One of the most extraordinary political leaders of our lifetime is Margaret Thatcher, and the new film The Iron Lady provides a wonderful opportunity for her to inspire a new generation of conservative leaders around the world.

The typical college student today was born after the Reagan presidency, and was too young to remember the leadership Mrs. Thatcher provided Great Britain during a truly critical time in that nation’s history.

As a former College Republican leader myself, I’ve seen firsthand how tomorrow’s political leaders are drawn from the ranks of today’s campus political groups. And often the transformation from young leader to government or party official happens very quickly. In my own life, I was only out of college for eight years when I became the leader of the Republican Party of San Diego County, one of the largest counties in America.

Margaret Thatcher embodies a long list of traits that are critical in a leader, and The Iron Lady conveys many of those traits masterfully.

As someone who grew up during the Reagan/Thatcher era,… Read More

As early as today the State Assembly may be asked to vote on AB 1208–The Trial Court Rights Act. This legislation, if enacted into law, would return some local control to our local courts. My hat is off to the 400 member Alliance of California Judges for sponsoring this measure and to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association for their support.

The Chief Justice and her handpicked Judicial Council have allowed the San Francisco based court bureaucracy to waste public dollars, intended for our local courts, on their pet projects including a disgraced computer system, pension spikes for their highest paid workers, court construction costs that far exceed what even the Federal government spends on new courthouses and the massive growth of the bureaucracy itself.

Consider these facts:

The Administrative Office of the Courts has grown by 70% since 2004 and continues to hire notwithstanding a “hiring freeze”. Judicial Branch leaders have doled out pay raises on two occasions over the past three years while our local courts were shut down a day a month. The former Chief Justice spiked the pension benefits of the top AOC executives such that the tax… Read More

In recent days, Governor Jerry Brown has been telling folks with the main stream media that he is going to have broad business community support for his proposal to hike billions of dollars in sales and income taxes. Based on what we’ve been hearing through the tom toms, there is apparently quite an intense battle going on right now amongst business community leaders about whether to support Brown’s tax increase measure. Of course we here at the FlashReport feel that would not be a good idea. But below is a letter from the National Federation of Independent Business, CA — and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association laying out the case for why businesses should not support Brown’s tax increases…

… Read More

Tomorrow morning the official announcement will come from the Newt Gingrich for President campaign has tapped former California Republican Party Chairman (and longtime FR friend) Mike Schroeder, of Orange County, to be the Political Director of their campaign here in the Golden State. In addition, Schroeder will also be serving as a Co-Chairman of the California campaign for Gingrich.

This is a big pickup for Gingrich as Schroeder is considered to be one of California’s “heavy weight” political pros, and is a smart and capable political strategist. Schroeder is also known for his aggressive style of campaigning, so I would look for a lot of activity from what has been up to this point a virtually non-existent Gingrich effort here in the Golden State. Schroeder was the political director for Steve Poizner’s successful statewide campaign for Insurance Commissioner, and played an informal role with Poizner’s unsuccessful gubernatorial run. Schroeder, who headed up the California GOP from 1997-1999 also was the Chairman of the successful recalls of Assemblyman Paul Horcher and Assemblywoman Doris Allen. He is a former State President… Read More

As the Florida Presidential campaign explodes into a media frenzy — there is also a substantial battle for the Hispanic vote–IN the Republican party.

I was not aware that if populous Miami county that 75% of Republicans are Hispanic. Nor did I know that 10% of all Floridian Republicans are Hispanic.

Marco who argues that Republicans are in favor of legitimate immigration always seems to say the right thing at the right time.

Marco Rubio is becoming an iconic symbol for the future of our party. … Read More

Governor Jerry Brown and his closest advisers must be rolling their eyes, and wringing their hands in frustration. After all, this year Brown is going to try to do what many think is an impossible task — which is getting the state’s voters, in the midst of a recession, to raise taxes on themselves. One thing that Brown knows is that if he is to have a reasonable shot at this endeavor, the public must be convinced that these higher taxes are absolutely necessary. Certainly a critical part of Brown’s efforts include convincing the voters that he and the leaders of the State Legislature will be good stewards of their tax dollars. So when he watched yesterday as Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez held a press conference to publicly announce a lawsuit against Controller John Chiang (a fellow Democrat) because they were unhappy that Chiang wouldn’t let them pass an unbalanced budget, Brown undoubtedly saw this action as detrimental to his plans.… Read More

The following is a speech from the floor that I delivered January 23, 2011, and wanted to share it with FlashReport readers…

Madam Speaker:

Long ago, Jefferson warned, “The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield, and government to gain ground.” The exceptions to that rule have been few and far between recently, and ought to be celebrated when they occur.

One did this past week with the announcement that supporters of the so-called “Stop On-Line Privacy Act” and the “Protect Intellectual Property Act” have indefinitely postponed their measures after an unprecedented protest across the Internet.

SOPA and PIPA pose a crippling danger to the Internet because they use the legitimate concern over copy-right infringement as an excuse for government to intrude upon and regulate the very essence of the Internet – the unrestricted and absolutely free association that links site to site, providing infinite pathways for commerce, discourse and learning.

It is not the Internet per se that has set the stage for the next quantum leap in human knowledge and advancement – but… Read More

Next week the state’s redevelopment agencies are set to go out of existence — forever. Sure, some other lesser-incarnation of them may return, but if they do, they will be with much less influence, a lot less public funding, and (if I have anything to say about it) property rights protections placed on them so that no longer can eminent domain be used to take someone’s private property against their will so that local politicians can play a scary real version of “Sim City.”

There are a lot of reasons why RDA’s being abolished are a good thing — but this short commentary addresses just one today — which is that for some reason, RDA’s make Republicans act poorly. In theory, Republicans (whether in local office, or in partisan office) should be united around the principles of freedom, liberty, and the free market. Yet the entire way that RDA’s do business is counter to all of that. RDA’s take money using the force of the power of government, accumulate it, and then local government ministers start to spend those tax dollars to warp and influence the economic marketplace, changing the factors of supply… Read More