Welcome back from your July 4th holiday! On Monday, I returned from my outstanding three-week journey from Great Britain, just in time to celebrate our country’s 230th anniversary of throwing off the oppressive tyranny of that nasty King George III and the British! Hooray!
The day after a holiday is almost as always quiet, politically, as the holiday itself. Reporters like to take time off, too, and while holidays that are closer to elections are typically exceptions to this rule, Independence Day is far from the November elections (well, to normal people who aren’t hip-deep in campaigns).
Today we feature a column penned by FR friend Jon Coupal, the President of the Howard Jarvis 
Taxpayers Association (pictured). Jon has given due credit to the Governor for drawing a firm line in the sand against tax and fee increases. This is an important position of the Governor, and will help to draw a sharp contrast between Schwarzenegger and liberal Phil Angelides, who we can count on to massively increase taxes as soon as he is in office (starting with an Executive Order to jack up the state car tax within moments of being sworn-in). That said, Coupal pens a cautionary piece about the dangers of a state budget that has seen a massive growth in spending and deficit spending. On this website we saw columns from the Assembly Republican Leader George Plescia and from law enforcement leaders praising the budget. Coupal sets what I think is a more realistic and sober look at the spending package, and makes it clear why most Republican representatives in Sacramento opposed the package.
I will be writing a piece myself on the state budget soon, as the whole thing passed through the legislature and was signed by the Governor while I was away. I will foreshadow my piece by saying that Republicans lost a tremendous opportunity to demonstrate a stark contrast with Democrats on spending issues, and what could have been a high-profile earned-media opportunity to show the GOP holding the line against the profligate spending of the left (an important message to communicate to GOP voters who are somewhere between upset and demoralized about over-spending in Washington, D.C.). A message of spending restraint is equally as important as our message of holding the line against tax increases. I applaud those Republicans who stood tall against this budget, and while I respect the point of view of those who think that a protracted budget battle this summer would be bad politics – I disagree. :-)
Other stories in the news today worth reading include a piece from John Wildermuth in the Chronicle looking at the bucks coming into Phil Angelides from organized labor (shocking!), Congressional hearings that are about to start off around the country (with the first being in San Diego) on the immigration issue, and a great column from Congressman Richard Pombo (as part of a pro-con debate on reform of the Endangered Species Act) in the Chronicle.
I wanted to once again thank Nicholas Romero, our Managing Editor of the site, for his great work while I was away, and also a shout-out to our site contributors for stepping up to keep this space filled each day.
As we go into the Summer and Fall, this is a great opportunity to drop me a line with feedback on the site. What you like, and don’t like. What you would like to see featured. Or anything else!
I would add that we are still in search of a Central Coast Correspondent, so if you know someone who wants to keep FR readers up to speed on issues taking place along the California Coast from Santa Cruz down to Ventura, please send them my way!
Have a great day!
Jon
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