[Cross-posted from OC Blog]

Capitol Alert just posted an article about Sen. Abel Maldonado naming the price of buying his vote for the largest tax increase in state history:

A blanket primary in which the top two vote-getters make the general election. Denial of per diem to legislators if they don’t pass a budget on time. A ban on legislative per diem and pay increases in budget deficit years. Removing unspecified pork from the budget package.

Gosh, can Maldonado’s litany be any more transparently self-serving?

Abel wants to run statewide in 2010, and knows that voting for a $14 billion tax hike makes him a dead-candidate-on-a-stick in a closed GOP primary. Apparently, he believes he’d fare better as a tax-hiker in a blanket primary — although I think he’d be just slightly-less dead meat even in that set-up.

Demands… Read More

This morning, around forty Republican legislators have to look back at the bleary mess that was their President’s Day Weekend (and somewhere in there was Valentine’s Day, too), wondering exactly what happened to them. With the seeming speed of the flip of a switch, Republican representatives to the “Big 5” signed off on a Big 5/Big Taxes budget “deal” that would make any professional sausage maker proud.

The problem with the plan is that at its center is a massive increase in taxes (sales tax, car tax, car fee, income tax) that totals over $14,000,000,000.00 (multiply that out a few years to really see that number grow – all of those zeros, by the way, make it BILLIONS). Completely conceded in this Big 5/Big Taxes plan is the notion that Republican lawmakers were elected to office with a pledge to protect Californians from higher taxes (let alone tax hikes of this record-making magnitude). There are two underlying assumptions to this plan that are flawed – the first of which is that there is simply no way to balance the state’s books without a tax increase. The second… Read More

As the "O" word in thetitle I used above becomes more and more prevalent in the media as the "BattleO’ The Cap’tol" drags thru the "Presidents Day" holidayfrom the Valentines Day one, the Republicans, laboring in the minority, getbranded once again with "stopping progress". I say they’re only being consistent in the belief system that they haveheld all aong.

Most Republicans have opposed very openly, oftenand in plain English, the expansion of government that has put us in the fiscal wreck we are in. It’s in our party plank, plain as day. More importantly it’s in the minds of Republicans that run for office.A frequentdifference found between the legislators of the respective parties is thatmost of the Republicans have been in business. They have actually lived in the world of those that are regulated to the brink by all the fine ideas that come from Sacramento and DC regulators via laws Democrat legislators pass, almost always with no, or a tiny handful of Republican votes.

Before a law like AB 32, Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Gas regs pass, you heard from our… Read More

Associated Press reporter Steve Lawrence’s latest article on the budget mess is here.

In it is a quote from Senate President Darrell Steinberg, where he throws the proverbial gauntlet down against Republican legislators. "We’re going to come back at 11 o’clock tomorrow morning, and we’re going to stay and we’re going to work again and we are going to come back every day until we get this done," he said. "This will get done, and it will get done with the framework that has been presented to you as a result of 90 days of work by your elected leaders."

It’s time for our elected leaders, Senator Cogdill and Assemblyman Villines, to hold a press conference and say that because Republicans, as a team, are not supportive of this plan, it is time to end the "lock down" and return back to the… Read More

It’s one thing to see Senator Abel Maldonado’s name on an electronic list published by Americans for Tax Reform. It’s actually more "real" to see the actual form that the Senator signed, of his own free will, making a pledge to his future constituents that, if elected, he would oppose tax increases and oppose efforts to raise taxes.

Attached is a .pdf of Senator Maldonado’s pledge form, which I asked the folks at ATR to fax to me.… Read More

Did you know that less than $5 billion of the proposed cuts in the Big 5/Big Taxes budget represent government programs getting less money than they got last year? So it might be fair to say that for every $1 of a REAL reduction in the level of funding of an existing program, taxpayers are paying an additional $3. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, and this is a terrible deal for California taxpayers.… Read More

In the so-far-unsuccessful quest to find enough Republican votes to pass the budget monstrosity, the focus has been on termed-out legislators. One would assume that the reasoning for this is that these members won’t be seeking re-election in two or four years and therefore voting to raise constituents’ taxes won’t come up in a campaign. But what about any future campaigns for higher office? Are these lawmakers the rare breed that has no ambition for higher offices?

Even if they’re satisfied with their “service” thus far, maybe these members should be worried about even finishing the current term. When word leaked that Senator Abel Maldonado might be caving on the budget vote, a web site was purchased with the address RecallMaldonado.com. Considering the success of past recalls for mismanaging the state government, Senator Maldonado might want to reconsider voting for this particular tax-increasing budget. As of this post, RecallAshburn.com was still available…

Registrant: MAPA Strategies

5235 Mission Oaks Blvd Suite 1000 Camarillo,… Read More

Word is Senator Maldonado has cut a deal, and the Senate Republicans are being briefed on it momentarily… Read More