OK, so the Governor’s office just sent out this photo of him speaking in front of the White House. Let’s have a little "caption contest" — what is Arnold saying?

You can participate by posting up your caption as a comment below or by dropping me a note!

The winning caption and runners up (if worthy) will be shared with all of our readers! If the winner is near where I live or where I travel, I’ll pick up coffee and a doughnut!… Read More

I read in Capitol Morning Report that Roy Allmond, filed a candidate intention statement to run for the office of California Secretary of State as a Republican.

What I found intriguing was that according to the Sacramento Bee, State Pay Results, Allmond, works for the current Secretary of State’s Office, Debra Bowen.

So why is Allmond running to replace his boss? Is she incompetent? Where has she failed?

Is Allmond planning to resign from his current job as a protest or tp remove any hint of conflicting interests?

His opponent Damon Dunn is racking up endorsements and barnstorming the state. There is a rumor that a former Secretary of State (the kind that visits foreign countries) is going to endorse soon.… Read More

On Thursday the California Senate passed a bill, ABX8 8 that will make internet retailers with affiliates in California collect sales tax on behalf of the state. The bill is now in the Assembly for a vote on concurrence. Many good points were raised in the debate. I completely agree with the Democrats that there is a great inequity between internet retailers who sell without collecting sales tax and California retailers who have to collect the tax. However, this is a fight that cannot be won because of the nature of the internet.

When Jeff Bezos was thinking about establishing Amazon back in the ’90s, his first thought was to set up on an Indian reservation. Bezos is a wonderful, mad genius, and his sophistication has only increased. When New York passed this same mandate on Amazon last year, Amazon immediately fired all of its affiliates in New York and signed up new ones in a neighboring state. You can call it radical, but it is a great business decision that is in the best interest of Amazon shareholders. Some say the answer is a national sales tax program, but that misses the mark as well. Consider that Google is rumored to be designing… Read More

It has been well over thirty years since the landmark Proposition 13 was passed by voters on June 6, 1978, creating a “shot heard around the world” as the California measure not only implemented significant taxpayer protections here in California, but it spread like wildfire around the entire country, ushering in a wave of new policies favorable to taxpayers from sea to shining sea. Of course this measure was the brainchild of Howard Jarvis, whose passion for limiting government and preserving liberty for the people lives on today through the efforts of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA).

You would have to go back an awfully long way to find a time when HJTA was more powerful and important than it is today. There are a lot of reasons for this – including the immense fiscal challenges facing our nation, state and local… Read More

It has been well over thirty years since the landmark Proposition 13 was passed by voters on June 6, 1978, creating a “shot heard around the world” as the California measure not only implemented significant taxpayer protections here in California, but it spread like wildfire around the entire country, ushering in a wave of new policies favorable to taxpayers from sea to shining sea. Of course this measure was the brainchild of Howard Jarvis, whose passion for limiting government and preserving liberty for the people lives on today through the efforts of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association (HJTA).

You would have to go back an awfully long way to find a time when HJTA was more powerful and important than it is today. There are a lot of reasons for this – including the immense fiscal challenges facing our nation, state and local… Read More

Over the weekend there was an article in the Orange County Register talking about how some legislators have managed to make big bucks by investing their per diem payments (for expenses associated with having to maintain two households) into real estate which then increased in value.

To this I would say… bravo! It seems to me that if we want legislators to be smart with OPM (other people’s money), we need them to be smart with their own.

We can haggle over appropriateness of per diem payments, the amount, and whether or not some of the fine lines that are walked in terms of taking the payments if you really only have one household, in Sacramento, and such.

But it should be obvious on the face of it that making prudent financial decisions with their own money is a good quality for legislators to have — since they are making important decisions about the finances of the state. I’d go back and re-read the article — and congratulate every one of those legislators who has figured… Read More

As the Fresno Bee reported, last Friday’s sold out Lincon Club breakfast forum, featuring former Fresno Mayor Jim Patterson, Current Fresno Council President Larry Westerlund, current State Senator Jeff Denham, and former member of Congress Richard Pombo was a great start to the public part of the campaign.

In promoting the forum, the Club promised hard hitting questioning, and our audience told us that we certainly met that test. Here issample of what we asked these four men:

California’s State Budget is a disaster of historical proportions, and yet you, in 2005-06 and in 2006-07, voted for State Budgets that raised the General Fund spending in California to unsustainable levels, from $81 billion to over $101 billion. The State Legislative Analyst correctly warned against the assumptions made in these budgets, and the LAO’s warnings turned out to be factually correct. We are still reeling from the fiscal disaster these budgets created. Later, in 2009, you voted to place… Read More

In late December I wrote that the City of San Diego has "a series of campaign laws long ripe for a challenge on First Amendment grounds," and further asked, "Yet, what candidates have ever wanted to take on those laws at the risk of being perceived in the media — and at the hands of opponents — as wanting to loosen restrictions?"

This was in response to the news that a coalition was — finally — doing just that.

In case you missed it, a Federal court last week ruled against the City of San Diego’s overly restrictive campaign laws. Jim Lacy summarized it on Wednesday in his column here on the FlashReport:

A Federal court in San Diego yesterday issued a permanent injunction against the City of San Diego’s $500 contribution limit per person to independent expenditure committees involved in City elections. The ruling quotes the recent Citizens United case we have written about, and is… Read More