Memo Date: April 2, 2008 To: Assemblyman John Benoit From: Jon Fleischman RE: Understanding Liberals I saw that yesterday, on a party-line vote, Assembly Democrats rejected your Assembly Bill 2389 which, put simply, would require that welfare recipients in California must submit to random drug tests, and if they they fail, be enrolled in mandatory treatment, or lose their right to welfare. You are to be commended for bringing forward such a common-sense measure, but I think that we all knew, unfortunately, that it was destined for defeat. It is not a coincidence that Democrats opposed this bill, while your Republican colleagues supported it. You see it goes to one of the basic core differences between the… Read More

I’m running out the door — but this just came in over the transom. Given the the Club for Growth is one of the premier organizations in Washington that is battling for fiscal reform and curbing the voracious appetite, present in both political parties, for pork barrel spending, I wanted to pass this along ASAP…

Also, BELOW the Club for Growth release, I have excerpted the opening paragraphs of some hard-hitting commentary from Frank Schubert (of Schubert-Flint Public Affairs), a resident of CD-4 who hits Tom McClintock pretty hard and makes the case for why he believes Doug Ose, and Tom McClintock should be his Congressman…

The infamous Los Angeles "Unified" School District is a national disgrace that keeps getting worse.LAUSD is a virtual prison for failure.

Today’s LA Times reveals that high school students in LA, less than half graduate. In Oakland failure rate is 54.4 who do not graduate.

Both school districts have been under union democrat control for over 50 years. Despite endless spending experiments the unions keep… Read More

Today’s front page of the Flash Report features an article from the San Diego Union Tribune about possible DMV tampering with voter registrations. Apparently several Republicans in San Diego were dismayed to learn that although they thought they had registered as Republicans at the DMV, when they arrived to vote in February’s primary there was no record of their registration with the GOP. Secretary of State Debra Bowen is investigating allegations that the DMV transferred the Republican registrations to nonpartisan.

Reading this article brought to mind a bill currently being considered in the legislature: AB 2371 by Assemblyman Joe Coto.

Every year lawmakers introduce legislation that will “make it easier” for voters to register or re-register, as if it so difficult to register right now. AB 2371 would require that anytime someone who is not registered to vote applies for a driver’s license, instruction permit, junior permit or identification card, or who files an… Read More

What would you say if I told you that in the state’s current fiscal climate Assemblyman Albert Torrico (D-Newark) is carrying a bill, AB 1967 (see link to .pdf below) that if passed, would cost our state retirement funds (both Cal-STRS and Cal-PERS) billions of dollars?

AB 1967, in essence, puts some pretty huge prohibitions on where the billions of dollars in these retirement funds can be invested. Of course, right now, these funds are invested (presumably) to maximize rate of return. But under Torrico’s bill, these public funds who have to immediately and forever divest from any investments with what are called Sovereign Wealth Funds, which to put it simply are those funds that are affiliated with foreign countries. Torrico’s bill does exempt any SWF’s affiliated with a country (or countries) that have signed onto a bevy of various international human rights accords. Oh yeah, the United States, were it considered a foreign country under Torrico’s bill, would not meet the criteria as we have not… Read More

[Cross-posted from OC Blog]

The bitter battle between Corona Mayor Jeff Miller and Rancho Santa Margarita Mayor Neil Blais to win the GOP nod in the 71st Assembly District is well on its way to being OC’s nastiest June contest.

Lately, the Blais campaign is going over that fine line between political hard-ball and sleazy politics.

For example, twice in the past week I’ve received a press release from the Blais campaign basically accusing Jeff Miller of public corruption.… Read More

I have always kept my hand in and paid attention to Inland Empire races. Without question, you’ve got to be tough to win Republican primaries down there. I stumbled across a website that continues that tradition, www.nonestande.com.

For Assembly race viewers, this battle between Brian Nestande and Kelly McCarty to succeed John Benoit should be highly entertaining.… Read More

What would you say if I told you that in the state’s current fiscal climate Assemblyman Albert Torrico (D-Newark) is carrying a bill, AB 1967 (see link to .pdf below) that if passed, would cost our state retirement funds (both Cal-STRS and Cal-PERS) billions of dollars?

AB 1967, in essence, puts some pretty huge prohibitions on where the billions of dollars in these retirement funds can be invested. Of course, right now, these funds are invested (presumably) to maximize rate of return. But under Torrico’s bill, these public funds who have to immediately and forever divest from any investments with what are called Sovereign Wealth Funds, which to put it simply are those funds that are affiliated with foreign countries. Torrico’s bill does exempt any SWF’s affiliated with a country (or countries) that have signed onto a bevy of various international human rights accords. Oh yeah, the United States, were it considered a foreign country under Torrico’s bill, would not meet the criteria as we have not… Read More