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Waste Watchers: Taxpayers Get Shortchanged by San Jose Employee Pension System’s Miscalculations

Taxpayers should be really frightened to know that it took the current market meltdown to discover costly errors with the city of San Jose’s employee pension system.

According to the Mercury News, (January 7, 2009), “…many retired city workers are still expecting bonus checks for high earnings reaped before the recent market crash.”

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Today, Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Patrick Marlette sided with Governor Schwarzenegger and taxpayers by ordering Controller John Chiang to implement the Governor’s furlough plan. The Governor’s plan to require state workers to furlough two days each month in order to save the state $1.3 billion is the right thing to do, given the amount of spending that the state needs to cut. In fact, the Governor’s plan, given the drastic problem created by chronic overspending going back years, is modest, and probably a precursor to more to come. Especially if Democrats in the legislature refuse to take a scalpel to state spending, and continue to seem content to spend like mad until literally the money runs out.

If you remember last week, I took the Controller, John Chiang to task for reversing his position on this issue and siding with the unions who filed a lawsuit to stop the furloughs. Taking a look at his political contributions and obvious political ambition, his decision to side with the same unions that had contributed tens of thousands of dollars to his campaign for Controller showed that he is nothing… Read More

Los Angeles area Rep. Jane Harman had her name floated as the number two at the Department of Transportation, noted in today’s In the Loop column in the Washington Post.

Politico’s Glenn Thrush reports that Alaska bigwig Sen. Ted Stevens has headed to Arizona in a U-Haul van with his congressional possessions.

Karl Rove pens a column in today’s Wall Street Journal taking issue with President Obama’s org-chart and operational responsibilities, here.

Elsewhere in the Journal, a U.S. Army deserter is profiled where we learn about his fight to seek asylum in Germany and the assistance he’s received from peace activists and punk rockers.

Finally, in a battle sure to give cheese lovers the blues, the Washington Post reported one of the outgoing Bush Administration’s final acts was to enact a 300% tariff on Roquefort cheese, fizzy Italian water, foie gras and other… Read More

Next month, the State Republican Party Central Committee will meet in Sacramento to elect most of its officers. Here at the FlashReport, we’re taking the opportunity to work our way through the CRP offices up for election, and give you our take on the candidates who are running. While there is no particular order in which we are going, we’ll eventually get to all of the positions that are being elected – Chairman, Vice Chairman, the Regional Vice Chairmen, and President of the County Chairmens Association. We’ve offered to run columns from the candidates, and all but two have responded so far.

So far the FlashReport has endorsed Laura Gadke for re-election as Vice Chairman for the Central Valley Region. Today we take a look at the Los Angeles Region Vice Chairman position, where incumbent Doug Boyd is seeking re-election.… Read More

Big Spending Bill: The final vote on HR 1, the non-stimulating stimulus bill, was 244-188. Amongst Democrats, the vote was 244-11. Not one single Republican voted for the bill. In my 3 years here, I cannot remember a single major vote where all Republicans voted the same way. President Obama wanted a bipartisan vote. But you can’t have a bipartisan vote without a bipartisan bill. And this bill is not even close. It will now go to the Senate where it will pass with some amendments which will likely improve the bill, but increase the cost. Then it will return to the House for a final vote before the President signs it.

I listened to many of the speeches given by supporters of the bill today. I also had the opportunity to question the Director of the Congressional Budget Office on the subject. The tepid arguments and weak rebuttals of the proponents here leads me to believe that perhaps even they know this is not really about stimulus. I can say that maybe 25% of the items in this bill have some multiplier effect, and that’s being generous. But the rest is just spending. Just 2… Read More

Judy Chu just received the endorsement of the Los Angeles County Labor Federation in her bid to replace Hilda Solis in the 32nd Congressional District. So far, her main Democratic opponent is State. Sen. Gil Cedillo.

This is good endorsement. Question is will this or her Republican endorsements make a difference?

Thats right Republican endorsements. In a special election members of any party can cross over and vote for a candidate of another candidate in the primary. The 32nd CD is about 21% Republican. Although there are at least two well-funded candidates talking about running, almost a dozen local GOP officeholders have endorsed Chu.I havent checked the registration of everyone. These were the one I saw and knew they were Republicans, at least recently they were.

Dennis Zine, Los Angeles City Councilmember John King, Covina City Councilmember Harry Baldwin, San Gabriel Mayor Mike Ten, South Pasadena City Councilmember and GOP Nominee in the 22nd SD in 2006. Mary Su, Walnut City Councilmember… Read More

Next month, the State Republican Party Central Committee will meet in Sacramento to elect most of its officers. Here at the FlashReport, we’re taking the opportunity to work our way through the CRP offices up for election, and give you our take on the candidates who are running. While there is no particular order in which we are going, we’ll eventually get to all of the positions that are being elected – Chairman, Vice Chairman, the Regional Vice Chairmen, and President of the County Chairmens Association. We’ve offered to run columns from the candidates, and all but two have responded so far.

So far the FlashReport has endorsed Laura Gadke for re-election as Vice Chairman for the Central Valley Region. Today we take a look at the Los Angeles Region Vice Chairman position, where incumbent Doug Boyd is seeking re-election.… Read More

Senator Battin had a great feature that heused to post on this site called "Waste Watchers." It was (and still is) put together by thegifted budget gurus on theRepublican Senate Caucus staff and released periodically. Theseare wonderful snippets of real-life government waste in action. All told, they have exposednearly $500 Million in wastefulspending. Now thatmy boss, Senator Benoit, has replaced Senator Battin,the "Waste Watcher" traditionwillcontinue on the Flash Report!

Waste Watchers: UC Workers Paid $600,000 To Change Offices The “Golden Years” have just become a little brighter for some special university employees. With looming budget cuts, reducing workforce costs is a sound administrative solution. However, the benefits for a number of… Read More