No-I’m not talking about any member of the Legislature. I’m talking about inside information about what is happening on the budget. I had a conversation with one capitol insider who told me the budget will be adopted with a tax increase. So I called around to see what others thought. The general consensus was that wouldn’t happen.

The basic reason–the Governor needs 9 Assembly Republicans to vote for the budget. Three Assembly Democrats, Parra, Calderon, and Soto,aren’t voting for the budget (Parra and Calderon won’t and Soto is ill and can’t). That means 9 Assembly Republicans have to put up yes votes. However, 31 of the 32 Republican members of the Assembly have signed no new taxes pledges and won their primaries because they signed those pledges, that means at least 8 Republicans would have tobreak their promises to theirvoters in order for this budget to pass with tax increases. I’m betting that doesn’t happen, for several reasons.

(1)Most Assembly members believe they have apolitical career after the Assembly. As my earlier post showed, any Republican who votes for a tax… Read More

Clearly the public employee union bosses just don’t get it. To Republicans in the legislature, these unions are the single greatest obstacle to enacting sane public policy in Sacramento. Everyone knows that these unions have only three major agenda items — grow their members by pursuing more public dollars being spent to employ whichever type of employee is mandated to pay dues into their union, seek greater and greater pay for their union members (no matter the economy, state of the budget, or conditions in the private sector) and seek more and more retirement benefits for their members (again, no matter what else is taking place).

So when I see public employee unions paying to place advertisements out there bashing Republicans (I just saw a California Teachers Association television spot during Olympics coverage, and the California Faculty Association is advertising at least on the Sacramento Bee and Red County websites), they are just emboldening Republican legislators.

To these public employee unions I say this — spend more and more and more on your ads. Every time a GOP legislator sees one, it reminds them of the importance of… Read More

Clearly the public employee union bosses just don’t get it. To Republicans in the legislature, these unions are the single greatest obstacle to enacting sane public policy in Sacramento. Everyone knows that these unions have only three major agenda items — grow their members by pursuing more public dollars being spent to employ whichever type of employee is mandated to pay dues into their union, seek greater and greater pay for their union members (no matter the economy, state of the budget, or conditions in the private sector) and seek more and more retirement benefits for their members (again, no matter what else is taking place).

So when I see public employee unions paying to place advertisements out there bashing Republicans (I just saw a California Teachers Association television spot during Olympics coverage, and the California Faculty Association is advertising at least on the Sacramento Bee and Red County websites), they are just emboldening Republican legislators.

To these public employee unions I say this — spend more and more and more on your ads. Every time a GOP legislator sees one, it reminds them of the importance of… Read More

A timely book that anyone political observer would enjoy is The Teapot Dome Scandal: How Big Oil Bought The White House and Tried to Steal the Country. It is very well written by Laton McCartney.

Now people may think this book is timely because of the oil crisis. It is timely for that reason.

An additional reason I think it is timely today is because of a post on this site written by Duane on some of the problems within the Republican party. It was an excellent post that rang true for many of us.

I would agree with virtually everything Duane wrote and add one more concept. We need to police our own political party for corruption. The sad truth is that when a long time Republican Sheriff, Congressman, Supervisor, or party leader does something unethical or illegal we all go silent. In the long run, our silence alone is a failure.

We need a couple people that are not elected officials to step up and lead this effort. People that will audit our party and hold members accountable when they break their… Read More

A few moments ago the Assembly approved AB 2123 (Lieu), which establishes the “California Financial Literacy Initiative.” This initiative will create a government program “for the purpose of providing resources and instruction to Californians” about how to be financially literate. The program will be overseen by the state controller, who, according to the bill, “has the experience and duty to lead an initiative to grow the state’s economy by bettering Californians’ financial literacy.”

Does it strike anyone else as hypocritical that our state controller and state lawmakers want to teach Californians “financial literacy”? I can’t speak to the “experience” of all state controllers past and future, but do we really want John Chiang teaching us about financial literacy? He’s currently defying the governor’s attempt to curtail government spending during the budget crunch. And lawmakers are 46 days past their constitutional budget deadline. If average citizens were 46 dayspast due on their bills, creditors wouldn’t be very… Read More

Now I’m not one to review movies, nor will I make it a habit here, lest I invite an E-towel snap from our FR leader, however I would recommend the new release "Swing Vote". It stars Kevin Costner and although the premise may be a stretch, it is a lot of fun and takes a good poke at what elections and politics can become. It does us the favor of not being preachy nor taking a partisan position, it just keeps it fun and a bit serious too. And hey, it has appearances by Richard Petty and Willie Nelson!… Read More

We are pleased to present this exclusive commentary from State Board of Equalization Member Bill Leonard…

Tax Increases are Doses for the Addict By Bill Leonard

My heart goes out to the current Legislative Republican members as the cave-ins, compromises, squishes, and treasons of the past have all come home. California’s on-going structural financial problems have not been solved by postponing decisions and by papering over the excess in spending over revenue. This has been the solution that has been regularly adopted, usually by picking off a few Republicans with political promises. Even if it might work again, it will not solve the problem. The spending levels are not… Read More

The Assembly is presently scheduled to convene Sunday at 3PM for a budget vote. We are supposed to have language in Saturday afternoon sometime, not much time before the vote on a document we haven’t seen yet. Right now, the Assembly Budget Committee is meeting in Room 4202 to hear ACA 19, the measure backed by our entire causus. This is the amendment that contains the spending limit that would be placed on the legislative budget process. Dems have been fiercely opposed to a limit. We hope that we can turn the corner on this issue as their is no self discipline in this legislature to limit spending and we cannot keep digging out of these budget holes. Of course the rainy day fund which, should be called the drought fund, is part of the discussion, but it means little by itself as without spending limits, only rarely would there be ‘excess’ funds to place in a drought fund.

Later, ACA 19 was defeated in committee on a party line vote.… Read More