All of the talk in the Capitol is that a deal is afoot. That the cosmic forces of the world are coming into alignment. Translation — the taxpayers of California had better watch their pocketbooks!

It is important that you read Assemblywoman Diane Harkey’s column on the FlashReport today.

A quick reminder — Democrats do not need Republicans to cut any deals — with one big exception. Still (barely) out of reach of the ever-greedy hands of the majority party is the two-thirds vote protection in the State Constitution to raise taxes. So let’s be very clear — any deal that Republicans strike with Democrats by definition includes a tax increase.

The problem is that Republicans can (and do) cut deals in good faith, and then Democrats reneg on them. I wrote an entire column on Monday which went into great detail on many of the handshake deals that were subsequently undone. And in almost every case, to get… Read More

Mental health professionals call it “the Stockholm syndrome” where hostages feel empathy and have positive feelings for the captors, feelings which have been described as “irrational” in light of the danger they face. It is a form of “traumatic bonding” like battered wife’s syndrome, or even the Sadist/Masochist relationship. Welcome to Sacramento, where the entire business community (and a couple of Republicans) is now suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

I wrote last week about how untrustworthy the business community can be in politics, and why Republicans cannot be “pro-business” but must be pro-free enterprise. Republicans have married themselves (in politics) to the business community. Democrats have married themselves to unions of all types. Unions are the Democrat’s loyal spouse, but the business community is the political equivalent of an unfaithful wife. They will sleep with anyone if they think they will get something out of it.

The so-called Lumber tax bill is the best example of just how untrustworthy the business community is. The support list for that bill reads like a who’s who… Read More

San Diego Politics & Media Mashup

If you believe Governor Jerry Brown, all of us are going to suffer if we don’t agree to tax ourselves more this November.

It’s a tired sales pitch we hear too often from California lawmakers, but that didn’t stop Brown from trying to play on our fears when he visited San Diego on Monday.

The first paragraph in the U-T San Diego’s story on Brown’s press conference framed the governor’s hyperbole this way:

Jerry Brown on Monday in San Diego peddled his tax measure to raise $6 billion annually for education and other state services, promising “real suffering by you and really our whole future” if the proposal fails in November.

There is a lot I admire about the governor, but he is on the wrong side of this issue and his messaging isn’t exactly the stuff of legend.

Maybeno one told him San Diegans… Read More

Last week I wrote a tough column extremely critical of the votes cast by Republican Assemblyman Brian Nestande and Republican-turned-Independent Nathan Fletcher for Assembly Bill 1500, legislation by Speaker John Perez that would arbitrarily shift about a billion dollars from the private sector into the coffers of California state government by hitting with a big tax increase multi-state companies that that sell services and products to Californians, but don’t have a lot of real estate assets or employees in the state. Californians depend on reliable and predictable availability of the services and goods which they consume in order to keep costs low and quality high. It is pretty a pretty established economic reality that when you increase the costs of goods and services, you create a scarcity and thus drive up the costs. Simply put, a billion dollar (plus) tax increase ultimately hurts the California consumer.

To the extent that the liberals running California state government continue to make it more expensive and difficult… Read More

Today there is a very important article for you to read in the FlashReport by longtime FR contributor Bruce Bialosky. Bruce, a certified public accountant, pens a lot of sobering material bringing into question the sanity of many policies enacted by politicians at both the state and national levels. In his column today, Bruce shines a bright spotlight on a particularly egregious piece of bad legislation that has almost finished winding its way to the Governor’s desk — only a State Senate floor vote remains for Assembly Bill 2451. AB 2451 represents a giveaway to public safety unions that reminds me of SB 400 back in 1999 which allowed for the outrageous practice of granting retroactive pension increases.

Bruce goes into some detail on AB 2451, and this blog post should be read after you read his column. But the gist of the legislation is that current law says that if a public safety worker dies within a five year period of retiring, except in some minor exceptions, their survivors can file a workers’ compensation claim, if there is either a nexus to the… Read More

There was an article in the Los Angeles Times yesterday about how the city is losing the core of its television production to other states. The article talks about how just two of the twenty-plus fall and midseason shows shows will be shot in L.A. County. It says that, “Fewer than 10% of new network dramas this season are based in Los Angeles, down from 50% in 2010 and nearly 80% in 2005.”

Most of the article is really focused on anecdotal, tragic stories of people in the television production business who are being very hard-hit by this circumstance. It is mentioned that other states are luring away the business.

First of all, I want to make it clear that I have an enormous amount of sympathy for those being hard hit economically. These are real people, with families, who are in dire straights.

That said, I will make the political observation that in some respects “Hollywood” is reaping what it has sewn. Whether you look “in front” of the… Read More

In his famous book, Socialism, written in 1932, Ludwig Von Mises had an interesting insight. He said, 80 years ago, in the midst of the Nazi takeover of Germany, that “it is unreasonable to expect” an association of entrepreneurs, or an association that relies on entrepreneurs as its principal means of support (read the California Chamber of Commerce, or any other number of “pro-business” associations) to take a principled stand against Socialism, mainly, he said, because that is not what they do. Their job is to build their business, not fight long term political battles, and building their business means overcoming, not fighting, government obstacles to growth. How right he was. That comment changed my view of my role in the Legislature. I knew that if it was unreasonable to expect that kind of behavior from the business community in 1932, when they were facing the threat of Adolph Hitler, how could I expect them to take the exact opposite approach when fighting Willie or Jerry Brown, or anyone of the string of speakers of the Assembly, including John Perez currently.

The business community wouldn’t fight, but I would, I decided,… Read More

Every election cycle, seeking to vindicate the rights of private citizens who, at great time and expense, have qualified an initiative for the statewide ballot (often a subject matter that has no chance of making it through the dysfunctional Legislature), against a partisan Attorney General who has crafted a biased summary of the proposed measure.

The Elections Code tasks the Attorney General with preparing “a true and impartial statement of the purpose” of any measure appearing on the statewide ballot. The Attorney General’s statement cannot “be an argument, nor be likely to create prejudice, for or against the proposed measure.” The ballot label, title and summary prepared for Proposition 32 by Attorney General Kamala Harris failed this basic standard, which unfortunately is no surprise.

Attorney General Harris’ proposed ballot language described Proposition 32 as restricting or limiting contributions to candidates from corporations, unions and government contractors, and as restricting the collection of campaign contributions from corporate employees and union members through payroll deduction. These… Read More