Promoters of the California bullet train are behaving like a salesman who gets his foot in the door and won’t take “no” for an answer.

It was 2008 when voters approved $10 billion in bonds to kick start a high speed rail (HSR) building program.But they were promised a system whose total cost would be $45 billion, that additional money would be secured from sources including private investment and that the system would meet environmental concerns.

An expert study sponsored by the Reason Foundation and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Foundation showed the actual cost for this extravagant plan would approach $100 billion or more. “There are no genuine financial projections that indicate there will be sufficient funds,” the authors wrote.… Read More

The human race consists of both male and female. It was designed that way for our good, and the good of humanity itself. The two genders complement each other. The sexual complementarity of men and women is the only union that can produce children. Children, in turn, benefit greatly when their lives are enriched with the unique contributions provided by both genders.

Despite the natural order that gives us male and female genders, there are children who experience confusion about their gender, expressing strong feelings identifying with the gender that is opposite that of their birth. Those children are entitled to love and support, and should be protected from discrimination and bullying in school. Indeed, California already has laws to protect those children by prohibiting discrimination and bullying based on gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and gender non-conforming appearance and behavior.

AB 1266 is not really about protecting transgendered students, since we already have laws on the books to do that. Rather, its purpose is to advance an adult political agenda by special interests who wish to use our public schools as a tool to strip gender and… Read More

Over at the Pacific Research Institute’s CalWatchDog website FlashReport’s Senior Editor, John Hrabe has published an eye-opening column, CA Assembly Pays Women Less; Fewer In Top Staff Positions.

After spending a vast amount of time pulling, sorting and analyzing data from public records of the California legislature, Hrabe has discovered, in essence, that the Emperor has No Clothes. While the liberal Democrats who run the State Assembly spend their time issuing platitudes on the top of gender equality and “breaking the glass ceiling” — it turns out that if you are a woman, your path to the top jobs and the higher salaries is a tougher one than you would have expected.

… Read More

by Barry Jantz

Is Friday’s City of San Diego agreement with Bob Filner a good deal for taxpayers?

Maybe we can start by agreeing on something. It really chaps the common hide to think the city would enter into any settlement whatsoever with the soon-to-be former but already disgraced mayor. If it were up to a lot of people, the guy would be left penniless or behind bars.

Yet, for anyone to believe there would be no cost to the city from Filnergate … well, that’s simply not realistic. Theday Gloria Allred and Irene McCormack Jackson held their press conferenceit was fairly clear the city would be on the hook for something, maybe a significant amount. A government agency is partly liable for its employees, including its elected officials, even when they are loose cannons and have loose fingers.

With that said,the deal brokered by retired Judge Lawrence Irving— with significant crafting, negotiating and ushering by City Attorney Jan… Read More

Political candidates and party officials rarely choose campaign themes purely out of philosophical interests. In the midst of a contested election, campaigns invest heavily in researching and testing messages to gain maximum advantage at the expense of the opposition.

The Democrats’ 2012 “war on women” theme used against Republicans was not chosen by accident or merely out of a desire to satisfy feminists in the Democrat Party leadership. It was a deliberate choice to maximize the Democrats’ advantage among women while exploiting a glaring vulnerability among Republicans, whose traditional support for life and religious liberty is often cast as “anti-women.”

Republican candidates and… Read More

Remember AB 340, the pension reform successfully pushed by Democratic Governor Brown, that even Governor Brown acknowledges is only a first step towards making public employee pensions financially sustainable?

Well even AB 340 goes too far according to Obama’s new Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez. As Dan Borenstein of theContra Costa Times reports on August 16th,“unless California lawmakers exempt transit workers from the pension changes, the feds could cut off up to $4.3 billion of transportation funding, according to an estimate by the California Transit Association.That includes $174 million for BART, $225 million for Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and $12 million for AC Transit.”

The immediate negative economic impact of this is huge: Bill McMorris,reporting for the Washington Free Beacon on August 16th, writes“The federal government has withheld more than $500 million in funding to local… Read More

For the second time in as many years, the State of California is mailing hundreds of thousands of fire tax bills to rural Californians who live in the so-called State Responsibility Area. The bills are hitting mailboxes even as the class action lawsuit I’m backing has finally received a green light to move forward.

As Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers’ Association is fond of saying, “the wheels of justice grind slowly.” Although I believe the lawsuit against the fire tax will ultimately prevail, it appears the trial won’t be until next year at the earliest.

Delayed justice means that hundreds of thousands of rural Californians, whether they can afford it or not, must write another check for up to $150 per habitable structure to the State of California to pay this unfair and unjust tax.

Given the confusing and controversial nature of this tax, I’m sponsoring a series of regional telephone town hall meetings to give impacted taxpayers—many of whom are senior citizens living on fixed incomes in mobile homes—an opportunity to receive information and voice their questions and concerns. To date, more than 2000 taxpayers have participated.… Read More

Today the California Republican Party will release the headline speakers for their upcoming biannual State Convention, which will be held the weekend of October 4-6 at the Anaheim Hilton hotel in the heart of Orange County.

FlashReport has the scoop!

As of now (these things tend to solidify even more as you get closer to the event) the three headline speakers will be Texas Governor Rick Perry, Congressman Greg Walden of Oregon who is the current Chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, and Sharon Day who is Co-Chairman of the Republican National Committee.

The highest profile speaker, Governor Perry remains extremely popular with grassroots conservatives despite his unsuccessful run for the Presidency in the last cycle. Perry has been the longest serving Governor in the history of the Lone Star State and has… Read More