And the Sarcasm Award goes to…

Published in California Politics by Meredith Turney | No Comments

Announcing the winner of our first-ever punch line contest

Our top takeaway from Capitol Alert’s first-ever punchline contest?Controller John Chiang’s staffers have no problem publicly poking fun at their boss.

Several of the department’s employees were among the readers who submitted their best joke about the California Democratic Party’s recent offer to reward the winner of a fund-raising contest with two hours with the state’s top accountant.

The winning entry came not from inside the Democratic controller’s office, but from a reader across the aisle.

GOP social media and political consultant Meredith Turney got the most laughs from our judging panel with this quip:

“California Democrats finally found someone who can help their fundraising even more than Kinde Durkee”

For readers not following the Kinde Durkee saga, the joke references allegations that the prominent Democratic campaign treasurer, who was arrested last month, stole millions from the accounts of her high-profile clients.

It’s been a good week for Turney in terms of getting laughs. A recent tweet taking a swipe at the Occupy protest movement got some love in a daily email newsletter sent out by state GOP spokesman Mark Standriff.

“I can be sarcastic when I need to be,” she said of her snark skills.

Turney, who is currently based in Southern California, can toast to her successes with the $25 gift certificate to Starbucks she won as our top entrant.

Seeing as the FlashReport.org contributor is an active member of the GOP, it’s unlikely she’ll win face time with Chiang through the state Democratic Party’s fundraising drive. so she asked us to pass along one message to the person at the center of her punchline:

“Please don’t audit me!”

Thanks for all who participated for the laughs (and the groans). Click here to check out the post announcing the contest.

No Comments

California’s Jersey Shore Lifestyle

Published in Uncategorized by Meredith Turney | No Comments

While MTV is notorious for pushing the envelope of good taste and decency in its program selection, few of its shows are as controversial as Jersey Shore. Ever since television viewers first encountered Snooki, The Situation and other cast members of the now-infamous show named after their home state, there’s been no lack of the kind of debauchery that’s become the hallmark of all MTV fare.

Thanks to the cartoonish cast, America has been introduced to all sorts of new slang terms that characterize their depraved behavior. Ever heard of GTL? For “guidos,” or New Jersey men of Italian heritage, it represents their daily regimen of maintaining their body at the gym and tanning salon, and further maintaining their appearance with laundry; thus, GTL. (And, yes, I did have to reference Urban Dictionary to write that last sentence.)

The show is so full of embarrassingly bad behavior that, according to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, sixty-seven percent of New Jerseyans believe it is bad for their state. Who can blame them? What state would want the Jersey Shore crew to represent their residents?

The most reprehensible part of the show is how it unapologetically portrays the stars: as bed-hopping drunks with no life ambition other than searching for the next party and their next sexual conquest. It is indeed a sad commentary on American culture when this behavior is glamorized by a major cable network that influences the lifestyles of its young, impressionable teenage audience. The Jersey Shore cast members should be offered as cautionary tales, not the people you want to party with.

With entertainment venues constantly barraging young people with such harmful messages about what’s acceptable behavior, parents feel besieged by a culture that could care less about preserving the innocence and mental and physical health of its young. Sadly, government is only compounding the problem by further usurping the diminishing role of parents in the lives of their children, while at the same time sending them a very similar message to that of Jersey Shore.

New laws recently passed in California clearly represent the problem. Governor Jerry Brown just finished clearing hundreds of bills from his desk. Amongst those bills were two related to parental rights and the behavior of young people.

Assembly Bill 499 allows minors over the age of 12 to consent to medical treatment for sexually transmitted diseases without parental consent or notification. So if some thirteen-year-old Snooki-wannabe emulates her favorite celebrity by having sex, she can now use the same immature judgment that led to her STD in determining its treatment—all without her parents’ knowledge. How does it aid a teenager’s health by further abetting a dangerously promiscuous lifestyle?

Being sexually promiscuous is only part of the Jersey Shore lifestyle. There’s also the tanning Senate Bill 746 bans minors under the age of 18 from using tanning beds in California. There goes the “T” in that GTL regimen. Even if a parent wanted to give consent to their child using a tanning bed, that parental right has been take away by the state. (Sorry, Toddlers & Tiaras stage moms.)

From a parent’s perspective, it’s impossible to follow Governor Brown’s logic in signing these two bills. He’s fine with 12 year-olds being sexually active and making major decisions about their health without parent involvement, but he doesn’t think they have the maturity to determine whether they can use a tanning bed.

In California and for Jerry Brown, potentially getting skin cancer from tanning is far worse than having underage sex, which has awful physical consequences (sterility, long-term STD damage). Do politicians not understand that teens aren’t emotionally ready to handle the consequences, which can leave much deeper scarring?

It may be on the opposite shore of America, but California’s government is treating its young people as though they are living the Jersey Shore lifestyle. Governor Brown and his liberal friends think they should have control over whether your child gets a tan, but children should determine their sexual health regardless of parental wishes. Sounds like a bad TV show, right? Too bad it’s reality.

Read at Townhall.com

No Comments

Jerry Brown, the Unions’ Governor

Published in California Politics by Meredith Turney | No Comments

Since their inception, California’s government unions have found no greater ally than Jerry Brown. In fact, it was Jerry Brown who first authorized government employees to unionize in 1978 through the Dill Act. Since then, unions have pushed government spending on benefits and pensions to the breaking point. The self-interested unions have built a political machine of campaign spending that ensures their candidates toe the line once elected.

When Meg Whitman ran against Jerry Brown for governor last year, her detractors loved drawing attention to the large amount of money she spent in contrast to her opponent. They sought to portray Whitman as a Wall Street billionaire completely out of touch with common folk as evinced by her ability to drop lots of cash into her campaign, while Brown was her thrifty counterpart, spending very little and promising to do the same with the state’s purse. But in reality, Whitman and Republicans were downright paupers compared to the massive spending unions typically pour into their causes. Whitman was the rarecandidate who could try to match the unions’ war chest. It was no secret that Jerry Brown wouldn’t need to raise or spend the same amount of money as Whitman since his union attack dogs would more than match any check she personally wrote.

So it comes as no surprise (although the source is a bit surprising) that the Los Angeles Times has found Jerry Brown to be a very good friend to public employee unions. In fact, according to the article, “When the dust settled on Gov. Jerry Brown’s first legislative session in nearly three decades, no group had won more than organized labor, which heralded its largest string of victories in nearly a decade.” That’s right, it’s payback time for Jerry Brown and he knows exactly which special interest group to thank for his third term as governor.

Brown’s most blatant payback to the union was his approval of legislation that will move all initiatives slated for the June primary ballot to the November general election ballot. Political wisdom holds that turnout is lower in primaries and if the Stop Special Interest Money Now Initiative appeared on the June primary ballot, its chances of passing would be much greater since voter turnout amongst its supporters would be higher. Obviously unions are scared to death that such an initiative would cut their funding at the source since it would prevent corporate and union spending as well as employee payroll deductions for political spending.

This is the most galling example of unions and Democrats bending the political and legislative processes to their will without regard for the public good. It’s a shame Californians aren’t rising up and chastising the majority party and its union puppeteers for such abuse of the system. As long as the unions’ governor sits in the horseshoe and the unions’ lackeys control the legislature, there isn’t much hope the formerly-Golden State will pull out of its nosedive any time soon.

Read at California Political Review

Tagged: , , , , No Comments

Do “Latino Rights” Trump Free Speech in California?

Published in California Politics, Rights by Meredith Turney | No Comments

As a media figure, you know you’re having an impact when your opponents try to boycott you. Just ask Lou Dobbs or Glenn Beck. It seems LA’s talk radio kings, John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou, of KFI AM 640, have now attained such influence.

They’ve grown accustomed to Governor Brown taking jabs at them and their politically active audience. Now, several “Latino rights groups” are trying to get the duo off the air. For SoCal locals, John and Ken have become the go-to radio hosts discussing the out-of-control progressive policies bankrupting California and killing citizens’ freedom. In recent years, their loyal audience has become increasingly vocal, calling politicians and other politicos when directed by the radio hosts.

One of the topics of their ire is AB 131, the California Dream Act, by Senator Gill Cedillo. In their daily radio program, John and Ken have been expounding on the lunacy of offering college scholarships to students whose parents aren’t legal citizens, taking money from students whose families have paid into the system and are legally here.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition, the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials and the National Immigration Law Center have announced a boycott of KFI’s advertisers because in their effort to prevent the Dream Act’s passage, John and Ken released the cell number for Jorge-Mario Cabrera with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, a group advocating for the legislation. After Cabrera was inundated with hundreds of calls from irate John and Ken listeners, he and his organization retaliated with the call for a boycott.

As a political communications professional, I understand Cabrera’s frustration. It’s not easy to be on the receiving end of angry phone calls from your opponents. And it’s really hard to get any work done when your personal cell phone is basically rendered useless by incessant calls. But you know what? That’s politics. Don’t put your personal cell number on a press release if you don’t want it released to the public. Especially in the Information Age of the Internet, such releases are bound to be published somewhere. And if Mr. Cabrera really does believe in his cause, then being able to defend his position should be part of his job.

When unions and other progressive organizations storm the capitol and harass– excuse me –”lobby” elected officials, are they ever denounced? Yet a pair of radio hosts direct their listeners to call and ask a Dream Act activist why he supports legislation that will harm the state and suddenly they are considered villains.

The National Hispanic Media Coalition has even gone so far as to label John and Ken “hate profiteers.” How exactly are John and Ken profiting from hate? They are merely pointing out the inherent illogic of spending millions of dollars in rewarding those who have disobeyed immigration laws.

With California facing a $10 billion deficit, 12% unemployment rate, and numerous other fiscal problems, why are Democrats so hell-bent on passing a bill it’s estimated could cost the state millions more? California’s UC and Cal State systems are grappling with tuition increases and budget cuts at the same time. Can they really afford to hand out more scholarships–especially at the expense of students whose families have contributed to the system by obeying the law? Apparently Governor Brown and his cohorts don’t care about fiscal solvency, since he signed the Dream Act into law on Saturday.

The real question in this controversy is whether the fabricated “Latino rights” to higher education trump legitimate free speech rights. Dream Act proponent Jorge-Mario Cabrera can’t take the heat for his position, so his revenge is trying to end the free speech rights of John and Ken and their listeners. If he succeeds, then the politically-created “rights” of Latinos will trump the free speech rights for all. That would be a tragedy.

Read at Flash Report

Tagged: , , No Comments

When Hope Won’t Float

Published in Uncategorized by Meredith Turney | No Comments

There is a sense of hopelessness in America right now. You can hear it when you talk to friends and listen to their fear of losing a job. Set aside getting a raise or promotion, they’re grateful just to get a paycheck.

You can see it in the faces of family members who have lost jobs or their retirement savings. How will they be able to pay their mortgage or ever retire? Forget selling a home and downsizing; their homes have been so devalued they may never be able to sell without owing more than the home’s worth.

You can sense it in the general mood of the man on the street. Gone is the optimistic smile or carefree greeting you might have encountered in better times. Everyone is so worried about “ just making it,” they don’t have the energy to be cheerful.

Per their profession, pollsters have tried to quantify this public sentiment. According to Gallup, an astonishing 81 percent of Americans don’t like the nation’s current governance; 56 percent believe the nation’s economic conditions are poor; 74 percent believe economic conditions are worsening; nearly half of respondents characterize themselves as “struggling.”

Read any news publication’s headlines and it’s replete with doom and gloom. In such an environment, even the most optimistic among us is tempted to give way to the fear and hopelessness gripping the country’s soul.

This hopelessness is rather ironic, considering it was lofty rhetoric of hope and change that lifted a first term, junior senator from Illinois into the White House just three years ago. When Barack Obama enraptured the nation with his polished promises of a utopian state in 2008, he and his advisers seized upon “hope” and its promises of a brighter future despite current circumstances.

Unfortunately, so many of the young, idealistic voters who placed their faith in Obama have now realized that rhetorical hope is a far cry from true hope. With more than 18 percent of young people unemployed, it is a hard lesson to learn, but a necessary lesson they will bear in mind the next time they are tempted to place their faith in a politician.

There is a saying that, “Hope floats.” It means that hope can overcome any trial or grief that threatens to drown us. Perhaps that is why so many politicians like to invoke hope during tough economic times. It is true: hope is essential to our survival. Without it, we would throw in the towel and in desperation resign ourselves to the status quo or worse.

The last three years of Obama’s hope and change have proven that the hope he promised is the hope that won’t float. It’s the hope that preys upon people’s desires and dreams, but does so only for political expediency.

It’s time for America to remember the key difference between Obama’s rhetorical hope that promises a political panacea and the hope that catapulted America to greatness.

America is great because people don’t place their hope in the government. They place their hope in God, and trust that with hard work and honest living, they will prosper.

As Ronald Reagan so succinctly pointed out, “…government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Hoping that government will solve our woes will inevitably lead to more problems and a loss of the freedoms that can actually solve those problems.

Hoping that government will provide a job, healthcare, education, a home, and security throughout life is misplaced hope that will result in disappointed hope. Hope not founded on the sound principles of personal responsibility and limited government is the demagoguery that inevitably produces despotism.

Abraham Lincoln, a president who certainly needed hope to sustain the American people during a very dark time, once referred to America as the “last best hope of earth.” In an 1861 speech in Philadelphia, Lincoln described what set America apart from so many other nations. He said that there is “something in that Declaration giving liberty, not alone to the people of this country, but hope to the world for all future time.” Liberty, not government, is the hope that has drawn people to America’s shores and has set apart this nation. That’s the kind of hope that floats.

Read at Townhall

Tagged: , , , , No Comments