As the California Republican Party engages in a healthy debate over how to best protect itself and its nominees from the impacts of Proposition 14, which is intended to weaken the role of political parties in California, there will be a lot of explanations and clarifications that will need to take place.

Yesterday on the FlashReport, CRP Chairman Ron Nehring walked readers through why the change in the election process necessitates changes by our party. Up until 2010 we all enjoyed a system with a June primary followed by a November general election. Now, with Prop. 14, we have a general election in June, and a run-off election in November. No longer does the party have a mechanism ask all Republican voters to weigh in on their pick as to who our standard bearer should be — which is why Nehring has proposed an alternative method. It’s not perfect — far from it. But it is significantly better than doing nothing at all, and watching the Republican Party, over time, move ever leftward. In 2000 we saw, in just one year of… Read More

Here’s an excerpt from my latest op-ed as published in the Fresno Bee: It may seem like a distant memory, but merely two years ago, a different governor and Legislature tried taxing their way out of a similar budget mess. Since then California has lost more than half a million jobs and our state’s unemployment rate has grown by 20%.

We clearly don’t need an empirical study to tell us that tax hikes don’t create jobs.

Even so, Gov. Brown is proposing to extend these very same tax increases for five more years. If approved, Californians will pay $45 billion more in income taxes, sales taxes, and vehicle taxes.

On top of this, the governor is proposing to eliminate a number of tax incentives that currently encourage businesses to create and retain jobs in our state.

Under his proposals, private sector employers, including… Read More

The President, yesterday, unveiled his budget for fiscal year 2012 and forward. It is an amazing abdication of leadership. He never gets to an annual deficit below $600 billion, even in spite of rosy economic projections that are substantially higher than those given by almost anyone else. He has a number of tax increases and few spending reductions. But, the blatant omission is of any significant reform to any of the entitlement programs in spite of his comments during the State of the Union that this is necessary.

I will have more comments later in the week about the President’s newfound lack of initiative on anything. But, here is a floor speech I gave yesterday about our budget challenges and the reactions to them.

Click to Watch Video… Read More

Saturday, the Citizen Redistricting Commission met in Claremont. While, they cancelled some parts of the public comment period. They did hear from former L.A. County Chair Linda Boyd, Lou Barnettand a couple others about the partisan path the Commission has embarked on. Wait! How is that possible? The complicated initiative that formed the commission was designed to limit the partisanship of the commission. As Morton Blackwell at the Leadership Institute would say, “Personnel is policy”. … Read More

The betting is furious.

As Governor Brown is beating the drums to only $50 billion more; demanding that Republicans give him the votes necessary to by-pass grass roots initiative work, Brown continues to cuddle the Chambers and the few semi-serious business folks, to push for massive continued taxes.

The question is, who, if any, will fold. Who wants to be Anthony Adams, redux.There were so many…

Paul Horcher

… Read More

A scandal is brewing in Riverside County that is beginning to break into a big story.

What if I told you that supporters of a candidate for Congress dropped tens of thousands of dollars into a new charity group, which then hired this candidate to be the charity’s Executive Director, paying the candidate the vast majority of the funds apparently raised by the group?

This is no hypothetical situation, based on a legal complaint filed with the office of Attorney General Kamela Harris, which was shared with the FlashReport, it would appear that former Congressional candidate and Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet (pictured, right), who ran unsuccessfully in California’s 45 District and lost to popular incumbent Mary Bono Mack, was the beneficiary of tens of thousands of dollars in salary from Pride Parents Palm Springs.

It is unclear what, if anything, Pride Parents… Read More

The Senate Republican Caucus has released a report on the Sunset Review Process that is a great overview and reminded me of my experience for 10 months as Secretary for State and Consumer Affairs last year. My conclusion regarding consumer licensing boards and bureaus would be to make the default choice of the review to be elimination of them all. The state’s 38 licensing boards and bureaus give consumers a false confidence that every license holder will provide quality service while the truth is that the best the board can do is certify that the person passed a test or got a degree and that they have no criminal record. This is far from quality service. Worse yet, when a complaint is made against a license holder the accused has all of the same rights as in criminal court which creates a burden on the board staff to administer and unfairly pits the accuser against the professional. The result is often that the accuser’s personal life is on trial. If ever the accusation is found to be justified the licensee gets a restricted license or loses it for a period and… Read More

Regular readers of these missives may have noticed that I have not been as prolific recently in these writings as is customary. That is not because I don’t love you anymore, or because you fell off the e-mail list (which is rather obvious since you are reading this now). And, it is not because I have had nothing to say. Quite the opposite. There is a bunch going on back here in DC, and being in the majority means that I am busier with it all than has been the case the last 4 years. I could tell you about the State of the Union speech (it was quite insubstantial) or the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac proposal from the White House (with which I mostly agree mainly because it doesn’t arrive at a conclusion on how to proceed) or any number of other issues. Instead, I will give you a brief update with my perspective on the two most burning issues right this minute (it is Sunday as I write this).

Egypt: Blame it on, or credit, the internet and Facebook. Totalitarian or authoritarian regimes governing a populace with few rights and less prosperity are not new. In fact, most countries have been governed this way for centuries. But,… Read More