From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…

Local Hero

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Assemblymen Anthony Adams and Doug LaMalfa have been doing a great job blogging from the Assembly floor about the flood of bills passing this week. Unfortunately, there are so many bad bills passing, it’s hard to keep up with them. For example, moments ago the Assembly approved AB 1819 (Price) which will allow 16-year-olds to file an affidavit to register to vote in their next eligible election (when they turn 18). Of course Assemblyman Price and his fellow Democrats argued that this will encourage greater civic involvement from young people. But as Assemblyman Joel Anderson pointed out, this is a slippery slope towards allowing minors to vote in presidential elections—something Barack Obama could certainly benefit from were it allowed this year.

One point that I had not considered regarding AB 1819 was brought up by Assemblyman Chuck DeVore: every 16-year-old who files their voter registration affidavit will expose their private information to the public. In an era where keeping a minor’s personal information private is increasingly difficult, why is… Read More

In another win for more chaos to bethrust upon employers to try to responsibly hire employees, AB 2076 passed off of our floor today 41-28.

It would prohibit the State from using any electronic employment verification system, and prohihit local governments from requring employers to use it and declares it state policy to discourage employers from using such a system unless required by federal law.… Read More

The writingdone now mail leaps shrieking like the bat hungry from a cave… Read More

Well, we knew that newly minted Assembly Speaker Karen Bass was the Chief Lieutenant of former Speaker Fabian "Louis Vuitton" Nunez. While we expect, of course, for her to be just as liberal as Nunez, if not more so, we hope that the similarities between the two will be minimal from there. When King Fabian was in the room, he was the most important person there. If you had any doubts, you could just ask him and he would tell you.

One thing that is staying the same in the office of the Assembly Speaker is the Deputy Chief of Staff for Public Relations flaking as Bass has retained long-time FR "sparring mate" Steve Maviglio.

As a matter of fact, Maviglio will be regularly met on the battlefield by his counterpart in Assembly Republican Leader Mike Villines’ office, Morgan Crinklaw. The two will be battling in out in a war of words regularly on the Capitol Weekly website. You can check out their first exchange here.

Both are capable spin-masters, but of course Maviglio has the… Read More

Who would serve the goals for expanding growth and opportunity in Los Angeles County? And, why are the county government unions spending over $4,000,000 for Ridley-Thomas?

Both answers suggest the clear conflict between Chief and now councilman Bernard Parks and professional politician Mark Ridley-Thomas.

The Los Angeles Times is covering this all important race in some depth. Yesterday, the Times reported that the union IE " Alliance for a Stronger [union controlled] Community has raised an unsurpassed monies to buy the 3rd vote.

Should union candidate Ridley-Thomas win, the county’s treasury will be devoted primarily for the unions. Taxpayers be damned. Atlas will Shrug.

On taxes only Chief Bernard Parks has pledged a rational plan to avoid tax increases. Every tax increases always drives business away, particularly the small business owner. The real growth for jobs come from small businesses. Large corporate owners are no longer the job generators in Los Angeles.

Parks reports that he would eliminate prog;rams that have no specific source of… Read More

The recent dust-up between Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner and former Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi certainly made for great political theater.

The nasty exchange of letters featured in FlashReport was priceless and certainly marks an early skirmish in a potential 2010 Governor’s race square-off between the two statewide officeholders (with due deference to the Attorney General and to the CEO of E-Bay). The lesson learned for Poizner is that sometimes important decisions are going to bring loud criticism. But if you stand on principle and stand your ground – as he did — then you will come out the winner. In fact, I have had numerous opportunities to praise Poizner for standing tall, most recently for his leadership in the defeat of Proposition 93 to weaken legislative term limits.

Poizner should not have been surprised by the criticism that came his way. It came… Read More

Give me a break.

In perusing dozens of websites this morning to prepare FR’s main page, I came across this atrocious editorial from the Fresno Bee, basically putting pressure on Assembly Republican Leader to deliver his vote, and enough votes from his caucus, for Assembly Bill 3034, which changes around some of the details in a proposed mega-bond package for the November ballot for — high speed rail.

Come on! California is suffering from one of the worst over-spending problems in state history, with a build-up of tremendous pressure that will lead to an epic standoff as Democrats want to tax their way out of this problem, and Republicans fight to reduce spending.

Amidst all of this, legislators are supposed to "polish up" yet another borrowing scheme in the form of bonds to make a massive taxpayer subsidy into hi-speed rail?

Hi-speed rail may or may not be a good idea — but that depends on whether there is a market for it in the private sector. The last thing that the State of California needs to be doing is putting its taxpayers, and their children,… Read More