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

Each year when we publish our popular and well-read Top Twenty Bills To Veto column, where we instruct the Governor on which of the hundreds of bills on his desk are most toxic, we always get a lot of reader feedback on the various bills. Many of these terrible bills are not on the radar of even informed FlashReport readers until we run that column. One bill that we highlight which has really sparked a lot of feedback is Assembly Bill 482 (Mendoza) which, if signed by the Governor, would prohibit an employer from using someone’s credit history when deciding whether or not to hire that person. Seriously.

In sifting through the emails that I got on this bill, I received one that peaked my interest because the title of the e-mail – AB 482 and Richard Kimball. Fellow movie buffs… Read More

The Los Angeles Times and the University of Southern California team up to conduct and present a regular survey of voters. This endeavor by one of California’s major newspapers, partnered with one of the state’s premiere private Universities, is a relative newcomer to this endeavor — with only a few surveys having been released. Other statewide polls conducted by organizations such as Field and the PPIC have been at this much longer. Over the weekend and into this week the latest LAT/USC poll results are being released — and to say that the results released thus far have been controversial would be a vast understatement…

Let me hit the "rewind" button just a bit. Last week the latest results from a Field poll were released. For the sake of brevity, let’s point out that Field shows the Gubernatorial race at a dead heat, with both Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman currently holding 41% of the vote, with the remained undecided. In the U.S. Senate race, Field has incumbent Senator Barbara Boxer at 47% of the vote and Carly Fiorina at 41%.

OK, now fast forward to this past weekend, and the… Read More

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

I’m on the road today (I’m actually in San Francisco where I am about to joust with Democratic consultant Garry South in front of execs with the Bay Area Council) — but I wanted to make sure that our site readers who do not follow our twitter feed that today Meg Whitman staked out her formal positions on the November ballot measures.

Of particular and unfortunate note was Whitman’s opposition to Proposition 23, the measure which would suspend the former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez’s greenhouse gas emission reduction mandates until California has recovered from this recession. (AB 32 was put on post-partisan Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk without any Republican votes.)

If you need a reminder of the reasons why Prop. 23 needs to pass and why the very underpinnings of AB 32 are counter to the very philosophy and world view of the Republican Party, you can see that… Read More

Emotion regarding social issues is clouding the political judgment of political observers and the local press in the race for the 5th Assembly District between Republican Small Business Owner Andy Pugno, Democrat Community Physician/Educator Richard Pan, and Peace and Freedom College Student Elizabeth Martinez. So the Pugno campaign will attempt to provide some facts for people to consider about the race, the district and the candidates. Pugno Fact #5 As of the 60-day close of voter registration, the makeup of Assembly District 5 is now 40% Republican, 37% Democrat. Under the 2001 redistricting plan, no Democrat has won a legislative seat when Republican registration was 40% or above. Just a short time ago, this district had more Democrats than Republicans. Today Republicans have a margin of almost 6,000 and the drive to register more Republicans continues.… Read More