The Red Brennan Group is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization. We are a party-agnostic organization whose mission is to create positive change in the county of San Bernardino. We don’t align with political parties, only initiatives we believe will serve the County of San Bernardino.
The Red Brennan Group’s aim is to replace bad incentives with good incentives. We believe that power, prestige, financial gain, and re-election are bad incentives to govern. Self-sacrifice, courage, justice, individual liberty, fearless leadership, fairness and the desire to solve real-world problems are good incentives.
We seek a government that keeps its citizens safe, does an excellent job of educating our children, runs good efficient hospitals, offers practical aid to the underprivileged and creates a climate of opportunity for businesses and employment. We aim to see citizens supported by the reduction or elimination of unnecessary fines and taxes. Our goal is a local government that does all these things effectively, fairly and with the citizen’s best interest in mind.
“The best government is that which governs least.” -United States Magazine and Democratic Review
The Red Brennan Group supports Big-Hearted Communities and Small Government because government is not the answer for every question. In fact, government is the answer to very few questions. Therefore, government should be limited in size, scope, and scale. In the domestic arena government should “… be confined to the administration of justice, the protection of natural equal rights of the citizen, and the preservation of order.” Government should do just what it can do and should do those things well. In short, government should deliver a good deal on its limited responsibilities to its citizens.
The Red Brennan Group supports candidates and elected officials committed to this view. The ruling elite governing San Bernardino County run the county for their own interests. This is bad leadership and delivers bad results to the people of the county. Of particular note is the gross financial mismanagement foisted on citizens by the ruling elite. The county’s budget is uncontrolled rising from approximately $2 billion dollars in 2007 to over $7 billion dollars today an increase of over 3 times. County government spends far more to accomplish a project than is reasonable. For example:
This spectacular misuse of taxpayer funding is coupled with the typical hallmarks of a bloated bureaucracy. Waste, inefficiency, labyrinth-like organizational structure, and intrusive regulations. The county has over 50 separate departments in behavioral health. Each with a Department Head, Assistant Department Head, facilities and staff. This leaves no budget left to actually help people.
This inexcusable mismanagement of tax-payers resources results in increasing debt and corruption. The debt load created by the county pension system will eventually place the county in bankruptcy court and will not benefit neither the citizens nor county employees. The system currently in place only benefits a whole lot of foreign countries and NY money managers. In addition, investment managers are projecting returns that are not obtainable in today’s market. County leadership glibly assent to the projections as it leaves more money in their hands.
There is only one hope to get the returns that will make the county pension plan solvent from an investment standpoint and that is to invest in new manufacturing, entrepreneurship, and small business within this county. The county should be doing everything in its power to shepherd those businesses to be successful. Instead, they oppress and burden local businesses with taxes, fines and fees. Seeing them only as a source of revenue, an unfortunate common practice within the county.
Corruption is always the hand-maiden of bad financial management. In San Bernardino County, public unions donate to elected official’s campaigns and then negotiate compensation and benefit packages with the officials they helped to elect. Developers donate to campaigns and have their multi-million-dollar projects approved by those same elected officials. This is a conflict of interest that can mostly be avoided when elected representatives serve by the same standards as certain private sector professions and recuse themselves from all votes that appear to create a conflict of interest.
Finally, the ruling elite co-opt the legal system to protect the entire gambit. Any citizen that attempts to challenge the powers at be is quickly dragged into court. Even if the text of the law is clearly in the citizen’s favor, biased judges side with the elite. The citizens will likely always lose this war of attrition. The opposing party can, and does, tap the limitless supply of tax-payers cash. The law, in the hands of the ruling elite, is a weapon of submission and oppression rather than a guardian of individual rights.
Bad financial management, increasing debt, corruption, and abuse of the law. These are the issues that concern the citizens of San Bernardino. If you are interested in partnering with The Red Brennan Group to fix bad government by limiting its size, scope and responsibility, email us at: info@redbrennan.org.
First time visiting our website? We suggest starting with the “Problem with San Bernardino County’s Budget”. It will give you the breakdown of the major issues within our and leadership and help you understand how we arrived at our two initiatives. The illegal FP5 tax and the supervisors pay and term limits.
We really hope you will sign up to become a member of the Red Brennan Group, as it costs nothing to join and we can keep you informed of what is going on within San Bernardino County policies and politics. We will let you know how TRBG is responding and we will continue to let you know what you can do to help!
The Red Brennan Group is convinced that the county had made misrepresentations about the necessity and validity of the FP-5 expansion and sincerely believes that the county board of supervisors’ straight out violated the basic tenant ...
