“So tonight, to you, the great silent majority of Americans, I ask for your support.” – President Richard Nixon, November 3, 1969

However, this time, I think that the majority of Americans who in every poll oppose this health care travesty are not and will not be silent. I thank you for that. And remember, there is strong bipartisan opposition to this bill. The partisan side is the extreme left wing of the Democratic Party who are driving this thing and will not work together with the rest of us who want to go in a direction which will not hasten our economic failure. The word is that Speaker Pelosi still has not persuaded enough Democrats to vote for the bill against their constituents and in many cases against their own beliefs.

Tax Increases: The “final” bill came out yesterday afternoon. Here is a partial list of the tax increases included in this reprehensible and immoral bill:

A new 3.6% tax on all investment income including capital gains. That means that the capital gains tax rate (including California state tax) will rise to 33.9%. The tax on dividend income will rise from 15% today to 53.7% including California tax. … Read More

This is the toughest entry I have had to write on the FlashReport blog since we started it up back in 2005. It is with a heavy heart that I share with you that my good friend, and a fellow FlashReport contributor Barry Nestande passed away earlier this afternoon. Apparently Barry was working out at his local gym and fell unconscious – and never woke back up. There is speculation that Barry suffered from a heart attack.

It is tragic that someone in the prime of their life, at 49 years of age, would be taken from us so abruptly. Barry was someone who had dedicated his life to his family, and to working hard in his chosen career of politics and government – always striving to work to promote candidates and causes that championed Barry’s core beliefs of individual freedom and liberty. For my part, I’ve known and worked closely with Barry for nearly two decades and can tell you that his was tireless in his dedication.

Most recently, Barry was serving as Chief of Staff to his close… Read More

The Secretary of State has announced the results of the random drawing for order in which candidates shall appear on the ballot…

Y, B, N, F, T, S, W, L, P, Z, V, X, Q, A, I, O, J, R, G, D, C, U, M, K, H, E

The way it works is pretty simple. Candidates are in descending order on the ballot by last name. If the first letters match, apply the draw to the second letter, and if necessary the third, and so on.

If candidates are running for an office that encompasses more than one Assembly District, the names will be rotated in each Assembly District.

To apply this draw to the GOP primary in the Assembly seat where the International HQ of the FlashReport is located — AD 70 — it would mean the order is Rich Wagner, then Jerry Amante, followed by Steven Choi. Since it is (by definition) all within one district, the names do not rotate.

All of you Central Committee candidates should check this out – since ballot order for those low-profile races is more significant!… Read More

Yesterday the front-runner to be the next Governor of Colorado (a GOP pickup!), former Congressman and former State Senate Majority Leader Scott McInniss, made a fundraising swing through the Golden State. One of his appearances brought him to my office (which I share with fellow GOPers Scott Baugh, John Clarey and Jim Righeimber) where he spoke to members of the Orange County Republican Party’s prestigious 400 Club — his remarks lasted about fifteen minutes or so. The best part came at the end, when he informed us that in his state, the Governor with the stroke of a pen can de-unionize Colorado’s state employees — and that upon his election, he intends to do just that! Wish it were that simple here!

Enjoy the remarks of Scott McInnis, and if you are inclined, help him out!

… Read More

Quote of the Day: “…if we can save money by adding 30 million people to our rolls, we need to go insure everybody in China and then we’ll be done with the deficit. This bill is a disaster."– Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX)

Sunday: It now appears that the earliest the Government -Run Healthcare vote will occur is Sunday afternoon. There is still strong bipartisan opposition. There is only single party support. As of now they do not have enough votes. Hopefully that will still be the case on Sunday. The President has again delayed his trip overseas to continue applying pressure on wavering Democrats. This is a change from his previous plan which was to have an Air Force jet fly him the bill in Indonesia to sign.

The Senate: We metyesterday morning with our Republican Senate Colleagues. They made it clear that they have 18 “points of order” that they can and will raise if a reconciliation bill makes it to the Senate. This will not enable them to kill the bill (it will pass with only 50 votes plus the Vice President) but they will significantly change it. So, any House Democrat cannot be… Read More

In today’s Wall Street Journal Political Diary E-mail, FR friend John Fund highlights exactly how vulnerable Barbara Boxer is in her re-election bid this year…… Read More

California state government continues to face a massive deficit that is in the tens of billions of dollars. A deficit that I would submit is largely a function of decades of liberal Democrat driven public policies in Sacramento that are highlighted by a virtually unchallenged and unoriginal toxic agenda – increase spending consistently, increase taxes consistently, and increase regulations consistently. This is not rocket science, when you do all three of these things consistently, you eventually hit a breaking point. You break taxpayers, and you break the economy itself.

It’s been interesting and distressing watching the political-class in and around the State Capitol go through all sorts of gyrations to try and avoid the obvious solution to our state’s fiscal woes. We’ve seen accusations that term limits are the problem. They aren’t. We’ve heard that the taxpayer protections in Proposition 13 are the problem. They aren’t. Now are told that Republican participant in the state budget because of the 2/3rds vote is the problem – and it isn’t.

Sadly, a review of GOP votes in state budget shows that, frankly, Republicans never hold… Read More

Wednesday, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) publicly announced that he will switch his vote on the Health care bill from “no” last time to “yes” this time. With Kucinich’s vote, now all of the most liberal Democrats in Congress are supporting the bill. 87 Democrats co-sponsored a bill to immediately have full blown socialized medicine like Canada or Britain. It appears now that all of those Democrats are supporting this bill that the President and Democratic leadership say is not government-run health care.

Hmmm. So if it’s not government run health care, how did you get 100% of the votes of those who publicly support government run health care and you are having trouble only with the moderates who oppose it?

Because, this bill is designed to get to European stylegovernment health care with rationing and so forth. Here’s how it does it: There will be a government agency that will determine the minimum benefits that must be included in all health insurance plans. It will mandate much more coverage which almost no insurance plan has today,which in… Read More