-
Flap’s Links and Comments for April 26th on 12:32
These are my links for April 26th from 12:32 to 12:53:
- California budget nut remains uncracked – Jerry Brown's insider attempt to crack California's budget nut has been no more successful than Arnold Schwarzenegger's outsider attack.
Both relied on unrealistic assumptions about Capitol reality – Schwarzenegger because he was a newbie and Brown for reasons known only to him.
Brown offered a complex mixture of spending cuts and tax extensions tailored to the supposed predilections of a disaffected California electorate.
Nearly four months later, however, the Capitol is stalemated – and not merely because of its deep ideological divisions.
For weeks, Brown negotiated with a few Republican senators who were evidently willing to place an extension of temporary taxes before voters if public pension and budget reforms were part of the ballot package.
The talks eventually collapsed. Brown says, in effect, the Republicans demanded too much, but it's also evident that he, Democratic lawmakers and their allies, especially public employee unions, got cold feet.
Private and public polls indicated that if taxes, pension reforms and a spending limit were placed on the ballot, voters might easily reject the taxes and pass the two others.
A new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll underscores the Democrats' dilemma, finding voters' support for a tax election and pension and budget reforms is very high but for taxes is barely 50 percent.
======
California's budget will remain uncracked until either voters pass tax increases by voting for them at the ballot or the Democrats get serious about cutting spending.
I see neither anytime soon and California's economy will stay in the doldrums.
- Lamar Alexander: The White House vs. Boeing—A Tennessee Tale – The National Labor Relations Board has moved to stop Boeing from building airplanes at a nonunion plant in South Carolina, suggesting that a unionized American company cannot expand its operations into one of the 22 states with right-to-work laws, which protect a worker's right to join or not join a union. (New Hampshire's legislature has just approved its becoming the 23rd.)
This reminds me of a White House state dinner in February 1979, when I was governor of Tennessee. President Jimmy Carter said, "Governors, go to Japan. Persuade them to make here what they sell here."
"Make here what they sell here" was then the union battle cry, part of an effort to slow the tide of Japanese cars and trucks entering the U.S. market.
======
Read it all…..
This example explains why America has lost its manufacturing might…..
- California budget nut remains uncracked – Jerry Brown's insider attempt to crack California's budget nut has been no more successful than Arnold Schwarzenegger's outsider attack.
-
CA-Sen: Tom Campbell Out of Money?
Former Congressman Tom Campbell and U.S. Senate candidate
Well, Tom Campbell has cancelled all television and radio ad buys for this week.Ex-Rep. Tom Campbell (R) is cutting back on TV advertising, switching strategies as some opponents wonder whether Campbell’s surprisingly strong campaign is running low on funds.
Campbell will not be on TV this coming week. And he has cut his ad buys for the final 2 weeks of the campaign significantly, according to sources who watch campaign ad spending; data shows Campbell has purchased $286K in ads over the last 2 weeks, less than the $393K he had previously reserved.
Instead, Campbell’s campaign will send an oversized mailer to 1.1M voters this week, according to his campaign.
From the Carly Fiorina campaign via e-mail:
Over here at Team Carly, while we are watching our ads on the airwaves increase in frequency, reports over the last couple of days confirm that Tom Campbell has canceled his television AND his radio time – all of it – for this week.
The Campbell camp is exhaling a lot of hot air as they struggle to come up with any good reason for why, but we sure have been amused by the excuses so far:1. Campbell is going to move numbers with that larger-than-life photo of himself that he’s mailing Republicans. Newsflash, we too are sending mail to Republicans statewide…and it may or may not include a photo of Tom as well.
2. TV won’t break through because of the Steve-Meg slugfest. True, Tom’s less than $100,000 buy for this week really would not have been competition for Steve and Meg.
3. They are husbanding resources for an ad blitz in the final few weeks. Could be, but it seems if that were true, they would have reserved more than $200,000 in time over the final two weeks of the primary campaign.
4. They are ahead and are therefore holding resources for the general. Sounds like a bold move when more than one-third of voters are undecided in the primary.
5. Carly has bought $2.2 million in TV and has not moved in the polls. First, the majority of our ad buy has yet to air and more importantly, the polling out there on the primary race does not account for the time we have been on the air. But nice try on that one, Team Campbell.
6. And finally, my personal favorite: Tom is ahead in the polls so they don’t need to spend as much on TV. We really hope they believe their own spin there – because if they do, they certainly are not looking at the same polling we are!
Let’s be honest here. Tom would be on TV and radio if he had the money.
And, while Tom keeps inventing excuses, Carly keeps getting more endorsements. Today, she is in Orange County (in AD 70 to be precise) picking up the endorsements of a slew of local elected officials and prominent business organizations including Orange County Supervisor Bill Campbell, the Orange County Business Council and the Hispanic 100. She has a full public schedule the remainder of the week. Meanwhile, our statewide network of volunteers made thousands of calls to Republican voters over the weekend and will be phone banking daily between now and June 8.Campbell’s advisors are trying to spin this as a super-sneaky strategy to conserve funds, banking on the fact that California’s two billionaire Republican gubernatorial candidates, Meg Whitman and Steve Poizner, will crowd everyone out on television anyway. And maybe there’s a little truth to that. But far more likely is the fact that Campbell has run out of money. He’s never been a good fundraiser, having been chased out of the Governor’s race for just that reason…
I surmise that Tom Campbell is running on empty and is saving whatever resources he has left to guard against a negative barrage from Carly Fiorina.
And, it will more than likely come and very soon.