Governor Schwarzenegger, today is the last day for you to act on legislation on your desk. As you know, along with State Senator Mimi Walters and Assemblyman Chuck DeVore, the FlashReport has urged to specifically veto the Twenty Worst Bills on your desk. Many of these you have saved to today, the last day to act. We urge you to veto them all!

Among those bills still on your desk are the two that I think are truly the worst of the worst — so bad I gave them the FlashReport’s "Golden Trashcan Award" – a dubious distinction. Assembly Bill 1602 and Senate Bill 900 establish the California Health Benefits Exchange — and are what we call the "Rush To Obamacare" — as these bills put an onerous centralized health care bureaucracy in place (with serious taxpayer accountability issues) — and does so in a hurry (Obamacare doesn’t require some of what is in these bills be enacted until 2014).

The… Read More

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Due to technical issues that are hard to understand, let alone explain, our main page will not be updated until the late morning. Our apologies.… Read More

Californians got to see the two top candidates for governor–Republican Meg Whitman and Democrat Jerry Brown–debate the issues tonight. Televised statewide, the event gave voters achance to see both candidates in action and learn more about the differences between the two.

It was one of the better debates this state has seen in recent years. I believe that is because both candidates are genuinely decent people who respect the voters and the democratic process. They both clearly have a strong desire to improve the state’s economy and budget situation.But their approaches are vastly different.For those of us who see the economy, budget reform and improved education as our top issues, Whitman clearly is the stronger candidate.

Tonight at 6pm is the first (and arguably most important) debate between Meg Whitman and Jerry Brown. You can watch it online here.

I will be live-tweeting throughout the event here.… Read More

Last night my good friend Lance Izumi joined Meg Whitman (and a few other friends and fans) at a special movie preview of “Waiting for Superman.” Izumi, for those of you who don’t know him, is the senior director of education studies at the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy and co-author of the book “Not as Good as You Think: Why the Middle Class Needs School Choice” (and is featured on the FR home page today.) He is also featured in the new "Waiting for Superman" movie, which was made by Academy-award winning documentary director Davis Guggenheim ("Inconvenient Truth").

Whitman has seen the film and thinks it is a must-see for people who care about kids and… Read More

Before John Perez was elected to the State Assembly in 1998, he worked professionally for organized labor — unions. According to his own biography…

Perez has always had the luxury in his jobs to not have to worry about where money comes from to hire employees and pay their salaries and benefits — that’s the kind of stuff that is on the "management" side of the ledger, not the "labor" side.

Well, Speaker Perez, in case it isn’t lost on you — at some point (probably about the time you got elected to the legislature, but certainly by the time you were sworn in this last March as Speaker) you have to have realized that… Read More

The Collective Bargaining Myth

Speaker John Pérez and Senate Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg are showing their true colors today. Apparently, the final hang-up in budget negotiations is pension reform — Governor Schwarzenegger and Republicans are insisting the Legislature roll back pension promises for state workers, while the Democrats want that to be achieved through “collective bargaining.” That would mean the unions themselves would have to agree to the rollbacks, instead of the Legislature imposing them.

It’s no surprise that Pérez and Steinberg would be arguing for collective bargaining: they don’t want the California Democratic Party to be on record voting to reduce compensation or benefits for its master and biggest benefactor – government employee unions. They also know that SEIU has so far refused to budge on anything in their talks with the Administration, so by insisting on collective bargaining, they are hoping to strengthen the union’s hand in its goal of extracting concessions in… Read More