This column appears today in Capitol Weekly… GOP Convention: Opposition to Special Election Taxes By Jon Fleischman Last weekend about 1,500 Republican leaders from all around California gathered at the Hyatt Regency Hotel across the street from the state Capitol for our biennial organizational convention. As is pretty much always the case, if you read the headlines blazing across MSM newspapers and reporter blogs, you might think that the convention was a bloodbath of epic proportions. It was not, of course. I spent a lot of time at the convention talking to delegates… Read More

U.S. Representative Tom McClintock has sent the following letter to President Obama concerning recent U.S. military actions in Libya… March 23, 2011 The Honorable Barack Obama President of the United States The White House Washington, D.C. 20500 Dear Mr.… Read More

In redistricting some districts draw themselves. The population and geography just work out that way.

Consider the City of Sacramento. The incorporated area is 814 people more than the ideal population for an Assembly District.

This district would place two newly elected Members of the Assembly together in the same district. Assemblyman Richard Pan and Assemblyman Roger Dickinson both live in the incorporated city so one would have to move or they would have to run against each other in this Democrat controlled district.

The other thing that this would do is pack most of the solidly Democrat areas into one district. The other two districts that are likely to come from the remainder of Sacramento would at least be competitive for Republicans.

I plan on publishing a number of maps in the coming weeks but this is the first one.… Read More

Haven’t we see this movie before? The anti-hero makes an unacceptable take it or leave it proposition to the heroes. Being nice people they politely say No. The chorus aka the media chimes in declaring that No is not an answer. So the heroes say how about an idea that lets the voters decide if taxes should go up or should go down? True democracy at its finest where the people decide their own fate. But the anti-hero rejects this proposal and while the chorus declares him wonderful.

In the next scene the chorus declares our heroes to be inflexible, anti-democratic, not worthy of their paychecks somehow this pricks them enough to make them take the risk of bargaining with the anti-hero. Lets trade an election on taxes for pension reform? No. For spending limit reform? No. For environmental review reform? No For regulatory reform? No. After each rejection the chorus declares the anti-hero to be unbelievably flexible and our heroes to be terribly naive. How dare you make a pledge to your constituents and now refuse to ignore it!

After weeks of alternate romancing and threatening the anti-hero… Read More

If there is at least one good thing that has come out of the Governor’s bargaining with the Legislature over tax and budget issues, it is Jerry Brown’s call for closing down the redevelopment agency scam that has allowed tax-and-spend Councilmembers and City Managers in local cities like pristine Mission Viejo to declare themselves ‘blighted communities" and then setup new taxing and spending authority to build corporate welfare edifices such as shopping centers anchored by up-scale stores like Williams-Sonoma and Nordstrom’s. It just doesn’t make economic sense for taxpayers, especially most taxpayers, who shop at WalMart, not Restoration Hardware.

Republican Assemblyman Chris Norby is a fighter against the redevelopment scam, having countered the policy on the Fullerton City Council, as a County Supervisor, and now in the Legislature. He is willing to be one of the just two votes the Governor needs to knock out this bad policy and save our budget millions in useless tax and spending authority.

The… Read More

Here is today’s lesson in our bilingual education program. For all the complaints that conservatives have about bilingual education in schools, it is actually a bigger problem in one really important area-government budgeting. Government budget experts do not communicate in English. Yes, the words they utter have English-like sounds, and the markings they make on paper have English-like appearance, but the sounds and the marks they make do not have English meanings. It is a foreign language, spoken every day in the halls of power around the country, and no one complains about it.

For instance, when they say they wish to "implement new sources of revenue," that means they want to take more money from you or your neighbor. For instance, they may wish to "increase user fees." They will say that it is only fair for the user of a service to have to pay for that service. Like the DMV. Why, the car tax is simply a user fee. Of course, if you don’t pay the fee, you can go to jail (because if your car is not registered you can be arrested), but you are using this valuable government… Read More

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Recently conservative State Assemblyman Kevin Jeffries announced that he will be running for his local seat on the Riverside County Board of Supervisors in 2012. This, of course, was not welcome news for the longtime incumbent of that office, Supervisor Bob Buster, who has announced his intention to seek election yet again to the office he has held since 1992.

There will be a number of key issues on which Buster and Jeffries disagree, but it would appear that one of the most significant is going to be the question of whether taxes are too high or too low. Yesterday Buster voted with a majority of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors (Benoit and Stone voting no) to endorse Governor Brown’s local government realignment plan, which is, of course, predicated on the voters of California passing the… Read More