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Longtime FR friends Conan Nolan of KNBC television in Los Angeles and State Senator Bob Huff (R-Diamond Bar) spent just over ten minutes chatting about the state budget situation on the KNBC LA Public Affairs Program “NewsConference with Warren Olney."
It’s worth a few minutes of your time to watch. And a shout-out to Conan, for managing to work the FlashReport into the interview!
The interview…
From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… Two California Items..
Facing Fiscal Reality Two well-off communities in the San Francisco Bay area have come up with an imaginative way of cutting spending to cope with the increasing burden of public employee health and pension costs. They are dissolving their police forces and contracting their responsibilities out to the local sheriff’s department. San Carlos, a city of 28,000 in San Mateo County, was the first to try the unorthodox approach last year. It’s been rated a success. The city’s police officers shifted over to become sheriff’s deputies, and felony arrests went up 92 percent in the first three months. Greg Rothaus, the former San Carlos police chief who is now a sheriff’s captain, says the response to emergency calls has been comparable to what they… Read More
If you are driving distance from downtown San Francisco or the South Coast Metro area of Orange County on April 14th or April 15 (respectively), then you have a unique opportunity to share in the grand opening of what promises to be one of the greatest movies ever — Atlas Shrugged, Part I. The event in Orange Our friends at the Pacific Research Institute are holding events in conjunction with the opening of this giant of a movie. The reason you want to attend one of these events if you can is that PRI is holding receptions where you will be able to talk about the film with other like-minded folks!
If you haven’t read the novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, I would commend you to immediately order a copy of it online. I actually listened to the unabridged version of it back in my college days as an up and coming leader in California Young Americans for Freedom (thanks again to Ken Royal for loaning it to me – all forty cassette tapes!). There is certainly no… Read More
A core of conservative communities was cut up by redistricting plan in 2001. A district that is much more conservative than Bonnie Lowenthal or Betsy Butler exists in the area around Torrance south of Marina Del Rey. This district does not split any cities except for the City of Los Angeles which will be split many ways as a result of size.
A district like this would elect a Republican under the right circumstances.
I hope that the beach communities are out there registering voters. Bumping this seat up to 38% GOP would make all the difference in the world.
Lake Forest City Councilman Scott Voights, who is a Vice-President of the venerable California Republican Assembly, just shared with me the release of a legal opinion from the Sutton Law Firm, a prominent and very high-quality Republican-oriented election law firm based in San Francisco, that analyzes an emergency "policy resolution" promoted by incumbent CRA President Celeste Greig and former Placer GOP chief Tom Hudson, that would perpetuate them in CRA offices in the face of overwhelming local unit and delegate opposition at the up-coming CRA convention to be held in mid-April. The independent legal analysis concludes that the Greig/Hudson resolution is hyper illegal. The whole situation is quite pathetic for Greig, Hudson and the CRA. It is an invitation for lawsuits. A copy of the legal analysis Scott released is attached.… Read More
According to the Tax Foundation, California’s Tax Freedom Day won’t come until April 16 this year, a full two days later than last year and four days later than the average state.
Tax Freedom Day, calculated annually by the Tax Foundation, is the day Americans have earned enough money to pay their… Read More
The annual convention of the California Republican Assembly is scheduled for next month, where a new leadership election is scheduled. CRA is and always has been, since the 1930s when it was founded by among others former Governor Earl Warren, the most important Republican volunteer organization in the state. Almost all the leadership of the California Republican Party have had a run threw the chairs of CRA. But while the recent election of leadership in the CRP was quite harmonious, the situation in CRA is hardly the case. Just after the "record date" closed this last week for selection and disclosure of delegates to next month’s convention, the current leadership group, lead by President Celeste Greig, former Barbara Alby aide Tom Hudson, and Orange County volunteer Craig Alexander, apparently determined that they were destined to be turned out of office; so in what would have been their limited time left on the CRA board, they have concocted an emergency "bylaw" amendment that will disenfranchise scores of delegates to the convention and thereby, they hope, perpetuate what has become a very pathetic term of office for all three. An unusual, and… Read More
Yesterday we saw the most recent and highest profile “cessation of negotiations” between Governor Brown, legislative Democrats, and the GOP “Rogue 5” as we call them. There is plenty of analysis available on the web for those who want to dig into the specific policy issues that were being horse traded in return for jamming taxpayers with yet another election held for the purpose of reaching into their pockets. Suffice it to say that my position, which is the position shared by a whole group of taxpayer protection groups in a letter published on the FlashReport today, and the position of 30 Senate and Assembly Republicans – there is NO public policy trade off that makes it okay to then vote to place taxes onto a special election ballot.
It is my sincerest hope that this latest “break” in negotiations is not just more posturing, as some budget kabuki dances take longer than others, but that it really means that the idea of Republicans putting up at least two votes in each chamber to put taxes on the ballot is extinguished.
As I have written before, if the very large tax increases passed as part of… Read More