Congressman Jim Costa (D), Fresno voted against the Democrats cap and trade bill on the House floor last night but don’t be fooled – he’s no moderate. Although personally likeable and knowledgable about many issues, he’s been AWOL on the water debate here in the Central Valley. I had a journalist from the Fresno Bee tell me a couple of months ago that "Costa had no clout with Pelosi" because he’s a "Blue Dog" moderate without a voice in the capitol, so he couldn’t "get anything done" on the water issue.

I did some research on this and here is what I found. According to the Washington Post, Jim Costa voted with his Party leadership 94% of the time in 2008, and 97.9% in 2009 year to date.

It’s not hard to see the writing on the wall here. I blasted an email out about this to the Westside farmers in Costa’s District last week, and many of them wrote me back stunned and angry that we have another Pelosi Democrat masquerading as a moderate here in the Valley.

Sources in the capitol tell me that once it became apparent that cap and trade was going to pass, Costa got a… Read More

Yesterday the U.S. House of Representatives passed what is being referred to as the "Cap and Tax" plan or "National Energy Tax" bill by House Republicans — legislation pushed by President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, Congressman Waxman and other liberals. No matter how you slice it, this legislation represents a massive expansion of federal government regulation, and the costs associated with the enactment it is are enormous for taxpayers. The Democrats referred to it as a "Cap and Trade" bill.

Only eight Republicans in the House voted for this legislation, and of the eight, only on is a Californian — Mary Bono Mack. Rather than trying to attempt to characterize for the Congresswoman why she voted for this bill, I reached out to her for a statement that I could share directly with FR readers. That statement is below.

I will be writing more on this vote by Congressman Mack next week, but I wanted to get her statement out as soon as possible. Suffice it to say for now that I am deeply troubled by Mack’s support of this legislation for a number of critical reasons.

The fact that the Democrats lost over 40… Read More

This is a FlashReport blog exclusive. The word is that 10News will run a story at 6 pm. If so, I’ll add it to the post, but — thanks to great sources…

Francine Busby 2.0: Loud Music, Resisting Arrest, Pepper Spray, and Battery on a Police Officer Erstwhile and announced future candidate for Congress Francine Busby sure knows how to toss a party.The supposedly "centrist " Democrat and her followers don’t seem to respect authority too much either. Last night’s event to raise funds for a challenge to Rep. Brian Bilbray would have only been more complete with a good old fashioned flag burning.

— BEGIN POLICE REPORT — On 6/27/09, at about 2112 hours, Deputy ***** and *****, Clinician ***** responded to 1366 Rubenstein Avenue, Cardiff, Calif, regarding a Loud Democratic Rally with Loud Speakers. The reporting party’s residence is located on Summit Avenue just west of 1366 Rubenstein Avenue. The reporting party told dispatchers he was willing to sign and wanted deputy contact. It was… Read More

Today I exchanged a few emails with State Senate Republican Leader Dennis Hollingsworth. He made it clear he isn’t thinking of challenging Congresswoman Mary-Bono-Mack for Congress. Too bad. Sen. Hollingsworth would have been a great Republican alternative to cap and taxer and job costing Obama enabler Congresswoman Mary Bono-Mack.

No word from Ray Haynes, Jim Battin or others. Somebody do it!

Cross posted on RedCounty.… Read More

The liberal Democrats in Sacramento desperately want to do something, anything to push out and delay having to confront the state’s $24 billion budget shortfall in one package. They will give anything to get Republicans to approve any stop-gap measures — three billion, five billion, seven billion — they will put up the cuts with "no strings attached" — to tantalize the member of the minority party, who have rightfully complained about the engorged spending of the California welfare state, to support these cuts.

The key here is that there are "strings" attached — as they say, no one ever gives up something for nothing in this business.

The end game for Sacramento Democrats is fairly simple and straightforward — they want to increase taxes as much as possible to close the budget hole — but they know that there is no political appetite for such increases right now in the State Capitol. With legislative Republicans blocking the 2/3 vote on taxes and the Governor vowing to veto any so-called "majority vote tax increases" — all the Democrats can do is try to buy time.

That is the… Read More

We’ve intercepted an e-mail sent from the Blackberry of Senate President Darrell Steinberg to the Blackberry of Speaker Karen Bass… From reading it, it’s clear that lack of unity among Republicans in the capitol is helping his cause of ultimately raising taxes…. DATE: 6/27/09 13:57 TO: superbass@unionforever.com FROM: icutmypayhaveyou@healthcareforeverykid.com RE: Our Unlikely Ally in Sam Blakeslee Karen — Divided Republicans mean "opportunity knocks" for us. I know that the union chiefs keep calling us — but there is hope that… Read More

I am sure most California politicos didn’t miss the above-the-top "I love Meg Whitman" piece penned a couple of months ago by Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard. I think it is ironic that one of the most prominent advertisers on the Weekly Standard’s website is now eBay. I know because every day that I compile links for the FR’s main page, the Standard’s website is one of my stops.

This morning I had to refresh my browser on their page exactly once to ditch the Joe Scarborough ad, and get the eBay ad you see below. Now to be fair, perhaps they were there before the cover-story puff-piece on eBay’s former Chief Executive Officer — and I just wasn’t looking for them.

My favorite theory is that the eMeg story gets forwarded around to all of Whitman’s former employees and such, and someone in advertising says, … Read More

Well, I guess Debra Bowen and the Los Angeles District Attorney are being bipartisan in enforcing voter registration rules. Last week they nailed a GOP voter registration collector, Mark Jacoby, for voter registration fraud and this week they filed charges against well-known southern California liberal Latino activist Nativo Lopez for allegedly fudging on his own voter registration. According to Martin Wisckol’s well researched article in the Orange County Register today, Lopez is facing felony charges for being registered to vote at a Los Angeles address while actually living in Orange County.

Bowen and the DA did the same with poor Mark Jacoby, a guy who makes his living collecting signatures on petitions, (a dirty business) and he plead out to a misdemeanor. But his plea surprised me. "Voter registration fraud" is really not the same as "voter fraud." "Voter fraud" is about stopping dead people and illegals from voting. In these "voter registration fraud" cases, Bowen and the LA District Attorney are enforcing laws that require people who are registered to vote to… Read More