I want to share some exciting, fun news with you. The Breitbart News Network is launching a new Breitbart California page! It will be awesome — just read the press release below. I’ve been tapped as Politics Editor, and will be penning a weekly column for the new site… That said, please know that my first and foremost passion will continue to be this site, the FlashReport, which will continue to publish every day as it has since October 1, 2005! Our crack team (read: John Hrabe, Anton Hartmann and me) will link the best of Breitbart California’s content right to our main page. Look for even more original content here as well as new fantastic pieces coming from our Senior Correspondent Katy Grimes, and our other contributors. Jon

BREITBART NEWS NETWORK ANNOUNCES LAUNCH OF BREITBART CALIFORNIA… Read More

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I am definitely in the camp that California has become a hopeless place for Republicans and/or sane government. The downward spiral has been happening for a long time culminating in the disastrous election of 2006 where Schwarzenegger hogged all the campaign funds, while the Democrats abandoned Phil Angelides and elected all the down-ballot positions wiping out any statewide bench the Republicans might have been able to establish. This election will be a major test of whether the California electorate has finally come to its senses.

The reason that we may have a test is not based on the strength of Republican statewide candidates, but the disaster that the Democratic caucus in the state legislature has become. This week brought about the completion of a trifecta of state senators being charged with crimes with one member already being convicted.

Though the convicted member, Senator Rod Wright, and the one charged with bribery, Senator Ron Calderon, had taken a leave of absence, it wasn’t until Senator Leland Yee was indicted for multiple issues including illegal arms dealing that the Senate suspended the three from their seats. Interestingly, all three were… Read More

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It’s nearly unanimous in Sacramento to punish the three corrupt Democratic State Senators, Leland Yee, D-San Francisco, Ronald Calderon, D-Montebello, and Roderick Wright, D-Inglewood, identified as corrupt. So, Governor Jerry Brown called for their resignations. The State Senate actually suspended them.

Former Senator and Congressman John Burton, Chairman of the California Democratic Party, did not see a pattern of Democratic criminal acts. He was quoted in the Los Angeles Times attributing the arrest of the three Democratic Senators, “to the personal failings of those accused, rather than to any culture of corruption festering in Sacramento’s ruling party.” Even if he pretends not to know how Sacramento “payola” or “pay-to-play” works, he must have read them in newspaper stories.

Unfortunately, it is also almost unanimous that Sacramento’s bi-partisan corrupt system of awarding special interest laws in exchange for campaign donations continues and there is no call by our elected officials, not by Brown, not by Burton, not even by Republican leaders of the Senate or Assembly to try to permanently fix our failing legislative… Read More

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California needs a change in leadership. We face tremendous challenges in this state, from hundreds of billions in unfunded pension liabilities, to businesses that are fleeing the state due to a business climate that is over-taxed and over-regulated. Today, I am proud to endorse Neel Kashkari for Governor of California because we need a leader with the courage to address these challenges head on – not another four years of Jerry Brown as a caretaker governor who is content to kick the can down the road.

Neel has proven that he can lead and deliver in tough situations. As Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Department under President George W. Bush, Neel helped steer the nation through the worst recession since the Great Depression. In times of crisis – especially like California’s current jobs crisis – I want someone like Neel in my corner.

For far too long Sacramento has been a place of misspent money and misplaced priorities. Governor Brown thinks that California has made a comeback, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. The truth is that millions of Californians are still struggling. The numbers don’t lie. California ranks 47th for highest… Read More

This is Part ll of my series on California’s dubious drought and water policies

National media coverage has largely confused reasons for the current drought. We are now being told that global warming has caused the drought.

Perhaps a more realistic cause for the drought can be found in natural climate change, agricultural inefficiency, poor water storage planning, and urban development in arid regions.

Most of the media and public officials paint California farmers and ranchers as the biggest water wasters in the state. Yet they have made huge strides in improving efficient water management over the years — it’s in their best interest to do so, not only economically, but to save and conserve natural resources. Farmers and ranchers are some of the best, most efficient and effective conservationists California has.

North Korean-style water… Read More

The SAN DIEGO U-T story (below) concerning San Diego’s improving employment numbers (higher than just prior to the start of the 2007 national recession) offers good information to consider, but leaves some aspects unanswered — and some information appears to be outright misleading. Consider:

1. How many of our employed are part-time in 2014 vs. 2007? Remember, to be counted as “employed” by the government, you need work only one hour a week. If two full-time employees are replaced by three part-time employees (thanks, Obamacare), is that an improvement?

2. Professor Gin (the region’s big government academic cheerleader) asserts in the article that “35,000 people moved to San Diego” last year (keeping our unemployment rate higher than it would be otherwise). But is that GROSS or NET… Read More

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today obliterating the Federal Election Campaign Act’s 40 year-old restriction on total contributions to Federal candidates by individuals is a stroke for free speech and a long time coming. After the FEC was created in the wake of Watergate, the restrictive new Federal campaign statute was tested in the landmark case of Buckley vs. Valeo, and the Court made significant changes to the law, ruling restrictions on so called “independent expenditures” to be unconstitutional stifling of free speech and not sufficiently related to the statute’s intention to root out “quid pro quo” corruption of the election campaign process.

Campaigns adapted under the new rules and legal precedents, which affected many state campaign finance systems as well. But the FEC law continued to contain unaddressed issues. After enactment of the sweeping “McCain-Feingold” campaign finance reform amendments to the FEC Act about ten years ago, the Supreme Court had reason to become re-engaged in looking not only at those gruesome amendments (from a free speech standpoint) but to re-think its approach to the… Read More

For public officials, generosity can be the mother of invention – and not in a good way.

This is certainly so when it comes to generous pension promises to government employees. Up and down California, politicians have had to scramble for inventive ways to pay for their munificence to public-sector retirees.

Too often the funding strategies are more reckless than resourceful.

As the pothole-pocked streets in many communities show, “delayed maintenance” is one formula for freeing up money for pension costs.

Scores of California localities have also turned to risky finance in the form of “pension obligation bonds.” Either they’ve sold bonds in order to pay near-term pension bills with long-term borrowing (essentially off-loading today’s financial woes onto the next generation), or they’ve tried to master the arcane Wall Street art of… Read More