We would like to wish our readers a Merry Christmas or a Happy Hannukah, and a great New Years. The FlashReport is currently in our "holiday break" mode, where we offer much more limited coverage. This takes place annually from the Saturday before Christmas through New Years Day. Traditionally the political news coverage is very slow, and it gives the elves here a chance to recharge their batteries before we return full steam ahead on January 2nd. The FlashReport Weblog on California Politics will be up and running during our seasonal break, and so we encourage you to keep an eye on it. Thank you so much for making 2008 the most successful year yet, by any measurable standard, for the FlashReport. We had more blog posts and more featured columns than any other year. We’ve had more readers (by far) than we’ve had since we began as an e-mail newsletter in 2001. We’ve had more visibility in terms of being mentioned in other blogs or in main stream media publications, and done more interviews than even before on television, radio, and for print media.

We… Read More

I may not be the biggest Schwarzenegger fan, but he had a strong message for the legislature this morning: solve the budget problem now, make real spending cuts and don’t punish the people of California with higher taxes. I have no doubt that the final agreement will include tax increases in some fashion (the people did put the never-met-a-tax-I-didn’t-like party in charge of the legislature and the governor has shown that he is willig to consider some level of tax increases). However, a responsible budget cannot ignore the need to cut the size of government.

Spending cuts are never popular. PTA leaders at my children’s schools are meeting parents at drop off and pick up with letters to send to the legislature to ask for schools to be spared from cuts. I refused the letter because I know that schools have to be part of this solution. So do health and welfare programs and the prisons. Those are the three areas where this state spends the majority of its money. But if we had real leadership in the administration of our public schools, we’d be making some serious changes in the bureaucracy, including making cuts in the fat in the school system… Read More

California’s Tax Hike Showdown

California Democrats in Sacramento are conspiring to evade the state constitution and pass a tax hike of up to $11 billion in the next few days.

State law requires a two-thirds majority of the California legislature to raise taxes. But the Democrats who run the state house and senate by big margins have gotten frustrated by the anti-tax bloc of Republicans who have held an effective veto over the tax scheme. Democrats have come up with a plan to raise income, sales and gas taxes without the two-thirds vote, thanks to some fancy legal maneuvering. An enraged Mike Villines, the House minority leader, tells me: "This is just a ploy to get around the constitution. We will fight… Read More

In 1988 as a student at UCLA, I was elected for the first time to the Los Angeles County Republican Central Committee. At that time the 60thdistrict included part of West Covina and El Monte. Anyone remember Assemblywoman Sally Tanner?

At that time one of the local Republicans was getting to run for Rio Hondo Community College Board. The candidate was Elizabeth Van Note (still active, but lives is San Luis Obispo). I remember the meeting because the goal was in 1989 to knock off the incumbent.

One of the reasons was the incumbent was a left wing Democrat, but also a savvy politician that would go places if we didn’t end it now. A lot of effort was put into that race. It was the first time I ever hears such reasoning for a non-partisan race. It made sense. Democrats move on to dobad things in higher office. Stop them now!

Unfortunately, our efforts failed. It was a tough district and beating an incumbent is hard. The incumbent did go on as predicted to Assembly, State Senate, and Congress. And by the way congratulations to the new Labor Secretary Hilda Solis.

And who says non-partisan elections don’t matter?… Read More

It would appear, based on public statements from Democrat Legislative leaders, that dealing with the state’s fiscal mess is being punted until after the New Year. This after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged yesterday to veto an outrageous scheme concocted primary by State Senate President Darrell Steinberg — passing over $8 billion in new taxes (income, gas, sales, and more) on just a majority vote!

Fortunately for California taxpayers, the vice-like iron grip that the public employee unions have on Democrats in the legislature is so rock-solid that Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass could not muster up the votes to give the Governor some "economic stimulus" policy changes that he wants in a tax-increase package, many of which relax labor law requirements on employers (California has some of the most notorious anti-business laws in the nation). So the Governor has said he will veto the package, and while he specifically avoided opining on the issue of the illegal votes to increase taxes, we’ll take the veto as a victory for taxpayers this round. That said, it is rather oxymoronic to say that you want to have… Read More

A reminder to our loyal readers that since we started the FlashReport as an e-mail newsletter back in 2001, and then shifted to a website format in 2005, we have maintained an annual tradition of giving the "elves" an annual break starting the Saturday before Christmas, extending through New Years. During the break, the main page of the site is officially closed. While we will have links up to help you navigate to many of the news sources that we go to when we compile links, we will not be populating the main page with links until January 2nd.

As we have done in the past, we are "leaving the lights on" over on the FlashReport blog page, and so look for new content to continue to appear there over the holidays — especially if we are covering any kind of breaking news.

I will not be going out of town, and is the past is an indicator, will still be surfing the web for news, and highlighting a few of the "must reads" each day on the blog — though don’t look for too many early morning posts!

Have a great holiday season, and thanks for making 2008 the most successful one in the seven years we’ve been at… Read More

It would appear, based on public statements from Democrat Legislative leaders, that dealing with the state’s fiscal mess is being punted until after the New Year. This after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger pledged yesterday to veto an outrageous scheme concocted primary by State Senate President Darrell Steinberg — passing over $8 billion in new taxes (income, gas, sales, and more) on just a majority vote!

Fortunately for California taxpayers, the vice-like iron grip that the public employee unions have on Democrats in the legislature is so rock-solid that Steinberg and Assembly Speaker Karen Bass could not muster up the votes to give the Governor some "economic stimulus" policy changes that he wants in a tax-increase package, many of which relax labor law requirements on employers (California has some of the most notorious anti-business laws in the nation). So the Governor has said he will veto the package, and while he specifically avoided opining on the issue of the illegal votes to increase taxes, we’ll take the veto as a victory for taxpayers this round. That said, it is rather oxymoronic to say that you want to have… Read More

This is not the first time the Democrats have tried to raise taxes on a majority vote, and, guess what, on most occasions in the past they have been successful in their efforts.

Let’s start with Sinclair Paint. In that case, the Supreme Court authorized the passage of an assessment on all paint manufacturers for child health programs on a majority vote. The bill received no Republican votes, yet the tax was passed and collected, challenged in court, and the tax was legitimized by Ron George and the California Supremes. The Court’s reasoning was this: Paint manufacturers put lead in the paint 50 years ago, lead paint affected the health of some children, therefore a fee on paint manufacturers (even if those manufacturers did not make lead paint) for all children’s health programs (even if those health issues are not related to lead-based paint health problems) is a fee, not a tax, because it is assessed to remedy a problem created by the people upon whom the fee is assessed. Using this logic, quite frankly, almost any tax could be justified as a fee.

Another example–the so-called revenue neutrality rule adopted by the Legislative… Read More