Gang violence permeates urban life. Hollywoodencourages sympathetictreatment; teenage fashion moguls emulate gangster attire; left wing writers extol gangster revolutionary ideals.

It’s quite telling how urban politicianstalk about gang violence. A Supervisor’s race in Orange County reveals serious gang involvement with a major candidate. Gangs are as old as… Read More

“Well, why, all of a sudden, if he had all these grave concerns, did he not raise these sooner? This is one-and-a-half years after he left the administration. And now, all of a sudden, he’s raising these grave concerns that he claims he had. And I think you have to look at some of the facts. One, he is bringing this up in the heat of a presidential campaign. He has written a book and he certainly wants to go out there and promote that book.” No. That is not the words of an angry Republican talking about Scott McClellan. Those are the words straight from the horses mouth—Scott himself on March 22, 2004 talking about the book of former homeland security advisor Richard Clarke. Seems Scott has a different take now that he is the one on a book tour. I have known Scott for a decade, since the late 90s when I was the campaign Press Secretary for then-Governor Bush in Texas where Scott was running the campaign of his mother – Carol Keeton Rylander (aka “one tough grandma”) to be State Comptroller. She won and Scott came to work in the Governor’s state press office for Karen Hughes. He later joined us at the presidential… Read More

One of the most frequent e-mail queries that we get here at the FlashReport is from loyal readers wanting to know who are the "good candidates" to vote for when it comes to judges. Alas, it is often that our message back is that we just don’t know. Well, we are pleased to share with you that this election cycle, the California Republican Lawyers Association has worked hard an put together recommendations in many of the judicial races in counties around California… CRLA President Steve Baric penned this piece to introduce his organization’s recommendations (this piece first appeared on FR friend Steve Frank’s California Political News & Views website)… LINK… Read More

We join with our lefty counterpart Steve Maviglio in lamenting the decision by the Stockton Record to close its Sacramento Bureau, issuing a pink-slip to veteran Capitol reporter Hank Shaw. (See Steve’s blog post.)

Shaw is a superior reporter — who is thorough, objective, and passionate about his coverage. Hopefully he will "land" somewhere that will enable him to continue to write about California politics.

In the meantime, this trend is disturbing. As Maviglio points out, this is just the latest in a trend as newspapers try to figure out how to remain profitable in a changing economic scene.

Imagine a world where the only people covering politics are Maviglio and me. Ooohhh… A nightmare scenario.

P.S. One upshot is that we’re bound to see more great post’s on Hank’s personal blog — Hunter, Angler, Gardner, Cook.… Read More

With reckless abandon, Los Angeles city leaders gave payroll increases and lucrative compensation packages for city workers, which can be directly attributed to the $406 million budget deficit they are now facing for fiscal year beginning in July. Sadly, city leaders knew they were putting Los Angeles’ future into financial jeopardy by agreeing to the payroll raises last year—but did so anyhow. According to the L A Daily News, May 11, 2008, “As Los Angeles grapples with its largest budget deficit in history, lucrative compensation packages for thousands of city workers are driving much of the gap , and there’s little end in sight.” It is mind-boggling that, “In the past year alone, gross annual payroll costs have soared $120 million for nearly 48,000 city employees – $90 million of that going to 35,000 civilian and sworn workers- and bumped the total… Read More

Give me a break.

In perusing dozens of websites this morning to prepare FR’s main page, I came across this atrocious editorial from the Fresno Bee, basically putting pressure on Assembly Republican Leader to deliver his vote, and enough votes from his caucus, for Assembly Bill 3034, which changes around some of the details in a proposed mega-bond package for the November ballot for — high speed rail.

Come on! California is suffering from one of the worst over-spending problems in state history, with a build-up of tremendous pressure that will lead to an epic standoff as Democrats want to tax their way out of this problem, and Republicans fight to reduce spending.

Amidst all of this, legislators are supposed to "polish up" yet another borrowing scheme in the form of bonds to make a massive taxpayer subsidy into hi-speed rail?

Hi-speed rail may or may not be a good idea — but that depends on whether there is a market for it in the private sector. The last thing that the State of California needs to be doing is putting its taxpayers, and their children,… Read More

The recent dust-up between Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi certainly made for great political theater.

The nasty exchange of letters featured in FlashReport was priceless and certainly marks an early skirmish in a potential 2010 Governor’s race square-off between the two statewide officeholders (with due deference to the Attorney General and to the CEO of E-Bay). The lesson learned for Poizner is that sometimes important decisions are going to bring loud criticism. But if you stand on principle and stand your ground – as he did — then you will come out the winner. In fact, I have had numerous opportunities to praise Poizner for standing tall, most recently for his leadership in the defeat of Proposition 93 to weaken legislative term limits.

Poizner should not have been surprised by the criticism that came his way. It came… Read More

Well, we knew that newly minted Assembly Speaker Karen Bass was the Chief Lieutenant of former Speaker Fabian "Louis Vuitton" Nunez. While we expect, of course, for her to be just as liberal as Nunez, if not more so, we hope that the similarities between the two will be minimal from there. When King Fabian was in the room, he was the most important person there. If you had any doubts, you could just ask him and he would tell you.

One thing that is staying the same in the office of the Assembly Speaker is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Public Relations flaking as Bass has retained long-time FR "sparring mate" Steve Maviglio.

As a matter of fact, Maviglio will be regularly met on the battlefield by his counterpart in Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines’ office, Morgan Crinklaw. The two will be battling in out in a war of words regularly on the Capitol Weekly website. You can check out their first exchange here.

Both are capable spin-masters, but of course Maviglio has the… Read More