Before Fleischman e-towel slaps me for this entry not being "California enough," it is coming from a CA-based consultant, so I’m goin’ with it.

Either Jennifer Kerns at K Street Communications’ blog is putting herself out there on this one, quoting an anonymous "high-placed DNC insider," or — if she is somehow correct — no one will soon forget….

The Street is hearing from a source this morning that a high-placed DNC insider has confirmed that Vice Presidential pick Joe Biden will step down from the Democratic ticket. The report is that on or about October 5, Biden will excuse himself from the ticket, citing "health problems," and he will be replaced by Hillary Clinton. This follows weeks of a post-Palin bounce following the RNC Convention, and significant… Read More

The fine crew at Capitol Weekly (www.capitolweekly.net) have the details I could not give. Ah, the constraints of being fair but totally biased…… Read More

Legislative Republicans, not having had a majority in the legislature since 1958, and only twice had a majority in one house of the Legislature since then (1968-70 and 1994-96) won a big one. Despite the Governor’s bluff and bluster, he ultimately agreed to a couple of small changes in the deal cut by the Legislative leaders, and it appears that the budget will now be signed.

Without new taxes.

Let’s face it. That is what this fight was all about, and the Republican Legislators won that fight hands down, no questions asked. They did a Pacquiao on the Democrats and the Governor, and got a budget without new taxes. Not a good budget, but, quite frankly, no budget has been good in the last 10 years. Ever since Gray Davis began the spending splurge that this current Governor continued, the budget roller coaster has sailed up and down with the economy, from spendthrift to crisis to spendthrift to crisis. If the Democrats and the Governor don’t end the spendthrift times, we will move from the current crisis to the next very soon.

As I said before, the one good thing about a budget that uses gimmicks to balance a budget is that the… Read More

The Senate will go into session at4 PM Friday and the Assembly will thenmeet at 5 PM to vote on the fixes that were hammered out this afternoon with the Governor and the other Big 4 leaders, avoiding the veto and the veto override threats.… Read More

Someone asked me this morning if there was any kind "budget deal" that contained a good enough spending/budget reform that would allow me to support a tax increase.

I thought about this for a while, and came to the conclusion that the answer is actually yes. But the spending/budget reform that would get me to that point is hardly something that the liberals who run the legislature would be open to supporting. I would need to have a true "Gann" style cap that places a hard limit on the size of state government — where state income is not allowed to expand beyond a specific formula factoring in population growth and inflation.

Of course this reform requires a vote of the people, so I guess it would have to be tied to the tax increase so that we either got both or nothing.

What is really needed, of course, is the limit, and tax cuts, as we really need to reduce the size of state government. But recognizing politics involves some give and take — this is the limit of my "generosity" on the tax issue.

Today the Governor is meeting with legislative leaders to discuss the budget. Of course, the… Read More

A legislative override of the governor’s budget veto is looking likely. And if the governor follows through on his threat to veto all the bills sent to him in retaliation, Californians will be saved from lots of onerous, dangerous new laws. One of those new laws is AB 1945.

This bill expands opportunities for trial attorneys to sue health insurers and creates a strong incentive for the unscrupulous to defraud health insurance companies. The end result would be higher premiums for everyone, pricing more Californians out of the market and eliciting calls by the Left to "reduce rising costs" by moving toward a single-payer system—e.g., government-run health care.

Unsurprisingly, AB 1945 is a Democratic bill. But nine Assembly Republicans actually voted for this step towards socialized medicine: Todd Spitzer, Tom Berryhill, Greg Aghazarian, Paul Cook, Bonnie Garcia, Shirley Horton, Guy Houston, George Plescia and Jim Silva.

AB 1945 started as a reasonable health insurance bill before being hijacked by the Consumer Attorneys of California… Read More

Your friends at Wal-Mart have embarked on an ambitious plan to register "Wal-Mart women" to vote.

Even Wal-Mart with their 200-plus California locations can’t make CA a red state but Democrats nationally should worry about this effort. Research conducted by my firm shows that Wal-Mart shoppers are not Obama voters. McCain-Palin will benefit in a big way from these new registrations across the country.

The effort by Wal-Mart is a noble one, they have a large audience, 130+ million US visitors a week and 1.4 million associates. It is hard to criticize the retail giant for trying to increase civic participation. Although someone will.

Wal-Mart’s in-house TV network will feature a public service announcement on voter registration and urge shoppers and workers alike to visit a Wal-Mart sponsored web page that guides wannabe voters to the appropriate forms to fill out.

Wal-Mart… Read More

I won’t go into the irony of Governor Schwarzenegger’s office pushing out a quote from Senator Tom McClintock. But I think it is worthwhile for FR readers to see (and hear) what McClintock has to say about this budget proposal, and whether the Governor’s veto should be upheld.

Apparently McClintock appeared on the John & Ken Show yesterday… The exchange on this issue went this way…

QUESTION: “What did you think of the Governor’s Veto?” SENATOR MCCLINTOCK: “I think he’s absolutely right. The budget that was adopted this morning makes the problem significantly worse. It defies the first law of holes, which is, when you’re in one; stop digging. We dug an eleven billion dollar hole this past year. That is, we spent $11 billion more than we took in during the past year. This… Read More