I don’t expect much news to come out of the Governor’s State of the State Address, taking place right now. If you’re like me, you’d much rather tune in to Arnold Sings The Best of Public Domain. This is hillarious!

(h/t to MT)… Read More

With only 16 days remaining before the new national face of the Republican party is elected, the anonymous emails, whispers and rumors are getting out of control.This national election might be turning into a circus. In just a couple of weeks, 168 elected members of the Republican National Committee will make the most important vote of their RNC experience. All of the candidates are vigorously seeking votes by flying or driving to most of the states to meetthe threevoters in… Read More

My Wednesday morning began earlier than usual with a sunrise call from Los Angeles radio station KFI requesting to discuss a report released by California’s Sex Offender Management Board, a state commission that monitors and analyzes sex offender laws in California.

Apparently SOMB’s latest report suggests that California should overturn a provision of Prop 83: Jessica’s Law that restricts paroled sex offenders from living 2,000 feet from schools, parks and other places where children gather.

I had already discussed the report with members of the SOMB and the Los Angeles Times the day previous so I was not caught off guard by the KFI reporter. Matter of fact, I prepared myself for one of those days where I would receive emails and calls from Californians understandably upset by yet another news story condemning Jessica’s Law.

I told the KFI reporter what I told everyone else: I am disappointed by the report’s recommendations, which has suggested in a vague manner that the Legislature and Governor toss the will of the voters aside in favor of the rights of sex offenders – some of whom may have been inconvenienced by the 2,000-foot living… Read More

Democrats want Republicans to further ruin their “brand name” because of their overspending, and that is ridiculous. Democrats have, year after year, authored spending plans that California government could not afford. Now the proverbial chickens have come home to roost, and all of the overspending has led to a crisis.

Virtually every legislative Republican has taken a “no new taxes” pledge. Contrary to the rhetoric of the left, I have yet to find a single legislative Republican who took the pledge because of a cynical “you have to sign it to win a Republican primary” strategy. On the contrary – every GOPer in the Capitol to whom I have spoken feels very honestly that state government is too big. Many have expressed a sentiment that Californians are punitively overtaxed. Certainly when you compare tax rates in California verses those in the other states, you have no choice but to draw the conclusion that “the pursuit of happiness” is a lot more costly, in terms of tax burden, here in the “Golden” state.

So now Republican are supposed to dump their brand name as the party of limited government, lower taxes and individual… Read More

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post on the hypocrisy of the Democrats. Democrats demand Republicans sacrifice what Republicans believe in, but Democrats will not budge an inch on their beliefs. This refusal of Democrats to budge has had two effects. First, when the state was swimming in money (two budget cycles ago the budget had a $9 billion surplus), the Democrats spent money like drunken sailors (I am not intending to insult drunken sailors here, since they are generally more responsible with their money than Democrat legislators are with taxpayer dollars). Second, in bad years, the spending splurges of the good years and the refusal of the Democrats to mend their spendthrift ways has led to the bankruptcy of the state.

Shane Goldmacher of the Sacramento Bee blogged on my post saying: "Haynes makes no mention in his post of how to close the roughly $40 billion budget gap, or the impending Feb. 1 deadline, when California is expected to begin issuing IOUs. But he does lay out the political case for Republicans to lay off new taxes."

Oh my goodness. I have spent three years writing about, and telling anyone who will listen, that this budget… Read More

I am sure that Timothy F. Geithner is qualified to be Secretary of the Treasury, and therefore leader of the Internal Revenue Service, notwithstanding his failure to pay his self-employment taxes while working at the International Monetary Fund in the early 2000s. The Obama Team and Geithner call his failure to timely file them a "common mistake," stating he was technically "self-employed." That’s a bunch of baloney, of course. Geithner has an Ivy League education; and his excuse is essentially that because he never worked for himself before the IMF, he didn’t know the tax rules.Just the typeof guy we need at the TreasuryDepartment to head off a depression……

But self-employment taxes are also commonly known as abig feature on any tax return where the taxpayer is filing a "Schedule C" with IRS Form 1040. In fact, self-employment taxes can often end up being the biggest single tax paid by a self-employed individual, since they are calculated on the side of the return that are not affected or reduced by common tax deductions. It is not uncommon for a self-employed individual to owe… Read More

A couple of days ago, I wrote a post on the hypocrisy of the Democrats. Democrats demand Republicans sacrifice what Republicans believe in, but Democrats will not budge an inch on their beliefs. This refusal of Democrats to budge has had two effects. First, when the state was swimming in money (two budget cycles ago the budget had a $9 billion surplus), the Democrats spent money like drunken sailors (I am not intending to insult drunken sailors here, since they are generally more responsible with their money than Democrat legislators are with taxpayer dollars). Second, in bad years, the spending splurges of the good years and the refusal of the Democrats to mend their spendthrift ways has led to the bankruptcy of the state.

Shane Goldmacher of the Sacramento Bee blogged on my post saying: "Haynes makes no mention in his post of how to close the roughly $40 billion budget gap, or the impending Feb. 1 deadline, when California is expected to begin issuing IOUs. But he does lay out the political case for Republicans to lay off new taxes."

Oh my goodness. I have spent three years writing about, and telling anyone who will listen, that this budget… Read More

I am very excited to announce to FlashReport readers that our own longtime FR blogger, Adam Probolsky, who heads up the respected Probolsky Research organization, has partnered up with the folks at Capitol Weekly and they will now be conducting a periodic statewide survey of California voters. You can read the announcement of this new survey here on the CW website.

I caught up with Adam, who is quite excited about the new partnership with CW, a well respected publication on California politics (they publish on Thursdays, and we typically carry links to almost all of their stories on our main page).

Adam told me that, “Our goal is to ask some of the more interesting questions that no one is asking.” He went on to say that the, “many of the questions they ask may be a little more controversial, but may be more timely and on-point.”

He assured me that because he writes for our site,… Read More