UPDATE ON CALIFORNIA'S MOST EXTREMIST CONGRESSMAN-- GARY MILLER: HE'S A CROOK AS WELL AS A NUT

Back in May I introduced DWT readers to California's most bat-shit, far right lunatic congressman. No, not Doolittle and not Pombo and not even Lungren. This certifiable kook is Gary Miller, who represents CA-42 (a suburban L.A. district taking in Chino, Yorba Linda, Diamond Bar, Mission Viejo... places we hear about on the traffic reports).

Today I found out two things about Miller. One: the Democrat attempting to mount a write-in campaign against him, Mark Hull-Richter, failed to gather enough valid signatures (he needed 2,461), so Miller is home free for re-election; and two: the L.A. Times ran a piece on Miller, exposing him as a tax cheat.

So we have to add "tax cheat" to his growing file which also includes real estate swindler, bribe-taker, and swinging participant in the Republican Culture of Corruption than has come to pervade Washington since Miller took over from CA-42's last corrupt congressman, Jay Kim (who wound up serving part of his term with an electronic ankle bracelet and under house arrest). And I might as well tell you about the picture now too. The xenophobic and racist Miller likes dressing up in Confederate officer drag and imagining how things might have been had the extreme right of the mid-1800's won their war against the U.S.A.

"When U.S. Rep. Gary Miller (R-Diamond Bar) sold 165 acres to the city of Monrovia in 2002," the L.A. Times story begins, "he made a profit of more than $10 million, according to a financial disclosure form he filed in Congress. Ordinarily, he would have had to pay state and federal taxes of up to 31% on that profit. Instead, Miller told the Internal Revenue Service and the state that Monrovia had forced him to sell the property under threat of eminent domain. That allowed him to shelter the profits from capital gains taxes for more than two years before he had to reinvest the money. But there is a problem with Miller's claim: Monrovia officials say that Miller sold the land willingly and that they didn't threaten to force him to sell."

Does this surprise you? It shouldn't. Miller is also not in prison for buying some cheap desert land and then collaborating with GOP gangland boss Jerry Lewis to sneak some earmarks through Congress that allowed for an expensive taxpayer-funded highway right to... his land, increasing the value gigantically. He sold the land immediately, of course. This is what "conservative" means to the Republican Party in 2006.

Miller claimed identical dubious exemptions for properties in Fontana (where Sammy Hagar grew up), cheating taxpayers out of millions of dollars. Unfortunately for Miller the City of Monrovia has Miller, a multimillionaire, on tape proving he's a bold-faced liar. Not that any of this will matter to his bizarre suburban constituents, who spend so much time commuting on over-crowded freeways that they are thoroughly brainwashed by the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity-- and pissed off. These are people with very bad lives and their only revenge is imposing the likes of Jay Kim and Gary Miller on the rest of us.