When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa loses his job in July, he’ll also lose access to some swanky public housing. Zocalo Public Square is helping the mayor’s transition with its Adopt-a-Mayor program, a neighborhood competition to determine the best block in town. In the following piecepublished at Zocalo Public Square, I make the case for a micro-apartment.

Micro-House This Ex-Mayor Before the mayor decides where to… Read More

I started thinking about this column on Friday, when I was at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to hear a speech by United States Senator Rand Paul. I was reminded of one of President Reagan’s favorite stories… I can picture my hero — ever the optimist and a horseman through and through – smiling as he tells a tale that concludes with a little optimistic boy who upon encountering a pile of horse manure, excitedly starts digging into the much, laughing and clapping. When asked how he could be so happy when all around was nothing but horse hocky, the little boy cries out, “With all this manure, there’s gotta be a pony in here somewhere!”

This column is not about the onslaught of terrible bills that passed out of the Assembly and Senate during the last week; much will be written about those as they advance through the process (Assemblyman Don Wagner actually penned a column that runs today highlight a few of them). In this column, I’d like to focus upon what I believe was an important moment that occurred, a… Read More

The other day in this space I showcased a number of bad Democrat bills that had recently made their way through legislative committees on the strength of the Democrat supermajority. Today, I thought I would highlight a number of bad bills that not only got through the committee process, but that were actually passed off the Assembly floor. That’s right, a majority of supposedly responsible legislators in the nation’s most populace state actually thought these were good ideas and voted for them:

AB 1266 (Ammiano) – this bill allows boys to change in the girls’ locker room, use the girls’ bathroom, and play on the girls’ sports teams, if the boy feels like a girl. Seriously. According to the author, “all students in K-12 schools must be permitted to participate in school programs, activities, and facilities in accordance with the student’s gender identity.” Now, “gender identity” means the gender with which the student “identifies,” not necessarily the gender into which the student was born, and “facilities” means bathrooms and … Read More

This Wednesday, the 6th of June, the Western democracies will commemorate the Normandy invasion that marked the beginning of the end of Fascist tyranny in Europe. On the same date, Californians will also celebrate a second liberation, the passage of Proposition 13 which 35 years ago reined in the onerous property tax system and made the passage of new taxes more democratic.

After three and a half decades, polls show Proposition 13 as popular now as it was the day it passed. Still, a divide on the issue remains, with the overwhelming majority of average folks supporting the tax limiting measure and a minority – primarily special interests that benefit from government spending, politicians who are in the pockets of those interests, a few leftist professors from taxpayers supported universities and, of course, editors at some of the state’s largest newspapers – remain dogged in their opposition.

For most Proposition 13 opponents, like the public employee union bosses, their opposition is all about money and getting more of it from taxpayers. Others, in the “chardonnay and brie set,” object to the bottom up origin of the 1978 tax revolt that… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: We are pleased to offer this original column submitted to the FlashReport by United States Senator Rand Paul. This evening at 6 p.m. Senator Paul will be giving an address at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. You can watch the live webcast of his remarks here. Enjoy! – Jon Fleischman]

There has been an ongoing discussion about how the Republican Party must change and grow if it to survive, or as I like to put it “adapt, evolve or die.” It is true that Republicans have not done a very good job at attracting Hispanics, African-Americans and youth. It is also true that to win elections and govern nationally, the GOP will have to be more competitive in blue states that favor Democrats.

Nowhere is this perhaps more true than California.

To win in California, Republicans will have to show that we care just as deeply about the environment as Democrats but we also care about jobs. We want common sense regulations to be balanced with economic growth and jobs.… Read More

One of the challenges to people who have spent too much time in politics is they develop an inflated sense of their ability to spin themselves out of anything.

Former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, former California Assemblyman Nathan Fletcher, and now Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee all appear to suffer from this condition.

Faced with imminent defeat at the ballot box, each of these three men switched from the Republican Party to independent, and then switched again to join the party of Michael Dukakis, Walter Mondale and Barack Obama. Each time, the move was promoted as one rooted in a grand concept of “principle,” suggesting it was compelled by a personal moral drive to realign their affiliations better with their “principles” and philosophy.

This is the kind of nonsense that comes from politicians with a bloated sense of their own political skills.

These men did not switch party affiliation for lofty philosophical reasons. They did so out of desperation. While they can spin justifications for their switch all day long, they’re… Read More

This morning the California State Senate will finish up the (painful) process of passing out legislation out of the upper house, as the deadline for passing bills out of their “house of origin” is upon us.

Of of the handful of remaining bills to be voted on today is SB 405, authored by Los Angeles State Senator Alex Padilla, that would ban every single grocery store in California from using plastic bags for customers to carry home their purchases. I wrote about this bill at length last Friday, and you can read that here. There are a LOT of sound policy reasons to oppose this legislation. One of the reasons is that it a job-killer. Many of the plastic bags used by Californians are made right here in California. Obviously such a ban would end the jobs of those who currently make them.

So it is with some cynicism that I heard through the grapevine that one of the Senators leaning towards supporting this extreme environmentalist legislation is none other than State Senator Richard Roth. Roth, who one a hotly… Read More

Sometimes being in the room helps get the story straight. Orange County lost its case to retain $73 million in property tax revenue, in a legal decision stemming from the 2011 state budget deal. The decision will be appealed, as County Supervisors struggle to fill the gap which will decrease employment and services dramatically, if we lose the appeal. Reports as to how and why we got into the mess are becoming skewed.

In 2011 in order to punish a Democrat Senator for not casting a tax vote, the Governor and/or his Finance staff decided to find a way to unwrap $40+ million in additional funding the Senator was granted in 2009. Voilà! They discovered that when Orange County was refinancing debt related to the 1995 bankruptcy workout (to repay the debt faster and cheaper) there was an uncrossed “T.” To explain, the County had, at the request of the bondholders, swapped a portion of its property tax revenues for vehicle license fees it was sending to the state to provide “collateral” so to speak for the bond repayment. In the 2007 refinance the County neglected or decided not to get the Legislature to reauthorize the swap. So in 2011, Brown merely took… Read More