Tag Archives: Darrell Issa

Uncategorized

Darrell Issa Aims for Oversight Spot

2 Comments

I can’t even begin to link to all the examples (just click back through the tag), but Darrell Issa is an embarrassment, an idiot, and a fundamentally mean person. Which, if you think about it, makes him a perfect contender for Ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee.

His line to the top was cleared in the past few months by the retirement of Rep. Tom Davis and the defeat of Rep. Chris Shays. Issa spends most of his time in Congress picking fights, “whispering and giggling…like a schoolboy” and pitching stupid fits over not being able to hang signs and charts on his office door.

But with Rep. Waxman looking to leave the committee for more glamorous pastures and the heir to the chairmanship on the Democratic side still unclear, FedBlog notes, this would be

a great opportunity for Republicans who want to make names for themselves. In the Senate, Susan Collins, the ranking member on HSGAC, presumably isn’t going to go anywhere, but she’s not going to go out of her way to score points against Obama. So it makes sense that members of the Republican Conference would look for an attack dog in the House. Issa fits that bill.

Which is the point of course. He gets to grandstand and spew vitriol from a better pulpit and fashion himself into a no-holds-barred attack dog of the new, more-extreme GOP minority. And with Rep. Dan Lungren making a play for Minority Leader and Chuck DeVore announcing his plans to challenge Sen. Boxer in 2010, it looks like the lack of Obama coattails in California is inspiring some ambition from the far right of the state.

After following Darrell Issa for several years, I know with considerable confidence that he’s often sophomoric but always vicious. His is a scorched earth, nose-to-spite-the-face approach to government that prefers the fundamental destruction of function to anything besides his own agenda moving forward. He’s filthy rich in an exceptionally safe seat, so he’s not going anywhere unless he chooses to. Which means that obnoxious as it’ll be, Issa is likely gearing up to be a professional pain in the ass for at least the next two years. Time to get used to dealing with his antics.

Uncategorized

Darrell Issa is Completely Insane

Two weeks ago, the House of Representatives passed Paid Parental Leave for Federal Employees. Women’s Policy Inc. explains that “the bill would allow federal employees to be paid for four of the twelve weeks of parental leave to which they are entitled under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) (P.L. 103-3). The legislation also would permit federal employees to use up to eight weeks of accrued sick leave for parental leave.”

It seems like a pretty good piece of legislation, and even if you have some reservations about the particular legislation, the principle of supporting new parents is certainly tough to argue with. Unless of course you’re Rep. Darrell Issa, in which case you’re completely insane and terrified of the coming scourge of out-of-control foster parenting:

“[L]et’s look at this from a practical standpoint. You are running a federal department. You have somebody who you need, and every single year, as often happens, they take on a new foster child that they keep for three to five years and they have, let’s say, three foster children. That means that individual will be gone on paid leave over and above their vacation, over and above their 13 days of sick leave a year, they are going to be gone four weeks every year, conceivably for a full 20 years.

A relatively brief perusal of foster care statistics reveals that only 46% of foster care placement is to a non-relative foster family home in the first place. It’s hard to believe that those nearly 237,000 foster children, when distributed throughout the entire national network of foster families drawn from 300 million Americans, is a terrible danger to the 7 million non-contractor federal employees from the same year as the foster care statistics.

But apparently our federal bureaucracy is overrun by lurking foster parents poised to strike now that they can spend their entire federal careers taking in foster children in order to get out of work. I’m the son of federal bureaucrats of varying level and description, and I find it hard to believe that going into work is so awful that you’d plot some nefarious foster parent plan for your entire adult life expressly to game the government.

Of course, Darrell Issa is the guy who thinks that 9/11 victims are just trying to bilk the government for a quick buck. And if Halliburton wants another Iraq contract ($15 billion in reported profits last year) or someone suggests eliminating tax breaks for oil companies, Issa’s happy to shell out the bucks. Or if it’s earmarks for pork that’ll help him get re-elected, he’ll throw down more than $100 million in federal dollars.

But the foster parent menace! It threatens us all. Sorry Darrell, but not everyone hates government as much as you do.

Uncategorized

CA-49: Darrell Issa Uses Tim Russert’s Death To Promote GOP Pet Issue

2 Comments

I don’t particularly think that the House of Representatives should be making resolutions like honoring the life of Tim Russert when there is so much business to be done.  But if they’re going to do it, the least that members can do is exhibit the bare minimum level of decorum.  In other words, not do what Darrell Issa did today.

ISSA: We are going to miss Tim Russert when it comes to the people on both sides of the issue of why we have $5 oil – $5 gasoline and $135 oil. I think Tim Russert would have been just the right guy to hold people accountable, who would talk about the 68 million acres that are, quote, inactive, while in fact 41 million are under current lease and use and are producing millions of barrels of oil and natural gas a day. […]

So, Madam Speaker, I am going to miss Tim Russert because this debate is too important not to have a fact-oriented, unbiased moderator who could in fact bring to bear the truth that we need to have.

You stay classy, guy who uses a journalist’s death to pimp for oil exploration.

Robert Hamilton is Issa’s Democratic opponent this year.

UPDATE: (Bob) Congratulations Darrell Issa, you won today’s Worst Person in the World award by Keith Olbermann. It’s like a free Maserati, only it wasn’t stolen.

Arnold Schwarzenegger, Budget, Prisons

Mid-Morning Musings

• Do read Robert in Monterey’s report about Abel Maldonado, Don Perata’s best buddy, running as a write-in candidate in the Democratic primary to stall an attempt to get an opponent on the November ballot.  First of all, this is an example of why crossfiling should be banned once and for all.  Second, Abel Maldonado is a snake and I can now see why Don Perata would knock on doors for him.  Apparently, neither of them have much interest in the democratic process.

• Arnold thinks the legalization of gender-neutral marriage will be a boost to the sluggish economy, but I hope he’s not basing his entire budget on a sharp uptick in gay weddings.  I mean, there are only so many Mr. Sulus rich enough to have that surge register more than a blip.  By the way, good for Mr. Sulu.  And good for Ellen DeGeneres for telling Straight Talk Express where to shove it.

• Speaking of John W. McCain, he’s in California today.  Nobody show him the PPIC numbers!

• Lucas mentioned this, but Darrell Issa got in the middle of a heated exchange between Henry Waxman and EPA Adminstrator Stephen Johnson over the EPA’s breaking the Clean Air Act.  Emptywheel has video:

• Why Fabian Nuñez is claiming racial bias at this late date over questions about his travel practices is completely beyond me.  And he’s taken to Spanish-language television for these accusations to stoke divisiveness in the Latino community, too.  It’s so counterproductive, as well as misleading.

• Speaking of Spanish-speaking media, this is an older story, but it’s fascinating to me that the Spanish-language channels in LA are so much more substantive than the English-language ones, featuring longer, “more deeply reported” pieces.

• We could see a settlement very shortly on prison overcrowding in the state which would not require early release.  There are some decent components to this deal, but it basically gives everyone three more years to clean up their act, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it just puts us in the same siutation come 2011.  The policies needed are well-known; the political will remains elusive.

• The Bay Area AQMD passed a carbon tax for businesses that emit greenhouse gases.  It’s “not enough to change behavior,” one expert said, but it does presage what may be coming down the pike for polluters.  Whether you get there through selling carbon permits at auction or with a tax, the bottom line is that pollution is going to cost enough money to alter business’ approach to engaging in it.  This is a good step.

• Interesting that we denied the endorsement to Rep. Laura Richardson (CA-37) on the same day that she is forced to defend herself against allegations that she walked away from her foreclosed home in Sacramento.  It sounds like the Congresswoman renegotiated the loan, but the conservative fever swamps are all over this one (check the comments in that LAT blog post).  She did buy the half-million-dollar home with no money down, and then left Sacramento almost immediately after winning election to fill the open seat in Congress.

Uncategorized

Republicans Ask Waxman to Investigate EPA

1 Comment

Yes, you're not seeing things; the headline of this post is accurate. But there is a twist, as the WSJ's Dana Mattioli reported yesterday afternoon:

In a letter today, two senior Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform asked the panel’s chairman, Henry Waxman (D., Calif.), to investigate whether top EPA staffers either violated federal rules that restrict regulators from lobbying, or “misused their positions to surreptitiously influence” EPA’s decision on whether to allow California to regulate carbon-dioxide emissions from vehicles.

Reps. Tom Davis (R-VA) and Darrell Issa (R-CA) are mad at Margo Oge and Christopher Grundler, the senior EPA officials tasked with evaluating California's waiver request and (unsuccessfully) telling Administrator Stephen Johnson that he had no choice but to grant it. Congressional oversight of that decision revealed that the pair subsequently provided former EPA Administrator William Reilly– at Reilly's request– talking points for arguing the waiver's merits to Johnson. Davis and Issa argue that this deserves the same level of scrutiny that Waxman devoted to a surreptitious plan to lobby Congress and governors against the waiver– Johnson may have also been a target, but he could not recall whether that was the case– concocted last summer by Secretary of Transportation Mary Peters, White House officials, and industry lobbyists.

This actually isn't the first time that congressional Republicans have gone after Oge and Grundler. During a hearing that followed the revelation of the Reilly memo and other EPA documents, Senator James Inhofe (R-OK) asked Administrator Johnson whether his employees had violated the Hatch Act. Johnson, to his credit, defended their actions, saying that he has “always encouraged my staff to give me candid and open advice” (he just reserves the right to ignore it, even when phrased as a clear mandate and not simply advice, and the resulting fallout severely alienates staff unions).

Rep. Waxman responded to the letter by pledging to give it “careful consideration,” but noting that the Committee had “found no evidence that EPA career staff lobbied members of Congress with respect to [California’s request]” (translation: the Davis-Issa analogy to his previous investigation is bunk). For his part, Reilly, who ran EPA under the first President Bush and granted California several waivers, has said that his communications with career staff who served under him were not unprecedented, let alone improper or illegal.

California

Darrell Issa Hates 9/11 Heroes, Who Loves Darrell Issa’s Money?

1 Comment

Cross posted at DailyKos and OpenLeft

So as we’ve established by now, Darrell Issa thinks very little of 9/11 rescue workers and would prefer that the federal government not concern itself with their welfare.  Cause according to him, 9/11 is not and presumably was not a national issue.  We’ve also established that he has no qualms about throwing federal money around on local pork as long as it benefits him directly.  So the next logical question for me is “oh hey, are there any familiar names that don’t mind taking Darrell Issa’s money?”  As you may or may not know, Darrell Issa is filthy rich.  So he’s spread a lot of money around on Republicans and conservative causes.  So as it turns out, there are quite a lot of Republicans currently running around the Capitol funded in part by Darrell Issa (partial list):


Dean Andal (candidate, CA-11)

Rep. Michele Bachmann (MN-06)

Rep. Brian Bilbray (CA-50)

Rep. Gus Bilirakis (FL-09)

Rep. Charles Boustany (LA-07)

Sen. Richard Burr (North Carolina)

Rep. John Campbell (CA-48)

Rep. Shelley Moore Captio (WV-02)

Rep. Steve Chabot (OH-01)

Rep. Tom Cole (OK-04) [head of NRCC]

Rep. Geoff Davis (KY-04)

Rep. John Doolitte (Retiring, CA-04)

Rep. Thelma Drake (VA-02)

Rep. Tom Feeney (FL-24)

Rep. Mike Ferguson (Retiring, NJ-07)

Rep. Randy Forbes (VA-04)

Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (NE-01)

Rep. Jim Gerlach (PA-06)

Rep. Phil Gingrey (GA-11)

Rep. Robin Hayes (NC-08)

Rep. Ric Keller (FL-08)

Rep. Mark Kirk (IL-10)

Rep. John Kline (MN-02)

Rep. Joe Knollenberg (MI-09)

Rep. Randy Kuhl (NY-29)

Rep. Doug Lamborn (CO-05)

Rep. Tom Latham (IA-04)

Rep. Bob Latta (OH-05)

Fmr. Rep. Cynthia McKinney (What the hell? ha.)

Rep. Candice Miller (MI-10)

Rep. Marilyn Musgrave (CO-04)

Rep. Randy Neugebauer (TX-19)

Fmr. Rep. Anne Northup (Candidate, KY-03)

Rep. Steve Pearce (Retiring, NM-02; Candidate, NM-SEN)

Rep. Mike Pence (IN-06)

Rep. Ted Poe (TX-02)

Rep. Jon Porter (NV-03)

Rep. Deborah Pryce (Retiring, OH-15)

Rep. Dennis Rehberg (MT-AL)

Rep. Dave Reichert (WA-08)

Rep. Rick Renzi (Retiring [to prison?], AZ-01)

Rep. Mike D. Rogers (AL-03)

Rep. Mike J. Rogers (MI-08)

Rep. Peter Roskam (IL-06)

Fmr. Rep. Jim Ryun (Candidate, KS-02)

Rep. Jean Schmidt (OH-02)

Shelley Sekula-Gibbs (Candidate, TX-22)

Rep. Pete Sessions (TX-32)

Rep. Chris Shays (CT-04)

Rep. John Shimkus (IL-19)

Fmr. Rep. Mike Sodrel (Candidate, IN-09)

Sen. John Sununu (New Hampshire)

Fmr. Rep. Pat Toomey (President, Club for Growth)

Rep. Jim Walsh (Retiring, NY-25)

Rep. Heather Wilson (Retiring, NM-01; Candidate, NM-SEN)

Rep. Rob Wittman (VA-01)

More than 50, and there are a lot of familiar names in there. Swing districts, notorious wingnuts, Senators in tough races.  How many of those people agree with Darrell Issa that the welfare of the heroes of 9/11 are no business of the United States government?  How many of them really want to be forced to answer such questions?  Rep. Issa has, for a number of years, been a bit of a hero in GOP fundraising circles.  Do people really want to be associated with his money now? Presumably the answer is “yes” in private and “maybe” in public.  If it’s even slightly possible to isolate Issa and his money, in this of all election cycles when the NRCC is desperately poor, it’s worth the effort.  Isn’t it time we start finding out how these politicians feel about taking money from just a soulless jerk?

San Diego

Darrell Issa has a Better Idea

8 Comments

Hammering on this a lot, but it just keeps getting more ridiculous

So Darrell Issa finds it inappropriate for the federal government to be funding medical care for sick 9/11 rescue workers.  Says Rep. Issa, “I have to ask … why the firefighters who went there and everybody in the city of New York needs to come to the federal government for the dollars versus this being primarily a state consideration.”

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.

Robert Hamilton is challenging Darrell Issa this year.

Cross posted at San Diego Politico

San Diego

Darrell Issa Keeps Digging, Still Hates 9/11 Rescue Workers

2 Comments

Yesterday I noted with considerable disdain that Darrell Issa doesn’t give a crap about 9/11 victims and is, not surprisingly, an ass.  Turns out that Issa’s heartless BS isn’t finding much of an audience elsewhere either, as people from coast to coast line up to tear him a new one:

“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 continue to support federal assistance for the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks,” he said.

But he didn’t retract his wacked-out rhetoric claiming the feds “just threw” buckets of cash at New York for an attack “that had no dirty bomb in it, it had no chemical munitions in it.”

He went on: “I have to ask … why the firefighters who went there and everybody in the city of New York needs to come to the federal government for the dollars versus this being primarily a state consideration.”

In his statement yesterday, Issa insisted he only “asked tough questions about the expenditures” during a hearing Tuesday on an aid bill for sick New Yorkers.

And if that wasn’t enough, contrast this with another recent dumbass maneuver by Issa in which he DID scurry to apologize for his missteps.  Back in February during hearings into a million missing White House emails, Darrell Issa enthusiastically did his water carrying for the Bush administration, declaring it entirely reasonable that converting from Lotus Notes to Outlook would cause such a loss of information.  He went so far as to compare Lotus Notes to wooden wagon wheels and Betamax.  But once big business got agitated about it, Issa fell all over himself and even officially correcting the Congressional record.  But 9/11 rescue workers? Apparently not on the same level as keeping Lotus happy.  I mean after all, according to Issa, 9/11 “simply was an aircraft” hitting the World Trade Center and causing “a fire.”

I don’t know what world Darrell Issa is living in, but he certainly doesn’t have much company.

Robert Hamilton is challenging Darrell Issa this year.

Cross posted at San Diego Politico

San Diego

Darrell Issa: 9/11 Fallout is New York’s Problem

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.

Robert Hamilton is challenging Darrell Issa this year.

Cross posted at San Diego Politico

Uncategorized

Primary Turnout: Might Be A Good Year to Compete Everywhere

23 Comments

(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.

CA-02; R+13

Wally Herger (R)

R 80,090

D 70,563

CA-03; R+7

Dan Lungren (R)

R 70,544

D 80,070

CA-04; R+11

Open (R)

R 107,757

D 89,717

CA-09; D+38

Barbara Lee (D)

R 13,384

D 124,070

CA-11; R+3

Jerry McNerney (D)

R 69,766

D 81,650

CA-19; R+10

George Radanovich (R)

R 63,766

D 62,331

CA-21; R+13

Devin Nunes (R)

R 51,272

D 44,053

CA-22; R+16

Kevin McCarthy (R)

R 86,234

D 61,123

CA-24; R+5

Elton Gallegly (R)

R 78,422

D 82,293

CA-25; R+7

Buck McKeon (R)

R 60,837

D 64,048

CA-26; R+4

David Dreier (R)

R 73,144

D 74,934

CA-40; R+8

Ed Royce (R)

R 66,027

D 59,372

CA-41; R+9

Jerry Lewis (R)

R 68,055

D 59,833

CA-42; R+10

Gary Miller (R)

R 79,622

D 63,182

CA-44; R+6

Ken Calvert (R)

R 57,083

D 57,317

CA-45; R+3

Mary Bono (R)

R 53,635

D 59,067

CA-46; R+6

Dana Rohrabacher (R)

R 81,427

D 74,084

CA-48; R+8

John Campbell (R)

R 92,187

D 75,845

CA-49; R+10

Darrell Issa (R)

R 62,658

D 53,493

CA-50; R+5

Brian Bilbray (R)

R 78,489

D 82,358

CA-52; R+9

Open (R)

R 74,593

D 67,849