Governor Jerry Brown swept into Los Angeles last Friday, picking up the preordained endorsement from the Los AngelesArea Chamber of Commerce for his $50 billion tax increase election. Preordained because the Los Angeles Area Chamber long ago lost its soul. It is no longera dependable ally for the small or larger business communities.

The Los Angeles Area Chamber was taken over by non-profits and lawyers. The landmark election of George Kieffer of Manatt Phelps (pictured right) in 2003 began a new assault against entrepreneurs. Since then the LA Chamber has supported virtually every tax increase from the city, county and state level. The Chamber supported the ill fated tax Prop 1A in 2009, which was rejected by angry California taxpayers by a margin of two to one.

George Kieffer is a gentleman and a… Read More

Former Assembly Speaker, Anaheim Mayor and current High Speed Rail Authority Chairman Curt Pringle was elected to head the Orange County Taxpayers Association this week.

OCTax is known for working with local government to improve tax policy andwork better with the business community. They also have a PAC that endorses and contributes to pro-business and anti-tax candidates.

In recent years the group has brought on higher profile leaders to serve on the board including former CA Housing and Community Development Director and current OC Business Council CEO Lucy Dunn and Cox Communications Government Affairs executive Jim Leach.

OCTax’s mission is to insure that taxes and tax supported programs are fair, understandable, cost effective and good for the economy.

OCTax is one of those endorsements you want to collect and feature in your voter contact if you can. The group has positive name ID and especially now, when voters are so peeved over the failed state of government budgets, OCTax’s stamp of approval is helpful to have. Organization president Reed Royalty has been around a long time and has the respect of most… Read More

I don’t really know Rancho Santa Margarita City Councilman Jesse Petrilla. Yet I think every single person that reads this blog should stand with him against the majority on his City Council.

See related Jim Lacy post here.

In 2003 I was the Vice-Mayor of Woodland and was called to active duty in the Marine Corps. When I left we had no idea how long I would be gone. Could have been months or even years. We really did not know.

The people on the City Council chose not to replace me but since my term of deployment was not clear I would have understood if they did. Petrilla will be gone for just three months.

Here is the problem for the service member that is publicly reported to be deployed. To most people in the public it says "military service is an honorable thing". To some it says that "the family of the service member is vulnerable". Not cool. I am sure that Councilman Petrilla is happy to do this training but has concerns about his wife. These are… Read More

One of the "must read" columns in the D.C. Beltway is "The Fix" by Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post. You can check out The Fix here.

Today Cillizza unveiled "The Fix’s Best State-Based Political Tweeters" and I am pleased that our FlashReport Twitter Feed was not only named for California, but we took pole position! If you aren’t following @flashreport — get with it!

The California political tweeters highlighted by Cillizza are… (These are their twitter "handles")

Twitter Handle: FlashReport (R), RobStutzman (R), keckery (R), jboren4507, RogerSalazar (D), juliesoderlund (R), steve4jerry (D), DarrelNg (R), richardcostigan (R), aaronmclear (R), LATSeema, MaeveReston, KQED_CapNotes, … Read More

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Each member of the governing majority on the City Council of Rancho Santa Margarita ought to be spanked.

They sure need to come to their senses somehow. Orange County Register head gossip columnist Frank Mickadeit wrote last Friday that the RSM council, less dissenting and sterling Republican Steve Baric, is planning to kick freshman Republican councilman Jesse Petrilla off the council because he will miss 6 meetings this spring as he was called to active duty in his military reserve job for just 115 days at Fort Knox, Kentucky, presumably to train and also help guard the nation’s gold reserves.… Read More

I’m a fan of Steve Harmon, who is a political reporter for the Bay Area News Group (Oakland Tribune, Contra Costa Times, San Jose Mercury News, etc.) — generally I find him to be a solid reporter, and I enjoy reading his stories.

That said, Steve and I have a running disagreement that centers around whether the 2009 budget deal that saw six Republican legislators vote to enact the largest tax increase in the history of any state (sales, income and car taxes, as well as an axing of a chunk of the child tax credit) caused those six GOPers to pay a steep political price. These same six Republicans also voted to create a trigger whereby if voters passed Proposition 1A in an ensuing special election, these same taxes which had been enacted for two years would have their sunset date extended two years further out. California voters rejected 1A by nearly a two-to-one margin thus those taxes were not extended.

In a piece that Harman had published over the weekend (for which, alas, I was not called for a quote), he… Read More

When the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was passed one of the primary tools to prevent discrimination was Section 5. This section was meant to “cover” certain parts of the country so that they did not come up with new ways of disenfranchising black voters.

Under this law the covered areas needed to seek preclearance from the US Department of Justice prior to making any change in voting procedures. This means that after an ordinance or administrative procedure and background material must be submitted to the Justice Department as soon as possible after it is passed.

When the VRA was updated in 1970 the test of what states or other political jurisdictions were covered was based on two criteria

The state or jurisdiction had a barrier in place in 1968 as a prerequisite to voting Less than 50% of the voting age population was registered to vote in 1968 or less than 50% of the voting age population voted for President in November 1968

Some entire states (mostly southern) as well as some counties and cities were covered by this test. You can see the… Read More