Two days after the election, and the vote counting continues here in the 4th CD. As of today, Tom McClintock is up 709 votes over Charlie Brown. There are still several thousand absentee and provisional ballots to count and it’s going slowly—election officials want to make sure they count accurately. I’ll post more updates on the vote count as the numbers come in…… Read More

I've been up in Sacramento for a couple of days, doing the kind of networking that FR readers would expect in order to be able to bring you the insights and commentaries you've come to expect here on the FlashReport. As I sit in my hotel room at the Capitol Hyatt hotel, formatting some columns for tomorrow morning's FR, there is a roar coming from the nearby Capitol building. There is a crowd of protesters gathered there, I would say about 1500 people strong – all upset about the defeat of Proposition 8. They are all screaming, “We want it. Now.”… Read More

Today, the Assembly special session was convened, the budget mess being the purpose. Thetax ideas being floated to "fix" it include 3 ideas I’ll talk about here, [plus,there’s a new tax on services and a vehicle fee increase].

Let me put it this way: When you get in your car [with a higher reg fee? or higher repair fees?], you pay a newoil tax. When you get to the store, you pay an increased sales tax. When you find you have less to spend because government is spending it for you, you may stop at the local watering hole and pay an increased alcohol tax per drink. Even then you may realize that dying won’t get you off the hook as the Fed death tax increases exponentially when the death taxphasedown expires Dec 31 2009, but that’s a Federal issue that I’ll leave out of the rest of this post.

The oil severance taxapplies to domestically produced oil…a sure fire incentive to decrease our dependence on foreign oil,yeah!

The sales tax increase, only temporary you know, of 1.5% is a surefire winner for boosting the economy going into… Read More

Just moments ago, Mike Villines was unanimously re-elected Leader by his fellow Assembly Republicans. Congratulations, Mike!!… Read More

Senate Republican Leader Dave Cogdill of Modesto and Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines of Fresno today issued the following statement in response to Governor Schwarzenegger's proclamation calling a special session of the Legislature to address California's budget crisis and economic woes:

“Governor Schwarzenegger acted prudently in calling the Legislature back into session to focus on solving California's budget crisis and turning our lagging economy around. However, Republicans are very disappointed to see that his budget plan includes higher taxes. We need to open up state government ledgers to ensure tax dollars are being spent as effectively as possible, on necessary programs and projects that truly benefit Californians.Raising taxes is the worst thing we could do right now, it will devastate an economy that is hanging on by a thread, threaten jobs and hurt working families.

Instead of raising taxes so the Legislature can spend even more on bigger government, Republicans believe that our priority in the special session should be putting California jobs first and encouraging more companies to invest in our state and… Read More

I hate to disappoint those of you who think it already costs too much to spend a day at the Magic Kingdom. But apparently Governor Schwarzenegger has included applying sales and use taxes to amusement park tickets as part of a huge tax increase proposal that, frankly, makes his original mammoth sales tax proposal look “Mickey Mouse” by comparison.

In order to save me time, and ensure accuracy, I will actually paste below the exact language from the Governor summary of taxes that he would increase.

Before you start to send me an e-mail outraged that our Republican Governor, who campaigned for re-election against Phil Angelides by declaring in all corners of this state that he would vigorously oppose all tax increases, don’t. I already agree with you that this is outrageous, and a total breach of the trust that we placed in the Governor. We elected him to safeguard Californians against just this kind of attempt to increase… Read More

[Cross-posted from Red County/National Politics]

What is the difference between rats deserting a sinking ship, and anonymous McCain campaign leakers?

Rats can’t talk.

And another factor in the rats’ favor is they don’t point fingers and shift blame — they just bug out without a word.

The anonymous McCain staffers trying to blame their campaign’s failure on Sarah Palin could learn a thing or two from the rats.

The McCain campaign has no one to blame but itself, and the anonymous shanking of Gov. Palin dishonors Sen. McCain.

These leakers are behaving more like Daily Kos bloggers, not professionals, and they to face a few facts:

1) From the perspective of the Republican rank-and-file, the choice of Sarah Palin turned a funeral march into a real campaign. The grass roots were energized in a way they hadn’t been in years. Here in Orange County — the GOP heartland — volunteer headquarters were… Read More

New York’s NBC affiliate reports, and is also linked on Drudge, that Gov. Schwarzenegger rounds out what it calls a "star studded" cabinet list that rivals The Last Waltz in depth of celebrity well-knowns.

The NY Times had earlier blogged about it, here. Here is the same from another. Politico echoes it here.

yikes.

more later.… Read More