With a h/t to FR Friend Leigh Wolfe and Patriot Axium, we present this great, short video taken at San Jose State University where the College Republicans protested a small rally in support of raising oil severence taxes, with the guest of honor — liberal State Assemblyman Alberto Torrico.

Torrico claims his legislation will generate $1 billion to fund higher education. The bill would increase gas prices and the final fiscal report on the bill shows it will generate less than half the promised $1 billion. A study of the proposal also found that it will result in the loss of 9,000 jobs in the oil and natural gas industry in California, a state that already has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country.

After he speaks, Torrico is confronted by College Republican activists and pressed on his support of higher taxes in a bad economy. When asked if he was ok with putting 9,000 people out of work he responded with a clear “I’m willing (for this tax) to cost 9,000 jobs."

I should add, as a former Chairman of SJSU College Republicans, that I am particularly proud of their… Read More

Gavin Newsom wants to lower the 2/3 vote threshold so bad that he mentions it not once but twice in his first campaign web-commercial…

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SacBee’s Capitol Alert is reporting that the size of a "comprehensive water solution" package is well over nine billion (with a b) bucks. That is a lot of money – and a lot of borrowing.

There are a lot of water-related policy aspects at play, and not being a water policy expert, I will leave that to others to sort through.

But I do have some concerns about the size of the package in terms of raw dollars. It seems vastly expensive. I guess the first question would be how much of that package is made up of lease revenue bonds that SHOULD come to a vote of the people but often don’t. The embarrassing approval of those prison-bonds without voter approval comes to mind. There’s been plenty of time since then to put them to a vote of the people for ratification — but, I digress…

To keep me and those taxpayer advocates that I know from opposing the "comprehensive water solution" on amount-of-spending grounds, there is a very simple test that must be applied: 1. HOW MUCH INFRASTRUCTURE DO WE NEED TO BUILD?

We need… Read More

Look who TMZ caught driving with a cell phone to her ear!

Nice.… Read More

Good work from our College Republicans:

For the second time in the past month our state’s youngest activists traveled to the Bay Area to help Republican businessman David Harmer in his effort to defeat Lieutenant Governor John Garamendi for the Congressional seat vacated by Ellen Tauscher. After energizing speeches by Harmer and CRP Vice-Chairman Tom Del Beccaro, on Saturday morning just over 40 College Republicans from across California joined a dozen Young Republicans to spend their weekend walking door-to-door and making phone calls for Harmer. To show his gratitude for their hard work Tom Del Beccaro invited the groups to his home for dinner after the walk.… Read More

I just got off of the phone with Tim Whitacre, the Campaign Manager of the Anthony Adams Recall. FR readers will recall that in February Adams was one of six Republican legislators who crossed party lines and voted with every Democrat in the legislature to smack Californian’s with well over $16 BILLION in higher sales, income and car taxes, as well as a cutting the child tax credit.

Shortly after that vote, an effort was started to try and gather enough signatures to force one of these legislators to a recall vote — that legislator is Adams. Although it requires just under 36,000 signatures to force Adams into a recall election, Whitacre told me that with turn-ins today at the Registrar of Voters offices in Los Angeles and San Bernardino Counties, the advocates for recalling Adams collected and have turned in a staggering 61,593 signatures.

Political veterans know that a percentage of those signatures will be invalid. But since the campaign was checking signatures gathered against the voter registration rolls, Whitacre assured me that there is a 100% likelihood that this recall will qualify with many, many thousands of signatures over the… Read More

Last week, I launched the AD72 Special Twitter feed to provide California political junkies up-to-date with the latest in this whirlwind special election to fill the Assembly seat of the fallen Mike Duvall.

Joining me as inaugural contributors are FR Publisher Jon Fleischman and RedCounty.com contributor Allan Bartlett.

Allan was at last night’s AD72 special election candidate forum organized by the OC Young Republicans; you can read his Twittering of the event on the feed, and his related post on RedCounty.com. One thing is becoming clear, mystery GOP candidate Richard Faher’s sole purpose in running seems to be to wreck Chris Norby’s candidacy.… Read More

Over the weekend voters in the 72nd Assembly District were treated to positive mail pieces from both Linda Ackerman and Chris Norby.

Attached to this post is a letter that went out from Linda Ackerman as well as a brochure.

Expect to see a lot of positive mail from Ackerman’s campaign as, based on the only survey to which we are privy, she has a lot of establishing herself to do with voters — where Norby, as a current elected official has a lead.

There are lots of rumors of independent expenditures in the works on Ackerman’s behalf. If true, look for those to do the "dirty work" of going negative on her main opponent, Chris Norby.

The next post will have a piece of mail from Norby that dropped over the weekend.… Read More