Today we are leading off our main page with some exclusive content from Republican legislative leaders Senator Dave Cogdill and Assemblyman Mike Villines, as well as with a hard-hitting piece from Jon Coupal with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Tomorrow, we’ll be bringing you some great commentary from some of our own team of correspondents including Dan Schnur, Ray Haynes, and yours truly.
I am pleased to officially welcome as contributors to the FR weblog Board of Equalization Member Bill Leonard and freshman GOP Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher. Look for some great commentary from these two, along with the rest of our stable of trusty center-right to right-right bloggers. We’ll be unveiling some additional new members of the blog team soon!
I’m actually headed off to the airport to make the trek up to Sacramento for a few days, renewing and establishing those contacts that allow us to bring you a lot of great breaking stories and original content on the page.
Before I sign off, though, I did want to take a moment to comment on something that Sacramento Bee columnist Stuart Leavenworth said in a column over the holidays, Some New Year’s resolutions for state leaders to consider. In the piece, Leavenworth lays out his ideal “resolutions” for the Governor, Democrat Leaders, and Republican Leaders.
The FlashReport gets a dubious mention, as does one of our more frequent columnists, in proposed resolutions two and three for the GOP Leaders:
2. Stop being intimidated by the "Flash Report" and other far-right Republican blogs that threaten us if we even discuss the dreaded T-word (taxes).
3. Ditto for Jon Coupal, the head of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s League. We gotta stop being intimidated by that guy.
I know that this isn’t the first time we have said this, and it won’t be the last. Folks in the media show a fundamental lack of understanding of legislative Republicans with this kind of portrayal of them as someone "captive" of conservative forces outside of the building. To a person, our Republican legislators have maintained a steadfast resolve against higher taxes because EACH OF THEM BELIEVES (without programming from "far-right Republican blogs") that raising taxes is always a bad idea, and doing so in a poor economy is really, really poor public policy.
It seems to me that folks in the media may be trying to draw some sort of simplistic analogy between the impact of conservative opinion makers on the right, and the iron-clad hold that public employee unions have on the left. Frankly, this is no comparison. Guess how much money the FlashReport contributed to candidates last cycle? Zip. As its publisher, maybe my family gave a couple of thousand dollars in total to political causes? I do not think you will find that to be the case with the unions, who have paid handsomely for the influence — and from where I sit, are getting a great return on their investment.
Anyways, to columnists like Leavenworth, instead of bemoaning the fact that Republicans have shown solidarity and resolve against making California less business-friendly, you should be thrilled. It is already a tough enough time for those in the business of printing newspapers — you know, your employers. Republicans are trying to help you, and many other Californians, to stay employed!
OK, that said, I trust that all of you FR readers had a wonderful holiday season, and thank you for being a part of the FlashReport’s new year!
Jon Fleischman
Founder & Publisher
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