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Yesterday the online investigative website California Watch broke a story that has stunned the political community of the Golden State. They published a story, complete with documentation, proving that the Speaker of the California State Assembly, John Perez, for nearly a decade made assertions that he was a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, when this simply was not true. Perez attended Cal, but never graduated. In his biography he boasted graduating, and subsequently news stories and political journals printed that he was a graduate as fact, which he did not dispute or seek to correct.

Suddenly the lie become, for Perez, the truth. At least until his lie helped him to establish bona fides that helped him to get elected to the State Assembly in 2008. Only after his election to the legislature is there an apparent effort to scrub biographies and put the falsehood in his past. All day long Perez’s office ignored the story. I spoke late yesterday afternoon with Lance Williams, the reporter who penned the story for California Watch — he told me that neither Perez nor his office would give him a comment.

Late last… Read More

Earlier today, the California Assembly passed the National Popular Vote (AB 459) on a 47-21 vote, and inflicted another tear on the great and frayed founding document of our Republic, the Constitution.

NPV reduces the Electoral College to mere window dressing and substitutes the direct election of the president – an idea the Founding Fathers explicitly rejected — in its stead. it amends the Constitution without bothering to amend the Constitution. To quote veteran conservative writer Quin Hilyer of The American Spectator, it is “an absolute disaster of an idea.”

I expect liberals to ignore the clear intent of the Founding Fathers and weaken the Constitution. But it’s deeply dispiriting when Republicans help them do it. These four GOP Assemblyman voted with the Democratic majority to toss the Electoral College into the garbage can:

Cameron Smyth Bill Berryhill … Read More

I had a chance to sit with Art Laffer, Sally Pipes and a few supporters of the Pacific Research Institute Wednesday after lunch and Art and I shared some “old times” from the 1978 Proposition 13 campaign, when he began a strong association with Howard Jarvis as a rising star in economics, and I was serving as Jarvis’ lowly but eager assistant, carrying his brief case from speech to speech. There was never much reading material in Jarvis’ briefcase, but Laffer offered that he really was a genius, a guy with guts and native intelligence who never gave up trying after several failures to reform California’s skyrocketing property taxes.

It is not confidential that right after Proposition 13 passed by a landslide in June, 1978, that Jerry Brown called Art Laffer and they spent several days together in conference about how to implement it and what to expect in the economy. It is also no secret that Jarvis and Laffer both subsequently endorsed Democrat Jerry Brown for Governor because of his pledge to fully implement the initiative, which he honestly did do. (Jarvis also endorsed the Republican candidate, but the commercial he cut for Brown was… Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail…

Special Election Surprise in California Last year California voters approved an “open primary” in which all candidates compete on the same primary ballot and the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, head to a run off. It’s often presumed that open primaries advantage party moderates since candidates must appeal to a broader swath of voters to win both the primary and general elections. South Bay voters put that hypothesis to the test on Tuesday in the special election primary to replace retiring Democratic congresswoman Jane Harman.

According to the latest vote tally, which doesn’t take into account some 9,800 absentee and provisional ballots, Democrat Janice Hahn has won the primary by about 2,000 votes. Her victory isn’t a big surprise — Ms. Hahn is a longtime Los Angeles city council member and had the backing of most of California’s Democratic establishment, including Sen. Dianne Feinstein.… Read More

[Publisher’s Note: When I was approached by a mutual friend on behalf of Dave Kieffer, the new boss over at the state’s largest public employee union, SEIU, about whether I would be willing to feature a column from Kieffer here on the FlashReport, I have to admit I was taken a bit off guard. It is probably impossible to actually count up the number of times that contributors to this website, including yours truly, have derided the influence of public employee unions — often citing the SEIU specifically in critical commentaries.

It didn’t take me long, however, to determine that if the SEIU wants to take a direct message to the conservative statewide community, it would be both provocative and entertaining to open that forum to them. Just to double check my gut instinct, I reached out to some advisers who all agreed — run the piece. So without any further introduction, other than to say that the content of this column should really cause some angst for those who believe, as I do, that a broadening of… Read More

This just in from FR friend and San Diego Councilman Carl DeMaio…

San Diego’s $1.8 Billion Retiree Health Care Giveaway

Late last week San Diego City Council majority voted to approve an unprecedented 15 year agreement that gives away $1.8 Billion in retiree healthcare benefits to City labor unions. Once again, the deal was struck behind closed doors between City politicians and public employee union bosses.

The public has a right to know what is exactly in this deal and how the numbers were reached. Instead, the media and taxpayers were provided with a 1-page handout prior the vote.

From what we do know about this deal, here are some of the glaring flaws:

15-Year Term is Unprecedented: The deal is set in a 15 year labor contract – no other labor contract in city history has ever extended for such a long period of time. City Leaders Give Up $340-530 Million in Savings: Because city leaders did not … Read More

From today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail… California Finances Slightly Less Awful

Last week thousands of California teachers rallied to extend $12 billion in tax hikes, which they said would help prevent $4.7 billion in education cuts. Well, it turns out that schools won’t be whacked after all, even if the taxes aren’t extended.

Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown’s revised May budget projects that the state will collect $6.6 billion more in taxes over the next two years than his administration had projected in January. That’s based on tax collections this year that have exceeded earlier projections by $2 billion.

Thanks to the state’s Proposition 98, which mandates that at least 40% of general funds be appropriated for education, schools will get about $3 billion of the “windfall.” That’s $3 billion more than they got last year. Mr. Brown’s revised budget still assumes that income, sales and vehicle tax hikes that expire this year will be… Read More

Some passing thoughts after observing the returns in the first round of balloting in 36th Congressional District special election in Los Angeles County…

Some California voters almost got their first taste of how they were misled by Arnold Schwarzenegger and the CalChamber, who promised that Prop. 14 would deliver increased voter choice. When the dust settled in the first round of voting in CD 36 on the West side of Los Angeles County, Republican Craig Huey was holding onto the second spot in the runoff by about 200 votes. The campaign of Secretary of State Debra Bowen has refused to concede, pointing out that nearly 10,000 late absentee ballots and provisional ballots have yet to be counted. Hanging in the balance is a potential big embarrassment for proponents of Prop. 14. If Bowen climbs back into second place, the “promise of choice” presented CD 36 voters would be candidates who have virtually identical positions on everything from supporting universal healthcare and defending Obamacare, both want to pull back U.S. Troops from around the world, both are proudly pro-choice, etc., etc. There is literally no choice … Read More