I can sense the frustration in conservative Supervisor Jeff Stone’s idea outlining conservative SoCal counties forming their own state of South California. You got to love him.

And after the spanking the GOP received in losing all eight statewide races in an anti-Obama-care year last November, it was remarkable.The GOP tide stopped at the California border largely due to the dominance of Los Angeles County and the [San Francisco] Bay Area.

But Seattle dominates Washington and Portland dominates Oregon! So we need 100 states instead of 50?

The $64,000 question to me is why the GOP has become a whites-only party in a nation that is becoming less white? California is 60 percent nonwhites. And when one asks a member of the religious white (or right) about sharing heaven with the religious nonwhite (or left) they look at you like a calf would staring at a new gate!

But my greatest disagreement with Jeff Stone is the fact that all politics are local. Apparently he does not hold that view. Why are the safest and most dangerous California cities both in Los Angeles County then?

But Jeff Stone is the former successful mayor of one of the most regulated cities in the county — Temecula. Yet the right decries any government interference at every turn!

Temecula doesn’t tolerate wave after wave of undersized, cracker-box homes, and a sea of mobile homes that have encouraged the idle masses to move here. The poor will always be with us, but do they have to all live here?

I would not salivate too much for red states like South Carolina with a tenth of the people and a budget deficit half the size of California’s. And South Carolina triple taxes nonowner-occupied homes driving down housing prices, so giants like Boeing want to move there.

We demonize labor, which at its zenith had only 1 in 3 workers as members 60 or so years ago. Now, maybe 1 in 12 is a union member. Any working person enjoys their efforts as rising tides lift all boats in the working world too.

Neither party has a clue — the right wants to pay people 50 cents a day to work 12 hours and the left wants to pay them $1,000 a day to stay home and watch a friend mow the lawn while playing video games.

Mike Reno
Pine Cove