In recent weeks, the conservative Republican Study Committee, the conservative caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives, has ratcheted up the pressure on GOP leadership to deal with the growing budget deficit in the wake of Hurricane Katrina and Iraq. When RSC leaders held a press conference announcing "Operation Offset" House GOP leadership aides lurked about the conference belittling RSC to the assembled media and Houseleaders subsequently criticized RSC members for "undermining the unity of the GOP conference," being "unrealistic about the Senate’s willingnessto go along," and creating negative publicity for House Republicans."

In the weeks following the launch of Operation Offset, the House leadership incrementally embraced the proposals of the RSC. First, they committed to find additional savings from a process called "reconciliation," which forces committee chairman to find a specified amount of savings within their committees. The following week, they embraced a 2% across the board spending cut and what do you know, they started to get positive responses from the RSC, the… Read More

Wille Brownleft the State Assembly to become Mayor of San Francisco.

What happened there?Brown was a deal maker ,attacked from the hard left, that tried to make big business and developers happy.

NowLA has a Willie Brown style Mayor in Antonio Villaraigosa. He just completed a deal that makes developers of a hotel at Stapels center and the owner of Bonaventure Hotelvery happy. Read it here.

This comes on the heels of a transportation plan for the 405 that utilizes non-union engineers. And his efforts to alleviate rush hour traffic.

He is acting more like Willie Brown every day.… Read More

Yesterday, I almost coughed up my cereal as I saw, before my eyes, in black and white, that the Los Angeles Times in a Sunday Editorial endorsed the Paycheck Protection measure. Stranger things have happenned, I suppose — but not many!

Today’s featured story on the FlashReport home page is about a publisher from San Diego named James Holman. Holman publishes a thick (over 200 page) alternative weekly paper that goes to almost 200,000 recipients.

His ‘crusade’ is the passage of Proposition 73, the measure on the Special Election Ballot that would require that the parents of a minor seeking an abortion be notified 48 hours prior to a doctor ending the life of the child.

A close and dear friend wrote to me over the weekend, asking why I haven’t said more about Proposition 73 in the FlashReport. She was correct to call me… Read More

Last month, the California Republican Party held its semi-annual convention in Anaheim . By most measures, the convention was a tremendous success for Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Governor had not only well-timed his “I’m running for reelection” announcement (great news for a GOP that had already endorsed his bid for second term in advance) – but he also came into the convention having just promised to veto a prominent homosexual marriage bill, and at the convention luncheon, he announced his official support for Proposition 75, the Paycheck Protection Measure. Party Chairman Duf Sunheim and Vice Chairman Ron Nehring were very prominent at the convention (as they should be) as well, speaking to groups, at meal functions and at the general session.… Read More

I won’t pretend to have as much background as Mr. Roe on the national ramifications of California’s redistricting initiative. I have found him to be a reliable indicator of national impacts and trends. I’m actually more concerned, though, with the potential ramifications of the redistricting initiative right here in California.

One unpleasant scenario is the passage of redistricting and the failure of paycheck protection. In that case, the number of real legislative targets increases from, say for example, between 3 and 6 to between 10 and 15. GOP resources would probably stay about the same or increase a bit – enough for Republican Leadership to fully fund give or take half a dozen legislative targets. However, Democrat/Union resources, already grossly superior, could always be increased with additional member assessments which would allow them to compete with superior cash in all of the expanded target seats. The result of this uneven fight might well be to eliminate the Republican Assembly delegation’s “veto” power of budgets and other 2/3 votes.

My argument is not that we should not try to pass the redistricting… Read More

Poochigian will need to prove his mettle…twice…

Up until this point, Republicans have been able to sit back and enjoy the beginning volleys in the battle between former Governor-turned-Oakland-Mayor-wanna-be- Attorney-General Jerry Brown and up-and-coming-Demo-Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo, as they duke it out to become the Democrat nominee for State Attorney General.

Well respected State Senator Chuck Poochigian from Fresno has been enjoying a clear field, raising over $2 million dollars in a show of strength as a candidate. He has been traveling up and down the state, working hard to court grassroots activists and donors alike.

Today in an interview on KPCC radio, Pierre Prosper, who has been serving since 2001 as a war-crimes prosecutor in… Read More

Orange County has its own measures on the ballot in November. The most politically charged is ‘D’ which would take Prop. 172 (the statewide half-cent sales tax for public safety) dollars currently allocated to the Sheriff and DA and send some of the new tax increment increases to the Fire Authority. Its a generally boring topic of little consequence. Unless there is a raging forest fire in which case we all want the firefighters to have what ever they need or if there is a kidnapping and we want the Sheriff to have the resources necessary to find the kid alive, or if Robert Blake decided to move to OC and not kill his wife again we would want the DA to have the money to hire expert witnesses.

Basically, on a regular day it really doesn’t matter, only I trust the elected Sheriff and the elected District Attorney and dare I say the elected five member board of supervisors over the appointed couple-dozen member Fire Authority board of directors who are hardly accountable to the public, to spend our… Read More

There is no new commentary today.

But did you catch some of these commentaries?

Take care, and enjoy your Sunday!

Jon… Read More