The latest from State Senator Tom McClintock:

Demonstrating support from across the California GOP spectrum, today the Presidential campaign of Governor Mitt Romney announced two prominent California endorsers, that we’ll call the "book-ends" of the party. On the right end of the shelf, Romney has been endorsed by popular, conservative Congressman Wally Herger (pictured right), who makes his home up in the northern end of the state. On the "other" end of the GOP bookshelf, Romney has earned the endorsement of moderate former Republican Assemblyman Brooks Firestone… Read More

Governor Schwarzenegger is framing California’s budget crisis ($15 BILLION and growing) as a spending problem. In conjunction with the release of his draft budget on January 10, he is calling a special session of the legislature (under the auspices of a “state of fiscal emergency”) where he will introduce cuts to deal with the growing funding gap problem for the current fiscal year.

If you go back to before Gray Davis was recalled, and Arnold Schwarzenegger rose from his ashes (hiring much of Davis’ staff in the process), Republican legislators have been decrying the steady and rapid increase in state spending that has occured in budget after budget after budget. As such, GOP legislators are resolute that California taxpayers not pay the price for the Democrat-led fiscal insanity.

That said, you watch the liberal Democrats scramble and scream at any proposed cuts in spending. As for me, it may sound simplistic, but why don’t we just adopt the budget of five years ago, and acknowledge that our spending increases since then were, in retrospect, unaffordable and unsustainable!

In the meantime, I guess… Read More

Yesterday’s announcement from the California Chamber of Commerce that their Board of Directors voted to place their organization in opposition to Proposition 93, the naked power grab being orchestrated by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez to extend his own political career, is a major setback for the measure. But I can’t say that the Chamber’s position was unexpected — Nunez has to have been expecting it — because, frankly, he caused it.

You see, the leadership of the California Chamber was involved in an intense period of negotiations with legislative leaders to broker a compromise where some form of term-limits reform would be coupled with redistricting reform. Nunez abruptly ended these negotiations, turning his back not only on the Chamber, but also on the Governor and fellow legislative leaders, and filed his own ballot initiative. The Nunez measure, now Proposition 93, of course has no redistricting reform in it at all.… Read More

From today’s WSJ Political Diary E-mail:

Subprime Workout

The retirement wave hasn’t been all bad news for House Republicans. More than a dozen Republicans will be leaving Congress after 2008, but several of them are handing over much of their campaign accounts to the National Republican Congressional Committee, which has been struggling all year to get out of debt and catch up with its free-spending Democratic counterpart.

Departing Louisiana Rep. Jim McCrery gave $200,000 at a fundraising meeting held by the House Republican Conference two days ago to retire the NRCC’s debt. New Jersey’s Jim Saxton, sitting on a war chest larger than $1 million, is expected to… Read More

Perhaps one way that Arnold Schwarzenegger can untangle the Environmental Protection Agencies denial of a waver for California so it can set its own emissions standards would be to actual become the Director of the Federal EPA… There is one candidate for President who is talking about having Arnold his his cabinet, and he’s not eRepublican…

(h/t to TK)… Read More

Today it was announced that the California Chamber of Commerce has officially come out against what we call the “Fabian Nunez Career Politician Term Limits Loosening Initiative” aka “The Big Lie” measure.

The Chamber’s opposition is a clear sign that the business community has had its fill of the hubris of Fabian Nunez.

I’m sure we’ll have more on this later on…… Read More

After Friday, the FR main page will be on haitus until we return in full-force starting Wednesday, January 2nd (we’ll still have plenty of good reading on this blog page). On the 2nd, we’ll be announcing the FlashReport 2007 Legislators of the Year. We will be singling out for honors one member of the State Senate, one member of the State Assembly, and one member of the California Delegation to Congress.

The FlashReport team will be huddled over the holidays looking at everything from voting records, to effectiveness, to support of the conservative cause.

As an FR reader, we invite you to make your suggestions to us, along with your reasoning. If you send in an e-mail, your name will be held in confidence, but we’ll give you direct feedback. Or you can send in your suggestion anonymously.

Thanks for your input… Read More