Yesterday the the House overwhelmingly passed the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Act of 2005 after years of doing virtually nothing, in a post 9-11 world, to protect our borders. Whether this excellent legislation makes it through the process and onto the President’s desk for signature is another story. To become law, it must survive a tough conference committee process and a US Senate where all good ideas go to die. Two local Valley Republican lawmakers, George Radanovich, and Devin Nunes, voted no. I’m at a loss as to why. I understand the pressure from the US Chamber of Commerce and Western Growers Association. Maybe Radanovich and Nunes they knew the votes were there and voted no to heed big agriculture’s call. We DO need a flow of labor into the Central Valley to handle a year round agricultural harvest, and the labor supply, due to the Minuteman project and other factors, was the worst we’ve seen here in many, many years. Still, does getting grapes off the vine or lettuce out of the ground really rise to the level of an issue like Homeland Security? I don’t think so. Our members of Congress have to get their… Read More

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s top education advisor, Alan Bersin, thinks it is time to raise taxes to give more money to the state’s K-12 school system. According to the California School Boards Association website, Bersin recently gave a speech to the group in which he called for an end to the “gridlock” between the anti-tax forces and “those of us on the district level (who) are faced with absolute requirements for additional resources." Bersin called on the CSBA to help educate the public on the need for new taxes, praising them for "skilled leadership." (Did you forget, Mr. Bersin, that CSBA’s "skilled leadership" helped defeat your boss’ important reform poposals in the special election? Probably not.)

… Read More

I think today may be the ‘slowest’ news day in terms of reporting California political news since the inception of the online version of the FlashReport. I suspect we will be seeing more of these kinds of spare-story days as we get into the holidays. Political reporters and columnists put in a lot of time during this year’s special election, so it makes sense that they would be taking more time off – and this is on top of the fact that California’s politicians are also enjoying the holiday season.

Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of political news going on in the country (especially out of the Congress) — but the focus of this website is on California political news.

Today I will take an opportunity to draw your attention to some of the recent posts on the FlashReport Weblog. Of course, if you missed any of my daily commentaires, you can click here to review them all by time, and catch up on my attempts a being a cub-reporter/columnist.

* Last week the California Republican Party Board of Directors met with Governor Schwarzenegger to,… Read More

Last week, I wrote about how the pro Wal-Mart majority of the Rosemead City Council used a liberal ruling of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to undue the scheduled recall against two ofthe majority’smembers. See it here.

Oops again. One memberof that majority (of courseshe is the one not being recalled)changed her mind after the federal government said they wouldn’t punish the city for violating the law. So now the recall is on. See the article here.

Some words of caution for Rosemead voters. In the early 1990’s, I was involved in a successful recall of all five council members in Covina after they voted for a utility tax. Well, guess what? The tax is still there. I’m sure we can all think of examples of recall elections that didn’t work out as well as hoped.… Read More

Today in the Sacramento Bee, my friend, State GOP Chairman Duf Sundheim was quoted as follows after emerging from a closed-door, executive sesison of the California Republican Party Board of DIrectors, which included Governor Schwarznegger:

Assuming that Duf was quoted correctly, I am struggling with the big question of who is the "we" that "support his decision" to hire Democrat Susan Kennedy.

The members of the Board of Directors, I believe, have been done a disservice here. It is clear to me… Read More

One of the central hubs on the blogosphere in Orange County is the OC Blog. It has a "blog pen" of a lot of great folks – but no one knows who there are! Their leader, and site host, is "Jubal" (seriously). Jubal is quite the personality – he’s even been published in the Orange County Register.

The OC Blog makes news and makes a real impact on OC politics.

All of this to say that many readers of the OC Blog also come to this site, and Jubal contacted me, to ask that I convey the following message to his loyal readers:

"I wanted to let all our faithful readers know that TypePad, which powers OC Blog, is experiencing some big glitch. I can’t update it, readers can’t post comments, and it is only showing posts up until December 9.

Bear with us until TypePad resolves this problem.

Jubal"… Read More

Next week, California Republican Party Chairman Duf Sundheim will travel to Ramallah, Gaza, and the old city of Jerusalem, where he will declare the crisis in the Middle East to be over.

I like Duf, and I think he’s doing an excellent job as chairman of a party who’s natural instinct is to form a circular firing squad at every convenient opportunity. But he’s been put in a lousy position here, because while he and most of his board members know that there’s no way in the world that the governor is going to fire Susan Kennedy, they needed to make it clear to Schwarzenegger how unhappy the party members they represent have become. Duf put the right face on the board meeting afterwards by emphasizing the policy ground on which Arnold stands, but it probably would have worked better if he’d been able to walk out with a fiscally responsible bond package in his hand.

So I don’t blame him for coming out of the meeting yesterday and pronouncing the controversy to be a… Read More

Yes kids, we face, as conservatives, a mortal onslaught of horrendous ballot initiatives in the next year, led by the ridiculous “Universal Preschool” initiative this June. But looming in the background, and with a much larger scope and impact, is a property tax initiative sponsored by super rich Silicon Valley leaders, to raise property taxes on everyone in the State. Shrouded under the cloak of fail a safe “education” and “child friendly” ballot title, (we should sue the sox off of the Attorney General to have this farce changed), the proposal would solve a problem that doesn’t exist – a mythical shortage of funding for public schools. You can read an informative article by Jon Coupal on the subject at http://www.hjta.org/HJTACalCommentaryV3-50.pdf.

Batten down the hatches mates, the pirates are coming to loot and pillage once more!… Read More