Ken Grubbs, Jr,. and I authored this Weekly Standard cover story about whether California is too big to fail. Tell me what you think.

One early December morning, Las Vegas police moved in on the Silverton Hotel and Casino, just off the Strip and known for its 117,000-gallon aquarium. There, having located a getaway black Audi with no license plates, they arrested 31-year-old Ka Pasasouk​—​a Laotian immigrant with a violent history who had eluded deportation as well as imprisonment. The Dragnet-style work came less than 24 hours after police back in Northridge, a Los Angeles suburb known for a state university campus, discovered what they called a “very grisly tableau.”

Outside an overcrowded boarding house, described in press accounts as unlicensed, lay the bodies of two men and two women, whom Pasasouk has now been charged with murdering. The story captured attention up and down the already tense state, where the phrase “grisly tableau” could easily have found wide use in the ubiquitous conversations about California’s… Read More

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association released a new poll today that shows the majority of California voters oppose lowering the voting requirement for local per parcel property taxes from two-thirds to 55%. More than 53% of voters oppose the change, and only 35% support the change. Approximately 11% were undecided.

Moreover, a majority of those against don’t just oppose the change – they oppose it strongly. The intensity of opposition to lowering the voting threshold was nearly double what it was for those in support. 40% of voters “definitely” oppose the idea of lowering the vote requirement, while just 21% say they would definitely support the change.

Furthermore, opposition to changing the voting threshold was broad-based: 68% of Republicans oppose it, along with nearly 53% of Decline-to-State (DTS) voters, while a plurality (44%) of Democrats also oppose it. In addition, more Democrat women – 50% – also oppose the change.

This poll mirrors what we’ve been hearing from our members who are Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. They oppose any further money grab from politicians – whether from Sacramento or the local level… Read More

Having had a day to begin the recovery process from yet another California Republican Party convention, I thought I would take the opportunity to share some thoughts about the weekend. Starting with some “big picture” observations first, and in no particular order…

The biennial organizational convention of the committee is typically a well-attended affair, and this one proved up to the expectation. With well over a thousand delegates on hand (not to mention all of the guests as well) there is no doubt the event was a money-maker for the cash strapped California GOP. While attendance tapered off at some of the other meal functions where the speakers were lower profile — the attendance at the Saturday luncheon was stunning in its size, for a CRP convention. There were many press accounts of Rove’s speech, and you can check out my exclusive convention sit-down video interview with Rove here. I would largely characterize the mood of the delegates as “resolved” — it wasn’t as celebratory a crowd is in some conventions past, but then the CRP is at a challenging time… Read More

The Sequester: I would wager that just a few months ago very few of you knew what the word “sequester” meant. Maybe you didn’t know how to pronounce it either (see-kwes-ter). I can tell you that I had never heard the word before I was elected to Congress. And, it took me a couple of terms on the budget committee to become familiar with it.

But, now we all know. It is a budgeting mechanism by which across-the-board spending reductions are enforced. And, it went into effect on March 1st.

Listening to the president, you would think that the Mayan calendar was off by a couple of months and that the end of the world was really coming as a result of the Sequester. From the dramatic rhetoric in his perpetual campaign swing, it sounds like life as we know it will cease because of a 2% reduction in the growth of planned government spending. What you are not hearing is that even with the Sequester cuts in effect, total federal spending this year will be higher than last year. So, why all the drama? Because it is clear that the president wants to increase spending and increase taxes and he wants you to think that the… Read More

February 26, 2013 officially marked the secondanniversary of the California Young Republican Federation!

The Young Republicanshave actually existed in some form in Californiaat least since the 1950s. However, as most readers know, there was a major YRelection dispute 20 years ago, causing the organization to split into the California Young Republicans (CYR) and the Young Republican Federation of California (YRFC). Approximately four years ago, I assumed the position of CYR Secretary, under then CYR-Chair Jenniffer Rodriguez. Jenniffer and I decided that there was no need to continue the split when the original people behind it were by and large no longer of YR age, so we approached YRFC’s leadership at the time, headed up by then-Chairman Shawn Fago and then-National Committeeman Adam Abrahms, to begin merger negotiations.

Unfortunately, some leaders of CYR, primarily in Kern County,did not wish to merge with YRFC, because growing the size of the organization’s membership and Board of Directors meant they would lose some amount of power. So, these Kern County YRs resorted to various tactics to try and block the merger, ultimately… Read More

This weekend is the California Republican Party’s Biennial Organizational Convention in Sacramento. I have been a voting member of the State Committee since 1989, and my column tomorrow morning will be a run-down on what we can expect to happen, and not happen, as 1500 Central Committee members gather at the (non-union) Sacramento Hyatt Hotel across from the State Capitol.

But I just read a blog post over at the San Francisco Chronicle politics blog by ace reporter (and FR friend) Carla Marinucci, where she got a hold of a Facebook update from a local Republican Leader in San Bernardino County who outrageously has targeted a candidate for CRP statewide office with what I think is a totally racist slur. I will now quote directly from Marinucci’s story:

San Francisco attorney Harmeet Dhillon, who has won support from major party leaders in her drive to be the California GOP’s first female vice chair, has also become the target of a nasty racist effort to slur her as a Muslim terrorist sympathizer and a “Taj Mahal princess.”

Dhillon, currrently chair of the… Read More

We’re playing a little bitch of catch-up with our “Idiot Of The Week” feature — with this seventh installment actually catching us up from last week…

The FlashReport Idiot Of The Week Award is bestowed upon that pubic official (or high profile person engaged in politics or public policy) who does something completely idiotic. With a state as large as Californian, which seems to have a higher-than-average amount of folks who either don’t think about what they do — or even worse, they think about what they do and still act like idiots — we suffer from no shortage of potential award winners. As in previous columns, we start first with the… Read More

Alert the media! The Assembly Women’s Caucus is offended.

Seth MacFarlane, the creator of Family Guy, and a successful entertainer, actor, and writer, hosted Sunday’s Oscar awards show, with his usual snarky, brazen, naughty gutter humor. And in helping the Awards show achieve a much-needed ratings increase, McFarland managed to offend the feminists of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus. The women’s caucus sent a formal complaint Wednesday to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, complaining that McFarland “struck a new low in its treatment of women.”

Boo hoo. As if Hollywood doesn’t already reach record lows in taste and humor. Look at these dresses!

“In a world where women have historically faced… Read More