Bob Salladay, the LA Times reporter behind the newspaper’s new Political Muscle blog, has a great post up today about Democrat lieutenant governor candidate John Garamendi holding a campaign event to speak on "vital concerns impacted by your vote on November 7, 2006" in a taxpayer-owned Sacramento Legislative Office Building. A quick-thinking and resourceful Republican staffer caught some photos and recorded audio of Garamendi committing an act that surely wouldn’t pass the legislative Rules Committees’ smell test if it were any other person or hosted by any other non-union group. Salladay includes a flier used to promote the event that I’ve chosen to attach below.

Garamendi’s action is disgusting to me because legislative staffers receive literally hours of indoctrination on office etiquette and ethics. They are… Read More

The California Voter Foundation has been around since 1994 and is most well known for its online voter guide. It’s founder, Kim Alexander, and I go way back — to before we were both bit by the political bug.

Anyways, Kim and several of her friends can be seen singing the "The Proposition Song" – a musical tribute to the wacky 13-issue long ballot. Hear the song and see it being sung by going here.

I was trying to figure out how to hijack the You Tube video so that I could have the song display the FR’s recommended ballot picks as each was referenced during the song. No such luck.

Besides, I am fairly certain the the Jon Fleischman ballot and the Kim Alexander ballot are NOT the same… OK, very sure. Check out the song – it’s great!… Read More

The wave of taxpayer groups and fiscally conservative leaders urging a sweeping NO on all five bond measures continues to grow. Lew Uhler’s influential National Tax Limitation Committee PAC has posted its ballot recommendations, and they oppose all nine spending measures, including recommending a NO on 1B, 1C, 1D, 1E and 84 — the five big bad bonds packages.… Read More

We’re down to less than two weeks left in the campaign.

We know how all but 3 down-ticket races are going to end up.

How LG, Controller, and Sec State turn out is still to be determined. Lots of decisions still are to be made and lots of money is still to be spent.

Each campaign still has some significant cash that will make a difference in the outcome. But legitimately, these three races are looking like they will be more shaped by independent expenditure efforts than by their respective campaigns.

And that isn’t a knock on the campaigns. The slates have been bought. The research has been done. It’s just that with the cash left for the last 13 days, these IE’s have far more to spend than any down ticket candidate.

On the Dem side, the Unions have pulled their money out of Angelides’ sinking ship. How much will they really end up spending on down ticket races? And where will they focus their efforts? These will be big questions in the coming 13 days.

First to see some major action on the Dem side is John Chiang, who yesterday received a $262,000 tv buy from the unions.

On the Republican side, some businesses are putting… Read More

There is some rhetoric flying around about what the Governor was and was not supporting by way of public employee pension reform last year. The Governor was supporting a change in pensions that would have shifted public sector employees from what is called a “defined benefit” program to what is called a “defined contribution” program. This change, which would have applied to only new hires (all existing public employees would be ‘grandfathered’ under the current rules), would have simply moved the methodology behind public sector retirement benifits to those used in the private sector.

In a defined benefits system, if an employee works for a set number of years, there is a specific formula of exactly how much the employer (in this case, the government) would pay a retiree, based on factors like their last salary, etc.

In a defined contributions system, the employer makes a specified contribution each pay period, or month, or year, into a retirement account for that employee (often times employees can augment this amount). Then this fund (like a 401k) grows over time resulting in an eventual retirement “nest… Read More

Proposition 90, the Protect Our Homes initiative, has earned the endorsement of the Redding Record-Searchlight, one of the largest newspapers north of the Sac Bee. The opening thought in their endorsement editorial said,

"Should a city be able to seize property through eminent domain simply because a rich developer has a nifty idea for the land? Most freedom loving Americans would answer no…. Despite all the deceptive ‘sky is falling’ rhetoric about taxpayer traps and not being able to build any infrastructure in California, Prop 90 still soldiers on strongly in polling and in the hearts and minds of regular folks. Of course, the goal of Prop 90 is tolimit eminent domain takings as a last resort to appropriate uses, such as infrastructure projects that the public truly benefits from, not eliminate it entirely.

Of course that isn’t what you hear from the land grabbers or the folks in local governments that are… Read More

There are very few absolutes in politics, but let’s be clear about this November’s election – a vote for any of the proposed bonds, Propositions 1B – 1E and Prop 84, is a vote for the same type of fiscal recklessness that led to the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003.

Think about it. Since 2003, tax revenues have exploded in California – up $20 billion annually. The Governor’s Workers’ Compensation reforms are an underappreciated reason for this increase and the economic activity associated with this increase. Unfortunately, the Legislature, Democrats and some Republicans, and the Governor, have spent the entire increased baseline in revenues and then some, and the State is still running structural deficits between $4 – $6 billion annually.

Almost none of this increased spending has been allocated to increased infrastructure spending, and instead gone to education and other issues, such as health care. So our roads, schools, levees and other long deferred infrastructure have not been funded – despite the obvious needs in each area.

**There is more… Read More

There are very few absolutes in politics, but let’s be clear about this November’s election – a vote for any of the proposed bonds, Propositions 1B – 1E and Prop 84, is a vote for the same type of fiscal recklessness that led to the recall of Governor Gray Davis in 2003.

Think about it. Since 2003, tax revenues have exploded in California – up $20 billion annually. The Governor’s Workers’ Compensation reforms are an underappreciated reason for this increase and the economic activity associated with this increase. Unfortunately, the Legislature, Democrats and some Republicans, and the Governor, have spent the entire increased baseline in revenues and then some, and the State is still running structural deficits between $4 – $6 billion annually.

Almost none of this increased spending has been allocated to increased infrastructure spending, and instead gone to education and other issues, such as health care. So our roads, schools, levees and other long deferred infrastructure have not been funded – despite the obvious needs in each area.

So now, despite the massive and unprecedented increase in State tax revenues, and despite the… Read More