DON PERATA RECEIVES INAUGURAL "GOLDEN PIG" AWARD FROM US TERM LIMITS AFTER SPENDING $1 MILLION OF SPECIAL INTEREST MONEY ON HIS LAVISH LIFESTYLE "TAX-FREE"

Trophy Awarded to Legislature’s Ultimate Perk Addict

US Term Limits, the nation’s leading term limits advocacy organization, yesterday announced it was inaugurating the "Golden Pig" Award for individual California politicians whose misconduct in office remind us of the necessity for term limits. Recipients are elected officials who have repeatedly acted in an arrogant and self-serving manner, gorged themselves on political perks, betrayed the public trust and demonstrated contempt for the voters who elected them.… Read More

I’m in Sacramento today… And so is Congressman Kevin McCarthy. Kevin is far from the U.S. Capitol, and hundreds of miles from his hometown of Bakersfield…

I ran into the former Assembly Republican Leader at a luchtime fundraising event for FR friend and Assemblyman Van Tran over at the Esquire Grill. It was a great event, and it was a pleasure to spend some time there with Jon Coupal, President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. We did have a few Assembly candidates here including Paul Heygi (Tran’s CoS) who is running in the 10th AD, Robert Rau in the 15th, andJohn Patein the 64th – the latter two being chaperoned by political consultant/icon Tim Clark (who is Tran’s consultant as well).

McCarthy and I had a few minutes to chat about his engaged role with the National Republican Congressional Committee. He is very focused on working to re-attain the majority for Republicans.

Later tonight, the "Energizer Bunny" has his own fundraising event here in Sacramento…… Read More

Beer & Politics is actually the name of a monthly meeting started by the Long Beach Junior Chamber of Commerce. I guess the Senior Chamber of Commerce must have an Ensure & Politics meeting. This month featured the candidates for the special election in the 37th Congressional District. The major Dems (Oropeza, Richardson, McDonald) showed up, as did one of four Republicans, Long Beach cop and war Veteran John Kanaley. You can hear audio of the event at LBReport.com here. You can see another article on the event here.The election is June 26th. … Read More

In California minors can’t get a tan at a tanningsalonwithout parental permission. That isn’t good enough for some legislators that have now voted to pass AB 105. AB 105 would prohibit teenagers from certain kinds of tanning, because apparently their parents are to stupid and/or don’t care for them like the nanny staters in the State Assembly do.

Three Republicans voted to save cheerleaders, the worldand other at risk teens from their parent’s permission to tan. (Cook, Emmerson he is a co-sponsor, and Horton) One Democrat to her credit voted no (Galgiani)

No word on when Cook, Emmerson, Horton or the Dems will prohibit teenagers from sunbathing at beaches or swimming pools.… Read More

If you’ve been following the saga of Fresno Unified School District at all, you know that the current Board President, Carol Mills, is involved in an ongoing cold war with the Superintendent, Michael Hanson. Hanson just happens to be one of the best School District CEOs in the United States, and nothing makes the teachers unions more angry than competent District leadership.

Mills is a micromanaging proxy for teachers union President Larry Moore, so there is no surprise about the tension. And if Hanson gets run out of town, there will be hell to pay for not only Mills, but the Board members that have been foolishly supporting her in the face of a growing public resentment of her conduct and a grand jury report to back it up..

Now several elected officials have weighed in, with a diplomatic, yet to the point letter, which asks Mills to get her act together. Although I would have like to have seen stronger language, it is gratifying to see… Read More

AB 1471, legislation to require a microscopic stamping of every cartridge as it is fired in a semi-auto pistol, passes today with no Republican support, 44-31. This bill was tried last year by Asm. Paul Koretz, where it was stopped late at night on our floor after coming back from the Senate. The pretense being that ID’d casings, tied to a particular gun,left behind at a shooting would help solve that crime.

The argument that marking bullet casings with a micro-small ID number struck by the firing pinis a way to solve crimes doesn’t hold water for Reeps, what with the fact that it is easy for a criminal to file down the firing pin, or toss other-numbered cartridges outto confuse investigation ofa crime scene, or usea revolver that doesn’t eject shells at a crime scene, not to mention that real world studies show that the numbers frequently mis-stamp and aren’t reliable. Theseare among just a few reasons why this bill won’t solve anything…and why the Governor needs to veto it should it make it’s merry way through the Senate again this year.… Read More

Bill Bradley, the normally diligent and well-researched author of the New West Notes blog, offers this factually inaccurate and lazily researched piece in the latest edition of LA Weekly. Choosing to pander to LA Weekly’s liberal readership, Bradley ignores well-documented evidence to regurgitate the tired, out-dated themes of a new right-wing conspiracy. Yes, that same right-wing conspiracy that Hillary Clinton revealed over nine years ago and that has twice-elected "post-partisan" Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is both new and radically right-wing.

Bradley’s flawed contention is that the Republican Party has been taken over by a new radical, conservative faction of Flash Report-blogging politicos. He cites “the rise of new, very far right party leaders: Fleischman, Tom Del Beccaro and Mike Spence” as evidence of his claim.

Never mind that Bradley’s article is laced with small inaccuracies to artificially bolster his argument, such as referring to Jon Fleischman as the… Read More

Last week, in what has been characterized as a "highly unusual" action, State Senate President Pro-Tem Don Perata convened a hastily called meeting of the Senate Rules Committee where, with no notice (and on a party-line vote), he "rushed through" a reappointment of Sara Wan as a State Senate appointee to the California Coastal Commission. Sara Wan is the ultra-liberal former Chairman of the Commission who has been at the center of many controversies. Why would Perata "rush" this at the last minute, on the date her term was set to expire?

First of all, there are really only three groups of people out there who really know who Wan is…

1) The eco-nut, ultra-leftist, anti-human activists (the base from which Wan comes, and from where she derives her support). These folks are the ones who believe that there is some sort of moral equivalance between the El… Read More