Somebody send some Tums to the Governor’s office, stat. I can only imagine what’s going on in the horseshoe today after legislative Republicans turned out to be the Governor’s unlikely ally in the pension reform fight. In a move that’s not only good policy, but also smart politics, Senate and Assembly Republicans introduced the Governor’s pension plan verbatim – they didn’t change a word, period or comma. They’re asking for no strings attached and only want Democrats to give it an up or down vote.

The Governor’s plan isn’t perfect but it’s a step in the right direction and it contains many of the same ideas that Republicans have… Read More

Today I released a dynamic analysis by the Board of Equalization showing that the Governor’s proposed sales tax increase will cost California jobs.

According to the analysis, a higher sales tax rate will take money out of the pockets of working Californians, destroying more than 23,000 jobs and $267 million in business investment.

These projected job losses are equivalent to every worker in a medium-sized California city like Glendora or West Sacramento losing their jobs.

When considering tax increases, policymakers often rely on static analyses that ignore behavioral changes by consumers and business owners. A dynamic analysis estimates the likely behavioral changes that could result from a higher tax rate.

The BOE analysis projects that nearly all of the proposed sales tax increase would be passed along to consumers. The state would receive $222 million less in revenues than projected by a static analysis, an 8% loss in potential revenue.

Since July of last year, lower tax rates have enabled Californians to keep more of their hard-earned dollars, and our economy is… Read More

[This is part one of a series exposing the political class in California, and how they will say or do anything to try and keep from having to go back into the private sector and live under the laws they create…]

Once again the Sacramento politicians and powerful special interests are attempting to subvert the will of the people and sabotage the public’s support for strong term limits for state legislators.

They tried it before with the slimy Proposition 93 in 2008, which would have kept the ethically-flawed Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez in their powerful positions as… Read More

Lawless. That’s the right word for the Supreme Court’s decision in the redistricting case. Lawless, in that it ignored the law to reach a decision the Court was explicitly prohibited from reaching.

The background of this case is probably well known to anyone reading this blog. A referendum petition was circulated to challenge the Citizens’ Redistricting Commission’s approved maps of the State Senate lines for the coming election. The petitioners gathered over 711,000 signatures and, therefore, the Court recognized, the petition is “likely to qualify” for the ballot. But this likelihood creates a problem. According to the California Constitution, the existence of a referendum “likely to qualify” for the ballot – which the Court accepts that we have here – operates to “stay” the Commission’s lines. If the lines are “stayed,” though, and the election is coming, what lines should be used? That is the question the Supreme Court had to answer.

The most important point to note is the explicit text of the Constitution. Under our form of government, the Constitution, coming as it does from the sovereign people, is the supreme law of the land.… Read More

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The race for the new 31st Congressional District will be one of the top contests in the nation. The San Bernardino-based seat gives Democrats 41-37% registration advantage and President Obama carried the district 55-40%. This seat has been identified as one of the top 5 battlegrounds nationwide and critical to Democrats’ ambitions for a majority.

The Republican candidates are Congressman Gary Miller, first elected in 1998 after defeating Disgraced Congressman Jay Kim, who was convicted of campaign Money laundering. Miller currently represents a portion of CD 31 in his current House seat. Also running is former Republican Senate Leader Bob Dutton. Dutton is facing term-limits in the Senate — he’s served in the legislature for ten years.

After redistricting, it was not clear which seat Gary Miller would seek since his current seat overlaps several new districts. For a long period of time, it looked like he would be in a throw-down with fellow GOP Congressman Ed Royce in the neighboring CD 39 in Los Angeles and Orange Counties, but Miller stepped up to run in the more competitive San Bernardino County seat. National Republicans moved… Read More

A common fallacy of “our side” is to endlessly repeat the mantra that “government doesn’t work.” It DOES work. Just not as promised.

Our welfare state works. Pay women to have babies out of wedlock? That works. A new study found that today over half of U.S. babies born to women under age 30 are born out of wedlock. http://www.newser.com/story/139982/most-babies-to-young-moms-born-out-of-wedlock.html

Pay people not to work? That works. More choose not to work — by postponing their return to work (well, returning to “on the books” work). Here’s the URL for the latest WALL ST JOURNAL article on unemployment insurance — aptly named “Paid Not to Work”: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203824904577217792498104980.html?mod=djemEditorialPage_h#articleTabs%3Darticle

As of December, ten counties in North Dakota have under 2%… Read More

Disaster in Washington: Last week was a disastrous one in Washington, DC. No, there was not a tsunami or a hurricane or another earthquake. But, the effects of last week will be felt much farther, longer and wider than would have been the case in any of those natural disasters. Everyone of every political stripe understands that our debt and deficits stand as the largest threat to the prosperity and hegemony of the United States in the years and decades ahead. But, in spite of this acknowledged reality, actions in Washington last week served to make this situation dramatically worse, not better. However, almost disturbing is how this happened. The same political dynamics that led to these deficits in the first place have been left unchanged and are currently causing the deficit to increase rather than shrink. Let me explain what happened, and more importantly, how and why it happened:

President’s Budget: The President’s campaign slogan of late is an “economy built to last”. Well, this is a “budget built to collapse”. It astoundingly increases spending, taxes and the deficit, both in the coming year and… Read More

Over the a last month, I kept hearing from different people about a new candidate in the race against Dianne Feinstein to represent California in the United States Senate – a businessman hailing from Oceanside in San Diego County. The people to whom I spoke with very impressed with him, and before I had a chance to track him down, I actually heard from him. His name is Dan Hughes and he’s a small business owner who has the potential to emerge as a real contender to be the GOP candidate against Feinstein.

Elizabeth Emken got out of the gate earlier, and up to now had been running the only visible campaign on the Republican side. I have written about her candidacy here. But I don’t think it was ever expected that anyone was going to “clear the field” for a run at DiFi – no, the GOP mantle must be earned in the June election.

I met with Dan Hughes recently and found him to be an intelligent, articulate, energetic and passionate life-long conservative. In fact, Dan tells the story of making a Reagan ’84 T-shirt when he was… Read More