"California is a trendsetter state," Christian Probasco wrote in a 2007 magazine article.  "Every Californian fad eventually makes it way over the Sierras." The latest fad comes next week (Tuesday, May 19), when those Californians who choose to go to the polls almost certainly will guarantee California will be the first state to go bankrupt. Bankruptcy is coming to California for one simple reason:  It costs a lot to keep bureaucrats in the lap of luxury.  California's sales and income taxes are among the highest in the nation. But isn't it Mr. Obama's intention to have the rest of the nation catch up with California in taxes and bureaucrats?

First up this week is something I should entitle Blown Away By Who You Are.  We have been deluged by TTPers who wish to participate in the Achilles Heel Project (AHP) and are simply in awe of their bios. The talent pool of TTP - the variety and depth of accomplishments, experience, knowledge, and credentials in so many fields - is astounding.   We're marshalling it for AHP, but I want to synergize it for TTP as a whole.  So we have formed a "social networking" site for this purpose:  http://tothepointnews.ning.com/. Here is where TTPers can go to meet, chat, and collaborate with each other.  There are so many wonderful folks on TTP - here's how you can all get to know yourselves.  Have fun and synergize! *** Next is an announcement:  the TTP Summer Rendezvous -  the Winning the Revolution Rendezvous - will be in Williamsburg, Virginia from Friday, September 11 to Monday, September 14. Colonial Williamsburg  recreates the America of Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.  Nearby Jamestown is where the settlement of America began in 1607.  And close by is Yorktown, where America achieved victory in its War of Independence in 1781. What more appropriate place could there be - and what more appropriate date than September 11 weekend - for TTPers to join together and commit to winning our American liberty once again?

Today (5/08), memorial services will be held at Washington's National Cathedral for a great American, Jack Kemp, who succumbed to cancer six days ago at age 73. Arguably, without Jack Kemp, the Reagan supply-side, high-growth economic revolution would never have occurred. Mr. Kemp, a young congressman from Buffalo, N.Y., convinced Ronald Reagan and much of the nation of the wisdom of sharply cutting tax rates on labor and capital. When Ronald Reagan ran for president in 1980, he wisely endorsed a bill - the Kemp-Roth Act - to cut income tax rates 30 percent across the board. It was a radical idea, but it worked so well that not even the current president is proposing a return to the 70 percent marginal tax rate that existed in 1980.

President Hussein Obama's "car czar" has no experience in the automobile industry, and is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly paying kickbacks to obtain New York state pension business. A former journalist turned investment banker and Democrat party fund-raiser, Steven Rattner also was involved in a deal with Cerebrus Capital Management, the hedge fund which owns most of Chrysler, which made other Chrysler investors wonder if Mr. Rattner could decide without bias how the government should aid the auto firm.  They need wonder no longer.  We have a gangster government in the White House.

In previous articles we have learned that there is hazard in taking privacy for granted on the internet. Doing so is at your own peril. As we enter deeper into this Orwellian world it becomes more apparent each passing day that privacy, in many aspects of our lives, is a luxury of the past. An ordinary cell phone can steal your privacy, without your knowledge, in some instances. Here is how. Flexispy

It's glorious to be in Paris on May Day with a beautiful woman - especially if she's your wife.  We're here this week to see our youngest son who's spending his junior year in high school studying in France. On May Day, the streets of Paris are filled with sellers of muguets, the sweet-smelling flowers of Lillies of the Valley.  Every man buys a muguet for his sweetheart.  I am no different. Unfortunately, communists and lefties of every stripe use May Day - a happy day of celebration of springtime since ancient times - to vent their envious hatred of capitalist prosperity.  Demonstrations and protests took place today in hundreds of French cities - and Paris was no exception. Seeing these angry "workers" and "students" marching along in rage and resentment demanding the world provide them with a living while ignorantly denouncing the only economic system that can provide it is an amusing "Walpole moment." As in Horace Walpole, who observed, "This world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel." (See What We Have Got and They Have Not.)

Many on the political left and in the mainstream media complained about the peaceful protests of hundreds of thousands of Americans who held "tea parties" on tax day. Yet they lightly dismiss truly destructive actions by leftist advocacy groups, many of whom take Saul Alinsky's book, "Rules for Radicals," as their bible. Mr. Alinsky wrote, "In war [i.e., war for an ideal or goal], the end justifies the means"; thus almost any action is acceptable for one's cause. How, then, would MSNBC and the New York Times react if free- market groups started hanging "Wanted" posters for Internal Revenue Service officials and employees who clearly serve as instruments for job destroying policies? Inflation is a tax that hits the poor particularly hard and is caused by the Federal Reserve creating too much money and credit. What would happen if monetary-reform groups adopted Alinsky tactics and started picketing the homes of Federal Reserve members and harassing their spouses and children?