Tag Archives: Tom McClintock

McClintock Calls for Snowden Amnesty

Libertarian Congressman splits Republicans

by Brian Leubitz

Tom McClintock may not be the most effective leader for his district. He doesn’t bring home big dollars for the state’s northeast corner, and he isn’t a legislative powerhouse. That’s just not his thing. He’s an idealist among a caucus full of idealists. But even the most idealists aren’t going where he is on the Snowden issue:

“I think it would be best if the American government grants (Snowden) amnesty, to get him back to America where he can answer questions without the threat of prosecution,” McClintock said.

“We have some very good laws against sharing secrets. He broke those laws. On the other hand, he broke them for a very good reason, because those laws were being used in direct contravention of our Fourth Amendment rights as Americans.”(KCRA)

I learned of this through a Facebook post from Jon Fleischman, publisher of the FlashReport. The comments were very split, with the more libertarian Republicans supporting McClintock, and the others saying some pretty nasty things about Snowden. Michael Genest, the former director of finance for Gov. Schwarzenegger, left one of the more publishable comments from the more traditional security Republican position:

Michael Genest Tom is wrong. Snowden could have worked his revelations through a whistleblower process without breaking the law. He chose to violate his oath instead. From what I understand he planned to do this even before taking the job. He may well have done us a favor if the NSA is overstepping what is required to protect us, but what damage did he also do to national security? That question was not his to decide and he deserves whatever punishment he lawfully gets, which appears to be a life sentence to live in Russia.

All that being said, it doesn’t look like either Snowden or the administration will be blinking on this standoff.

Tom McClintock Still Doesn’t Like eMeg, Part 2

Back in August, Tom McClintock made some not too excited remarks about Meg Whitman.  Seems the election approaching hasn’t really changed his mind on that front: Meg Whitman is just not loyal enough to ummm…McClintockianism…

McClintock – a tea party favorite with a strong libertarian streak – had particularly hash words for his party’s nominee for governor, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Asked about Whitman following his remarks, McClintock suggested she is not loyal to the “principles of the American Founders,” and said he agrees with her Democratic opponent Jerry Brown as much as he agrees with Whitman:

   My loyalty is to the principles of the American Founders. My loyalty to the Republican party and to its candidates extends only so far as they are loyal to those principles. And I don’t see that in the current ticket. Two of the people on the Republican ticket were singularly responsible for biggest tax increase by any state in American history. These are Whitman’s handpicked running mates. […]

   I look at all of these things and I realize I agree with her maybe 20 percent of the time. I agree with Jerry Brown about 20 percent of the time. I agree with the libertarians about 80 percent of the time. So I’m not making an endorsement, particularly for that!(Think Progress)

Must be hard to live up to the pure principles that exist only in the mind of Tom McClintock, but on the other hand, I’m sure it is an awesome place.  

Tom McClintock Still Doesn’t Like eMeg

Tom McClintock is certainly not one known to hold his tongue for any reason, but he’s let it all hang out with his feelings about the GOP nominee for Governor, Meg Whitman.

McClintock went on, “If it comes down to a choice between Arnold Schwarzenegger’s third term with Meg Whitman, or Jerry Brown’s third term with Jerry Brown, anyway you cut it, it’s going to be a long four years.” (SacBee)

I can’t say I really blame him, but this is all rather public. And he doesn describe the situation rather fairly.  The best the GOP, or the state really, can hope for from Meg Whitman is four more years of Arnold Schwarzenegger-style governance.  And really, it’s hard to think of any ways that Meg is either more capable or more knowledgeable about the problems than our current Governor.  

On a side note, if somebody asked me ten years ago whether I thought I would ever write the sentence above (about a CEO of a major corporation not being more knowledgeable than a former action movie star), I would have laughed.  But such is the situation that we find ourselves in.

As for the second clause of McClintock’s analysis, well, Jerry Brown would be Jerry Brown part III.  Now, while he had to spend much of his second term trying to patch together a system of governance that could last a few years in the wake of Prop 13, his record is really rather positive.  Sure, that Prop 13 is a bit of a downer, but he managed to somehow build a system that lasted nearly 25 years before it really broke under the weight of the super majority requirements.

But, all in all, I’m with Tom. Why would California want another term of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Calitics Blast From The Past: CA-04: Grand Dragons For McClintock

I was going through some old posts on CALITICS this morning, after reading up on the latest on the push by McClintock and Dan Logue to repeal AB32, and came across this gem from former Calitics contributor/writer David Dayen.

CA-04: Grand Dragons For McClintock

by: David Dayen

Fri Oct 10, 2008 at 13:00:00 PM PDT

Perennial candidate Tom McClintock is a beloved figure on the far right.  We just didn’t know how far.

It turns out that in 2003, when McClintock was running for his eleventy-teenth political office in the California governor recall election, he was endorsed by none other than the KKK.

Dateline: September 27, 2003

Ku Klux Klan Announces support for Tom McClintock

The Imperial Klans of America, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan (IKA) have announced their full support for Tom

McClintock’s bid for the governorship of California. Their support is announced in what they term “the

lesser of all evil candidates.”

When interviewed, Mr. Chris Johnson (Grand Dragon or State Director of the IKA’s California chapter) had this to say regarding the announcement, “While Mr. McClintock is not the perfect candidate for California Governor, we have more in common with his ideology than any of the other candidates. We are in congruence with his stand on illegal aliens infecting our land and his courage in standing up to the invasion.” Mr. Johnson went on to say that, “Mr. McClintock echoes our anti-abortion stand, and our opposition to oppressive taxation.”

I guess the McClintock campaign can spin this by saying that at least the KKK called him evil, even if he was the lesser of all the rest?

Here’s the thing: organizations can choose to endorse anybody they want, and the candidates have no control over that.  But McClintock never said a peep five years ago when he got this endorsement.  And there’s a Chris Johnson on McClintock’s donor list from that 2003 gubernatorial race.  Chris Johnson is obviously a common name, and the donation is $100, so take it with a grain of salt.  But certainly, McClintock needs to answer the question of why he never rejected the endorsement and why they never sought out and returned money that would even have the appearance of coming from the Klan.

More to the point, McClintock is just the kind of guy to demonize an opponent’s associations.  In fact, when running for governor in 2003, McClintock compared then-Lt. Governor Cruz Bustamante’s association with the Hispanic student group MEChA to, you guessed it, the KKK.

State Sen. Tom McClintock, a conservative Republican rival, recently likened the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, also known as MEChA, to the Ku Klux Klan.

“It’s like saying, ‘Oh, I was a moderate member of the Klan,'” McClintock said last month on the San Diego radio station KOGO. “It’s incumbent on Cruz Bustamante to clearly and completely renounce …

The idea that the KKK finds ideological kinship with McClintock is pretty much a no-brainer.  His demonization of illegal immigrants as the cause of so much of the nation’s economic woes plays to the baser instincts of the racist right.  He’s running a campaign against Charlie Brown that has recently seized on Brown’s appearance at an anti-war rally before the invasion of Iraq as somehow un-American.  It’s really not too much of a logical leap here.

The Post Ended With–Stay tuned for more on this…

Since both McClintock and Logue are up for election again this year, does anyone know if McClintock ever responded to the allegations? I don’t recall a peep about it from McClintock. Note also Dan Logue in the picture with Tom and (Guess Who?), as well.

How did Dan Logue do with protecting us by protecting out boarders?

Since Logue has no problem taking money from out of state and huge energy companies, like SEMPRA, who was just ordered to pay back a half BILLION dollars or so to California rate payers, I wonder how many folks from out of the district will pitch in to make sure Logue is not re-elected?

I understand that the Unemployment Rate in Marysville, Logue’s home base, is now 21% or so. How does that jive with his claiming to have been responsible for thousands of jobs in the area?

Just asking….

After the primary, things up here should get real interesting.

Stuff to ponder, especially if you are a voter in CA-04 or CA Assembly District… 03

AB32: Dan Logue and Tom McClintock have some air pollution just for you!

The following was originally written and published for Nevada County residents but applies, in large part, to every county Logue and McClintock represent. Republished with the approval of the author.

Why are our elected representatives attacking our health in Nevada County? This is probably the first question you have to ask yourself to understand why our Assemblyman, Dan Logue, and our Congressman, Tom McClintock, are behind the fight against California’s Assembly Bill 32 (passed in 2006).  Assembly Bill 32, signed by Governor Schwarzenegger, is a major initiative by the Air Resources Board for reducing California’s greenhouse gasses by 30% to 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% below that by 2050.  Make no mistake about it; AB 32 is landmark clean air legislation that will soon make a big difference in the air we breathe in Nevada County.

To fight this good legislation, Logue and McClintock tried to launch an initiative against it by calling it a “jobs” bill but were stopped from this title by Attorney General Jerry Brown, who made it very clear that it was a “pollution bill.”  (Although there is no real proof that jobs will be lost under AB32, it is clearly understood that jobs will be created in the new “green” industries that will be generated by the new law.)  Unfortunately, the initiative process supported by Logue and McClintock to kill or stymie the 2006 clean energy and air pollution law is continuing.  Dan Logue claimed no knowledge of funding for the initiative but it is now known that the Valero Energy Corporation and the Tesoro Energy Corporation, both headquartered in Texas, are behind Logue and McClintock’s attempt.  Valero and Tesoro are the major contributors to the initiative and have donated large sums of money to their efforts.  And, supposedly by trying to keep the donations secret, they may have violated state campaign laws.  

 

Nevada County’s air is directly affected by the pollution from the refineries and automobiles in the bay area.  (Valero owns refineries in Benicia, while Tesoro runs plants in Martinez.  Valero and Tesoro represent some of the heaviest carbon emissions operators in the state.)  Once the pollution is transported from the bay area by wind to our foothills where it gets “stuck” against the tall mountains, it gets transformed into ground-level ozone by UV radiation (the sun).  

The American Lung Association in its’ 2007 State of the Air Report concluded that Western Nevada County is the 13th most ozone polluted county and the 1st most ozone polluted rural county in the United States.

Ozone pollution in Nevada County is significantly worse than in areas commonly associated with air pollution, including New York City; Chicago, Illinois; Washington, DC; Las Vegas, Nevada; and many other US cities.

Ozone is completely invisible and undetectable without monitoring equipment. Nevada County’s rates of childhood asthma are higher than the overall state average.  Besides ozone being the cause of difficulty in breathing, wheezing, and exhaustion for adults, long term exposure can have permanent health effects including accelerated aging of the lungs, loss of lung capacity, decreased lung function, development of respiratory diseases and premature mortality.  According to the New England Journal of Medicine, it only takes a 10 parts per billion increase in ozone to increase the rate of death by 2.9% to 4%.

It is now quite obvious that our representatives for Nevada County do not represent our best interest.  Instead, they have attacked the very air we breathe and our very health to support big oil.

Assemblyman Logue and Congressman McClintock’s apparent need to support and protect these corporate polluters is sacrificing the very health of their own constituents in Nevada County.

We must replace Logue and McClintock!  We must fight this initiative.

Kent W. Clark has lived in Nevada County since 1999 and is the Representative for District 2 on the Nevada County Democratic Central Committee.

Assemblyman Dan Logue Meet Your Newest Worst Enemies: Angry CA VOTERS and NO ON VALERO.COM

As reported earlier here on Calitics and elsewhere, California Assemblyman Dan Logue, after his recent failed attempt to kill the major provisions of Assembly Bill 32, California Landmark Clean Air legislation by a vote in the legislature, has begun an attempt to go the initiative route to repeal most of AB32. Logue and California Congressman Tom McClintock have been identified as two of several conservative who came up with the idea to repeal AB 32. Right off the bat they wanted the initiative to be referred to as a jobs bill. That did not fly and I recall reading Logue and company were considering legal action against Jerry Brown, Attorney General, because the office made very clear it was a air pollution bill. Now it gets more interesting.

To recap, in part, when Logue was asked by the NEW YORK TIMES who was funding the initiative, Logue refused to identify where the funding for the initiative was coming from. Shortly after the report was published, records were discovered by the press that indicated the financial sponsors of Logue’s initiative, all two of them, were Valero Energy Corp. and Tesoro Corp, neither of them headquartered in California.

Suddenly, almost before you could “catch your breath” the CBS affiliate in Sacramento, Channel 13, aired a news story of protesters of Logue’s initiative gathered at a local VELARO gas station to protest the funding.

The news story can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/NoOnValero

About the same time, NOONVALERO.COM, by Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs, sponsored by environmental organizations and business, was launched. It states on the home page in great big letters, in part:

Valero – a Texas-based oil company – is funding a deceptive, job-killing initiative for the November 2010 ballot that would kill California’s clean energy and air pollution law, AB 32. If passed, this initiative would destroy the fastest-growing segment of our economy and put at risk billions of dollars of investment in clean energy companies and small businesses that are creating thousands of jobs throughout California.

A fact sheet, available on the web site, in addition to a place to sign up to volunteer to defeat Logue and Valero indicates:

Valero Oil Company’s Initiative Would Kill Clean Energy & Air Pollution Standards in California

Californians for Clean Energy and Jobs: FACT SHEET Last updated 3/5/10

Passed in 2006, AB 32 is a California law that establishes clean energy and air pollution control standards.

These standards stimulate job creation and investments in clean technology, and reduce our dependence on

foreign oil. Despite the law’s benefits and popularity, it is under attack by Valero’s Initiative.

Valero’s Initiative Would Create More Air Pollution in California

• The Texas-based oil company Valero Energy Corp. is funding a deceptive initiative for the November

2010 ballot designed to kill California’s leading clean energy and air pollution control standards.

• The company claims its measure simply “suspends AB 32,” but in fact their initiative would halt the

implementation of clean energy and pollution standards until California’s unemployment level drops

below 5.5 percent for an entire year – a market condition that has occurred just three times in the last

30 years!

• Valero wants us to return to the dirty energy economy that pollutes our environment, jeopardizes our

health and puts us at a global competitive disadvantage in the trillion dollar field of clean energy.

• Valero is joined in its efforts on the initiative by another Texas oil company, Tesoro. Both companies are

among the biggest polluters in California.

o Valero was named one of the worst polluters in the U.S. (Source: The Political Economy

Research Institute, University of Massachusetts, http://www.peri.umass.edu/Toxi…

Table.265.0.html). The company was hit with $711 million in fines by the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency in 2005.

Valero’s Initiative Would Kill Thousands of Jobs and Billions of Dollars of Investments in California’s Economy

• According to the non-partisan, independent Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO), the suspension of AB 32

could: “delay investments in energy technologies reaping longer-run savings, or dampen additional

investments in clean energy technologies or in so-called ‘green jobs’ by private firms, thereby resulting

in less economic activity than would otherwise be the case.”

o If Valero’s initiative passes, California could lose more than $80 billion in gross state product

(GSP) and face the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs by 2020.

o California green jobs are growing 10 times faster than the statewide average.

o Between 1990 and 2006, green technology businesses in California grew by 84 percent.

• In 2009, while other sectors saw little or no investment, California’s clean technology sector received

$2.1 billion, 60 percent of the total in North America, and more than five times the investment in our

nearest competitor – Massachusetts.

Valero’s Initiative Would Increase Dependence on Foreign Oil

• By eliminating clean energy and air pollution standards, Valero’s initiative would result in greater use of

foreign oil in California.

• In 2009, Americans spent $265 billion – $500,000 a minute – on foreign oil.

• According to the U.S. Department of Defense, “climate change and energy are two key issues that will

play a significant role in shaping the future security environment. Although they produce distinct types

of challenges, climate change, energy security, and economic stability are inextricably linked.”

• According to the CNA’s Military Advisory Board, “America’s heavy dependency on oil-in virtually

all sectors of society-stresses the economy, international relationships, and military operations-the

most potent instruments of national power.”

Further information available at noonvalero.com.

Both Dan Logue and Tom McClintock are both running for reelection this year.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in both the Primary and, if need be, the General elections in 2010.

Logue/McClintock AB32 Repeal Argument Destroyed – THE MISGUIDED OPPOSITION TO AB 32 AND CAP & TRADE

There is nothing worst than watching your child suffer due to the “crud in the air,” regardless of how the air became so filthy. Inhalers and trips to the emergency room are routine for “breathing treatments.” Watching your child gasp for breath is a horrible, and to a great deal, a preventable experience. No, there is nothing quite like it. There is also nothing quite like legislators attempting to roll back clean air laws with disputed facts.

For the past few weeks I have read various articles on the attempts by Assembly Person Dan Logue and Congress Person Tom McClintock, and their attempts to repeal CALIFORNIA ASSEMBLY BILL 32, which was signed into law by our current Governor. They have attacked the law, which is not even close to being implemented yet, as a “job killer.”  The bill, and now law, is NOT and never was a “Jobs” bill, as they attempt to make the case for (including their rejected attempts to have it described so on official documents to gather signatures to put on the ballot by the State of California). It is a CLEAN AIR LAW and certainly, when you look at the facts, NOT A JOB KILLER now or later, when fully implemented.

Last night I read an article regarding the Logue/McClintock attempts to undo AB 32 and just how wrong headed the attempts to roll back the “air quality” bill are. The author, THOMAS D. ELIAS, also addresses how even an untruth can (and is) used to make the case for a problem and a credible solution to an existing law that simply does not exist. In my opinion, the following article pretty much destroys the argument put forth for repeal of current law. As far as I am concerned it should be published in the voter guide and sent to every voter in California. The artice is presented below with permission of the author.

“THE MISGUIDED OPPOSITION TO AB 32 AND CAP AND TRADE”

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

Whether or not Congress eventually approves the greenhouse-gas reduction agreements reached late last year in Copenhagen, California will soon have a cap-and-trade system in place.

Unless voters here put a ballot initiative to the contrary on the November ballot and then pass it. Sponsors of this putative proposition call it the “California Jobs Initiative,” contending jobs will be lost in efforts to fight global warming by demanding lower industrial emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane.

“With unemployment at 12.5 percent and another looming budget deficit, this is not the time for California to attempt an overhaul of the entire economy at a cost of tens of billions of dollars,” writes Republican Assemblyman Dan Logue of Linda, in Yuba County, one of the initiative’s backers.

The presumption here and among many other opponents of doing much about climate change is simple: Fixing the environment will cost business billions of dollars and eliminate many thousands of jobs.

But they never back that bromide with facts. That’s because it is based on little more than reflexive, knee-jerk guesswork. Still, their campaign is effective. It even has led major polling organizations like Gallup and Harris to run surveys where a slight majority of respondents now favors economic growth over fixing the environment.

It turns out that’s a false choice. For doing something about greenhouse gas emissions doesn’t necessarily mean business will be hurt or jobs lost.

That’s the conclusion of a major report forecasting that cap-and-trade rules like those the “Jobs Initiative” seeks to cancel actually will cost most businesses pennies, if anything. Meanwhile, another study of the existing carbon market in Europe, the first large industrial region to make serious efforts at cutting greenhouse gases, demonstrates that cap-and-trade proved profitable to most businesses and gave them no reason to cut jobs.

Cap-and-trade is a system where companies are assigned limits for permissible emissions. These “caps” drop each year until environmental goals are reached. Companies that emit less than their quota can trade or sell the difference between actual gases they produce and what they’re permitted to others which emit too much. So outfits that do the most to cut the gases they produce stand to make profits. How much depends on the going price of emission credits.

The way this has actually worked runs completely counter to popular presumptions pushed by conservative politicians like Logue; initiative co-author Tom McClintock, the Republican congressman from Placer County, and many vocal talk-show hosts.

So pervasive is the belief that cutting greenhouse gases costs jobs that two current leading Republican candidates for governor and the U.S. Senate, Meg Whitman and Carly Fiorina, both base their campaigns in significant part on a belief that popular support for environmental measures is waning because of high unemployment.

The polls suggest some movement that way. That’s because the false environmentalism-kills-jobs line has been pushed so loudly and so often.

The fact is that cap-and-trade has not killed jobs or companies in Europe, where a UC Berkeley Energy Institute study shows that when carbon trading began there in 2005, stock prices rose for companies that produced the most emissions the previous year and therefore got the highest emission quotas. This happened because those firms had to do least to cut their pollution and thus had an easy time acquiring emission credits they could trade or sell.

“Rather than being hurt by imposition of…regulation,” the Berkeley study concluded, “(many) industrial sectors benefited.” Which means that big businesses can make large profits by cleaning up their operations, and the cleaner they become, the more they can make – so long as other companies opt to stay dirty.

At almost the same time, the Union of Concerned Scientists funded a study of its own showing that small business will suffer few impacts from AB32, the landmark 2006 law mandating greenhouse gas cuts in California.

“Most small businesses will not be regulated under AB32 (the law behind the planned cap-and-trade system here),” that report concluded. One of its case studies checked potential effects on the Border Grill, a Los Angeles-area restaurant chosen because eateries are more energy intensive than the average small business, while also creating more jobs than most types of small business.

The analysis found that a cap-and-trade system covering the electricity, natural gas and transportation companies used by the Border Grill would create pass-through costs of less than three cents for every $20 meal served.

Concluded the study, “The likely effects of AB32 will be minor for small businesses.”

All of which means the adamant and vocal opponents of doing anything about global warming have been master propagandists, causing much of the public to believe in a mostly fictitious conflict pitting business and jobs against efforts to fight climate change.

Email Thomas Elias at [email protected]. His book, “The Burzynski Breakthrough,” is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

Thank goodness for Mr. Elias for destroying the Logue/McClintock argument for repeal of current law (AB32) and for permission to reproduce the column. Let us all breath a little easier, now and after the efforts to repeal current law fails, always.

Link to original column: http://www.californiafocus.net…

Dreier, McClintock Stand With Usurers Over Credit Cardholders

The banksters still have a powerful sway over members of Congress.  Yesterday, they stopped cramdown in the Senate, which would have allowed bankruptcy judges to treat primary residences the same way as yachts and vacation homes in a bankruptcy.  And there was much rejoicing.

On the same day, the House bucked the trend, passing the Credit Cardholder’s Bill of Rights by a wide, bipartisan margin.

In 2008, credit card issuers imposed $19 billion in penalty fees on families with credit cards and this year, card companies will break all records for late fees, over-limit charges, and other penalties, pulling in more than $20.5 billion. Credit-card debt in the U.S. has reached a record high of nearly $1 trillion – and almost half of American families currently carry a balance, and for those families the average balance was $7,300. One-fifth of those carrying credit-card debt pay an interest rate above 20 percent […]

The Credit Cardholders’ Bill of Rights Act passed today levels the playing field between card issuers and cardholders by applying common-sense regulations that would ban retroactive interest rate hikes on existing balances, double-cycle billing, and due-date gimmicks. It would also increase the advance notice of impending rate hikes, giving cardholders the information they need and rights to make decisions about their financial lives. Our economic recovery depends on a shared prosperity – and we must put an end to these abusive practices that continue to drive so many Americans deeper and deeper into debt.

I’m glad this ends double-cycle billing, where cardholders pay interest on debt that they’ve already paid off, and forces credit card companies to allocate payment to the debt with the highest interest rate.  But overall, these are very modest protections that simply prohibit the credit card companies from ripping off the American people.  And 105 Republicans agreed yesterday.  But among those who didn’t we’re the usual suspects of arch-conservative Yacht Party wingers like Tom McClintock, joined by supposed “moderate” David Dreier.

Of course, as Dick Durbin noted yesterday, the bankers who own the Senate will return to try and ditch this bill.  They’ve killed the same legislation before, and Harry Reid didn’t exactly sound confident this time around.  But I want to focus on Dreier and McClintock, both of whom and their pals in the GOP caucus have been well and truly bought by banking interests in exchange for votes like this.

Ed Royce (CA-40- $2,506,414)

David Dreier (CA-26- $2,118,538)

Gary Miller (CA-42- $765,988)

Devin Nunes (CA-21- $499,235)

Kevin McCarthy (CA-22- $461,138)

Tom McClintock (CA-04- $353,294)

Here’s what newly-announced candidate Russ Warner had to say about this yesterday:

Dreier will once again be forced to face a top rate challenge in 2010, Russ Warner, who has every intention of making sure voters from Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, and Claremont to San Dimas, Monrovia, Sierra Madre, San Marino and La Crescenta know that Dreier is strictly a representative of the special interests that have done such grievous damage to the state’s economy and to the financial well-being to his own constituents. “Time and time again,” Russ told us this morning after going over the vote yesterday, “David Dreier proves the interests of his corporate donors take precedent over the people he was elected to serve. Dreier’s never felt the pressure of supporting a family and has lived off the taxpayer dime for nearly three decades, so its not surprising he has no idea how harmful these predatory credit card companies are.”

And the D-Trip backed Warner up today by launching a Web ad highlighting Dreier’s vote.

We’re going to have to fight in the Senate to make sure this passes.  But this vote should not be forgotten next year.  Everyone has felt the pinch from credit card usurers, and so votes like this are signatures, marks of where you stand.  Hopefully Warner and whoever challenges these other Republicans will use it.

CA-04: Rep. Tom McClintock & the GOP fiddle while America burns (with pictures)

Cross posted at Daily Kos

In a recent op-ed, Congressman Tom McClintock (R- Roseville) made the claim that Obama’s stimulus bill would cost over $200,000 per job, and that conservative free-market policies would ultimately prevail in the end over the “tax-borrow-and-spend policies” of the Democratic Administration.

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And who did he blame for those policies???

The guy he just barely beat in the race for Congress, Charlie Brown.

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In true form of “it’s NEVER my fault, but I’m sure as heck gonna preach responsibility in the hopes no one notices I’m being hypocritical,” Rep. McClintock went full-speed against his former opponent ,a 26-year military veteran, and insinuated the policies of President Obama are actually the brain-child of Lt.Col. Brown. McClintock wrote:

“Charlie Brown is betting otherwise. He is betting with our money that the prescription for prosperity is record-breaking increases in taxes, borrowing and spending,”

What’s ironic about this statement is that it’s Tom McClintock, not Charlie Brown, who is a member of the House of Representatives. In fact, it’s safe to say that Tom McClintock is betting (with our money) that the prescription for prosperity is to ignore warning signs, come up with no viable alternative ideas to help fix the economic crisis, and hope our government fails.

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There are so many points that can be made about Congressman McClintock’s bizarre editorial, but I’d like to focus on just a choice few. The first, and perhaps most misleading, is the claim that President Obama’s stimulus plan will cost taxpayers over $200,000 for every job created. This simply is not true, and the argument is not based on faulty logic. The average price of creating a job under Obama’s plan? Less than half of what Rep. McClintock is threatening us with.

The Republicans are also taking the cost of a plan that will extend over several years, creating millions of jobs each year, and dividing it by the jobs created in just one of those years. In fact, the most respected and influential economists in our country say that the $200k+ figure is closer to $60,000 per job. This price is actually lower than the “acceptable” (where does this come from?) threshold of $100k per job created.

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One of the other dangerously misleading claims by Rep. McClintock is in regards to the Congressional Budget Office warning that the new federal stimulus will be harmful to our economy. In fact, the CBO offers macro-economic evidence that the stimulus package will increase our chances to move out of our hard-hitting recession:

“CBO estimates that the Senate legislation would raise output by between 1.4 percent and 4.1 percent by the fourth quarter of 2009; by between 1.2 percent and 3.6 percent by the fourth quarter of 2010; and by between 0.4 percent and 1.2 percent by the fourth quarter of 2011. CBO estimates that the legislation would raise employment by 0.9 million to 2.5 million at the end of 2009; 1.3 million to 3.9 million at the end of 2010; and 0.6 million to 1.9 million at the end of 2011.”

Congressman McClintock and his allies in the GOP are using the Congressional Budget Office’s estimations as weapons in the narrative against the Democrats without telling the public that more of the overall rise in spending and fall in revenues occurs in the first two years under the Senate legislation, which is what they are attributing to the legislation’s potential to fail. And any estimate past the immediate future is off-set by the fact that the markets will change and new legislation will undoubtedly alter the future course of our economy.

Unfortunately, instead of helping shape the President’s policies, Congressman McClintock used his new-found power as a member of the House of Representatives to introduce his first piece of legislation: a resolution honoring President Ronald Reagan on the 98th anniversary of his birth .

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Instead of practicing true fiscal responsibility and limiting spending at every opportunity, Congressman McClintock is voting to spend over $1 million for a study to think about the upcoming 100th birthday of former President Ronald Reagan.

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As our esteemed Congressman is spending his time reflecting on the past, Placer County (the most populous county in California’s 4th Congressional District) is seeing some of the worst unemployment rates it has seen in decades. County-wide unemployment is up to 10%, with the City of Lincoln suffering from 17.% unemployment of its workforce. Roseville, the most populous city in CA-04, is now suffering from a 9.7% unemployment rate.

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It begs the question, Congressman: why are you fiddling while Placer County burns? Why aren’t you trying to work towards solutions instead of planning birthday parties? You were elected to lead and represent us, Congressman. Why aren’t you leading or representing?

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Brown Concedes in CA-04

After a long fight to count every vote, Charlie Brown has acknowledged that Tom McClintock will be the next Congressman representing CA-04.  Here’s part of his email to supporters:

Thanks to the extraordinary work of our local elections officials, I am pleased to report that the high standards of fairness, accuracy, and transparency have been met.  And with the counts and recounts across district four complete, and more than 370,000 votes tallied, the outcome of this election is no longer in question.  Unfortunately, we’ve come up less than one half of one percent—just under 1,800 votes—short of victory.  

So a short time ago, I called Senator Tom McClintock to congratulate him on a hard fought victory, and to wish him well in Congress.

To you, I can only offer my deepest gratitude-for your generosity of time and resources, and your unwavering energy and encouragement.  Together, we have transformed the 4 th District, and lifted this campaign higher and farther than anyone thought possible.

I am proud of the campaign we ran.

Charlie fought a very good fight, actually becoming a point person for veteran’s issues around the country and leading by example with his Promises Kept Challenge, donating 5% of his campaign contributions to organizations serving veterans and their families.  And he showed through two cycles that the supposedly hopeless 4th District is more than winnable to the right candidate.

Still, he came up just short.  But I don’t think he has anything to be ashamed of.

This closes the book on elections in California.  While the final numbers and vote totals will be released Dec. 13, we know that Democrats picked up a net 3 seats in the Assembly, no seats in the Senate, and no seats in the Congress.  That’s the performance despite a 24-point victory at the top of the ticket, the biggest in California since 1936.

We’ll have much to discuss about this in the weeks to come, looking back to what happened and looking forward to prospects in the years ahead.  For now, a sincere thanks to Charlie Brown, who made us proud.

…as a sort of postscript, the Auburn Dam project, which was the source of tremendous debate in the campaign, officially died today, as the state water board revoked the 40 year-old water rights.  It was BROWN’S position, that the cost of the porposal outweighed the benefits, that won out.