Hey, someone has to little out for the little guy. In this instance, I would be the "someone" — and the "little guy" is my friend Bill Whalen. Bill as many of you may know with Hoover over in Palo Alto, and has been a frequent commenter on things political. Bill is a former speechwriter for Governor Pete Wilson, and one of the more insightful people I know in politics.

When the FlashReport launched, Bill lent his talent and credibility to our site as a blogger, and he still contributes occasionally. Last December, Bill launched his own online blog, Poli-Cal, which you can find (and should bookmark) here. We do link his pieces on our main page — two of them are there today.

The reason I bring all of this up is that this morning I hopped over to the great new blog on California politics that is a joint venture of the Los Angeles Times and Capitol Weekly. Up until now it ran under an online masthead that simply read, "California Politics" — but today it has a new name – PolitCal."

I… Read More

Earlier this week, I penned a commentary where I pretty well laid out California Supreme Court Justice Ron George for making a number of contributions to the Hillary Clinton for President Campaign in 2008, aggregating to $2300. I drew the conclusion that George had made these contributions based solely on information taken off of the Federal Election Commission website, where a search of Ron George produced a listing of these donations to Clinton, identifying the giver as Ronald George, with an employer and occupation of State of California/Chief Justice (the graphic is a clip straight from the FEC website).

As it turns out, Chief Justice George did not make any contributions to the Presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton, and that the information that is presented on the Federal Elections Commission website is not accurate. To be more specific, the FEC relies on campaigns to file specific donor information, which they then upload to their site,… Read More

OK, tales of the bizarre. So I linked to a website of conservative activist Aaron Park who had posted up documents about a 1990 case where Abel Maldonado had a judgment against him in the Santa Barbara County Superior Court over not making child support payments. But then 30 minutes later Park pulled down his post (pressure from..???). So I have pulled my blog post on it, as I am not comfortable leaving a dead link active on my site. Had to delete a tweet as well. Sigh.… Read More

Some years ago I wrote a post on the death of my dog, Felony the Dog, that came to mind today when I learned that Kingpin, the dog of my friends, Jason and Patty Roe, was on his last legs. As a person who spent many years in the company of Kingpin I thought I’d republish. After all, if the people in politics were more like dogs, we’d have to watch our backs a bit less and our shoes a bit more. To me that would be a fair trade.

Eat many burgers in your last days Kingpin, and take many walks.

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FELONY THE DOG

For some thirteen years I’ve had a British Staffordshire Terrier named Felony the Dog, or Felony for short. One of my peers in my first year of law school had purchased a puppy, but his apartment manager had very particular and definite views about the acceptability of pets that required either Donald and Felony, or just Felony, to move. Donald chose to stay, and I, who had just moved into an ancient Victorian downtown that happened to have a yard, became Felony’s new owner. Felony proved to be an intelligent dog who picked her friends and her enemies at first site and generally stuck with the… Read More

Famed politico and senior level Whitman for Governor consultant Mike Murphy fired a shot across the bow of the S.S. Poizner, in response to the accusations leveled by Poizner this morning (see the blog post below this one). Murphy’s statement: "After reading the ridiculous charges made by Steve Poizner during today’s strange press conference, all I can say is that I’m starting to worry about Commissioner’s mental condition. It is true that I have been trying to find a way to avoid a costly and unnecessary Republican primary. I believe it is important that Republicans across California unite around Meg Whitman to defeat Jerry Brown in the fall. It is also true that I am not the only one with this view. Many Republican leaders are more and more concerned that the Poizner campaign, now 28+ points behind in the… Read More

[As you read this, please note that the Hillary Clinton Campaign has acknowledged to Chief Justice George’s attorney that he appears on their campaign reports in error. So my story was based on inaccurate information on the FEC website, and my accusation was, as it turns out, unfounded. See more here – Flash]

Just a few minutes ago, I got off of the phone with Beth Jay, the Principal Attorney for Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald George. She called me in response to my commentary this morning taking the Chief Justice to task for what appear to be many contributions to the Hillary Clinton for President campaign back in 2008.

While telling me that she can understand why I could have reached the conclusion that Justice George had made those contributions (hmmm, because the FEC website identified… Read More

A good friend of the FlashReport, an attorney who does a lot of reporting compliance work, offered the following observation on this flap over the Chief Justice being the victim of a "drive by reporting…"

I could see how an incorrect occupation/employer would end up listed on a campaign report. Our firm prepares dozens of these reports per filing period, and for a committee as large as Hillary’s, the recordkeeping is astronomical. In an attempt to comply with reporting requirements, we often resort to google when we can’t reach a donor to obtain their address (in CA has to be a street address), occupation and employer. If we find a match that appears accurate, we go with it. Especially at the CA level, there is no “best efforts” rule like there is at the federal level – in CA, if you don’t obtain the street address, occupation and employer, the contribution has to be returned. At the federal level, the committee need only show that it made its “best efforts” to obtain the information, and can keep the contribution in the absence of the information being collected – so… Read More

As far as the “jobs, jobs, jobs” mantra, we can spend with borrowed money, which is not popular with voters, or we can look at what is right in front of our noses. To stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, the obvious thing for government to do is lower the cost of labor by cutting back on payroll taxes paid by employers and workers.

I plugged in data for an imaginary California worker making $45,000 a year who is single with no deductions and here is how it breaks out:

Gross pay (per month): $3,750 Federal income tax: $543 FICA (social security): $232.50 Medicare: $54.38

So already out of a gross pay of $3,750, this hypothetical Californian has over $829 taken out by the federal government before he gets a dime. But we need to add California’s payroll taxes.

California has four State payroll taxes which are administered by the Employment Development Department (EDD). They are Unemployment Insurance and Employment Training Tax, which are employer contributions, and State Disability Insurance (SDI) and Personal Income Tax… Read More