RIDER NOTE: Perhapsa more accurate question is this: “Is it time to stop building PUBLICLY FINANCED and SUBSIDIZED convention centers — without a vote of the electorate?” Hmmmm . . . let me think . . .—–

Daily Policy Digest

June 26, 2012

Over the last 20 years, convention space in the United States has increased by 50 percent; since 2005, 44 new convention spaces have been planned or constructed in this country alone. That boom hasn’t come cheap. In the last 10 years, spending on convention centers has doubled to $2.4 billion annually, much of it from public coffers, says Amanda Erickson, associate editor at The Atlantic Cities.

The resultant glut of convention centers, however, has undermined the financial strength of these notable investments. The annual number of conventions is down, as are the number of attendees, and convention centers are… Read More

Governor Jerry Brown and legislative Democrats must take California voters for chumps. That is the only explanation that I can think of for why they think that employing the Washington Monument Strategy will actually succeed in getting voters in the Golden State to vote increase taxes on themselves in the midst of a recession, to bail out a state government that can’t even agree that a public employee who commits a felony with a nexus to their government job should lose their pension. Apparently the “bogey man” that will be used… Read More

I’m really trying. But I just can’t keep up with dumb ideas from the other party.

On the campaign trail, I’ve told the story of a meeting last year with some plaintiffs’ lawyers who specialize in employment law. I mentioned the idiotic and counterproductive Labor Code requirement that bars ten hour work days, even if the employee wants them. In a flight of what I thought was hyperbole, I added that Democrats act as if, without that law, “there would be 12 year old urchins in basements sewing garments again.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Wagner,” one of the lawyers earnestly replied, “that’s exactly what would happen.”

What I took as an obvious exaggeration, she took as a very good argument for a very bad law.

A couple of weeks ago, Democrats on the Assembly Education Committee complained about the narrow scope of a bill by State Senator Bob Huff. They objected to it because it didn’t completely fix a big problem (ironically, a big problem of Democrats’ own making with faulty legislation they passed a few years ago – but I digress). Instead, the bill dealt only with a small piece of the larger problem, and supposedly was objectionable for… Read More

The results have been tallied for our little Election Contest (see the questions here), with about 45 participants. I’m pleased to say it was the most competitive contest yet. Maybe the questions were too easy. I’ll remember that next time. But, we do have some winners.

First, some stats — since the type of ner … uhhh, I meanwonkswho enter the contest are into stats.

Out of the 10 base questions, no one got less than five correct answers, with 63 percent of the participants getting between five and seven right. About another one-third nailed eight or nine correctly, pretty amazing.

More specifically:

San Diego City Council District 5— Thankfully, this “gimme” question that the seat would be won by lone contenderand Republican Mark Kerseywas answered correctly by everyone,includingKersey. He did add an “ahem” after his answer to this one.

San Diego City Council District 1— One third of you guessed… Read More

I am very pleased to share the wonderful news that last weekend, at the Americans For Prosperty Right Online annual convention held in Las Vegas, FlashReport’s own publisher Jon Feischman was awarded the blogger of the year award which has been renamed, starting this year, the Andrew Breitbart Award for Excellence in Activism and Online Reporting. The award was presented to Jon by renowned activist Dana Loesch of Breitbart.com and Tim Phillips, the President of the Americans for Prosperity Foundation, in front the better part of a thousand online conservative activists from all around the country.

Tim Phillips, President of Americans for Prosperity Foundation said, “For years, Jon Fleischman has demonstrated the instincts, technical savvy, and guiding principles that make a truly great newsmaker online. The Flash Report has become a must-read resource for Californians, and we were proud to honor Jon for his great work at Right Online.”

Peter Foy, who is State Chairman of Americans for Prosperity for California said, “It is wonderful that Jon Fleischman has received this wonderful recognition from his peers in the online activist… Read More

— Speaker John Perez’s scheme to raise a billion dollars in new taxes and then redistribute that money to public college and university students in California is incorrectly called the “Middle Class Scholarship Program.” The problem with this title, you see, is that scholarship has absolutely nothing to do with it, since there is no requirement that beneficiaries meet any kind of level of performance, such as a grade point average. It would be more appropriately called a welfare program, or a grant program. But I guess those names didn’t poll quite as well.

— A lesson in California state budget physics: When Governor Brown introduces a bad budget, and the Democrats who control the legislature propose their own bad changes to a bad budget, the results is… Well… You guessed it… A bad budget. The document that is nearing final approval isn’t balanced by a long shot. While there are some big problems with it, the biggest gaping hole in it is that it “balances” assuming that California voters will approve a massive tax increase before them on the ballot this November.

— The Right Wing News… Read More

For as long as there have been liberals seeking or occupying positions of authority in government, there has been the presence of the politics of class warfare. We will see this in aces in the campaigns of both Jerry Brown and Molly Munger for their respective income tax increase measures that come before voters in November — “the rich must pay their fair share” and “they can afford it” will be the rhetoric of proponents — never minding the unfortunate reality that state government revenues are already extremely overdependent on income taxes from California’s biggest earners.

No where is there a better example of playing the “class warfare” card in the state legislature than Assembly Speaker John Perez’s so-called “Middle Class Scholarship Program” — which at its essence seeks to cut a favorable tax break for out-of-state companies, that saves those companies about a billion dollars a year in state taxes, and then proposes to use that billion dollars to instead create a new program to directly subsidize the costs for students to attend a public college or university in the state. Well, not all… Read More

Barack Obama has not turned out to be the President whom Europeans expected he would be. And if public opinion serves as a guide, the President has been a disappointment for Americans as well.

These were among the points I made in an address to the prestigious Konrad Adenauer Foundation in Berlin last week. The Foundation, which is aligned with the conservative CDU party of Chancellor Angela Merkel, is a major force in German politics, and its staff and supporters are well connected to the European political scene.

When Barack Obama addressed several hundred thousand Germans at Berlin’s Victory Column in 2008, it came at a time when President Bush’s standing in European public opinion had reached its nadir. Obama would present the starkest break from the policies of the Bush Administration, and the European public responded with glowing approval and anticipation.

Yet today, even the left-leaning European press has turned against America’s chief advocate of “hope” and “change.” While… Read More