 "Photo: Susan Tam | Daily Trojan")
The USC College Republicans kicked off the first night of their annual leadership conference Monday evening in the Topping Student Center with featured speakers Claude Parrish, who spoke about economic leadership and Rep. John Shadegg (R-Ariz.) who spoke about political leadership and Homeland Security.
About 25 people attended, including the Terrorism and Homeland Security and Public Policy class taught by Erroll Southers, a former FBI agent.
Claude Parrish is the current Vice-Chairman of the Board of Equalization. The Board is made up of four people who act as a final appeals body in administrative procedures involving taxpayers, Parrish said. The board hears 30 to 60 cases twice a month, he said.
"We grant relief to tax payers in about 40 percent of cases," Parrish said. The IRS grants relief in only about 2 to 3 percent, he said.
Parrish also emphasized the importance of small businesses, saying that they bring in much of the state's revenue.
Parrish, who started out as a newspaper boy and volunteered for Nixon in his first campaign in 1962, encouraged students to be politically active.
"The friends you get (in politics) will last you a whole life. There is nothing else like the camaraderie. I still get Christmas cards from people I volunteered with in '72," he said.
Parrish ran for office six times before being elected, including four tries for the Board of Equalization. Every vote counts, he said.
"Many votes (in the Board) come down to 3-2 decisions," Parrish said, stressing the importance of each vote and explaining how he won the election for treasurer of the Republican Party by one vote.
California is the only state with an elected tax board, Parrish said.
"California has some of the highest taxes in the country and it is important to have an elected official you can talk to (about tax issues)," said Parish.
Shadegg, whose daughter is a senior at USC majoring in English, spoke about how he got his start in politics and his position in the Homeland Security.
Shadegg began by talking about careers, or professional trades, that are often passed down in the family. In his family, for example, he said he followed in his father's footsteps of managing campaigns. After he finished law school, he helped Ken Kramer campaign, who was running for a seat in the House of Representatives. At the time, he decided, that if he ever had the chance, he would also run for Congress.
Shadegg recognized the trend in continuing education to higher degrees, referring to the plans of his daughter to go to graduate school.
"If you want to talk about lifetime learning," he said, "run for the U.S. Congress."
He also mentioned the latest work that Congress had done, including passing a transportation bill and mentioning the problem of "pork-barrel" politics, or bills in which politicians add issues that are important to their jurisdiction to get the bill passed.
Shadegg answered questions about the new Department of Homeland Security, which brings together 22 different federal agencies in the biggest government consolidation in history.
"Is it going to be efficient? Or just more expensive, and more bureaucratic?" he asked. It's too soon to tell, he says.
Shadegg, however, said he feels the need to focus more on threat-related spending as opposed to first-responder funding.
"The federal government should focus on intelligence outside the country, and (maintaining) a terrorist threat and information center," he said.
Here in Los Angeles, four fire stations are equipped with HAZMAT teams that are updated with the latest training to deal with a large-scale terrorist attack.
Shadegg said he proposes that different locations be ranked by their risk factors and impact of terrorist treats. For example, Phoenix would be ranked highly because of population density and its large nuclear plant.
Page, a small city in Arizona could be a risk because it is near the Glen Canyon Dam, which, if attacked, could cause economic disaster to the entire Southwest and all the water storage areas farther downstream.
Students asked a wide range of questions ranging from how funds are allocated to specific questions on whether or not certain technologies would be used.
"It was really good to hear a politician speak and have the opportunity to ask questions directly related to classwork," said Laura Law, a senior majoring in Public Policy and Development who works in the aerospace industry.
