Quote of the Day: “…if we can save money by adding 30 million people to our rolls, we need to go insure everybody in China and then we’ll be done with the deficit. This bill is a disaster."– Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

Sunday: It now appears that the earliest the Government -Run Healthcare vote will occur is Sunday afternoon. There is still strong bipartisan opposition. There is only single party support. As of now they do not have enough votes. Hopefully that will still be the case on Sunday. The President has again delayed his trip overseas to continue applying pressure on wavering Democrats. This is a change from his previous plan which was to have an Air Force jet fly him the bill in Indonesia to sign.

The Senate: We metyesterday morning with our Republican Senate Colleagues. They made it clear that they have 18 “points of order” that they can and will raise if a reconciliation bill makes it to the Senate. This will not enable them to kill the bill (it will pass with only 50 votes plus the Vice President) but they will significantly change it. So, any House Democrat cannot be… Read More

In today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail, FR friend John Fund highlights exactly how vulnerable Barbara Boxer is in her re-election bid this year…… Read More

California state government continues to face a massive deficit that is in the tens of billions of dollars. A deficit that I would submit is largely a function of decades of liberal Democrat driven public policies in Sacramento that are highlighted by a virtually unchallenged and unoriginal toxic agenda – increase spending consistently, increase taxes consistently, and increase regulations consistently. This is not rocket science, when you do all three of these things consistently, you eventually hit a breaking point. You break taxpayers, and you break the economy itself.

It’s been interesting and distressing watching the political-class in and around the State Capitol go through all sorts of gyrations to try and avoid the obvious solution to our state’s fiscal woes. We’ve seen accusations that term limits are the problem. They aren’t. We’ve heard that the taxpayer protections in Proposition 13 are the problem. They aren’t. Now are told that Republican participant in the state budget because of the 2/3rds vote is the problem – and it isn’t.

Sadly, a review of GOP votes in state budget shows that, frankly, Republicans never hold… Read More

Wednesday, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) publicly announced that he will switch his vote on the Health care bill from “no” last time to “yes” this time. With Kucinich’s vote, now all of the most liberal Democrats in Congress are supporting the bill. 87 Democrats co-sponsored a bill to immediately have full blown socialized medicine like Canada or Britain. It appears now that all of those Democrats are supporting this bill that the President and Democratic leadership say is not government-run health care.

Hmmm. So if it’s not government run health care, how did you get 100% of the votes of those who publicly support government run health care and you are having trouble only with the moderates who oppose it?

Because, this bill is designed to get to European stylegovernment health care with rationing and so forth. Here’s how it does it: There will be a government agency that will determine the minimum benefits that must be included in all health insurance plans. It will mandate much more coverage which almost no insurance plan has today,which in… Read More

California state government continues to face a massive deficit that is in the tens of billions of dollars. A deficit that I would submit is largely a function of decades of liberal Democrat driven public policies in Sacramento that are highlighted by a virtually unchallenged and unoriginal toxic agenda – increase spending consistently, increase taxes consistently, and increase regulations consistently. This is not rocket science, when you do all three of these things consistently, you eventually hit a breaking point. You break taxpayers, and you break the economy itself.

It’s been interesting and distressing watching the political-class in and around the State Capitol go through all sorts of gyrations to try and avoid the obvious solution to our state’s fiscal woes. We’ve seen accusations that term limits are the problem. They aren’t. We’ve heard that the taxpayer protections in Proposition 13 are the problem. They aren’t. Now are told that Republican participant in the state budget because of the 2/3rds vote is the problem – and it isn’t.

Sadly, a review of GOP votes in state budget shows that, frankly, Republicans never hold… Read More

Welcome to the "spin room" as it were. The latest Rasmussen and Field Poll numbers are in (they are some of the many statewide surveys that are taken, showing snapshots of voter opinion at a given moment), and below is a memo sent from Meg Whitman’s public opinion consultants, John McLaughlin and David Hill, to one of her general consultants, Mike Murphy, outlining why they see the Field numbers as being great news for Whitman, terrible news for Steve Poizner, and very disturbing for Jerry Brown….

Memo To: Mike Murphy From: John McLaughlin and David Hill Date: March 18, 2010… Read More

The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association threw down the gauntlet today and entered the Ballot Initiative fight to stop California’s massive “Energy Tax.”

This is a game-changer in the race to Suspend AB 32.

Up until now, the effort has been critiqued for enjoying the support of Valero energy company, giving firepower to its enemies who suggest this is only an effort being fought by the oil companies.

They couldn’t be more wrong.

With HJTA entering the fight, this changes everything.

You may recall it was HJTA who lead the fight against the Governor and his political machine during last year’s Prop. 1A fight — you rememeber — the $16 billion tax on the people. The opposition effort to the Governor and the Legislature’s proposed tax increases were hardly organized by Sacramento standards – until they got involved. At the end of the day, even though they were outspent 20-to-1 by the Governor, the Democrats, and the Unions, Prop. 1A was defeated by a very healthy 2-to-1 landslide.

Expect them to do the same with the effort to Suspend AB 32. Expect them to bring to bear the… Read More

It is the primary season in a year of Republican ascendancy. Conservatives have figured out that their fratricide of the last several years handed power over to the Democrats, and they have united (to a certain extent). That means that candidates have "seen the light," they have experienced their election year conversions, and all Republicans candidates are conservatives. They run commercials this time of year touting how conservative they are, how their opponents are not, and how they are going to implement [insert conservative agenda item here] when they get elected.

This year they will be elected. Whether they are running for Governor, Senator, Member of Congress, Legislator or other, they will be elected. As in 1994, they will suddenly have power.

However, for the last 16 years, many of these candidates have been sitting in their offices, their country clubs, their neighborhoods or in their homes, listening to the media, their friends, their office mates, or their business associates deride conservatives in office. They have been told how unreasonable conservatives are, how unrealistic they are, how important it is to work with liberals,… Read More