From the time I was in t-ball, my dad always used to tell me that I needed to use two hands when catching pop ups. Sure, 99 times out of 100 it’s no big deal, and the out is made. But then there’s that other one…

It’s with that in mind that I write about the last night’s budget votes.

Throughout the night, the Assembly leaders hustled to get a budget, some budget, any budget passed. Negotiations took place. Concessions were made. Entire sections of the budget were rewritten hastily in the middle of the night, being fueled by cold pizza and colder coffee.

But last night, unfortunately, it seems someone forgot to remind our leadership to use both hands.

As part of the grand deal that was cut, the Research and Development tax credit for businesses was to be expanded, to provide conformity with the federal tax code relating to R&D. As part of the package that was agreed to, those provisions would then sunset in 5 years.

However, that isn’t exactly what made it’s way into the final product.

Instead of those provisions sunsetting in 5 years, the budget as written sunsets the entire section of the tax code relating to… Read More

I’m in Washington, D.C. and just attended a briefing of American Conservative Union board members by national pollster Tony Fabrizio of Fabrizio, MacLaughlin, on his firm’s recent national in-depth survey of Republicans. This was a detailed and extensive study, involving 2,000 interviews in the polling sample, nationwide. It was not prepared for any candidate. The poll results are available on their site at: http://www.fabmac.com/releases.html.

Among the interesting findings of this survey, which tracked changing attitudes of Republicans, is the emergence of an identifiable new subgroup of Republican voters that Tony calls, "Dennis Miller Republicans." These types of Republicans have emerged in the last 10 years. They share a lot of the positions of "libertarian" Republicans, but they are not exactly libertarian. While Tony finds that libertarians in the Republican party (about 10% of them) remain essentially identifiable by their profound philosophical opposition to government authority, the Dennis Miller Republicans are ones who "just don’t like government,"… Read More

Night owls, the Assembly is going through the labor-intensive process of a ton of trailer bills to the main budget bill. The budget currently has 55 votes on the big board, one more than it needs to pass. But it is still "on call" which means that votes can change. This is done because the ‘deal’ will involve achieving 54 votes on all of these trailer bills, and you wouldn’t want to close the final budget vote until you pass the trailer bills concurrently. Once the trailers have all passed, and they lock int he final budget vote, we will bring you the intel on which GOPers voted for it. **Update 12:35am. A slight drama is playing out right now. Among the plethora of trailer bills is the health trailer bill, in which is funded, among many other things, an aweful lot of public funds for abortions. Like all trailer bills, it requires 54 votes. Right now, there are only 51 votes for it. … Read More

I have been hearing from a lot of Republicans on the Assembly side of the Capitol that there is a budget deal that has been crafted and approved — that it would contain some deficit spending, though closer to $500 million rather than the billions proposed by the Democrats.

That said, I think that folks are a bit premature. I just got off of the phone with Senate Republican Leader Dick Ackerman who assures me that there is no deal as now, and that his caucus has not signed off on a budget.

So, there is still hope that before this process is over, we can get to a budget that is balanced. I certainly wouldn’t encourage any legislator to cast a vote for budget that is not.

I keep hearing that Speaker Nunez has important vacation plans that he doesn’t want to cancel. The best way to do that is to give us a budget that doesn’t spend more than projected state revenues!

Anyways, I would hope we would see solidarity among our conservatives in the legislature, and we won’t rush to put up GOP votes for a… Read More

The "Is he in or is he out" talk has swirled for weeks regarding Mark Larson’s potential run for an open Duncan Hunter seat next year, especially after he left KOGO radio in early June. Many conjectured the move was solely for a congressional run, but he was pretty clear he needed to make the change, regardless of any shot at public office.

In his blog yesterday, Mark reveals a new and exciting partnership with John Lynch, CEO of Broadcast Company of the Americas, to "build" a new radio station: San Diego 1700 AM (which Lynch already owns, so nodrawn out FCC approval needed). Larson will serve as program director and do the weekly 5-9 am show at the redesigned station, among his many other ongoing roles.

Considering the title of his blog post, "A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME…ON THE WAY TO CAPITOL HILL: I got an offer I couldn’t refuse," it should be clear he’s not running, but then there’s this….

"John and I also agree in understanding the ‘call of community service’. He knows there may be a point in the… Read More

Here is green Arnold. I almost cried when he says there is no such thing as a Republican planet. LOL. Last Friday, Governor Schwarzenegger went on another ‘Green Thumb’ tour taking his enviromental activism on the road to Florida. I found this video taken by a greeny at the event, and thought I would let you all hear what he had to say… … Read More

I guess the subtitle on this one should be ‘Yeah I Know It’s A Self Serving Post’ but Fletcher is really burning it up finance-wise and shouldn’t not get posted because of his affiliation with me. I’m also not so good with changing font sizes on this thing so bare with me…

NATHAN FLETCHER RAISES $350,000

FOR STATE ASSEMBLY CAMPAIGN

Over $300,000 COH from Strong Grassroots Support

SAN DIEGO – State Assembly candidate Nathan Fletcher (R-San Diego) today released… Read More

Republicans in the Senate and Assembly should not be in any hurry to vote out a budget that contains deficit spending, that is for sure. But assuming that the Republican Leaders can negotiate a budget that contains no deficit spending at all, which would be a tremendous achievement to be sure, let us step back away from the trees and look a the forest.

For all of the hard work, we are really tinkering with a massive spending package that is bloated with programs and projects that feed the modern welfare State of California.

I don’t envy Dick Ackerman or Mike Villines because the budget they are negotiating over bears very little in common with the one that they would personally pen if they could adopt one on their own. We are taking a terrible budget and trying to make it as good as we can, right? Well, as I said below, there is no reason to support any budget that contains deficit spending.

Frankly, if the hurdle of eliminating the spending of money we don’t anticipate even having is crossed, then beware if you are a super close friend of the leaders. They will have done the best job they could to put "lipstick on a pig"… Read More