You have to love the creativity of the public employee unions that have lorded over the massive growth in state government spending — they have come up with a "pretty name" for their efforts to politically attack Republican legislators who have drawn a line in the sand against punishing Californians with higher taxes — "The Fair Budget Coalition" — hey, who would be opposed to a fair budget? No one, right? Well, I guess what you have to ask yourself is, "Fair to whom?"

You’ve heard this here before, and you will hear it a lot — public employee unions have two and only two core purposes. The first is to increase the wages and benefits for their respective members. The second is to increase their number of members. EVERYTHING else is window dressing.

The public employee unions that make up the "Fair Budget Coalition" — the California School Employees Association, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, California Teachers Association, California Federation of Teachers, United Public Employees PAC, State Building and Construction Trades, Professional Engineers… Read More

FR friend John Myers with KQED Public Radio had an opportunity to sit down with Governor Schwarzenegger for a one-on-one interview. Myers 30,000 foot take from the exchange was that the Governor is flexible in terms of ideas that legislators may have to come up with $24 billion in cuts to resolve the state’s fiscal imbalance, with so much more money budgeted to spend than is actually available. But Myers says that the Governor is resolute about his opposition to resolving the situation with any tax increases.

You can click here to see Myers’ recent entry on his Capitol Notes Blog which gives more of his summary of the interview, along with a number of audio excerpts. If you are a public employee, retired, or a total political hack, you can listen to the entire twenty minute or so interview here.… Read More

Well, the Democrats are acting predictably, I am sorry to say. This morning in my commentary (a couple of post below this one), I said that the Democrats would unveil tax increases as part of their plan. This morning just after 11am, the Sacramento Bee posted this story: Assembly Democrats Push Oil, Tobacco Taxes.

I urged Democrats to just come out with their nefarious plans — and they did! Once again, they have demonstrated that they are completely tone dead from the message sent by voters last month with the overwhelming rejection of Proposition 1A and its tax increases.

The attempt by Democrats to hike taxes are not surprising in the slightest. After all, we are talking about Democrat caucuses that are split between complete union hacks, whose fealty to the public employee union bosses leave them unable to vote for cuts that would negatively impact the core mission of the unions (to increase the wages and benefits for union members, as well as increase the size of the union) — and liberal ideologues to whom making any cuts in social welfare programs, let alone cuts of this… Read More

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

Terminating the California Income Tax

… Read More

Over my objections, the BoE voted 3-2 to sponsor a bill that would make it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for non-wealthy taxpayers to sue the government. The back story to this is the BoE recently lost a case in Superior Court. The judge awarded attorney’s fees to the plaintiffs because the Board’s position was so unreasonable the judge ruled the case involved the enforcement of an important right affecting the public interest. The judge ruled the BoE must pay the plaintiff 1.5 times a reasonable fee, which he found in this case is more than $600,000. Before it got to this point I repeatedly argued we needed to settle the case, but the Board’s Democratic majority would only listen to the flawed legal advice we were getting from our legal department.

On Tuesday, the same lawyers who previously insisted we fight this case brought before the Board a bill idea to eliminate the current system for recovering costs and replace it with an exclusive standard that raises the bar so high for fee recovery that it will preclude non-wealthy taxpayers from bringing actions against the Board. Attorneys will not be willing to take a case for a regular taxpayer… Read More

Here are a few simple questions for you.

Do you love California politics? Do you obsess over following the daily goings-on of California politics? Do you love the FlashReport? Do you think state government is too big and spends too much? Do you wake up early?

If you answered yes fives times in a row to the questions above, then we may have a place for you in helping out with putting together the FlashReport!

If I have have piqued your interest, drop me an e-mail.

Jon Fleischman Publisher, FlashReport… Read More

With warnings from State Controller John Chiang that if something isn’t done about the state’s out-of-whack finances that state government will soon literally run out of operating funds, and State Treasurer Bill Lockyer making it clear that if imminent action isn’t taken soon, even with massive cuts there won’t be time to do the financing that the state would typically need to do this summer to pay its bills – you can be sure that the Democrats in the State Capitol will do something.

If their rhetoric and lack of action on substantive cuts in the Joint Budget Conference Committee are any indicator, despite the overwhelming results of the May 19th Special Election and a repudiation of tax increases, you can bet that Democrats are going to look to raise taxes – perhaps with “majority vote” fee solutions that are, in fact, tax increases that seek to end-run Proposition 13’s 2/3 vote requirement.

What does this mean? Well, it means that before we see a real “all cuts” solution to the state’s massive overspending-created woes, the Democrats are going to see if Governor Schwarzenegger means what he says. The Governor has made it abundantly… Read More

With warnings from State Controller John Chiang that if something isn’t done about the state’s out-of-whack finances that state government will soon literally run out of operating funds, and State Treasurer Bill Lockyer making it clear that if imminent action isn’t taken soon, even with massive cuts there won’t be time to do the financing that the state would typically need to do this summer to pay its bills – you can be sure that the Democrats in the State Capitol will do something.

If their rhetoric and lack of action on substantive cuts in the Joint Budget Conference Committee are any indicator, despite the overwhelming results of the May 19th Special Election and a repudiation of tax increases, you can bet that Democrats are going to look to raise taxes – perhaps with “majority vote” fee solutions that are, in fact, tax increases that seek to end-run Proposition 13’s 2/3 vote requirement.

What does this mean? Well, it means that before we see a real “all cuts” solution to the state’s massive overspending-created woes, the Democrats are going to see if Governor Schwarzenegger means what he says. The Governor has made it abundantly… Read More