In the famous movie, Casablanca, Captain Louis Renault announced:

I’m shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here. [A casino worker gives Renault a wad of money.] Casino Worker: Your winnings, sir.

Over this last week, we have seen many in the Governor’s office and the Democrat Leadership announced that they are “shocked” that the California Department of Parks and Recreation had hidden money while they were attempting to extort more money out of the taxpayers by threatening to close down parks. “How could they be so deceptive?” our liberal friends in politics and the media cried, “They lied to us.”

Oh, give me a break. This deception has been going on for years, aided by the full time budget staff at the Legislature, the Legislative Analyst’s Office, the “Career Executive Assignment” (CEA) staff in the various state agencies and departments, and the leaders of the various government unions. Who lost their job over this? A couple of political appointees, either too lazy, too stupid or too trusting to inquire from these career… Read More

This just in from San Diego City Councilman, candidate for Mayor, and long-time pension reform advocate Carl DeMaio..

This morning you will be reading about an important court ruling that protects efforts to bring meaningful pension reform to San Diego. I wanted to provide a little analysis for what this means going forward.

After Comprehensive Pension Reform was supported 66% of San Diego citizens in June, the local Municipal Employee Union and representatives of the Public Employment Relations Board (PERB) asked the Superior Court for a restraining order against the City of San Diego. The Unions and their allies at PERB wanted the Court to stop San Diego from doing the work necessary to implement Proposition B until PERB makes a decision on a frivolous union claim. That decision could take six months or longer.

The Court chose to allow San Diego to meet its obligations under the City’s charter and work toward making pension reform a reality. In his ruling, Judge Vargas noted “The court finds traditional equitable considerations now weigh in favor of the voters, the City of San Diego and of a proper and… Read More

San Diego Politics & Media Mashup

Republican Carl DeMaio has hired a Democrat and Democrat Bob Filner is on board with pension reform.

Who spiked the water in San Diego?

Relax. There’s no need to panic. The water is clean…I mean drinkable. So why are we seeing New Carl and New Bob popping up in stories?

Here’s the thing — election season is nearly in full swing and DeMaio and Filner, the two men running to become San Diego’s next mayor, have to figure out how to appeal to the middle in order to come out on top in November. In San Diego, 40 percent of registered voters are Democrats and 28 percent are registered Republican.

Math is leading both candidates to stray from their core philosophies and make decisions they never would have made leading up to the June… Read More

I am honored to be a new contributor to the FR blog. My CalWatchdognew stories and columns appear in the FlashReport, and now I will be a blogger as well. Sometimes I will cross post with CalWatchdog, and sometimes the posts will be exclusive to the FR blog – Katy Grimes, 7/31/2012

As free marketeers celebrate famed Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman’s 100 birthday today, revisiting Friedman’s 1979 interview with Phil Donahue, where Friedman schooled Donahue, a 1970′s liberal television talk show host, on capitalism. This is an important reminder of why we fight for the free market.

Friedman, born July 31, 1912, and died November 16, 2006, easily dispelled the… Read More

Because I’m one of the signers of a CA ballot book argument against Prop 38 (the “Munger” income tax prop), I’ve been asked by a Democrat State Senator to submit input to a State Senate hearing this week on the matter. Having testified at such legislative hearings before, I’m painfully aware that such “hearings” are carefully orchestrated political circuses where everyone knows the outcome before the hearing is even called to order.

My submission may or may not even be included in the pile of papers passed around. But submit I did. I’ve decide that my workup should not be wasted by sending it just to the legislature, so I’m also sending it out to the press, plus posting it here and on other blogs.

If my Kabuki dance prediction is correct, the State Senate will lean towards the “Brown” tax prop — Prop 30 — under the simple premise that it has a better chance of passing. Their distant second choice is Prop 38.

Here’s my letter. The fonts are screwed up, thanks to “copy and paste” glitches, but the content seems to be intact and… Read More

For those of us who think it would be terrible public policy for the voters of California to raise taxes this November, Sacramento Democrats continue to be the “gift that keeps on giving” in terms of actions that will cause the already skeptical electorate to have more reasons not to want to send any more of their tax dollars to Sacramento.

A very quick recap — just in the last week and a half we had:

The approval of billions of dollars of indebtedness on an incredibly unpopular high speed rail boondoggle. The discovery that the better part of a thousand legislative staff members have been getting raises while state employees are taking furloughs. The revelation that despite the audit functions of the Democrat Controller and the Democrat Legislature, the Parks Agency within Democrat Jerry Browns Administration had squirreled away north of $50 million dollars, that were totally off the grid.

Now to add to all of that, news headlines are now spotlighting a legislative effort, spearheaded by senior Democrat Senator… Read More

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association announced today that we launched a new blitz of radio ads to educate voters about the nearly $100-billion bullet train project.In the new spot, you can hear me alerting taxpayers, “Sacramento politicians have turned their backs on Education and Public Safety and voted to waste billions on the largest boondoggle in American history.”

The spot goes on to highlight the scare tactics politicians are using to force tax increases on the working people of California. While Sacramento special interest groups are pushing for more taxes, frivolous spending, and political cronyism, lawmakers are ignoring desperately needed reforms in education, pensions and government spending.

HJTA asks listeners to stand with thousands of fellow Californians by going to HJTA.org and signing a petition to the Governor and Legislature demanding reforms, not higher … Read More

Redistricting Agencies in California are dead. For some time there will continue to be some stories about the death-throes, since unwinding these agencies is a complex process.

That having been said, I just wanted to remind FlashReport readers that the end of the redevelopment era in California is a good thing, and we should all be very happy about it.

You see in a great many cases, Redevelopment Agencies had been primary violators of the private property rights of Americans. Using the government’s power of eminent domain, private property would be seized by many of these agencies not for widening a road, or laying down a railroad track, but because politicians preferred some other use for the land than that being carried out by the existing owner.

Redevelopment Agencies were also a magnet for crony capitalism. And by that I mean that local politicians would get into the practice of using redevelopment funds to benefit specific businesses and companies, who would then, in turn, help out the politicians. And when I say “helping out” — that came in various forms ranging from the “taking” of someone’s property… Read More