14 percent) to siphon away an ever-larger share of taxpayers' wealth and transfer it to public employees. Such as prison guards, whose potent union is one reason California's cost-per-inmate (about $49,000) is twice the national average.
• California's voters are complicit in their state's collapse. They elect and reelect the legislators off whom public employees unions batten. Also, voters have promiscuously used their state's plebiscitary devices to control and fatten the budget. In November, as the dark fiscal clouds lowered, they authorized $9.95 billion more in debt as a down payment on a perhaps $75 billion high-speed-rail project linking San Francisco and Los Angeles -- a delight California cannot afford.
• But Californians should now pay a real price, in realism about ways and means, for Schwarzenegger's wasted years. His governance-by-attention-deficit-disorder has involved flitting from one trendy irrelevance (e.g., stem-cell research) to another (e.g., cooling the planet) while the state has sagged. Fittingly, he was in Washington as his shambolic legacy was being defined by Tuesday's defeat.
• WSJ (5/21/09) Golden (State) Opportunity. California voters send a message about runaway government.
• Mr. Schwarzenegger, legislators and public-worker unions are now conspiring to roll out plan B: a federal bailout. The Governor was in Washington on Tuesday and, sounding like a Detroit auto executive, declared: "We need assistance." As a starter he wants a federal guarantee on California's next $6 billion bond offering.
• But a federal bailout is an injustice to the residents of other states, especially those that run their governments responsibly. Why should taxpayers in Colorado, Virginia or Ohio pay for California's incompetence? Worse, one price of a bailout could be an Obama Administration demand that California remove its requirement for a two-thirds legislative majority to pass a tax increase. Another possible political target is repeal of the Proposition 13 property tax limitation. Yet these are the only remaining restraints on the appetites of the political class.
• The next step is to fix California's steeply progressive and antigrowth tax code. California's 10.55% income tax and 9% sales tax are driving businesses and high income taxpayers out of the state, depleting the tax base month after month. They also lead to overspending during the good times as revenues boom, but to budget crises when those revenues fall precipitously during the busts. A 5% to 6% tax rate on sales and income without deductions would halt the flight to low-tax neighboring states and invite newcomers who could start buying houses again.
• The state's public-employee pensions also need to be overhauled. According to the California Foundation for Fiscal Responsibility, the state pension funds are more than $200 billion underfunded. Public employees can retire after 30 years on the job in their early 50s, with lifetime retirement benefits at 90% of their final salary. Some retirees receive $200,000 a year or more in pensions. The solution is to follow Florida's lead and require new workers to accept defined contribution pensions like the 401(k) plans now dominant in the private work force. Without such a reform, many California cities will go bust and the state's tax burden will grow inexorably.
• Despite the panic from Sacramento, Tuesday's vote was the best fiscal news out of California in 30 years. It showed that the voters are paying attention to the games their elected leaders have been playing, and they have finally blown the whistle. We hope the sound was heard as far away as another out-of-control government, the one in Washington, D.C.
612-623 – •• "People are going to have to figure out: Do they want schools, do they want roads, do they want public safety, do they want to take care of the less fortunate?" said John Burton, a former state Senate leader who is now chairman of the California Democratic Party. "At some point, that's going to happen."
• Rep. Tom McClintock (5/21/09) Warnings from the Left Coast.
• Washington Times (5/21/09) Schwarzenegger knocks California voters. Will 19,000 illegal immigrants be moved to state custody and 23,000 non-violent offenders be moved to local jails? Will 2010 be another 1994 when the country threw out the tax and spend Democrats?
628-638 – Our American Idol is Kris Allen!
644-652 – David Rosales, pastor of my home church for the past 18 years (1991), the 10,000-member Calvary Chapel of the Chino Valley (calvaryccv.org). They invite you out to their FREE "Night of Worship" next Friday, May 29th at 7pm. The Katinas perform. And also the Calvary Chapel 13th Annual Inland Empire Men's Conference next Saturday May 30th at 8am (Breakfast at 7am.) Guests in include Chuck Smith, Raul Ries, Pedro Garcia, Ken Graves, Victor Marx, LTG (Ret) William "Jerry" Boykin (Wed 5:30). The Katinas will perform too. Conference is free and open to all men in the Inland Empire. Plenty of free parking. For more information, go to calvaryccv.org. Monday nights for Young Adults 18-35.
657-700 – • MSNBC (5/21/09) Couple flees with cash after bank error: New Zealand institution mistakenly deposited $6.1 million into account.
• ABC News (5/21/09) Four Charged in Alleged Synagogue Bomb Plot to Appear in Court. Men Allegedly Bought Stinger Missile, C-4 Explosives Through FBI Informant.
• Ann Coulter (5/20/09) Notre Dame Holds First Alan Keyes Fundraiser.
• NRO Editors (5/21/09) Californians Draw a Line.
• Victor Davis Hanson (5/21/09) Is America Premodern or Postmodern? A highly complex society, staffed by the inept, can be terrifying.
• Bjorn Lomborg (5/21/09) The Climate-Industrial Complex. Some businesses see nothing but profits in the green movement.
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