I’m a fan of Steve Harmon, who is a political reporter for the Bay Area News Group (Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News, etc.) — generally I find him to be a solid reporter, and I enjoy reading his stories.

That said, Steve and I have a running disagreement that centers around whether the 2009 budget deal that saw six Republican legislators vote to enact the largest tax increase in the history of any state (sales, income and car taxes, as well as an axing of a chunk of the child tax credit) caused those six GOPers to pay a steep political price. These same six Republicans also voted to create a trigger whereby if voters passed Proposition 1A in an ensuing special election, these same taxes which had been enacted for two years would have their sunset date extended two years further out. California voters rejected 1A by nearly a two-to-one margin thus those taxes were not extended.

In a piece that Harman had published over the weekend (for which, alas, I was not called for a quote), he… Read More

Each member of the governing majority on the City Council of Rancho Santa Margarita ought to be spanked.

They sure need to come to their senses somehow. Orange County Register head gossip columnist Frank Mickadeit wrote last Friday that the RSM council, less dissenting and sterling Republican Steve Baric, is planning to kick freshman Republican councilman Jesse Petrilla off the council because he will miss 6 meetings this spring as he was called to active duty in his military reserve job for just 115 days at Fort Knox, Kentucky, presumably to train and also help guard the nation’s gold reserves.… Read More

One of the "must read" columns in the D.C. Beltway is "The Fix" by Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post. You can check out The Fix here.

Today Cillizza unveiled "The Fix’s Best State-Based Political Tweeters" and I am pleased that our FlashReport Twitter Feed was not only named for California, but we took pole position! If you aren’t following @flashreport — get with it!

The California political tweeters highlighted by Cillizza are… (These are their twitter "handles")

… Read More

You must be doing something right, especially if the Courage Campaign is attacking you… San Diego GOP Chairman Tony Krvaric pens a detailed letter to the Union-Trib, in defense of Congressman Darrell Issa. Some excerpts:

“The (Courage Campaign) missive attacked Issa for having the audacity to reach out to job creators about impediments to job creation. Mind you, this is the exact same thing the Obama administration is doing. If you go to oversight.house.gov, you will see that all of the responses are available in a downloadable and searchable PDF. Of course, when the administration solicited the opinions of the Business Roundtable, held a CEO summit, hired a new chief of staff to build better relationships with private industry and ordered a governmentwide review of regulatory barriers to job creation, the Courage Campaign was noticeably mute…… Read More

I suggest you go here.

I have to admit, I was a little mystified by Governor Brown’s comments this last week. He appeared in front of the budget committees (a little outside the norm, to be sure) to say that, if those tax increases were not on the ballot, and if they did not pass, he would only sign a budget with $25 billion in cuts, or at least that is what the paper reported he said.

The whole event was reported as a threat to Republicans, vote for my tax increase initiative or I’ll cut the budget by $25 billion.

Huh?

And the problem with that is……what? Let’s see, I’m a Republican legislator, and the Governor has given me the choice of a vote that angers all of my supporters, friends, and most Republican constituency groups or a vote that angers most government unions, left wing activists, and the Democrats in the Legislature. Is there a problem with this choice? What is it? Why would the Governor pose such a challenge to Republicans? There really is no reason now to vote to put the taxes on the ballot. Don’t throw me in that briar patch Governor. I really don’t know what to do… Read More

President Obama could be a constructive part of trying to solve America’s debt problem. But, he has chosen not to participate. Here is my theory as to why: In his first 2 years, the President showed his true colors – enormous increases in spending and deficits and government intrusion through the stimulus plan; ObamaCare as a move towards socialized medicine; and national energy taxes in furtherance of a radical environmental agenda, to just name a few of his way left-of-center initiatives. And, although he won’t admit it publicly, I believe that he understands that the "shellacking" (his word not mine) that his party took in last November’s elections was the result of the public’s disapproval of his policies and his agenda. This is, after all, a center-right country. So now, as his re-election bid approaches, he needs voters to forget what he really believes and what he really wants to do. Since he can’t bring himself, as President Clinton did, to adopt a centrist or center-right agenda, he has chosen to simply do and propose nothing of substance. His State of the Union speech laid out… Read More