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GOP presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann will make a trip to Southern California in September to speak at the California Republican Party’s fall convention.

The conservative Minnesota congresswoman is scheduled to address delegates on the first night of the three-day convention, which will be held in Los Angeles Sept 16-18.

CRP Chairman Tom Del Beccaro said in a statement that he believes Bachmann’s “pure energy, vibrancy and leadership will be a hit with our delegates.”

“This is a great opportunity for us to hear directly from one of the Republican Party’s leading presidential candidates,” he said.

The full speaker line-up has yet to be confirmed, though CRP spokesman Mark Standriff said invitations have been extended to other GOP presidential candidates as well.

Interesting that Bachmann who, if the GOP Presidential nominee, will have NO chance of beating President Obama is still coming to the Golden State. Obviously, it is to meet with donors and to fundriase but it may also be to preempt Mitt Romney and Rick Perry (who has addressed the convention previously) from having an exclusive forum in the vast nationwide media market which is Los Angeles.

I might actually buy a ticket for the Friday night speech and/or cover the event for flapsblog.

However we vote, Amazon loses

A Times-USC poll last week showed a close contest. After registered voters were read some arguments on both sides, the so-called Amazon tax was supported by 46% and opposed by 49%.

Looking inside the numbers, two factors stood out, neither shocking.

A majority of Democrats (52%) favored collecting the tax online; the majority of Republicans (59%) opposed it. Independents were almost evenly split.

There was a generational divide: The younger the voters, the more opposed they were to online tax collections. The older, the more supportive. Specifically, 55% of people under 50 were opposed, 52% of the over-50 crowd supported it.

The conflicting political dynamic is this: The best bet is there’ll be a low turnout for the election. A low turnout normally benefits Republicans. Score one for Amazon. But younger people usually don’t bother to show up; older voters do. Score that for Wal-Mart.

Regardless of the outcome on election day, Amazon looks like a loser. First, it’s going to spend tens of millions — and probably scores of millions if it persists in fighting this tax issue in states all over the country.

More important for Amazon, its corporate brand will be smeared from one end of the state to the other. Get used to “tax cheat.”

Ask Pacific Gas & Electric Co., Mercury Insurance Group and Valero oil whether they’d again try to enrich themselves in California voting booths.

But at least this new ballot brawl should benefit one sector of the California economy.

Dan Walters: Higher California fees are the epitome of fairness

The fire fee is conceptually similar to a new requirement that local redevelopment agencies must share their revenue to remain in business. Those agencies have been skimming about $5 billion a year off the top of the property tax pool before funds are distributed among schools and local governments.

The state must make up about $2 billion of that diversion to schools. So in effect, all state taxpayers have been subsidizing local redevelopment projects.

And then there are those college fees. One commentator went so far as to claim that when Republicans refused to go along with Brown’s pitch for additional tax revenue, they were indirectly imposing a tax on college students.

Balderdash.

A fee is a fee, not a tax. Taxes are involuntary but fees pay for specific non-mandatory services, such as college educations.

Roughly a third of California’s adults have four-year college degrees, so they have enjoyed low-cost educations at the expense of everyone else.

One could argue, with great validity, that everyone has a stake in having a well-educated workforce, but even with the fee increases, college in California is still highly subsidized and still a very good deal.

California State University fees will still be among the lowest in the nation vis-à-vis comparable institutions, according to data from the California Postsecondary Education Commission. University of California fees will be about average. And our community college fees are still rock-bottom.

Fair is fair, and the new fees that are causing such angst are very fair.

Will ballot measures test vested pension rights?

A local ballot measure in San Jose and a statewide initiative, both only proposals at this point, would attempt to cut the cost of public pensions promised current workers, believed by many to be “vested rights” protected by court decisions.

The watchdog Little Hoover Commission, warning in February that soaring pension costs could “crush” government, said cuts to new hires would not yield enough savings and recommended legislation allowing pension cuts for current workers.

A key point: The commission and the proposed ballot measures would not cut pension amounts already earned by current workers through years of service. The cuts (in benefits or employer contributions) only apply to pensions earned after the change.

The Little Hoover Commission said the courts have held that public employees have a vested right under contract law to the pension benefits offered on their first day on the job, even if it takes five years of work to qualify for them.

But the commission said the rulings, which differ from private-sector pensions that can be cut for future work, have provided openings to modify benefits for current workers that must be clarified.

“Government agencies cannot generate the needed large-scale savings by reducing benefits only for new hires,” said the commission. “It will take years if not decades to turn over the workforce, and the government is hardly in hiring mode today.”

The backers of the proposed ballot measures are already hearing from defenders of the vested rights of current workers.

A paper on vested rights issued by the California Public Employees Retirement System this month suggests the giant system, which covers half the non-federal government workers in the state, would go to court to protect the rights of its members.

Independent commission finishes drawing new districts

California’s fiest-ever independent redistricting commission finished drawing 177 new congressional, legislative and Board of Equalization maps late Sunday after a rare conflict over racial issues.

The new maps, which will be released to the public on Friday, are expected to generate a flurry of lawsuits and at least one referendum drive, all of which would, if successful, shift redistricting to the courts for final resolution before the 2012 elections.

Created by two ballot measures, the commission is doing a job that in the past had been done either by the Legislature or the courts. Overall, its districts – if finally adopted – are expected to give the state’s dominant Democratic Party opportunities to gain two-thirds majorities in the Legislature and increase its control of the state’s congressional delegation.

The 14-member commission – five Republicans, five Democrats and four independents – spent the entire weekend on final district-by-district reviews, making dozens of mostly minor changes that sometimes involved just a few people.

Enjoy your morning!

Texas Gov. Rick Perry is all but certain to launch a presidential campaign and is nearing an announcement set for the second half of August, according to sources familiar with his political team’s planning.

For months, Republican activists, donors, elected officials, and even voters have dithered about their choices in the 2012 presidential primary contest. This is especially true of grass-roots conservatives who have clamored for someone else to enter the fray, only to be disappointed by the likes of Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee — all of whom declared this year they would not be candidates, in that order.

But they may have their man in Rick Perry, a telegenic and booming political presence who boasts executive experience as the nation’s longest serving governor, as well as a healthy level of support from the tea party faithful. The governor’s wife, Anita, has given him her blessing for a national campaign, and now that anticipation of a Perry candidacy is reaching a fever pitch, he is poised to jump into the race next month.

Potential donors to Perry’s presidential effort met Tuesday in Austin, and those familiar with what transpired there told RealClearPolitics that key players in Perry’s orbit indicated the 61-year-old Republican will announce a campaign between Aug. 15 and Aug. 31. Perry himself said on Friday that he’ll at least make his intentions known within the next three to four weeks.

In the past month Perry’s team has moved swiftly to put the parts in place for a campaign.

But, not all is happy with the GOP, the Tea Party and Rick Perry’s history of less than conservative policies.

Yet the enthusiasm over a possible Perry candidacy has thus far clouded one inconvenient truth: While the governor is currently the model of a Tea Party politician, his past includes plenty to give Tea Partiers and social conservatives pause if and when they decide to take a closer look.

That fact was highlighted last Thursday, when former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee took a very pointed shot at Perry. “For all his new found commitment to hyper-conservatism,” said the former GOP presidential candidate, “he’ll get to explain why he supported pro-abortion, pro-same sex marriage Rudy Guiliani last time.”

Perry’s support for Giuliani – whose moderation on social issues alienated social conservatives and contributed to his dramatic flameout in the 2008 presidential race – isn’t his only potentially problematic endorsement. He doesn’t much like to talk about it these days, but Perry was actually a Democrat until 1989; the year before he converted to the GOP, he served as Texas chairman for then-presidential candidate (and current target of conservative disdain) Al Gore.

Then there are the issues, chief among them immigration. Perry, who presides over a state with a large and growing Hispanic population. has been criticized by Texas Tea Party groups for not pushing hard enough to pass a “sanctuary city” ban and other hard-line immigration legislation. In 2001, he signed the Texas version of the DREAM Act allowing children of illegal immigrants access to in-state college tuition. As Arizona Sen. John McCain’s reelection campaign illustrated last year, any perceived softness on immigration issues can become a major headache in a Republican primary. 

There are niche issues that could hurt Perry, like his support for the (never-created) Trans-Texas Corridor, a toll-road despised by small-government types that would have meant the appropriation of an estimated 81,000 acres of rural land. Or the executive order he signed in 2007 requiring that Texas sixth-grade girls be vaccinated against the human papilloma virus, a sexually transmitted disease that causes cervical cancer. (The order was ultimately blocked, but the order outraged many conservatives.)

And then there’s the elephant in the room: Texas’ debt problem. In the 2010 governor’s race, Democrat Bill White pointed out that Texas’ debt has doubled under Perry. Since 2001, according to the Star-Telegram’s Mitchell Schnurman, Texas’ debt has grown at a faster rate than that of the U.S. government. Perry assumed office in December 2000.

All this could lead Republican voters to the same conclusion about Perry that many have made about Romney, whose position on a number of issues has shifted over the years: That he is a political opportunist without core beliefs. Some conservative bloggers have already seized on a list of 14 reasons Perry “would be a really, really bad president.” The list points to many of the issues mentioned above as well as tax increases. One blogger, citing the list, derides Perry as “a big-time globalist.”

The House GOP should send him a short term “all cuts” deal and dare the Democrats in the Senate and/or the White House to block it.

Then, the Dems/Obama break it, they OWN it.

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