The campaign trail of gubernatorial hopeful Steve Poizner took him last evening to South Orange County, where I call home. He had an event with local elected officials. It was so close that I had to swing by and check it out. There I saw Orange County Supervisor Pat Bates, and since Poiz’s campaign had announced her endorsement earlier in the day, I thought I’d whip out the Flip camera (it’s always with me in case of that "TMZ moment") — and have some fun.

A reminder — as an officer of the State GOP, I do not endorse in contested Republican primaries. So if you are a GOP candidate for statewide office, and you come into my turf, I may "Flip you on!"

… Read More

LETTER TO PUBLIC OFFICIALS PRAISING RACE TO THE TOP LEGISLATION

January 8, 2010

Dear Race To The Top Passage Enthusiast:

**There is more – click the link**

View Full Commentary… Read More

LETTER TO PUBLIC OFFICIALS PRAISING RACE TO THE TOP LEGISLATION

January 8, 2010

Dear Race To The Top Passage Enthusiast:

I recently saw your public statement proclaiming the great victory for California in the passage of "Race To The Top" education legislation, that brings our state’s laws in compliance with federal guidelines, and making our state eligible for hundreds of millions of federal tax dollars.

On the micro level, I agree that this legislation positively impacts California’s education system — the substance of its contents are largely positive. At this level, it’s good that we passed it — and pleasant to see it pass over the objections of the California Teachers Association labor union.

That said, I ask you and all of my friends to consider that at the macro-level, the "Race To The Top" legislation passed out of Washington, D.C., represents the worst form of federal meddling into issues out of its purvey. Federal interference with state and local issues has… Read More

Yesterday, I posted a blog on Flash Report that disputed the numbers Governor Schwarzenegger used to compare California’s spending of prisons and higher education.

He said during his State of the State speech that California spends 45 percent more on prisons than on higher education. I replied that the state spent 7.3 percent of thetotal state budgeton prisons and 9.7 percent of thetotal state budgeton higher education, which differs vastly from the Governor’s State of the State numbers.

Keep in mind I was using the Governor’s own 2009-10 budget numbers!

Here’s the Governor’s chart (I’ve highlighted prisons in yellowand higher ed in green): (Click on the chart to enlarge it.)

Today, I read a Flash blog that… Read More

In the State of the State address yesterday, Governor Schwarzenegger talked about using tax incentives on the purchase of green technologies as a means of creating jobs. This is not simply a theoretical notion. The fact is, there are several initiatives throughout the U.S. that could make this piece of the Governor’s plan a reality, and the President and CEO of two of them will be my guest on Go Green Radio tomorrow.

Robbie Diamond is the President & CEO of Securing America’s Future Energy (SAFE) – www.secureenergy.org – , and the Electrification Coalition – www.electrificationcoalition.org -, both nonpartisan, not-for-profit groups of business four star military leaders committed to promoting policies and actions that facilitate the deployment of electric vehicles on a mass scale in order to combat the economic, environmental, and national security dangers caused by our nation’s dependence on petroleum.

Among Robbie’s distinguished group of… Read More

Today John Perez, an ultra-liberal Democrat from Los Angeles, was elected Speaker of the Assembly. Good for him – and congratulations. That is a major achievement, especially for a freshman lawmaker. I know that Perez has the best interests of California at heart, even if his left wing ideology will guide him down the wrong path to make our state a better place for Californians to live, work and play.

As was tweeted by Anthony York at Capitol Weekly earlier in the week, and reported by Torey Van Oot on the Sacramento Bee’s Capitol Alert blog this morning that Assembly Republicans will put forward their leader, Sam Blakeslee, for Speaker. They did so, and it made me, as a Republican, proud.

I have written that Republicans as a minority party should put forward their own candidates for leader for many years. I did so when Senator Steinberg was elected Senate President Pro-Tem, and I did so when Speakers Nunez, Bass and now Perez were elected.

Yes, every Assembly Republican knew that the outcome of the Speakership vote was preordained. So… Read More

I just spoke with a longtime FR Blog reader who told me they had only discovered a couple of days ago that we feature original content on our main news aggregation page. Yes, almost every day we have original columns you won’t find anywhere else! Today we have an AFP-CA video and columns from Steve Poizner Sam Aanestad and Brian Nestande that you won’t want to miss.

So if you stop by the FR blog regularly – great! But at least once a day visit the main page, too!

LINK TO MAIN PAGE

Well, it’s been almost seven long years since the voters of California placed their economic and political future into the hands of Arnold Schwarzenegger. With the State in far worse shape than when he inherited the Davis mess, one could make the case, easily, that when he declared himself to be "post partisan" his chance at becoming effective as Governor ended.

We can all have a romantic vision of post partisanship, but it doesn’t work, and never will. Politics is bloodsport. We are never, ever all just going to "get along". My chief complaint with this Governor is that a man with business experience and a supposedly center right disposition could get his ass handed to him over and over again by leftist legislators with nary a clue on how to run an economy or a government. Arnold had truly been a girly man during his term. He’s got one chance left now to make amends and not leave California hanging over a cliff.

This is the year to shut the State government down in order to make the budget work. There’s no revenue, and there has been no reform of State spending. Taxes can’t be raised unless the… Read More