[Publisher’s Note – This particular opinion piece rambles on a bit. Somewhere in this is a point to be made. Discerning readers will have to figure it out… Flash]

There is definitely no road map for a conservative legislator when dealing with the state budget debacle, which is why if you look at the vote’s on the state budget in the Senate and Assembly, Republicans are split – many reliably conservative legislators voted for the bill, while still many others voted against it.

Welcome to the intersection of policy and politics. I mean, let’s be clear. The budget that sits on Governor Schwarzenegger’s desk, that he has vowed to veto on Friday (presumably Friday to maximize inconvenience to legislators who would have to come up on the weekend for a potential over-ride vote, with one Assemblyman, Lloyd Levine, having to choose between a budget vote in Sacramento, and his own wedding in Seattle), is riddled with reasons for a conservative to vote no. Frankly, it doesn’t contain nearly enough… Read More

Your friends at Wal-Mart have embarked on an ambitious plan to register "Wal-Mart women" to vote.

Even Wal-Mart with their 200-plus California locations can’t make CA a red state but Democrats nationally should worry about this effort. Research conducted by my firm shows that Wal-Mart shoppers are not Obama voters. McCain-Palin will benefit in a big way from these new registrations across the country.

The effort by Wal-Mart is a noble one, they have a large audience, 130+ million US visitors a week and 1.4 million associates. It is hard to criticize the retail giant for trying to increase civic participation. Although someone will.

Wal-Mart’s in-house TV network will feature a public service announcement on voter registration and urge shoppers and workers alike to visit a Wal-Mart sponsored web page that guides wannabe voters to the appropriate forms to fill out.

Wal-Mart… Read More

Over the weekend I was in Washington, DC, to attend Family Research Council’s Values Voter Summit. Now in its third year, the conference drew over 2,000 pro-family “values” voters from all across America to the Washington Hilton for three days of conservative speakers, networking and informative break-out sessions.

Keynote speakers for the event included Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Sean Hannity, among other conservative commentators, political leaders and policy experts. As a group of credentialed bloggers (new media) typed away in the back of the convention hall, Hannity boldly declared that 2008 is the year journalism officially died in America. “Journalist” Charlie Gibson’s embarrassing gotcha interview of Governor Palin two nights before was certainly the death knell.

As you can imagine, California was the topic of many speeches and private conversations. After all, the most critical battle for traditional marriage is taking place in our state with Proposition 8. In a break-out session about the marriage issue, Alliance Defense Fund attorney (and my Constitutional Law professor in law… Read More

Legislative Democrats for about two minutes today were given a big disincentive to override a pending Gubernatorial veto of the just-passed state budget. Just minutes ago the Governor made it clear in prepared remarks at a press conference that he will not sign a budget that is absent real structural budget reforms. Of course we here at the FlashReport feel that we need a true Gann-style spending cap in place if we are going to have real reform. While legislative Republicans support that, it has not been introduced by the Governor. But even the "lite" version of budget reform, championed by the Governor, was gutted by the Democrats.

The Governor actually said that if the legislature overrides his veto (which can be done with the same 2/3 vote in each house that just passed it), that he will respond by using his veto pen on all of the nearly 900 pieces of legislation sitting on his desk! This really throws down the gauntlet at Perata, Bass and their other Democrat legislators, since virtually any piece of meaningful legislation on the Governor’s desk is something they put there.

My mind started to race… Republican legislators… Read More

The buzz in the capitol is that Governor Schwarzenegger is going to announce his veto of the budget passed early this morning by the legislature. We’ll find out at 3pm when he holds a press conference. There’s probably a legislative override coming if the veto does happen. Maybe if the governor knew the names of the Republican Caucus members he could call them to find out just how firm they were on their budget votes…

Watch the press conference live here.… Read More

If you need the case for reforming the budget-drafting process, then take two minutes to read the budget bill here. Good luck though, it would take a seasoned state policy expert a much longer time to even delve into this document. And it doesn’t even include the 27 trailer bills.

If the process is working correctly, authentic budget negotiations (you know, between Republicans and Democrats) would take place in the normal Budget Committee process. But of course that doesn’t happen now, as the majority party rams through "their" budget through committee on a majority vote — disregarding the fact that it takes a 2/3 vote to pass the budget in each chamber. It’s worthy of note that Senator Jeff Denham introduced legislation to do just this — which was voted down by Democrats.

So now just about everyone has to play "catch up" and figure out what the heck is in this mammoth and recently released budget language.… Read More

In the wee hours this morning, the California State Assembly, following behind the Senate who had done so hours before, passed along to Governor Schwarzenegger a budget that represents the collision of two immutable forces — Democrats who simply refuse to reduce state spending to a reasonable amount, and Republican legislators who finally have said "enough is enough" and refuse to raise taxes any longer to feed the overspending.

The result is, as Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association calls it in a column on the FlashReport today, a budget that is ugly, but holds the line on taxes. And we agree, this budget is an unfortunate one, because it doesn’t represent what Californians deserve, but it likely represents the best that they are going to get, given the dominance of the radical left in the building.

It is widely accepted that one of the items that actually moved the budget negotiations away from a "Democrats with Arnold" model to a "Big Four"… Read More

In the wee hours this morning, the California State Assembly, following behind the Senate who had done so hours before, passed along to Governor Schwarzenegger a budget that represents the collision of two immutable forces — Democrats who simply refuse to reduce state spending to a reasonable amount, and Republican legislators who finally have said "enough is enough" and refuse to raise taxes any longer to feed the overspending.

The result is, as Jon Coupal of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association calls it in a column on the FlashReport today, a budget that is ugly, but holds the line on taxes. And we agree, this budget is an unfortunate one, because it doesn’t represent what Californians deserve, but it likely represents the best that they are going to get, given the dominance of the radical left in the building.

It is widely accepted that one of the items that actually moved the budget negotiations away from a "Democrats with Arnold" model to a "Big Four" legislative leader model… Read More