Free Republic

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who has challenged many members of his party to take climate change seriously, said Friday that he plans to invite lawmakers and governmental executives from around the globe to California this fall to address solutions to the problem. The governor said he will invite officials from Europe, as well as from Australia, China, India and other countries, in the hope of forming an international alliance of community and regional leaders. He is planning the conference for November, a month before the United Nations holds its next round of international climate talks...

WASHINGTON -- For a generation, most people accepted the idea that the core of what makes America tick was an economy governed by free markets. And whatever combination of goods, services and jobs the market cooked up was presumed to be fine for the nation and for its citizens -- certainly better than government meddling. No longer. Spurred by the continued housing crisis, turmoil in financial markets, spiking oil prices, disappearing jobs and shrinking retirement savings, the nation and its political leaders have begun to sour on the notion that the current market system is the key to a fair,...

Last March, we received word that Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was offsetting his jet travel demands by purchasing green credits. The cost of Schwarzenegger’s travel was to be “annually invested” in sustainable forest management projects. At that time, it was reported that the Governor was flying twice-weekly from his office in Sacramento, CA to his mansion in Brentwood, CA. We firmly believed then that the offsetting was, at best, a band-aid for a habit that in one hour would do more damage to the environment than a small car could inflict over the course of one year. Now, the LA Times...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has placed his support behind a costly high-speed rail system in California. Schwarzenegger told NBC11 he wants California to lead the way in transporting commuters across the state at near-record speeds while reducing global warming at the same time. Critics have said the state's proposed high-speed rail system is too costly and too good to be true, NBC11's Mike Luery reported. On the very spot where the Transcontinental Railroad was established nearly 140 years ago, Schwarzenegger told Luery that a less-than-three-hour trip from San Francisco to Los Angeles represents the type of progress that...

Carly Fiorina has headed a major Silicon Valley corporation, ascended to the rank of America's top female business icon, authored a book - and now is on the short list of possible GOP vice presidential candidates. But now the former CEO of Hewlett-Packard has a new challenge: As a leader of Republican National Committee's 2008 "Victory" drive and a chief adviser to presidential candidate John McCain, she's being buffeted by intense criticism that, as a star campaign surrogate, she is playing fast and loose with the facts. --snip-- It wasn't the first such slip-up, Keenan said. Fiorina's public reassurance to...

Arnold Schwarzenegger has risked accusations of green hypocrisy by driving around in a gas-guzzling Dodge Challenger Coupe. The Hollywood star-turned Californian governor has built a reputation as a leading green campaigner and last Friday told a climate-change meeting in Florida: "America is so addicted to oil it will take us years to wean ourselves from it, and to look for new ways to feed our addiction is not the answer." In an interview last year, the governor spoke of his wish to create "a whole new industry of clean cars and clean engines and components to build those engines." To...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state Sen. Tom McClintock are California's best-known Republicans. McClintock is the quintessential Republican candidate for statewide office. He is a middle-aged, upper-middle-class, white, male career politician. He currently serves as state senator for the 19th District, where he hasn't lived in years, and is running for Congress in the 4th District, where he not only doesn't live, but can't even vote. McClintock is completely inflexible and incapable of compromise, and as a result, receives little to no Republican support in Sacramento. He regularly gets beaten in statewide elections, having lost races for state controller, lieutenant governor...

SAN DIEGO – Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger may like John McCain as a presidential candidate, but not enough to drop his opposition to offshore oil drilling off the California coast. The governor told reporters Wednesday that the state would maintain its long-held stance against offshore drilling, despite the positions taken this week by both the Arizona senator and President Bush. He also suggested that scrambling for new sources of crude oil in response to the recent drastic upturn in fuel prices represented a step backward at a time when America needs to move forward in its quest for energy independence. A...

Quietly for now, perhaps more visibly later, Sen. Sam Brownback has set himself a missionary task. That task involves persuading the so-called "religious right," his core constituency, to get behind the John McCain presidential candidacy. .... "You get down to the raw points of it, and that's the (Supreme Court)," he said. He tells conservatives that McCain's "very reliable on that... and so (in a different way) is Barack Obama." "Barack's a good guy - I like him - but he's a very liberal Democrat," Brownback said. "If you have a liberal Democrat plus a Democratic House and Senate, that's...

Republican presidential candidate John McCain's tax policies have given him an edge as the better man for the economy, various Wall Street experts said at this week's Reuters Investment Outlook Summit. McCain plans to extend the Bush administration's tax cuts, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Tax, and slash corporate taxes. Obama, who has derided the Arizona senator's plans, has pledged to raise taxes on the wealthy and introduce a broad range of refundable tax credits. "My personal opinion is I would argue that McCain is probably the better candidate for the economy and that is more or less because of his...

There is – or at least should be – only one standard by which to judge Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's latest budget proposal: Does it stop the "crazy deficit spending" that he pledged to end when he was elected five years ago, or at least make significant progress toward fiscal responsibility? Sadly, not only is the answer "no," but Schwarzenegger has apparently abandoned even the pretense of truly balancing the state's books, and would bury the state even deeper in the quicksand of borrowed money, bookkeeping gimmicks and pie-in-the-sky assumptions on revenues and spending. This seemingly endless cycle of mounting debt...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has now abandoned his goal of fixing the problem that led to his historic election in 2003. With the revised budget proposal he released Wednesday, the governor has effectively conceded that California's era of perpetual budget deficits will not end on his watch. --snip-- His trouble started early, when he proposed spending cuts that were politically unpalatable while failing to follow through on a fundamental, top-to-bottom rethinking of the way the state does business. When the economy briefly surged and brought in billions of dollars in unexpected tax revenue, Schwarzenegger lost his zeal for fiscal discipline and...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, with talent on loan from G-d, at the cutting-edge of societal evolution, with half his brain tied behind his back — just to make it fair, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling,...

SACRAMENTO — Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Wednesday will propose borrowing against future state lottery revenue to help close a $15.2 billion budget deficit in the next fiscal year. The governor will propose raising $15 billion in the next three years by selling bonds based on anticipated lottery revenue. He will use about $5.1 billion of that for the 2008-09 fiscal year to help erase the deficit, administration officials said Tuesday. The other $10 billion would be left in a reserve fund the governor wants to create as part of a budget-reform proposal. It would be intended to ease the effect...

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger held town hall-style meetings everywhere but Sacramento this spring, making the point that the state's budget obstructions reside in the capital city. He asked leaders in Eureka and Garden Grove to demand that lawmakers resolve budget problems in April as the state faced a deficit as large as $20 billion, yet his message had little impact. As he releases his revised May budget today, Schwarzenegger must broker a deal in Sacramento with legislators who are disinclined to reach compromise on their own, skeptical of his intentions and believe his clout has waned in the Capitol. "It's difficult...

PHOENIX (AP) - Republican presidential hopeful John McCain says the focus on illegal immigration during the Republican primary season harmed his party's image among Hispanics. Speaking to reporters in Phoenix on Cinco de Mayo, McCain said that Hispanic citizens want America's borders secured and illegal immigrants to be treated humanely. He says low-income Hispanic citizens are vulnerable to losing their jobs to the lower wages accepted by illegal immigrants. On the subject of broader immigration policies, McCain says local governments would not have to take on immigration problems had the federal government overhauled the country's immigration policies. McCain spoke at...

The John McCain campaign celebrated Cinco de Mayo today by launching a Spanish-language version of its website–and announcing that McCain will speak at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza (that’s “The Race”). The campaign justifies his appearance by framing it as a gesture of inclusiveness and outreach that is “part of his commitment to talking with all Americans.” Yes, they see it as an act of tolerance to legitimize the militantly open-borders, anti-immigration enforcement, ethnic nationalists who call themselves “The Race.”

Dulles, Virginia -- Bowing before the politically correct lords of the environmental movement, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared this week that when it comes to the issue of climate change, “America has to lead, and [California is] doing so with or without Washington.” Schwarzenegger was explaining his decision to ratify a two-year environmental alliance between the state of California and the People’s Republic of China under the supervision of the United Nations. Frustrated with the Bush administration’s reluctance to embrace a global climate treaty that would place caps on greenhouse gas emissions, Schwarzenegger engaged the UN and China by making...

Thank you. It's good to be back in Meridian. As you might know, I was once a flight instructor here at the air field named for my grandfather during my long past and misspent youth. And it's always good to be in Mississippi, which you could call my ancestral home. Generations of McCains were born and raised in Carroll County, on land that had been in our family since 1848. The last McCain to live on the property, which the family called Teoc, was my grandfather's brother, Joe McCain. I spent a couple summers here as a young boy, and...

Numerous conservatives throughout the country have called me to say that while they may have supported candidates other than John McCain for the Republican nomination, they would now like to campaign for the Arizonan -- if for no other reason than the thought of “President Obama” or “President Clinton 44” gives them nightmares! The stumbling block for them is that John McCain, so far, is not sending out signals that he welcomes conservatives who were not with him from the start. In his recent trip to the Middle East, the certain GOP nominee was accompanied by Sens. Lindsay Graham (R.-SC)...