More Facts, Ma’am: Sergeant Joe Friday probably never said that, but you know what I’m getting at. With the debt limit debate getting close to the final days, you may wonder what happens if we actually go “over the cliff” and do not extend the debt limit by the supposedly magic August 2nd date? The following information is gleaned from a presentation made to the Republican caucus by a former Bush Administration deputy secretary at the Treasury Department who now works with a think tank called the “Bipartisan Policy Center” in DC:

There is general agreement that the federal government will have exhausted all alternative funding sources and will run out of cash on or about August 2nd. This date is largely driven by $23 billion worth of Social Security checks that are scheduled to go out on that day. At that point, the US government is on a cash basis with no ability to borrow more money. That means that it can only spend the same amount of money that comes in. And, this is not an annual issue, it is a daily issue. If $20 billion comes in on Thursday, then you can send $20 billion out. If only $10 billion comes in on Friday,… Read More

Having just finished the “Lion of LIberty: Patrick Henry and the Call to a New Nation” by Harlow Giles Unger I have been taken back to the great national debate over the powers of government. The discussions of the 1790s are very contemporary. After winning the revolutionary war the country was taken into the constant debate of how to empower and how to limit a national government. Patrick Henry as Governor of Virginia joined others in arguing against the ratification of the proposed constitution considering it granted far too many powers to a Federal government over the people and the states. In language prescient to today’s debate he warned of an out of control national government.

Sharing some of those concerns was James Madison and he promised the anti-constitutionalists that if the Constitution was ratified he would propose a Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties and to limit the national government. Elected to Congress from Virginia is 1790 he made good on that promise. But not all of his proposals were adopted. This made me curious as to what was left out.

The Madison package that was adopted actually consisted of 12 amendments. The… Read More

Just the Facts, Ma’am: This was the famous retort offered by fictional LA police detective, Sergeant Joe Friday, on the TV show Dragnet whenever a female witness started to delve into conjecture or opinion. In these missives, I usually give you heavy doses of my commentary and opinion.

Not today, or tomorrow. As the debt limit debate reaches the critical stage, I felt maybe you needed some facts, just plain facts, about the country’s financial status. Last week in a Budget Committee hearing, the actuaries for the Social Security and Medicare systems testified as to the status of these two programs and provided actuarial projections for both. Here is a summary of the salient points they made. I will let you draw your own conclusions:

Social Security and Medicare currently amount to 35% of all federal spending. Both systems are currently in negative cash flow and are on track for insolvency or exhaustion of their trust funds. The reasons for these impending problems are largely demographic. The United States traditionally had a birth rate of about 3 children per woman up until 1965. By 1975, that rate had dropped to 2 children per… Read More

If Carla Marinucci of the San Francisco Chronicle’s “crack” political reporting staff isn’t already convinced that the California Redistricting Commission is illegally drawing lines for California’s partisan political offices which will result in intentionally tilted outcomes favoring the Democrats, take another look at the maps they have drawn for California’s four Board of Equalization seats. Our publisher Jon Fleischman has blogged on these lines, and I intend to carry his reasoning a little further here.

Interested people should visit the Commission’s website at the self-absorbed named URL “www.wedrawthelines.com.” (The “Village People” graphic at the top of the site says it all about these bozos.) There you will learn that while the Commission is doing a good job at having public meetings across the state, about the only thing it is hearing at those meetings is what partisan Democrats have to say. And what it is not doing is following the law.

Proposition 11 is very specific on a point the Commission is missing, and had evidently surely illegally disregarded, in publishing the… Read More

Voters were promised that the California Citizens Redistricting Commission would restore integrity to the redistricting process. No more political games. No more insider shenanigans. No more districts drawn specially for incumbents.

The commission has been a perfect failure on every account. The first maps were universally criticized by Republicans and Democrats and likely couldn’t withstand legal challenges on the basis of the Voting Rights Act. Last week, the commission announced that it wouldn’t release the second draft of maps– this from a commission that promised openness and transparency.

Now, we learn from Friday’s bombshell report from CalWatchdog.com that a commissioner has made multiple campaign contributions to Democratic candidates and has extensive connections to a redistricting special interest group.

From the… Read More

With each passing day, it is becoming more and more clear that the California Redistricting Commission, despite being given strict criteria under Propositions 11 and 20, by which to draw new BOE, House, State Senate and State Assembly lines, is pursuing its own agenda. We have all watched with gross fascination as a few strong liberal members of the Commission have become the dominating factor in virtually every decision, from the critical early decisions such as choosing a consultant to draw maps — to decisions now about the details on the maps themselves.

So it comes as no surprise to learn of the formation of a new group called FAIR, which stands for Fairness & Accountability in Redistricting. This group, with significant ties to both Washington, D.C., and to some major political donors, has been filed to begin the preparations for a referendum campaign on the Commission’s final new districts. This group is an umbrella organization that is looking at all four sets of maps being drawn — the way the initiatives were crafted, it is separate process to referend each set of maps.

From the final date the maps are approved, August 15, FAIR will… Read More

Assemblywoman Diane Harkey penned this insightful column for FlashReport readers. In it, Harkey reveals yet another terrible component of the majority vote budget passed by Capitol Democrats — in this case she details how the Democrats are raiding the coffers of medium and large sized cities big time…

Clarity and Certainty At Last – Another Unbalanced Budget and Taxes on the Way by Assemblywoman Diane Harkey The ink was hardly dry on the Governor’s “balanced” 2011-12 budget, before we learned that the state’s cash receipts were less than expected for the month of May and June of the 2010-11 year we just completed. Also, while claiming to spend only $86 billion, the total was actually $91.5 billion, when one adds the more than $5 billion for “realignment,” or transferring state prisoners and some social services to counties.

The funding for “realignment” was supposedly met by transferring 1% of the… Read More

California taxpayers are celebrating a rare victory. Despite Democrat efforts to extend them, the sweeping “temporary” tax increases of 2009 have gone away. This is an uncommon treat, as many prior tax hikes sold as “temporary” are still with us today.

As Californians enjoy the benefits of this victory, today marks the 20th anniversary of a prior sales tax increase that is still with us. On July 15, 1991 Californians were impaled with a “temporary” sales tax increase of 1.25%. This measure was enacted by the Legislature to address the state budget shortfall during the early 1990s economic downturn.

Fast forward to June of this year. A 2009 sales tax rate increase of 1% was set to expire on July 1, 2011. Despite a vote of the people against extending this and other temporary tax increases, Governor Jerry Brown and Democrat legislators unsuccessfully sought a five year extension of these taxes.

These higher taxes amounted to billions of dollars per year out of the pockets of struggling Californians and into the hands of wasteful government. Combine the 2009 temporary sales tax increase with the 1991 temporary sales tax increase, and… Read More