So as to prove that he's not just running off incoherently about hating rescue workers, Issa wants you to know he's proud of his alternative plans for spending federal funds. To that end, he's triumphantly sent around a press release listing all of his new earmarks (word doc, h/t Chris Reed). So what, you're probably wondering, has Representative Issa chosen to crow about that exemplifies the "local money for local issues, federal money for screw you" spending mantra? Here's the quick list:
San Diego Regional Interoperable Computer Aided Dispatch Project -$6 million
San Diego Regional Communications System (RCS) Upgrade -$3.5 million
Gang Prevention Program (City of Oceanside) -$500K
Lake Elsinore Emergency Operations Center -$250K
Murrieta Creek Flood Control Project -$13 million
San Luis Rey Flood Control Project -$7.2 million
Perris II Desalter (Perris, CA) -$2 million
Non-Potable Distribution Facilities and Demineralization/Desalination Recycled Water Treatment and Reclamation Facility Project (Riverside County) -$2 million
Santa Margarita Conjunctive Use Project (Camp Pendleton) -$1 million
San Jacinto & Upper Santa Margarita Watersheds Project -$355K
San Diego County Fire Safety and Fuels Reduction Program -$45 million
Corpsmen/Medics Civilian Nursing Training Program (Oceanside) -$1.6 million
Vista Community Clinic -$1 million
North County Health Project Oceanside Clinic Expansion (Oceanside) -$1 million
Railroad Canyon I-15 interchange project -$8 million
State Route 76 (widen and realign) -$5 million
San Luis Rey Transit Center (Oceanside) -$3.1 million
West Vista Way (City of Vista, widen) -$2 million
French Valley Airport (Temecula) -$1 million
Renovation and expansion of Fallbrook Boys and Girls Club -$500K
Some pretty nice projects in there. But it begs the question: Ahem, why do all these people need "to come to the federal government for the dollars versus this being primarily a state [or local] consideration?" Rep. Issa? Bueller? Bueller?
Lemme just venture one guess. Rescue workers in New York don't vote in Temecula or Oceanside do they? Oh yeah. So only when Issa is trying to hook it up for his own self should federal money be spent on state and local projects. Not only cruel and hateful, but selfish and duplicitous too. He's building himself quite a nice collection of adjectives. Full of crap isn't technically an adjective, but it also applies.
"That is a pretty distorted view of things," said Frank Fraone, a Menlo Park, Calif., fire chief who led a 67-man crew at Ground Zero. "Whether they're a couple of planes or a couple of missiles, they still did the same damage."
"New York was attacked by Al Qaeda. It doesn't have to be attacked by Congress," added Long Island Rep. Pete King, a Republican.
"I'm really surprised by Darrell Issa," King added. "It showed such a cavalier dismissal of what happened to New York. It's wrong and inexcusable."
Lorie Van Aucken, who lost her husband, Kenneth, in the attacks, slammed Issa's "cruel and heartless" comments.
"It's really discouraging. People stepped up and did the right thing. They sacrificed themselves and now a lot of people are getting really horrible illnesses," she added.
New York Democratic Reps. Jerry Nadler and Anthony Weiner and GOP Rep. Vito Fossella also added some heated criticisms of Issa. Issa, however, remains mostly unrepentant:
I'm not sure if he's just a soulless ass or if he's also actively trying to undermine the entire foundation of post-9/11 conservativism, but Darrell Issa is doing his level best to spit on the rescue workers who got sick at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the twin towers attacks. He's flatly refused to vote for federal funding that would provide medical care to these victims of the attack because, in Issa's mind, it apparently was just a local thing, and not a major one at all:
"It simply was an aircraft, residue of two aircraft, and residue from the materials used to build this building," Issa said during a hearing into whether a new 9/11 victims' compensation fund should be launched.
Which is odd since, as Rep. Anthony Weiner notes, "The gentleman voted for [original 9/11 funding] because we had the national sense that this was not an attack on New York City, this was an attack on our country."
But hey, keep up the dispicably cruel hypocrisy Rep. Issa. Feel free to even bring some friends along. Because all it proves is that 9/11 to you is nothing more than a tool to intimidate people into sacrificing Constitutional rights and attempt to justify the $3 trillion Iraq boondoggle. That's when it's a national issue. That's when America is at stake. Only when it serves the political interests of Darrell Issa.
But when the heroes who sacrificed at Ground Zero need help? For Darrell Issa, that's not America's problem and it apparently sure isn't his problem. It's...well...somebody else's problem.
(bump cause I like congressional and numbers - promoted by Lucas O'Connor)
Turnout from Tuesday's primary by party. Every district with a Republican leaning PVI plus Barbara Lee just for fun and comparison's sake. Of the Republican leaning districts, Dem turnout was higher in 8 and close in several others. Might be an interesting November. Just sayin.
Numbers on the flip.
Update: I should have mentioned in the first place, there are still no Democratic candidates in CA-02, CA-19, CA-22, or CA-25. Turnout was dead even in the 19th and higher for Dems in the 25th, just for starters.
(Well, looks like the rightwing is going all out on the Dirty Trick - promoted by Brian Leubitz)
Capitol Alert from the Sacramento Bee is reporting that OC Lincoln Club is donating $100,000 to help qualify the Electoral College reform initiative for the ballot. [Link] The measure, if it qualifies for the June ballot and passes, would award California's electoral votes by Congressional district instead of the present winner-take-all system.
The initiative qualifying effort was dropped by its original sponsors, but in recent weeks was pickup "by a group led by Republican strategist David Gilliard." Their goal is to turn in 700,000 signatures by the end of the week.[Link]
The OC Lincoln Club joins 49th Congressional Representative Darrell Issa as the single largest contributors to the effort by the California GOP to malapportion the electoral system here in California. Here is a list of some of the donors who have contributed to this effort.
As reported and later expounded on by the Calitics web of newshounds, Dirty Tricks is back. Unfortunately it's not a Halloween gimmick, and thanks to Courage Campaign, you can now see this new video from Bradley Whitford on the shady power grab and help financially support the incredible work that the Courage folks are doing. But as the Dirty Tricks continues its haphazard course between various life-support systems, it's found a big money home in the wallet of recall-champion Darrell Issa.
Issa, who represents the 49th Congressional District, is one of the richest people in Congress, making a fortune off the Viper car alarm (step back, you are too close to the vehicle). Issa is a veteran of throwing gobs of personal money into campaigns. He dropped $12 million of his own money to lose the Republican Senate primary in 1998. He was a bit more successful in 2003 when he dug into his wallet for $1.6 million in personal cash to fund the signature gathering for the Gray Davis recall which, when asked if it was worth it earlier this month, he said "Yes, of course." Well, Rep. Issa is ponying up the big bucks again, lining up behind Dirty Tricks in its hour of need. If new polling from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner is any indication though, he may have picked himself a loser this time. The poll finds just 22% in favor and 53% opposed (25% undecided) to the measure throughout the state with uniform opposition throughout every region of the state. So the question is...why?
As the smoke begins to clear in San Diego, the stories and reactions to the fire will start competing with the recovery effort atop the fold. First on the minds of many in government seems, not surprisingly, to be response time and firefighting capacity. Unforunately, Republicans are again demonstrating that they make up in bluster what they lack in remote semblance of coherence. Southern California Republican Congressmen such as Duncan Hunter, Brian Bilbray, Darrell Issa, Jerry Lewis, Elton Gallegly and Dana Rohrabacher have been lining up for every available reporter to knock Governor Schwarzenegger and the state's CalFire bureaucracy for supposedly impeding firefighting efforts throughout the region last week. They've flown so dramatically off the handle in fact that even Chris Reed has it right on their craziness- or at least part of it:
The congressmen who are doing such a good job exposing the state's bureaucratic tomfoolery in its wildfire response have some explaining to do themselves. Couldn't they have spared an earmark to cover the cost of outfitting the California Air National Guard's C-130 with a fire-retardant tank, something that was promised to happen after the 2003 wildfires but never did?
Instead, Duncan Hunter funneled $63 million into the DP-2 Vectored Thrust Aircraft boondoggle. And Dana Rohrabacher worried more about buying expensive planes the military didn't want than about helping California's wildfire-fighting capacity. This is from a May story in the Washington Post:
... Rohrabacher (R-Calif.) has made one of the biggest earmark requests in the new Congress, seeking $2.4 billion to build 10 more C-17 planes -- which the Pentagon has said it does not need.
These gentlemen have ended up discussing almost every issue in the country, all in the context of the fire. And they've managed to be completely wrong every time. So without further ado, an "oh the humanity" sampling from the past week.
This is almost a placeholder diary so I can get to it later in my monthly roundup, but this diary at Open Left shows the very real opportunity available in California this time around. Six Congressional Rpublicans who are running for re-election have less than $250,000 in cash on hand. The NRCC, the campaign arm for the House GOP, is spread thin by retirements and challenges. So many incumbents are going to be on their own in 2008. And saying "Hello, I'm a Republican member of Congress" just doesn't rake in the money like it used to. Here's the list:
John Doolittle, CA-04
George Radanovich, CA-19
Ken Calvert, CA-44
Mary Bono, CA-45
John Campbell, CA-48
Darrell Issa, CA-49
I can add to this the fact that Gary Miller only raised a paltry $40,000 last quarter. And Doolittle's problems are well-documented.
Unfortunately, our Democrats statewide haven't fully stepped up. Two of these incumbents (Radanovich, Issa) don't have challengers yet, and Mary Bono just got one in Paul Clay. But I would hope that Art Torres and the team would wake up to the fact that there are opportunities all over the map, in places that would significantly help down-ballot races as well.
At the end of August, Congressman Darrell Issa came to San Diego to discuss the Navy Broadway Complex development in the downtown harbor area. While he was in town, he sat down for an interview with Navy Compass discussing broad themes of military and foreign relations. NavyCompass does a great job with the questions, keeping them relevant to their content but ranging across a wide range of relevant issues. He hits all the well-known pro-military talking points that Republicans love to throw around in public, but in the process draws a sharp distinction between talking the talk and walking the walk. So how does Congressman Issa's voting history match up with his glowing words about supporting veterans and soldiers? Let's find out.
BENAWU posted another of his great Congressional race tracker updates yesterday, announcing that 317 out of 435 House races have confirmed candidates (or presumed returning incumbents). But despite this early success, in California there are only confirmed challengers for 10 out of 19 sitting Republicans. Only Texas has more unfilled races right now, and it's friggin Texas. As BENAWU notes, all of these districts had challengers in 2006, so some level of infrastructure exists for a challenge. Now many of these districts are going to be tough sledding for any Democrat thanks to redistricting in 2002, but anyone who's been paying attention the last few years knows that the Republican party is potentially vulnerable almost anywhere. The goal of filling every race proved its worth last year with surprising success in supposedly safe districts across the country. Just ask Jerry McNerney or Nancy Boyda or Jim Webb for starters.
Last week I ran down the unused money from last year's unopposed and underopposed California members of Congress. It was a long list. 22 districts held by Democrats fielded no Republican challenger who met a very low bar of fundraising legitimacy. Really not impressive, but really not surprising either. So what about the flipside? How did Democrats do in going after Republicans?
Democrats left only one California seat unopposed, and failed to raise money in one other. Of the 21 Republican-held seats, only 4 qualified as as unopposed or underopposed (challenger raising less than $25,000). It suggests two things to me. One, Democrats are already doing a pretty good job of funding candidates in red districts (although there's still room to improve of course), and two, that strong funding only goes so far given the way these districts are drawn. So as I would be cautioning anyways, fundraising is only one piece of the puzzle. It still takes the right candidate in the right context.
