Last week I wrote a tough column extremely critical of the votes cast by Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande and Republican-turned-Independent Nathan Fletcher for Assembly Bill 1500, legislation by Speaker John Perez that would arbitrarily shift about a billion dollars from the private sector into the coffers of California state government by hitting with a big tax increase multi-state companies that that sell services and products to Californians, but don’t have a lot of real estate assets or employees in the state. Californians depend on reliable and predictable availability of the services and goods which they consume in order to keep costs low and quality high. It is pretty a pretty established economic reality that when you increase the costs of goods and services, you create a scarcity and thus drive up the costs. Simply put, a billion dollar (plus) tax increase ultimately hurts the California consumer.

To the extent that the liberals running California state government continue to make it more expensive and difficult… Read More

Today there is a very important article for you to read in the FlashReport by longtime FR contributor Bruce Bialosky. Bruce, a certified public accountant, pens a lot of sobering material bringing into question the sanity of many policies enacted by politicians at both the state and national levels. In his column today, Bruce shines a bright spotlight on a particularly egregious piece of bad legislation that has almost finished winding its way to the Governor’s desk — only a State Senate floor vote remains for Assembly Bill 2451. AB 2451 represents a giveaway to public safety unions that reminds me of SB 400 back in 1999 which allowed for the outrageous practice of granting retroactive pension increases.

Bruce goes into some detail on AB 2451, and this blog post should be read after you read his column. But the gist of the legislation is that current law says that if a public safety worker dies within a five year period of retiring, except in some minor exceptions, their survivors can file a workers’ compensation claim, if there is either a nexus to the… Read More

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday about how the city is losing the core of its television production to other states. The article talks about how just two of the twenty-plus fall and midseason shows shows will be shot in L.A. County. It says that, “Fewer than 10% of new network dramas this season are based in Los Angeles, down from 50% in 2010 and nearly 80% in 2005.”

Most of the article is really focused on anecdotal, tragic stories of people in the television production business who are being very hard-hit by this circumstance. It is mentioned that other states are luring away the business.

First of all, I want to make it clear that I have an enormous amount of sympathy for those being hard hit economically. These are real people, with families, who are in dire straights.

That said, I will make the political observation that in some respects “Hollywood” is reaping what it has sewn. Whether you look “in front” of the… Read More

In his famous book, Socialism, written in 1932, Ludwig Von Mises had an interesting insight. He said, 80 years ago, in the midst of the Nazi takeover of Germany, that “it is unreasonable to expect” an association of entrepreneurs, or an association that relies on entrepreneurs as its principal means of support (read the California Chamber of Commerce, or any other number of “pro-business” associations) to take a principled stand against Socialism, mainly, he said, because that is not what they do. Their job is to build their business, not fight long term political battles, and building their business means overcoming, not fighting, government obstacles to growth. How right he was. That comment changed my view of my role in the Legislature. I knew that if it was unreasonable to expect that kind of behavior from the business community in 1932, when they were facing the threat of Adolph Hitler, how could I expect them to take the exact opposite approach when fighting Willie or Jerry Brown, or anyone of the string of speakers of the Assembly, including John Perez currently.

The business community wouldn’t fight, but I would, I decided,… Read More

Every election cycle, seeking to vindicate the rights of private citizens who, at great time and expense, have qualified an initiative for the statewide ballot (often a subject matter that has no chance of making it through the dysfunctional Legislature), against a partisan Attorney General who has crafted a biased summary of the proposed measure.

The Elections Code tasks the Attorney General with preparing “a true and impartial statement of the purpose” of any measure appearing on the statewide ballot. The Attorney General’s statement cannot “be an argument, nor be likely to create prejudice, for or against the proposed measure.” The ballot label, title and summary prepared for Proposition 32 by Attorney General Kamala Harris failed this basic standard, which unfortunately is no surprise.

Attorney General Harris’ proposed ballot language described Proposition 32 as restricting or limiting contributions to candidates from corporations, unions and government contractors, and as restricting the collection of campaign contributions from corporate employees and union members through payroll deduction. These… Read More

San Diego Politics & Media Mashup

I’m not sure what’s worse: suggesting the Republican Party is racist or calling someone a criminal while offering no evidence to support the claim.

Congressman Bob Filner, running for mayor in San Diego, did both of those things in a span of a few days.

Adding fuel to the fire was local labor Lorena Gonzalez. More on her in a minute. First, Filner.

At a mayoral debate Thursday, Filner played the race card while refuting a point by City Councilman and mayoral candidate Carl DeMaio.

“They (the Republican Party) are a party that does not believe that the people of color in this nation deserve an equal chance, they do not believe that Mexico is worthy of respect as a nation,” Filner said, according to KPBS.

Monday on KOGO, host LaDona Harvey noted that Filner basically accused her and a whole bunch of other people of being racist without offering any proof.

Within the hour, Filner was doing the same thing —… Read More

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As if her job isn’t already hard enough, the task for Assembly Republican Leader Connie Conway got a bit tougher yesterday. You see she, along with her counterpart, State Senate Republican Leader Bob Huff, are spending a lot of their time convincing potential donors that it if we want to stop tax increases in California, it is critical that enough Republicans occupy each chamber of the legislature to block the two-thirds vote threshold required to raise taxes under the State Constitution. This pitch, by the GOP leaders, is pretty persuasive — especially when you consider how aggressively Capitol Democrats try to raise taxes. However, the presupposition of their pitch is that… Read More

The trial lawyers and radical environmentalists took it in the shorts over the weekend as the California Republican Party voted overwhelmingly to oppose Prop 37, the ballot measure that would ostensibly require the labeling of “genetically modified food.”

I engaged in the battle against Proposition 37 after receiving an email from a political operative for the “Yes on 37” campaign ahead of this weekend’s state party convention and it became clear the liberals were going to make a play.

During my four years as state party chairman, the liberals would occasionally show up and lobby the party to back one of their big government propositions if they thought they might be able to get away with it. Fortunately, we stopped them every time.

Prop 37 of course isn’t really about food – it’s about lawsuits. It would require food sold at the grocery store, convenience store or other shop to bear a label if it contains genetically modified ingredients (as though genetically modified foods are potentially harmful, which of course they are not).

The real objective behind Prop 37 is to open the floodgates for a new round of lawsuits against… Read More