Reporting from the floor of the California State Senate…….

After over two months the Senate Democrats finally decided to put up the budget for a vote. FOR THE VERY FIRST TIME.

Senator Perata just finished railing at the governor – then saying he was through with negotiating with us. The problem is – he never started negotiating with us in the first place.

Senate Republican Leader Dave Cogdill has asked time and time again to sit down and work out a budget deal. Perata just doesn’t respond.

The Senate Democrats have taken the tack of working out a "deal" with the governor – which includes a tax increase – then having the governor "pick off" the two weakest Republican Senators.

They’re doing this because its a tried and true tradition – it’s exactly what they did last year. And didn’t that work out well….. Remember last year? We were called "terrorists", "whackos" and "extremists" – then locked in the chambers overnight to try and force us into… Read More

Multiple people have told me that former Speaker Fabian Nunez is having to step in and take a leadership role in the budget negotiations because Speaker Bass and her staff don’t seem capable of making it happen.

I never thought I would actually want to see Nunez as Speaker again.

It is a strange day.… Read More

As a Jewish Republican, it’s kind of novel to be singled out by Governor Schwarzenegger in Yiddish, which is what happened a couple of days ago when the Governor participated in a video-conference interview with the editorial board of the San Diego Union Tribune. But I must admit to being honored to have two outstanding called-out ”colleagues" – KFI radio talk show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou – great Americans. Longtime FR friend Chris Reed is a member of the U-T’s Editorial Board and blogged about a quip made by the Governor:

BONUS TIDBIT: The governor made clear he’s paying close attention to the media in the budget battle, and not just mainstream heavyweights like the Sac Bee and the L.A. Times. He said he hoped his recently aggressive push to sell his compromise budget as a "way out of the problem, solving it once and for all" would make Republican lawmakers more comfortable with his plan. If he gets them aboard, "then maybe there’s only out there John & Ken… Read More

As a Jewish Republican, it’s kind of novel to be singled out by Governor Schwarzenegger in Yiddish, which is what happened a couple of days ago when the Governor participated in a video-conference interview with the editorial board of the San Diego Union Tribune. But I must admit to being honored to have two outstanding called-out ”colleagues" – KFI radio talk show hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou – great Americans. Longtime FR friend Chris Reed is a member of the U-T’s Editorial Board and blogged about a quip made by the Governor:

BONUS TIDBIT: The governor made clear he’s paying close attention to the media in the budget battle, and not just mainstream heavyweights like the Sac Bee and the L.A. Times. He said he hoped his recently aggressive push to sell his compromise budget as a "way out of the problem, solving it once and for all" would make Republican lawmakers more comfortable with his plan. If he gets them aboard, "then maybe there’s only out there John & Ken… Read More

There are a lot of reasons why legislators should be opposing Senator Don Perata’s SB 1407. This measure which would raise all kinds of fees associated with courts in order to then finance $5 BILLION in bonds (that would take about $10 BILLION in funds to repay over time) in order to build new and modernize old court facilities.

I am quite sure that there is merit in the argument that the infrastructure for our state’s court system is in need of modernization.

But the means to achieve this, as set out in SB 1407, is extremely poor public policy. You can read a cornucopia of reasons to oppose it in a column penned for the FlashReport last week by Assemblyman Joel Anderson. I will reinforce what is clearly the single most important reason. As a matter of principle and sound public policy, legislators should not incur debt for the taxpayers of California without first taking the… Read More

As FR readers know, KFI’s John and Ken have been extremely vocal in recent weeks, expressing dismay over Governor Schwarzenegger’s decision to do a 180 on his often-repeated no taxes pledge. We’ve been equally as vocal here. We’ve all got something in common — we all supported Governor Schwarzenegger in his elections because he made us a promise, a pledge, a commitment — that the taxpayers, "would not be punished for the mistakes of politicians." Right. We are now official chumps, I suppose.

The Governor "called out" John and Ken, and yours truly earlier in the week (read about that here) for our opposition to a tax hike as any part of dealing with the state’s overspending problem.

Well, John and Ken reached out and now I will be appearing on their show later this afternoon. If you are free during the 3… Read More

Update: The bill passed 42-33.

:With several speakers for and against AB 2747 by Asm. Patty Berg, the Assemblytook upthe Senate’s amended version of what is known as the ‘end-of life care’ bill.It did not pass on the first ballot,by a vote of 38-31. It is on call and will be taken up for another vote later today.… Read More

I am sitting in the airport, waiting to return to the Philippines, where I hope to earn enough money to become a profit center for the state instead of a cost of doing business. On my way to the airport, I heard the Governor slam the Republican borrowing plan really hard, calling it "bad" and "how the state got into this trouble in the first place." First, he is wrong on how the state got into this trouble. This Governor got into this mess the same way the last Governor did, by refusing to stand up to a spendthrift majority in the Legislature. What is worse, he was warned, by me and by others, who saw this doom coming, and whom he dismissed as irrelevant. While it is true that we were irrelevant in those negotiations, it was only because he refused to listen to the prophets forecasting his impending doom. He now wants to shoot the messengers (to mix the metaphors), and cover up his failures and his lack of discipline by punishing the taxpayers of the state of California, instead of the tax receivers. Big government bureaucrats and government unions live off the taxpayer. They pushed the majority to enact the out-of-control spending over the… Read More