We are about to do a "pre-spring" cleaning up of our extensive links on this site.

As part of that process, we’ll be revising and updating our links to political and MSM blogs, both on the menu above and on our Blog Scan page. We will be updating our links to websites, resources, columnists and such.

If you have favorite places you go to on the web as a politico, that you would recommend we include, just drop us a note.

Thanks in advance for your input!

Jon Fleischman Publisher… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… FR friend John Fund recounts his dinner with newly minted MA Republican Senator Scott Brown, but you’ll be most interested in who they saw, but didn’t disturb, after dinner…

Senator Scott Brown and Fred Thompson have a fair bit in common so it’s no surprise they’ve become friends. In 1994, Mr. Thompson won a come-from-behind Senate victory in Tennessee driving an old pickup truck between campaign stops. Mr. Brown drove a 2005 GMC Canyon truck and solidified his "everyman" appeal to score an upset Senate win last month in Massachusetts.

Mr. Thompson, now a successful radio talk show host whose memoirs will come out this spring, was so tickled by Mr. Brown’s victory that he offered to rent him his Washington D.C. apartment, which is a convenient short drive from the… Read More

Meg Whitman has launched her second television advertisement which you can watch below. Her campaign also released a new radio spot that features Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. The radio spot is under the tv spot below.

… Read More

Today the campaign of John Eastman for Attorney General got a big, talkative boost. The former Dean of the Chapman University School of Law, rolled out an impressive list of endorsements from some of the premiere names in talk radio in this country. Eastman has been endorsed by Bill Bennett, Hugh Hewitt, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Dennis Prager. Prager has the distinction here on the FlashReport of having recieved the most "Golden Pen" recognitions in his role as a syndicated columnist.

What are they saying about Eastman?

BILL BENNETT “John Eastman is one of the great advocates for conservatives in this country. California would be well served with him as their Attorney General.” … Read More

It has been well over thirty years since the landmark Proposition 13 was passed by voters on June 6, 1978, creating a “shot heard around the world” as the California measure not only implemented significant taxpayer protections here in California, but it spread like wildfire around the entire country, ushering in a wave of new policies favorable to taxpayers from sea to shining sea. Of course this measure was the brainchild of Howard Jarvis, whose passion for limiting government and preserving liberty for the people lives on today through the efforts of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA).

You would have to go back an awfully long way to find a time when HJTA was more powerful and important than it is today. There are a lot of reasons for this – including the immense fiscal challenges facing our nation, state and local… Read More

It has been well over thirty years since the landmark Proposition 13 was passed by voters on June 6, 1978, creating a “shot heard around the world” as the California measure not only implemented significant taxpayer protections here in California, but it spread like wildfire around the entire country, ushering in a wave of new policies favorable to taxpayers from sea to shining sea. Of course this measure was the brainchild of Howard Jarvis, whose passion for limiting government and preserving liberty for the people lives on today through the efforts of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA).

You would have to go back an awfully long way to find a time when HJTA was more powerful and important than it is today. There are a lot of reasons for this – including the immense fiscal challenges facing our nation, state and local… Read More

Over the weekend there was an article in the Orange County Register talking about how some legislators have managed to make big bucks by investing their per diem payments (for expenses associated with having to maintain two households) into real estate which then increased in value.

To this I would say… bravo! It seems to me that if we want legislators to be smart with OPM (other people’s money), we need them to be smart with their own.

We can haggle over appropriateness of per diem payments, the amount, and whether or not some of the fine lines that are walked in terms of taking the payments if you really only have one household, in Sacramento, and such.

But it should be obvious on the face of it that making prudent financial decisions with their own money is a good quality for legislators to have — since they are making important decisions about the finances of the state. I’d go back and re-read the article — and congratulate every one of those legislators who has figured… Read More

We can debate exactly what caused the near economic collapse in the fall of 2008, but clearly over leveraging and excessive risk taking by consumers, banks, and “non-banks” was a major contributor. The economy continues to have a drag caused by deleveraging and fallout from the losses incurred during that period. The U.S. Federal government prevented that collapse by putting the imprimatur of the United States Treasury on a lot of private debt in order to stop the run. It worked because the world markets had a tremendous level of trust in the full faith and credit of the United States government.

But the shoe may soon be on the other foot. Federal spending as a percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is now over 25%. The last time the government represented that much of the economy, we were building B-29 bombers to drop their payloads on Japan and Germany. As a result of the economic downturn, taxes collected are only about 15% of GDP (whereas 19% has roughly been the average for the last 40 years) hence the huge deficits.

And that’s only the federal government. State and local governments now comprise (roughly) an additional 10% of GDP. So combined,… Read More