I just got a ‘heads up’ from Ryan Sherman who handles PR for the California Correctional Peace Officers Association — one of the biggest, most influential ($$$) public employee unions in California.

In what I would call a definate gun to the temple of big political head of Fabian Nunez, this major player in state politics just announced their official opposition to the Speaker’s term-limits extension ballot measure.

This represents yet another big plus for the opposition efforts to the "Big Lie Initiative" following the announcment last week that Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner had written a $1.5 million check to aid in opposition efforts, and that was combined with a matching contribution of another $1.5 million from the U.S. Term Limits Committee.

Before any major efforts have been launched to expose the Nunez measure as a sham for self-serving politicians like Nunez, just the "word" getting around has caused the measure to plummet 10 points in the latest statewide poll, with now less than 50% of likely voters are supportive of the measure.

Ironically, most of the support currently for 93 comes from… Read More

Jim Bopp, Jr. of Terre Haute, Indiana is an amazing constitutional lawyer. He was the lead counsel in the Supreme Court case of Wisconsin Right to Life, the biggest Federal campaign reform case since the landmark Buckley v. Valeo in 1976. Bopp’s arguments in Wisconsin Right to Life literally killed-off major portions of the largely senseless McCain-Feingold Federal campaign finance law "reform" as an unconstitutional invasion of First Amendment rights. I have had the brief opportunity to work first-hand with him in a coupleFederal courtrooms, when I joined him and other California election law attorneys in arguing against and successfully enjoining Proposition 208, and later portions of the Proposition 34 election "reforms" as unconstitutional. Jim represented CaliforniaProLife Councilin those cases.

Now Jim has done it again, here in California, representing California ProLife Council again. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has just issued an opinion usurping significant aspects of FPPC regulation of legitimate nonprofit organizations that also seek to weigh-in on ballot measure… Read More

Just as the Federal Election Commission has begun a process of establishing rules for disclosure of expenditures for "electioneering communications" in the wake of the guidance of the U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark case of Wisconsin Right to Life, whatare apparently push polls have just been released in both Iowa and New Hampshire attacking Mitt Romney’s Mormonism. Will these attacks on Mormonism and Romney hit California anytime soon? For details on the attacks, click here. And to hear Romney’s reponse to this activity andhis support for and articulation of stateddeficiencies in the McCain-Feingold campaign reform law, see here.

Thanks to my friend and sometimes co-counsel Professor Dan Lowenstein at UCLA Law School for the tip!… Read More

I have consistently made the argument that earmarks exist to serve political ends. Well, here is the latest example. Each of the conference reports for the Defense, Labor/HHS, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs spending bills have earmarks “airdropped” into them. “Airdropping” is a way of adding earmarks to a bill during the conference report process at the last possible minute, effectively shielding the earmarks from reproach due to the lack of time for review before a vote on the floor. Many times, these reports are hundreds of pages in length and Members simply cannot thoroughly examine every page in less than 24 hours. This is a deliberate tactic to spend millions of dollars of taxpayer money with complete anonymity and zero accountability. I have vocally opposed this practice as have many of my colleagues on both the House and Senate side.

However, despite the outcry… Read More

Aninitiative to end the practice of governments accepting and spending non–reported dollars for political activity was launched at a press conference in Sacramento today. Proponentsare Jon Coupal of Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., Jim Nielsen, Chairman of the California Alliance to Protect Prvivate Property Rights and former state senator, and Lew Uhler of National Tax Limitation Committee.

Under the present scheme, the League of California Cities and other entities can utilize so called "non-public funds" to weigh in politically on issues like, say, defeating efforts of protecting your property rights from abusive eminent domain takings. $7 million has been raised without accountability to fight Prop 90 previously and now towards the true eminent domain reform initiativecirculating thru Farm Bureau, Howard Jarvis and the CA Alliance to Protect Private Property. [They also have their own clever initiative that they are pushing and funding to make it look like they are reforming EmDo but has such weak and narrow… Read More

What if you had a reoccuring nightmare, that while you were sleeping, thousands of dead bodies were rising out of their graves to come and take…your home! Sound scary? Well it is actually happenning to the owners of homes in posh Sarataga, a suburb of San Jose. In what may prove to be a "poster-child" case for eminent domain reform on next June’s ballot, the Saratoga Cemetary District has officially left their options "open" to pursue the use of eminent domain as they seek to force the owner of a home to sell their house, which abuts the Madrona Cemetary. The "urgent need" — apparently the Saratoga Cemetary District wants to expand the roadway around the graveyard. According to the San Jose Mercury News, Nikki Teeter answered a knock on her door to find a real estate agent there, representing the District, telling her that they want to buy her home. Apparently, despite protests that the Teeters have no interest in selling their home of 29 years, the realtor kept trying to set up meetings. Apparently this Cemetary District is… Read More

Our friends at the Consumer Alliance for a Strong Economy have launched a radio advertising campaign against the ill-advised health care scheme being advanced by the Governor and Legislative Democrats. You can click on the ads below to hear them. CASE, you’ll recall, made a splash when they introduced the Dancing Duck television spot in January.… Read More

Tom McCintock, one of the few Sacramento pols who has been accurate in truly predicting the financial shortfall that is facing California, says this is just the beginning:

The newspapers are reporting that the fiscal gap is $10 billion. It is actually far more serious than that. The actual figure – according to the LAO – is that the state will spend $14 billion more than it takes in between now and the end of the next fiscal year. The difference is that we will first blow through the $4 billion reserve that the state began the year with. (That reserve, by the way, is already gone.)

But the LAO is still predicting that the state’s general fund revenues will grow about 3.5… Read More