Free Republic

SACRAMENTO — The Republican Party will hold a presidential candidate debate at the Ronald Reagan library Wednesday. It’s a bad fit. The GOP’s modern idol is exactly the opposite of Reagan in personality and character. For upbeat Reagan, America was a “shining city on the hill.” For whining Donald Trump, it’s a waste bin for venom and lies. Reagan’s soaring rhetoric made people feel good about themselves. There was “always a bright dawn ahead” — “Morning in America.” Yes, maybe that was a tad naive and corny, but it brought a collective smile — and won over many Democrats.

... Under California’s red flag law, enacted in 2014, a law enforcement official or immediate family member can ask a judge to issue a Gun Violence Restraining Order if a gun owner is feared to be a danger to himself or others. If the order is issued — and it almost always is — the gun owner’s weapons will be seized by law enforcement for up to a year. After a year, the restraining order can be renewed. Elliott was the first to create a restraining order program. So far, she has obtained roughly 300 orders and 400 firearms have...

Schwarzenegger could learn from Obama's share-the-pain message George Skelton, Capitol Journal January 22, 2009 From Sacramento -- I hope Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger listened closely from his choice seat. Because President Obama's inaugural address was a stark reminder of what has been missing from political discourse in California: the notion of individual sacrifice for the common good. Not just share-the-wealth sacrifice. But share-the-pain across the entire economic spectrum -- the pain of sharply reduced public services for the poor, higher taxes for the rich and both afflictions for the middle-class. It's the only cure for a sick state government before it...

Reporting from Sacramento -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders are close to agreement on a landmark red-ink reduction package. But to see how close, you'd have to look inside Schwarzenegger's head. And I don't know anyone in Sacramento who knows how to do that. When he vowed to veto the $18-billion package of tax hikes and spending cuts that Democrats passed in both houses Thursday, what was that all about? Was he merely trying to squeeze Democrats for more on his holiday wish list? Or did he really not want any part of this Democratic scheme, considering it...

Money, money everywhere and not a buck to spend -- at least from the barrels of billions locked up by ballot-box budgeting. That money can only be spent on specific programs previously approved by voters. It can't be used to help balance the books in Sacramento or pay down the state's rising debt or avoid slashing programs for the elderly poor and disabled. Ballot-box budgeting usually involves a noble cause with an ignoble means: snatching a tax source or raiding the treasury at the expense of other public needs. The frequent knock on the Legislature is that it won't get...

When you take a close-up look at the red ink gushing from the state Capitol, it becomes a very ugly sight. For starters, the problem is worse than first thought. Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill last month projected a nearly $10-billion deficit spread over the current and next fiscal years. Then last week, reports leaked that the Schwarzenegger administration, with updated numbers, is projecting a $14-billion deficit. Actually, it's $14.5 billion. Add to that some minimal reserve any prudent budget should include -- say, at least $1 billion -- and it's a $15.5-billion hole that must be filled next...

Proposition 93 would reduce the total years someone could be a legislator from 14 to 12, but allow all to be served in one house. Currently, lawmakers are permitted just three two-year terms in the Assembly and two four-year stints in the Senate. There's an unfortunate self-serving provision, however, in Proposition 93, which purports to be a "citizens' initiative" but actually is sponsored by Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez (D-Los Angeles) and backed by Senate leader Don Perata (D-Oakland). That sweetheart deal would allow current lawmakers to serve 12 years in their present house, no matter how many they already had...

The chutzpah award for this summer has a runaway winner. It's the small team of Republican operatives trying to rig the 2008 presidential race. "Rig" means tilting the playing field to assure continued Republican occupancy of the White House -- perhaps for a very long time. The GOP would do this by ending the winner-take-all system of parceling out electoral college votes in Democratic-leaning California. Instead of all 55 of California's electoral votes being awarded to the candidate who wins the popular vote statewide -- presumably the Democrat -- they'd be divvied up by congressional district. Whichever candidate carried a...

That gets the support of the Legislature's most fiscally conservative member, veteran Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks). Let the majority party rule and be accountable for the consequences, McClintock says. Give 'em the rope to hang themselves. And with a two-thirds vote still required for tax hikes, he notes, "spending can't run away."

Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first governor in memory -- at least going back to Pat Brown -- to parachute into the district of a legislator of his own party and exhort citizens to browbeat their representative into voting his way.... Senate Republicans assert that's not enough. "They're phony reductions," says Sen. Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks). He cites one example: Schwarzenegger would "save" $160 million by delaying a Medi-Cal payment for one month, shoving it into the next fiscal year. He adds: "What the governor says and what the governor does are two distinctively different things."

While his Senate Republican colleagues have cowered under the shadow of right-wing ideology, he has had the courage to move forward on a centrist course of compromise. Sen. Abel Maldonado (R-Santa Maria), 39, is the kind of lawmaker ordinary people say they want representing them: Not too politically partisan. Not afraid to exercise independence. More loyal to his constituents than his party caucus. Senate Republicans either don't know when to declare victory because they're so used to losing. Or they're just hankering to fight -- to prove their relevance and take a shot at the governor who last year virtually...

Check this Perata comment to reporters after a July 12 negotiating session with GOP leaders: "They want us to cut in places that Democrats just didn't get elected to come up here and cut. So for any program that involves the elderly, people who are disabled, people who are mentally ill, our mantra is kind of, we're here to protect those who can't protect themselves." ADVERTISEMENT Click here to find out more! Nuñez was even more adamant: "We're not going to take the canes away from the blind. We're not going to kick people out of their wheelchairs … kick...

That said, it seems to me that Schwarzenegger badly needs a deal and shouldn't be too picky. Take what he can get from Democrats and warmly embrace it as his own. Pull out a two-by-four and beat Republicans into submission. Republican lawmakers need a rehabilitated governor to help them raise campaign money in the fall and perform little favors for the next four years. Not to mention improving flood control in their rural districts. Privately, some gubernatorial insiders agree. "It's been really hard to watch," one advisor says of the Republicans. "Don't they understand the part about the governor giving...

One Republican who is a maverick on this subject is conservative Sen. Tom McClintock of Thousand Oaks, who received 13.5% of the vote for governor in the Gray Davis recall election and plans to run next year for lieutenant governor. McClintock has long thought that the budget should be passed by a simple majority vote. "A perverse result of the supermajority requirement is that it does not constrain state spending," McClintock says. "What it does is bid up the cost of the budget with each additional vote. Every additional vote comes with louder calls for higher spending.

"We conservatives believe government has one legitimate function — public safety. Protecting the border is public safety." The border police force also would enforce ignored laws that ostensibly forbid the hiring of illegal immigrants. For farm labor, Haynes supports a temporary guest worker program. "People coming into this country now are exploited at every level," he says. "They're exploited by traffickers, they're exploited by a large chunk of employers, they're victims of crime they can't report because they're afraid of being caught." Haynes is under no illusion that the Legislature will pass his measure. So he's aiming for a ballot...

Political players at the Capitol, however, are split into three camps: conservatives who complain that Schwarzenegger's approach is too wimpy, liberals who cry it's too harsh and the governor and his business allies who are seeking a middle ground. "Conservative Republicans don't like it and Democrats don't like it. There must be something right about it," says Bill Hauck, a principal coauthor of the plan. He's president of the California Business Roundtable and a longtime government wonk who has worked both sides of the partisan fence.

So a special election is a big risk even for a celebrity politician considered by many to be invincible. If there's no compromise with the Legislature on these proposals, there'll be a bitterly partisan shootout between Schwarzenegger and Democrats — between his special interests and the Democrats' interests, including the potent California Teachers Assn. The Terminator could meet his match in teachers — and schoolkids and parents.

They're of particular interest after the presidential election, when the Republican red tide continued to spread across the American heartland and into California's interior. For many voters, the Democratic brand name has become increasingly synonymous with the label "liberal." If not for the fear of liberalism, why would nearly 61 million Americans — including 5.5 million Californians, 44% of the state's electorate — vote to reelect a president who had so mismanaged both a war and the national treasury?