Matthew K. Fong Remembered Matthew K. Fong, California’s 29th State Treasurer, former member of the California State Board of Equalization, respected attorney and businessman, devoted father and loving husband passed away today, June 1, 2011.

Fong, who had been battling cancer for several years, was a speaker at the commencement ceremonies at Southwestern Law School on Sunday, May 15 where he received an honorary degree and ovation from the graduates and friends and colleagues from his service in elective office.

Matt was a fiscal conservative who has brought strong academic and business skills to state government. Fong believed small business was the backbone of the California economy and should have an opportunity to compete with the bigger firms. In the State Treasurer’s office, Fong launched an initiative designed to encourage smaller firms to compete for the lucrative underwriting and advisory work on state financing deals. He created a pool of eligible and authorized financial firms. He constantly looked for ways to save taxpayer money. He initiated a shelf registration program that sped up the timeline and… Read More

On FlashReport’s main news aggregation page in the morning, you’ll see articles that are referencing a new survey by the Public Policy Institute of California.

As President of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association my official response to this survey is as follows…

“The poll shows Californians do not trust their Representatives with decisions on taxes. They do not want higher taxes imposed by the Governor and the Legislature. The real reason they want to vote is so they can turn down Jerry Brown’s menu of tax increases. The Governor ought to listen to the people, go back to the drawing board and present budget solutions that don’t hurt working families rather than wasting the people’s time and tax dollars on a special election whose negative outcome is predictable.”… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…

Obama’s ‘Green Evangelist’

It’s another marker of President Obama’s true inclinations that he has chosen to nominate a leading environmentalist to be his new secretary of commerce, a post designed to stimulate job creation.

John Bryson, the nominee, began his career as a top appointee of Jerry Brown back in the 1970s, when Mr. Brown first served as California’s governor. During that time, Mr. Brown preached “an era of limits” when it came to the economy and loaded up the state with onerous regulations. Before his stint as a state water and public utility commissioner, Mr. Bryson opened up the West Coast operations of the Natural Resources Defense Council. According to Republican Sen. David Vitter of Louisiana, the NRDC has filed more lawsuits seeking to block offshore oil drilling than any other group in the country.

No one doubts that Mr. Bryson, a former CEO of the Edison utility company in California who helped steer that state through its 2001 power crisis, will win Senate confirmation.… Read More

California is known in the world for a lot of amazing things. One of them is that we are home to the incubator of amazing technological advances, centered in the Bay Area’s Silicon Valley. With all of the financial challenges facing the Golden State, one would assume that, at a minimum, our state’s politicians would adopt a “do no harm” strategy when it comes to wanting to foster and encourage the entrepreneurialism and job creation coming out of California’s technology sector. How does that saying go, “Methinks you presume too much…”

Bay Area State Senator Ellen Corbett has introduced Senate Bill 242 which threatens to disrupt the growing momentum behind social networks in here in California. Technology writer Adam Theirer’s recent column for Forbes suggested that her bill may pit the State of California versus the Internet. In so doing, she has also created a huge opportunity for the opponents of her bill. California’s technology industry is depending on members of the Senate to help them defeat Senator Corbett’s bill. Legislators can… Read More

[We are very pleased to offer this column from two longtime FR friends, Kevin Dayton and Kevin Korenthal, both affiliated with the Associated Builders and Contractors of California – Flash]

Unions 1 – Los Angeles County Taxpayers 0 Los Angeles County Wastes $795,000 with More Waste to Come on Hospital Project

By Kevin Dayton and Kevin D. Korenthal

Seven months of debate at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors over requiring construction contractors to sign the county’s first Project Labor Agreement (renamed on the May 24 agenda as a “Community Workforce Agreement”) came to a regrettable end on Tuesday for county taxpayers, as well as businesses and their employees not affiliated with a labor union.

After a long series of public comments for and against the Project Labor Agreement, including many questionable… Read More

Local Fresno Assemblyman Henry Perea (D), Fresno, recently wrote an oped piece in the Fresno Bee. The quotes he’s most proud of are here.

Below is my rebuttal – please note that in my research, I only found 1 of 52 Democrats with any private sector business ownership. Only 1.

Assemblyman Henry Perea’s May 12th column “Public Safety Key To Economic Recovery” is full of errors and naïve assertions that need to be corrected so that Bee readers have a proper understanding of what drives an economic recovery. Now, having recently researched the biographies of all of the Democrats serving in the State legislature, I found that of the 52 members of their caucus, 1 has experience as a small business owner. There is a huge representation of academia, legislative staffers, local elected officials and union leaders in the Democrat majority, but no one with any meaningful business experience. I find it audacious that any of their members would even have an opinion about what makes the economy… Read More

Years of overtaxation and overregulation have given California the second highest unemployment rate in the nation. Even so some of our state lawmakers still believe that punishing success is a recipe for job growth.

Efforts by Assemblywoman Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) and other Democrat legislators to increase taxes on high income earners will actually punish California job creators and worsen volatile state revenues.

According to the Tax Foundation, California already has the third highest income tax rate and one of the most progressive tax structures in the nation. The top one percent of California’s income earners have incomes of $500,000 or more per year and pay up to 50% of all income tax revenues received by the state each year, according to a report by the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.

The battle cry to ‘tax the rich’ is really code for taxing California’s job creators, including many small businesses that are struggling to survive. Rather than help California’s budget, higher taxes will reduce revenues and drive even more job creators out of our state or out of business.

The Tax Foundation also… Read More

I have been in Congress nearly 6 years now. During that time, I have heard a number of speeches from the podium on the House floor. I have heard 2 U.S. presidents and any number of prime ministers and presidents and chancellors of other nations. But, last week’s speech by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was the best speech I have yet heard in those chambers.

First, from a clinical perspective, he is a great speaker. He used notes, but no teleprompter. Those little glass stands that you always see when Obama speaks were not there. Not using a teleprompter allowed him to ad-lib, as he did when a protestor started yelling in the gallery, without worrying that he would get out of synch with whoever was operating the prompter and thereby either miss or repeat a paragraph. Without that machine in between him and the audience, he made a connection that others fail to make. I could feel his courage. I could feel his strength. And, most importantly, I was overwhelmed by the sincerity of his remarks. I felt he was being completely honest and authentic. Many American politicians could learn something from him.

And, from the standpoint of the message,… Read More