Here at the press room at the Fiorina Boxer debate, I asked CalBuzz blogger Jerry Roberts to critique the food spread…

I will certainly say that the food spread here doesn’t come close to the one from the Orange County Whitman-Poizner debate. Here is the video critique from that night…

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America’s fifth largest county, San Diego, once more has a Republican plurality. In the last month or so the county has gone from a 4,850 Democrat advantage to a 891 Republican advantage. Cheers to San Diego County Republican Party Chairman Tony Krvaric and his team.… Read More

Here’s an inspiring story about an elementary school teacher who almost single-handedly turned a school’s math scores from dismal to great. Denise Maimone applied logic when she stealthily went into Georgetown Elementary School, located in a remote region of El Dorado County, and rejected the notion that every single 8th grader is somehow magically prepared for algebra, when in fact most aren’t. Instead, she parsed out those kids who were ill-prepared for the rigors of higher math and those who had the skills and brought the school’s math test scores up by 88 percentage points – the highest, by far, in the state. As a founder of a private Christian school, I have always supported and protected funding for education. It’s really a no-brainer to support the education of our future generation of kids. That being said, I don’t think California leaders achieveacademic greatness simply… Read More

Update:Apparently the OCBC did communicate their support for this bill to its proponents. We’re still waiting for the full story, but if there is an issue here, it would be internal to the OCBC, and not the fault of the social-engineers who want to ban plastic bags. As Drudge would say… developing…

630am – Original Post I penned a commentary on the defeat of AB 1998, the ban on plastic grocery bags, which you can see below this post. In my original draft, I hammered the Orange County Business Council pretty hard for supporting the bill. I made an assumption that because Senator Cedillo… Read More

The entire membership of the Assembly Republican Caucus in the California State Assembly yesterday signed a letter to Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger urging him and state Attorney General Jerry Brown to file a federal appeal of the Proposition 8 case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, according to John C. Eastman, Director of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence and former Dean of Chapman University School of Law, who helped draft up a very articulate letter.

“This is a significant statement of principle coming from the entirety of the Assembly Republican Caucus,” Eastman said. “It reflects respect for the established rule of law that no matter one’s personal opinion, a validly enacted state initiative must be defended in the courts by the elected officials charged with this responsibility. The Governor and Attorney General have a constitutional duty to appeal the Prop 8 ruling, and it is high time for them to fulfill their oath of office in this regard.”

Proposition 8 was passed by over seven million voters in 2008, gaining 52% of the vote. Its constitutionality was upheld the California Supreme Court in… Read More

Yesterday one of the leading conservatives in America, United States Congressman Tom Price of Georgia, stopped into the International Headquarters of the FlashReport (located in the heart of Orange County). Price is the Chairman of the House Republican Study Committee — which to the uninitiated — is the conservative caucus within the House Republican Conference.

We whipped out the handy Flash FlipCam and conducted an on-the-spot interview with Representative Price… It runs just under five minutes. Hope you enjoy it as much as he and I enjoyed taping it!

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It’s the final hours of the 2009-2010 legislative session here in California and legislators are furiously passing bills left and right to beat the constitutional deadline. Legislators did take the time today to vote down two budget proposals, but as Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg said, "I feel an urgency, but not an urgency at any price, and that’s really what this has come down to."

And that’s the problem. Legislators seem to have no incentive to pass a budget this year. This is the second longest period the state has gone without passing a budget (In 2008, it was 85 days past due.). Some have even speculated Governor Schwarzenegger would like to hand the unpleasant responsibility of trying to hammer out a budget to the next occupant of the horseshoe.

But just because it’s hard work doesn’t mean politicians can be let off the hook that easily. It’s time for legislators and the governor to declare a moratorium on any legislation that isn’t related to the budget process. Americans for Prosperity… Read More

People and businesses make economic decisions every day. To spend or not to spend; to borrow or not to borrow; to lend or not to lend; to invest or not to invest. In making these, and arguably almost any decision, we weigh whether the benefits and return from taking that action outweigh the costs and risks. If you believe that your potential return on an investment is greater than the risks, then you are likely to do it. If you think the benefit of buying something is equal to or greater than the cost, then you will spend that money.

On a macro-economic scale, there are a lot of risks out there right now. There is a lot of talk about potential disinflation or deflation, but yet the mounting debt augurs for monetization and rampant inflation in the future. We may have a “double dip” recession, or perhaps not. Gold may stay at its record highs and interest rates at their record lows, or it could all reverse. In the words of Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the current economy is “unusually uncertain”.

Uncertainty increases the perception of risk and analysis of costs when making those economic decisions. So, the uncertainty causes… Read More