Assemblyman Rick Keene was one of nine Republicans in the lower house to cast a vote for the budget that passed out last Thursday night (or was that Friday morning)? He has submitted the following commentary to add to the discussion on the state budget:

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary…

Cindy by the Bay

I recently predicted that the independent challenge against San Francisco Rep. Nancy Pelosi by peace activist Cindy Sheehan would cause the House Speaker no end of heartburn between now and the 2008 election. Democrats would themselves regret ever legitimizing the bombastic mother of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq, once given a ready platform by Democrats as a way to embarrass President Bush.

It looks as if Ms. Sheehan is fulfilling that prediction. In a widely read op-ed published in Sunday’s San Francisco Chronicle, she took a two-by-four not only to Ms. Pelosi for her failure to cut off funding for the Iraq War. Ms. Sheehan used her cudgel to whack the… Read More

Today, George Skelton opines on the budget deal passed out by the Assembly last Friday (see Skelton article here). In the article, Skelton suggests that "…it was about the time of the wine-tasting that the legislative leaders hatched their plan to roll California’s most vulnerable" adding that while his comment may be a cheap shot, it was no more so than "…picking the pockets of the poor in order to bring spending and taxes closer into balance."

Did I just wake up in bizarro world? Or does it still make perfect sense that the way to ensure that the government can provide safety-net care to the needy is to ensure that our financial house is in order?

I would be willing to bet that Mr. Skelton doesn’t make it a practice to budget more for his charitable giving than would exceed his income. It stands to reason than none would.… Read More

We admit that most of the time that we draw attention to an L.A. Times story, it is to point out something we didn’t like about what a reporter or columnist wrote… But I have to give an FR "shout out" to Times reporter Evan Halper, whose state budget update story "GOP members maintain their opposition but agree to offer a plan of their own" which ran yesterday contained a generous amount of "ink" on the FlashReport!

It’s at the end of the story, and excerpted below. You can read Halper’s full Sunday story here.

Last night I tried to imagine what an urgent communiqué to the Speaker from the lead consultants of Fabian Nunez’ pending measure to extend his term limits, in light of the failure to pass a state budget. So this morning, I took a few minutes to craft one for them. This is a fictional account, and is not a real memo. But it isn’t hard to imagine one similar to this being sent… URGENT MEMORANDUM To: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez From: Gale Kaufman and Matthew Dowd RE: Consequences of failure to pass budget on Term Limits Extension Measure … Read More

Last night I tried to imagine what an urgent communiqué to the Speaker from the lead consultants of Fabian Nunez’ pending measure to extend his term limits, in light of the failure to pass a state budget. So this morning, I took a few minutes to craft one for them. This is a fictional account, and is not a real memo. But it isn’t hard to imagine one similar to this being sent… URGENT MEMORANDUM To: Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez From: Gale Kaufman and Matthew Dowd RE: Consequences of failure to pass budget on Term Limits Extension Measure … Read More

Longtime anti-tax leader Joel Fox, who serves as President of the Small Business Action Committee, sent over this column, to consider as part of our coverage of the state budget process…

Lost in the dramatic scene of locked-in Senators and the contentious budget debate in the Senate is the very important acknowledgement by Assembly members, especially amongst the majority, that, yes, it is tough to do business in California. The tax cuts/incentives for California companies approved in the Assembly budget could be a crack in the wall for those who think money that comes to government grows on trees. California is in a tough competitive business climate and the efforts in the Assembly to recognize this fact is a potential bright spot that should not… Read More

Remember the "oood old days". I do. Back in the 80’s conservatives like me on college campuses were focused on anti-communist activity. I still call The People’s Republic of China, “Red China”. Communists were communists and we were better dead than red! I wrote an editorial in the Daily Bruin criticizing President Bush (the first) for doing nothing to China during the massacres at Tiananmen Square. Those days are sadly passed as many self-described conservatives claim that the “free market” China is somehow better. Of course,there are also manybusiness interests in China. Now the cause for beating up Red China haspassed to the Left. Coalitions of Free Tibet Hollywood types and members and sympathizers of the … Read More