At roughly eleven o’clock this morning, Governor Jerry Brown is expected to hold a press conference and release his proposed state budget for the 2011-2012 fiscal year. Presumably he will also present his proposed revisions to the current budget, which is significantly out of balance. It has been widely reported that Brown will include in his proposal for the 2011-2012 budget placing on the ballot increases in the state’s income tax, alternative minimum tax, sales and use taxes, and an increase in the vehicle license fee.

These tax increases should be a non-starter, and Republicans (rightly so) are already strongly united against putting them forward to voters. It is worth noting that these very same tax increases were placed before voters in a special election in May of 2009 and rejected by almost a two-thirds margin. The fact that Brown would even introduce such an idea represents a bit of hubris from the Democrat Party. You see, it has been decades of liberal policies that have placed California government in such a precarious position. Not only have liberal-dominated legislatures continued to ratchet up spending… Read More

News reports indicate a neighbor of nine-year-old Christina Taylor Green of Tucson was going to Congresswoman Garbrielle Giffords’ event yesterday morning and invited the youngster to come along. Christina had just been elected to the student council at her school and was interested in politics and public service.

Christina was born on September 11, 2001, and her mother says she believes it symbolic of her daughter’s patriotism.

My daugher is also nine and other than knowing I was elected to city council until she was five, hasn’t expressed much of an interest in politics. I’m okay with that, either way.

Yet, reading about that littlevictim, I not only thought about my daughter, but it hit me. The thought of a little girl just elected to her student council. The purest and most innocent expression of representative government, coming face to face with the darkest, sickest form of lashing out against it.

The most tragic of ironies.

###… Read More

It should really come as no surprise to even the least-seasoned politico that the Sacramento Bee’s editorial board in a sharply penned column today trashes Americans for Tax Reform and their well-regarded no-new-taxes pledge. After all, the Bee’s large editorial board, doesn’t have even one Republican on it — not even a moderate one. This is the same Sacramento Bee editorial page that frequently calls on state legislators to — you guessed it — raise your taxes!

The accusation made in the Bee’s stinging attack on ATR, the pledge, and its President Grover Norquist, is that somehow that they are trying to dictate policy from across the country — admonishing pledge signing legislators that, "…they need to decide whether their allegiance to a demagogue 3,000 miles away trumps their allegiance to California and its citizens."

Give me a break. It is very clear in reading the editorial that ATR and Norquist are the "straw man" — and that in reality the liberal Sacramento Bee Editorial… Read More

FR friend Jim Boren, the very opinionated Editorial Page Editor over at the Fresno Bee just penned a new column in which he talks about the big challenge that Governor Brown will have trying to achieve his budget deal (especially the part about asking the voters to tax themselves) given the political morass (my words) that is Sacramento. Here is an excerpt from the piece…

From the San Diego Daily Transcript…

DeMaio files for mayoral runBy ELIZABETH MALLOY, The Daily Transcript

San Diego City Councilmember Carl DeMaio has filed the paperwork to run for mayor in the 2012 election, but downplayed the move in a written statement.

“Fixing the city’s pension and budget problems are my top priorities, and if running for mayor will advance fiscal reform of our city, I will do it," he wrote. "As I weigh this decision whether to run, I will be spending the next several weeks talking to supporters and listening to residents across our city to seek their advice and ideas.

"Since I’m actively considering and discussing a possible race for mayor, I have filed a ‘Candidate Intention’ form with the City Clerk’s office as required by law," he added.

DeMaio is the first person to file the paperwork for the next… Read More

It is being reported that Supreme Court Justice Carlos Moreno is retiring. Not too surprising. A mainstream Democrat appointed by Governor Gray Davis, he wanted to make sure he would be replaced by another Democrat. There is no doubt that Jerry Brown will appoint someone from his own party. To date, every single one of Brown’s appointments have been Democrats, which frankly makes sense for him.

I wonder how many Republican justices or judges around the State of California are serving much longer terms on the bench than they would like, simply because they want to be sure that they will be replaced by someone in their own party. While Arnold Schwarzenegger is a registered Republican, his record of appointing fellow Republicans to the bench was — well, deplorable. I don’t have specific statistics in front of me — but I would guess that maybe slightly more than half of his judicial picks were from the Party of Lincoln.

When George Deukmejian and Pete Wilson were Governors, Democrats being appointed were definitely the exception to the rule. Likewise, overwhelmingly Gray Davis’ picks were… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… … Read More

School Districts across the state deem unused school sites "surplus" and sell them off to private developers. This practice is largely a bad idea. Just because a community’s demographics have shifted to an older population does not mean that young families will never return. And there is no re-capturing acreage that was once a school and becomes single-family homes.

In fact, if the school district needs a new school site in a dozen years from now, it is highly likely that they will be forced to go to the taxpayers for the money through the sale of bonds or increased property taxes like a parcel tax.

I my home town of Irvine the school district is on the verge of selling off two neighborhood schools. This school district is always crying poor. Even worse, they may be looking to use loopholes in state law to spend the proceeds of the sale to fund operations.

You can check out my column on the subject in today’s Orange County Register here.… Read More