When the Wall Street Journalbellowsthat the "Budget Deal Gives Boost to California Republicans", you know the Party has finally turned the the corner.

Senator Dennis Hollingsworth whose initial ascent gave hope to Republicans, that Republicans would behave like Republicans instead of accommodationists for bankrupt [literally] union legislative spending.The prior leader was woefully out of his depth. Let’shope that he is thelast of the ‘let’s get along crowd’ that has dramatically tarnished the Republican brand, hurt CRP fund raising and discouraged conservatives.… Read More

There are a myriad of cuts in the budget deal in the billions of dollars. A small amount of those savings would come from the axing of the Integrated Waste Management Board (there are five political appointees to that commission, all making generous six-figure salaries for what many characterize as part time work).

Three of the members of this commission are former Democrat lawmakers Carole "Crash" Migden, John "We Need More Taxes" Laird, and Sheila "I want government healthcare" Kuehl.

If the deal passes as described, at the end of this year, this particular board will vaporize, causing these three expanders of government to have to find a job. Unfortunately the big spending policies they embraced during their time in the legislature has played a contrributing role in making the recession here in California worse than it could be. So it’s not a very good time to look for a job.

That said, here is a website for Migden to help her start looking.

This site looks like a good starting point for Laird.

Kuehl can… Read More

For FlashReport readers with a strong constitution and about seven extra minutes to spare, check out this video of State Senate President Darrell Steinberg. Within the first minute of his remarks of this afternoon, he starts railing on the 2/3 vote requirement to raise taxes and to pass a budget. It is a theme that he echoes over, and over, and over again. The voracious appetite of liberals to overtax the people is just stunning — and serves as a reminder of why the supermajority vote requirements are there. It is abundantly clear that Democrats want to end those requirements so that they can ratchet up a redistribution of wealth scheme that will leave our state floundering with an even worse economy.

Oh well, here is the whining of the Senate President…

(At the tail end, Steinberg talks about pushing a vote tonight or in the early hours. I sure hope that State Senate Republicans block such a manuever. Shame on them if, when it is over, they never gave conservative policy experts outside of the building a chance to review the documents and give substantive input.)… Read More

Professional distractions have kept me from writing here lately, but isn’t our Governor doing a wonderful job of facing down the union bosses on our state budget?! I believe that this is truly Arnold’stime, theopportunity to establish the definingmoments of his term in office, and his firm stand on the budget is fantastic.

At the same time, SpeakerKaren Bass is proving to be an unmovable and largely irrelevant but willing captive of thefrightening bizarro worldsought by theService Employees International Union, whose best shot recently is to muster a press releaseclaiming credit for a new budget, and blaming the structural deficits she and the Legislature’s Democrats have caused on the "national economic recession" (read: George W. Bush). [It took the national Democrats over ten years to stop blaming the Reagan budget cuts of the ’80s for everything in the ’90s, I imagine Obama and Bass will be dumping on George Bush in the same manner thru the 2020s.]

On a few other topics, we note Nativo Lopez, as predicted here, pled… Read More

Yesterday afternoon a group of prominent California conservative leaders (including yours truly) sent an open letter to the 120 members of the state legislature urging them not to vote on or for any proposed budget deal until all of the text of the proposed legislation has been available to the public for 72 hours… One of the flaws of the tragic February budget deal was its secrecy and lack of transparency. In a representative democracy, the people have the right to understand what is being voted on, and to have enough time to give input and feedback to their elected legislators…

Here is the letter…

An Open Letter to Republican Members of the California State Legislature: July 22, 2009 … Read More

I see U.S. Representative Darrell Issa as a combination of a stinger missile and the Energizer Bunny. As the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, FR friend Issa has been relentless at holding the feet of the Majority Party to the fire — over and over and over…

Now Issa has confronted a controversial issue – Is ACORN Intentionally Structured As a Criminal Enterprise? A new report released today by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Republicans presents evidence that ACORN has evaded taxes, obstructed justice, engaged in racketeering, and created a conspiracy to defraud the United States. ACORN’s ability to flaunt the law is made possible by a complex structure that hides illegal uses of funds and positions low-level employees to take the fall when it gets caught for illegal acts. Federal taxpayer dollars continue to flow to ACORN – this report explains in great detail why Americans should be outraged by taxpayer… Read More

When Sony Pictures released the movie, “Who Killed the Electric Car,” (http://www.sonyclassics.com/whokilledtheelectriccar/electric.html) the U.S. political landscape was much different, and Detroit had a lot more clout than it does today. The movie honed in on a very specific moment in time when the California Air Resources Board (CARB) eliminated the production of electric vehicles in the zero emissions vehicle (ZEV) initiative, and pinned the blame on D.C.-based lawsuits and lobbying in Sacramento as the reasons electric cars failed to achieve economically-feasible market share. I’d be the last person to underestimate the effects of Sacramento lobbying, but in truth, there have been two primary consumer concerns that have inhibited the success of the electric car: · the cost of the vehicles is higher than comparably-sized gasoline cars; and … Read More

What California needs is a release of middle management prison bureaucrats. Instead of pushing a plan of early release of tens of thousands of convicted felons from our state prison we ought to be looking for savings by cutting the fat out of CDCR.

The Governor’s prison budget savings plan would release nearly 30,000 prisoners into our communities. Senate Republicans have a safe and sane plan to achieve the same level of savings without any early release of prisoners, and it’s in writing.

See the "Corrections Budget Reductions" document below.

California has virtually the same number of prisoners in state prison than it did ten years ago, while the state population continues to increase. The number of individuals in state prison in California is roughly average per capita in the US, why the rush to release.

We should cut the fat instead of releasing dangerous felons into our neighborhoods.

Corrections Budget Reductions

Summary of conflicts between Democrat and Administration’s jointly proposed cuts to Corrections and Senate Republican… Read More