Just a minute ago, the newest members of the State Senate were sworn in. Congrats to Sharon Runner and Ted Lieu of the 17th and 28th districts. This fills out all the State Senate seats due to the vacancies of Senator George Runner moving on to BOE and the untimely loss of Senator Jenny Oropeza.

This maintains the previous 25-15 Dem-Republican ratio, and now brings to only 2 the number of Republicans needed for a 2/3 vote assuming 25 Dem votes.… Read More

From time to time, it is worth calling out the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times for their hubris, and extremely liberal view of the world. Today is as good a day as any (although their editorials really make it possible to do so almost on a daily basis). The Times editorializes today against Senate Republican Leader Bob Dutton’s statements that there are not votes in his caucus to assist Governor Brown with his plan to raise taxes by placing them on a special election ballot.

Obviously if Republicans do not think that increasing taxes is a solution to the out-of-whack, spending-orgy induced budget crisis — then Republicans support an all-cuts budget. As they should. Taxpayers should not be punished for the house of cards of taxpayer funded spending that was created over decades by a shameless coalition of liberal activists and public employee union leaders. It’s not convenient to have to speedily deconstruct what took so long to… Read More

During normal business hours today, Sherry Hodges officially announced she is a candidate for the 74th Assembly District in San Diego county. How she gets away with that while serving simultaneously as Assemblywoman Diane Harkey’s Chief of Staff in the 73rd Assembly District in neighboring Orange County has more than one taxpayer’s head shaking. Taxpayer’s in the 73rd surely did not get a full day of constituent service from Harkey’s office today. But perhaps as troubling was Hodge’s endorsement list, sent out with Hodges’s announcement information, which lists the endorsement of Vista City Councilman Steve GRONKE. Gronke is well known in San Diego GOP circles for abandoning his Republican registration in the summer of 2009 to run with $100,000 of public employee union I.E. support vs. Bill Horn, the most conservative SD County Supervisor [and Purple Heart & Bronze Star awardee in Vietnam].

Gronke had been a Democrat for 13 years (1982-95), then registered in Perot’s Reform party (1995- 2000), before switching to the GOP just before his first Vista council race in 2000. Then he flipped to Independent in 2009… Read More

As the California Republican Party engages in a healthy debate over how to best protect itself and its nominees from the impacts of Proposition 14, which is intended to weaken the role of political parties in California, there will be a lot of explanations and clarifications that will need to take place.

Yesterday on the FlashReport, CRP Chairman Ron Nehring walked readers through why the change in the election process necessitates changes by our party. Up until 2010 we all enjoyed a system with a June primary followed by a November general election. Now, with Prop. 14, we have a general election in June, and a run-off election in November. No longer does the party have a mechanism ask all Republican voters to weigh in on their pick as to who our standard bearer should be — which is why Nehring has proposed an alternative method. It’s not perfect — far from it. But it is significantly better than doing nothing at all, and watching the Republican Party, over time, move ever leftward. In 2000 we saw, in just one year of… Read More

Here’s an excerpt from my latest op-ed as published in the Fresno Bee: It may seem like a distant memory, but merely two years ago, a different governor and Legislature tried taxing their way out of a similar budget mess. Since then California has lost more than half a million jobs and our state’s unemployment rate has grown by 20%.

We clearly don’t need an empirical study to tell us that tax hikes don’t create jobs.

Even so, Gov. Brown is proposing to extend these very same tax increases for five more years. If approved, Californians will pay $45 billion more in income taxes, sales taxes, and vehicle taxes.

On top of this, the governor is proposing to eliminate a number of tax incentives that currently encourage businesses to create and retain jobs in our state.

Under his proposals, private sector employers, including… Read More

The betting is furious.

As Governor Brown is beating the drums to only $50 billion more; demanding that Republicans give him the votes necessary to by-pass grass roots initiative work, Brown continues to cuddle the Chambers and the few semi-serious business folks, to push for massive continued taxes.

The question is, who, if any, will fold. Who wants to be Anthony Adams, redux.There were so many…

Paul Horcher

… Read More

The President, yesterday, unveiled his budget for fiscal year 2012 and forward. It is an amazing abdication of leadership. He never gets to an annual deficit below $600 billion, even in spite of rosy economic projections that are substantially higher than those given by almost anyone else. He has a number of tax increases and few spending reductions. But, the blatant omission is of any significant reform to any of the entitlement programs in spite of his comments during the State of the Union that this is necessary.

I will have more comments later in the week about the President’s newfound lack of initiative on anything. But, here is a floor speech I gave yesterday about our budget challenges and the reactions to them.

Click to Watch Video… Read More

A scandal is brewing in Riverside County that is beginning to break into a big story.

What if I told you that supporters of a candidate for Congress dropped tens of thousands of dollars into a new charity group, which then hired this candidate to be the charity’s Executive Director, paying the candidate the vast majority of the funds apparently raised by the group?

This is no hypothetical situation, based on a legal complaint filed with the office of Attorney General Kamela Harris, which was shared with the FlashReport, it would appear that former Congressional candidate and Palm Springs Mayor Steve Pougnet (pictured, right), who ran unsuccessfully in California’s 45 District and lost to popular incumbent Mary Bono Mack, was the beneficiary of tens of thousands of dollars in salary from Pride Parents Palm Springs.

It is unclear what, if anything, Pride Parents… Read More