Democrats – Page 2

DNC Seeks to Boost California Election Outreach

May 2, 2022 By Gillian Brassil 2 Comments

The Democratic National Committee is giving California and at least five other states grants to organize voter outreach ahead of this year’s elections.

The 2022 elections will determine whether Democrats or Republicans control the United States House of Representatives in 2023. Many experts are predicting a “red wave” this fall that will hand the chamber to Republicans.

The party of the president, now a Democrat, historically falters in midterm elections for Congress. Adding to Democrats’ worries are President Joe Biden’s declining approval rating for his handling of inflation and pandemic policy and the fact that a large number of Democrats are retiring.

The state-level Democratic Parties of California, Texas, Florida, Minnesota, Maryland and Wyoming will get DNC grants — some, like California, will get money to hire organizing directors, a spokesperson for the DNC told The Sacramento Bee. The directors are meant to recruit and funnel volunteers working on voter outreach into targeted districts across the state for local and national elections.

“The DNC is proud to make these latest investments in the California Democratic Party to expand organizing and voter outreach efforts on the ground,” DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement sent to The Bee. “The California Democratic Party has built an impressive coordinated effort to keep Democrats in office, and the DNC is committed to continue helping build upon that work to ensure California Democrats win up and down the ballot this November and beyond.”

The DNC announcement comes weeks before California’s primaries on June 7, 2022.

The last time the California Democratic Party received such a grant was in 2018, another midterm election.

Other states will benefit from such a grant in future roll-outs, the spokesperson said.

Prominent election-tracking organizations have re-rated some House races nationwide. For the most part, mostly, they boosted Republicans’ odds in California.

Though experts said redistricting, the once-a-decade process of redrawing legislative boundaries, favored Democrats in California, Republicans could hold onto the same number of districts that they have now. California lost a seat in Congress due to sluggish population growth, dropping its House delegation to 52 representatives. The lost seat is Democratic, surrounding Los Angeles.

California has 10 Republicans in the House. It would be 11, but former Congressman Devin Nunes resigned to lead former President Donald Trump’s social media company.

The House is currently divided by 221 Democrats and 209 Republicans, with five vacancies. Four vacant seats were held by Republicans. With a 222 to 213 split, Republicans need to win just five more seats in 2022 to take the majority.

Click here to read the full article at the Sacramento Bee

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Democrats, DNC, elections

Republicans Act On Homelessness Where Democrats Have Failed

March 18, 2022 By Scott Wilk and James Gallagher 2 Comments

The progressive experiment is failing in California. Take a walk around any of the cities controlled by Democrats here and you’ll see dozens of homeless encampments, feces, and heroin needles littering sidewalks and streets.

Despite containing only 12% of the nation’s population, California is home to a whopping 28% of its homeless, and an astronomical 47% of its unsheltered homeless. Since 2018, the state has thrown $17 billion at homelessness and the problem has only continued to grow.

Under more than a decade of complete Democratic control of state government, California’s approach on this issue has been disjointed and scattershot.

Democratic ideas to address homelessness have failed – evidence of that failure is visible to anyone who witnesses the suffering that has taken over our streets. In Gov. Gavin Newsom’s own words, Democrats have been “as dumb as they want to be” when it comes to homelessness.

Still, their “plan” to address homelessness is to simply carry on the same ineffective programs but spend more money. If we continue in their direction, we can only expect to see continued worsening results.

It is time to look at new ideas instead of doubling down on failed ones.

That’s why Legislative Republicans have introduced a comprehensive package of more than a dozen bills to ACT on homelessness, now. These bills prioritize accountability, compassion and treatment. Specifically, they demand accountability from our leaders, focus resources on housing and shelter accessibility, mental health and substance abuse assistance, and provide support for people at risk of becoming homeless.

Our first set of bills will bring accountability to homelessness programs and ensure funding gets to programs that actually keep people off the street and deliver the help they need. Californians cannot afford to continue providing blank checks with no results. Our proposals would require the governor to make an annual report to the Legislature on his homelessness efforts and begin a long-overdue audit of state homelessness spending and outcomes.

California has spent billions on housing efforts for the homeless population – yet those programs have failed. That’s why Legislative Republicans have proposed measures to support programs that help keep people off the streets and help those in the cycle of homelessness grow beyond the shelter walls. The Republican plan will streamline shelter construction, protect faith-based organizations that provide shelter and fund local government efforts to increase shelter capacity.

Ignoring mental health and substance use disorders within the homeless population is the furthest thing from compassionate. Californians in every community of this state see streets littered with needles and walk past those who struggle to grasp reality. Legislative Republicans want to bring real compassion to the homelessness crisis and ensure those who need help will receive it. Among our proposals are bills to provide addiction services for the homeless using opioid settlement funds, provide prompt treatment to people having a mental health crisis and ensure those with severe mental illness are placed into treatment instead of left on our streets.

While every homeless person comes to homelessness in their own way, we know certain groups – former foster youth, veterans, the mentally ill, the addicted, domestic violence victims, and the recently incarcerated – are at far greater risk than the general population. However, California’s prevention programs, to the degree they exist, show little evidence of success or accountability.

Republicans plan to help these populations break the cycle of homelessness, overcome adversity, and find and keep employment within the state. Republican proposals will create incentive and training programs to provide at-risk youth with employment opportunities and establish reentry programs for jail inmates at risk of becoming homeless upon their release.

Homelessness is all around us, and getting worse despite the continued empty promises from Capitol Democrats. Their ‘money solves everything’ approach is failing spectacularly, but they refuse to see it.

Click here to read the full article at the OC Register

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Democrats, Homelessness, Republicans

California Democrats Refuse to Pass Gas Tax Relief

March 16, 2022 By Katy Grimes 3 Comments

AB 1638 would have saved Californians 51 cents a gallon for about 6 months

Democrats in the California Legislature refused to pass AB 1638 by Assemblyman Kevin Kiley (R-Granite Bay) which would have suspended the state’s gas tax to provide immediate relief Californians. If passed, it would have saved Californians 51 cents a gallon for about 6 months.

AAA reports the national average for a gallon of gas is $4.316, and California’s average is $5.750. gas in Mono County costs $6.501 per gallon, and Napa County is $5.947.

“Today the Republican and Independent Members of the Assembly voted to save Californians 51 cents per gallon by suspending the gas tax,” Kiley said following the vote. “In addition, 18 members abstained from the vote. Unfortunately, the Supermajority rounded up enough votes to deny struggling Californians this modest measure of relief.”

When asked on Monday about the Republican idea to temporarily halt the whole gas tax, Erin Mellon, Newsom’s communications director wrote, “the Republican’s proposal can be manipulated to help line the pockets of petro-dictators and oil companies who are benefiting from the spike in oil prices across the world. The governor has proposed a tax rebate to provide billions in direct relief to Californians who are suffering from rising gas prices across the country, a direct result of [Russia’s President Vladimir Putin’s] war,” ABC7 reported.

“We have a $65 billion surplus here in California, so we can backfill that money,” said Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher.

Kiley added, “Our state’s political leadership has never been so out of touch.”

California drivers are still faciing the switch to the summer blend gas, a higher-grade fuel which can add up to 15 cents per gallon to the cost of a fill-up, and lowers your gas mileage. Most Californians already know that for every tank of gas, $10 of the total cost is state-imposed gas taxes, thanks to Senate Bill 1, signed into law by then Gov. Jerry Brown in 2017, which increased the gas tax by 12 cents per gallon, and increased automobile registration fees by more than $175, the Globe reported.

Click here to read the full article at the California Globe

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: California Politics, Democrats, gas taxes, Kevin Kiley, Legislature

OC’s Davies Proposes ‘Parents Bill Of Rights’ In Assembly

February 11, 2022 By Roxana Kopetman 1 Comment

California legislators will soon be taking up two bills related to school vaccinations and other education matters.

One bill, introduced by an Orange County Republican, would create a “California Parents Bill of Rights” that supporters say will give parents more control over their children’s education. Another, introduced by a San Diego Democrat, would allow school administrators easier access to student COVID-19 vaccination records.

Assemblymember Laurie Davies, R-Laguna Niguel, held a news conference Monday to talk about her “Parents Bill of Rights,” which refers to parents having “the right to make health care decisions” and a greater voice on where their children go to school and what they’re taught.

“It is the right of every parent to make decisions they deem best to protect the health and welfare of their children, not Sacramento politicians,” said Davies, pledging to continue to oppose vaccine and face mask mandates.

Davies likely is in for a fight given that Democrats have a supermajority in Sacramento and it’s tough for Republicans to get bills passed unless they gain bipartisan support.

Davies’ bill, AB 1785, reiterates existing laws and rights that parents already have but also stipulates what schools would need to do to keep parents involved and informed about those rights. The proposed legislation, for example, would require a school or district to post information on its website regarding various topics, such as immunization requirements, how to inspect instructional materials and curriculum and how to opt out of sex education. The bill also proposes that schools would need to provide an annual newsletter “about the nature and purpose of clubs and activities offered” on campus.

Mari Barke, president of the Orange County Board of Education, was on hand Monday to praise Davies’ bill and talk about parental choices. Barke noted that the county board is tasked with considering appeals from students who want to transfer from one district to another but are denied that move from their home districts. The board, run by a conservative majority that favors charter schools, also considers charter school petition appeals after they are denied by their home school districts.

“We do try to honor school choice and parental choice through our overturning of charter school appeals and inter-district transfers,” Barke said. “We don’t feel any child should be constrained by their ZIP code, and we know that parents always make the best decisions for their children, not the districts.”

The Orange County Board of Education has a lawsuit pending against Gov. Gavin Newsom on what board members say is his overreach and abuse of emergency executive powers that have led to pandemic-related mandates.

On Friday, Feb. 4, the same day that Davies introduced AB 1785, Assemblymember Akilah Weber, D-San Diego, introduced AB 1797, which would make it easier for school officials to access and verify students’ COVID-19 vaccine status.

The bill would update the existing California Immunization Registry, which is described as a secure, confidential database managed by the California Department of Public Health. (Currently, school district officials do not have access to verify students’ COVID-19 status.) The bill would also require doctors to report COVID data to the registry and collect race and ethnicity data as well.

Click here to read the full article at OC Register

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Democrats, Laurie Davies, Parents Rights

McCarthy, Foxx Demand Biden Ed Boss Cardona Turn Over Teacher Union Emails

January 13, 2022 By Jesse O'Neill 1 Comment

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Education Committee ranking member Virginia Foxx sent a letter to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona Wednesday demanding copies of emails between his DOE, the White House and the teachers’ unions.

In the letter, obtained by Fox News, the Congressional Republican leaders blasted federal education officials for “radical spending” during the pandemic and accused them of mishandling school closures and billions of dollars of COVID-19 education relief.

“We noted Congress had already appropriated nearly three times the funding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said was needed to operate schools successfully,” the Republicans wrote.

“Unfortunately, rather than continuing Congress’s bipartisan approach to addressing COVID-19, Democrats advanced their partisan agenda, approving more than $120 billion in additional funding for schools” in last year’s $1.9 billion American Rescue Plan COVID-19 relief bill.

McCarthy and Foxx wrote that Democrats argued “radical spending was necessary for schools to reopen safely for in-person instruction,” but said the claims were proven false by data that showed only 4 percent of the relief funds were used as the vast majority of US schools reopened in the fall, according to the report.

“Despite Democrats’ claims to the contrary, these funds were not needed to reopen schools,” the lawmakers reportedly wrote. “Because of this, some schools are grasping at any project they can find on which to waste these taxpayer funds, including indoctrinating students and staff with racist and divisive ideologies.”

As they accused the Education Department of misappropriating funds, McCarthy and Foxx also called the Biden administration’s handling of academic disruptions “appalling,” as “one million public school students across the country were impacted by district-wide school closures” as 2022 began.

Click here to read the full article at the NY Post

Filed Under: Trending News Tagged With: Covid-19, Democrats, Schools

Democrats Talk Openly About Challenging Nancy Pelosi’s Leadership

June 22, 2017 By Joel B. Pollak 5 Comments

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is facing unprecedented pressure, as frustrated Democrats have begun — for the first time in seven years — to talk about replacing her after a series of disappointments at the ballot box.

Pelosi was hailed as a driving force behind Democrats’ victory in 2006, when the party seized both houses of Congress and set the stage for victory in the 2008 presidential election. She became the first female Speaker of the House, and set about centralizing power in the Speaker’s office, ruling her caucus with unquestioned authority and promoting an unapologetically liberal agenda.

However, Pelosi’s role in the Obamacare debacle of 2009-10 helped provoke the Tea Party wave, sending her party to historic defeat and costing her the Speaker’s gavel. Amazingly, Pelosi did not resign at that point, and dispatched several would-be challengers, most notably Rep. Heath Shuler (D-NC), who later lost his seat to a Republican. She also fended off a challenge by Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) after 2016. Pelosi has been a prolific fundraiser for the party, even if she has also become a lightning rod for criticism and a useful political foil for Republicans to run against.

Ironically, Pelosi’s power within her caucus only grew as the Democrats lost seats, because most of the losses were in conservative swing districts. That left a core of liberal representatives from major cities, and blue states such as New York, Illinois, and Pelosi’s home state of California. There has been no political constituency in the caucus for an ideological alternative to the left-wing agenda that Pelosi and her coterie have continued to push even in defeat.

The high expectations that Pelosi set for Tuesday’s special election in Georgia may prove to be her undoing. Early in the week, with Jon Ossoff expected to win, Pelosi let it be known that she expected to take back the Speaker’s gavel after 2018. But Republican Karen Handel surged to victory, partly by tying her opponent to Pelosi.

As reality hit home, some Democrats began to break the taboo around challenging their leader. MSNBC analyst Matthew A. Miller tweeted: “No Dem wants to say it publicly, but taking their top bogeyman Pelosi off the table would help too. Fair or not, it’s the truth.”

Now, other critics are beginning to emerge.

“It’s time for some change. I think it’s time for a new generation of leadership,” said Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA). And Rep Filemon Vela (D-TX) told Politico: “I think you’d have to be an idiot to think we could win the House with Pelosi at the top … Nancy Pelosi is not the only reason that Ossoff lost. But she certainly is one of the reasons.”

But Pelosi also has her defenders — and she will not go easily.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential” people in news media in 2016. He is the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

This piece was originally published by Breitbart.com/California

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: Congress, Democrats, Heath Shuler, Nancy Pelosi, Tim Ryan

CA Budget About HOW We Spend … Not Just How Much

January 12, 2016 By Jon Coupal 1 Comment

Gov. Brown’s opening general fund budget gambit of $122.6 billion – total spending including bond and special funds is $170.7 billion – sets a new record for state government spending. That the big increases are coming from the man many regard as one of the more sane of Sacramento’s top politicians does not bode well for taxpayers. After all, this is just a starting point. Now the real fun begins with those less well grounded in economic reality starting the annual ritual of “making it rain” for their favorite projects and special interest employers.

To the governor’s credit, he is paying attention to paying down debt and strengthening the state’s rainy day reserve, a wise move considering that state revenue is highly dependent on top earners and is thus very vulnerable to an economic contraction.

Still, leading Democratic lawmakers want more – a lot more. They are already complaining that that the budget does not spend enough on early childcare programs, grants to families on welfare, or provide more money for affordable housing.

Let’s concede at the outset that Californians have widely divergent views about how much money should go to all the various things government does. For example, there is a legitimate debate about how much money we, the taxpayers, should be paying to deal with the water crisis. Or how much for K-12 education? Prisons? The list is fairly extensive.

But too often we neglect a very important topic when it comes to spending. That is, are we actually getting value for our tax dollars? Per pupil education spending is important, but a poor indicator of educational outcomes. Total spending on prisons is irrelevant if we are releasing dangerous criminals back out on the street. Californians are angry at traffic congestion, but what good is more transportation spending if it doesn’t actually help people get to where they want to go? Californians are sympathetic to the needs of the poor, but are justifiably outraged when needed assistance fails to get to the truly needed and, instead, is used to buy luxury goods or pay for expensive vacations.

We know that Governor Brown is capable of recognizing waste, fraud and abuse. Just a few years ago he put forth a very credible 12 point pension reform plan that would have corrected most of the pension abuses in California. Regrettably, except for dealing with the most obvious of abuses, the reforms were shelved due to intense pushback from public sector unions. This means that the ever increasing percentage of the general fund budget going to address pension obligations is more than it needs to be.

Taxpayer advocates are constantly told that the amount of tax dollars lost to waste, fraud and abuse is but a tiny fraction of government spending. To be blunt, we don’t believe it – and mounds of evidence supports our disbelief. Even the Los Angeles Times several years ago pegged Medi-Cal fraud in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

To understand why more focus in the budget process should be on oversight, the observations of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman are instructive. He noted that there are four ways people can spend money:

You can spend your own money for yourself. (Being careful both about how much you spend and on what you buy);
You can spend your own money for somebody else. (Being careful about how much you spend but less careful about what you buy);
You can spend somebody else’s money for yourself. (Being careful about what you buy but less careful about how much you spend); and
You can spend somebody else’s money for somebody else. (Where you care less both about how much you spend and what you buy).

Friedman’s thesis is that what government does is spend money in the fourth way. And that is why any discussion about the California state budget needs to include the question of whether taxpayers are getting value for the hard-earned dollars they send to Sacramento.

Jon Coupal is president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association — California’s largest grass-roots taxpayer organization dedicated to the protection of Proposition 13 and the advancement of taxpayers’ rights.

Originally published by at HTJA.org

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: budget, CA budget, Democrats, government spending, Jerry Brown, Legislature

Brown Cautious in 2016/17 Budget Proposal

January 9, 2016 By Joel Fox 2 Comments

Channeling philosopher George Santayana (“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”), Gov. Jerry Brown presented his budget yesterday looking to the future by considering the past. Warning that budget writers “put out of their minds” thoughts of recessions that could cripple state budgets, he vowed not to repeat past mistakes of building budgets that cannot be sustained in difficult economic times.

Brown offered a chart that showed the rollercoaster budgets over the last decade-and-a-half with big budget hits from the dot-com bust and the mortgage crisis. Brown said using the budget history as a template, his team predicted the effects of another budget shortfall, which could happen soon. The average economic recovery period is five years, the governor said, and California is well beyond that point now.

Presenting a chart that showed recent deficits in the red, to prevent future large deficits Brown said, “If you do what I want” there would be less red on a chart during the next recession.

Warning legislators against creating new programs that will continually require state funding—even if the ideas behind the programs are noble — Brown said, “Too many goods, too quickly, become bad.”

Will Brown’s warnings be heard by legislators?

Maybe. With the change in the term limit law, legislators will have more time to serve in the capitol. Actions they take now they would have to live with in the coming years (as long as they are re-elected).

Still, majority Democrats and interest groups plan to test the governor over budget priorities. Brown seemed prepared to confront new demands. “This is not a candy store that you can pick out what you want.”

Some groups would not bother with debating issues in the legislature but are planning to take their proposals to the voters via the initiative process.

Governor Brown was asked about a number of proposed initiatives. While he said he did not want to comment on initiatives, he did, dropping boulder-sized hints of what he was thinking on some prominent potential ballot measures.

On the Proposition 30 income tax extensions, Brown cited a “fatal flaw” in the measure by stipulating that none of the tax revenue collected by the tax extension would end up in the rainy day fund. (Brown’s budget is adding $2 billion to the fund bringing it up to 65% of its constitutional mandate.)

The governor in response to a reporter’s question said that Prop 30 could make a future budget deficit worse because the tax measure relies so heavily on high-end income taxpayers, who see great drops in their capital gains during recession.

On the minimum wage, the governor pointed out that because the state increased the minimum wage a dollar on the first of the month, the budget had to set aside an additional quarter-of-a-billion dollars from the General Fund to cover state workers. Should the $15 dollar-an-hour minimum wage ballot proposal become law that would cost the state an additional $4 billion. The money has to come from somewhere, Brown said.

Addressing the $9 billion statewide school bond already qualified for the General Election, Brown said much of the money would end up with affluent school districts. It is not well targeted, he said, arguing that the legislature can do a better job than the “developers” who put this together.

Originally published by Fox and Hounds Daily

Filed Under: Top Stories Tagged With: budget, Democrats, government spending, Jerry Brown, Legislature

Republicans Act On Homelessness Where Democrats Have Failed

California Democrats Refuse to Pass Gas Tax Relief

Democrats Talk Openly About Challenging Nancy Pelosi’s Leadership

CA Budget About HOW We Spend … Not Just How Much

Brown Cautious in 2016/17 Budget Proposal

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