Heritage Calls For The Removal of Criminal Earmarker Ken Calvert From The House Republican Leadership

Two-headed corruption beast

Yesterday Republican sex predator Ken Calvert crawled out from under his rock, tweeted something about Nancy Pelosi not delivering jobs and slithered away again. I wondered what caused the roly poly Inland Empire's crooked congressman to get his mind off his real estate manipulations for a moment to join in the election fray.

Calvert is a notorious shill for Boehner and Cantor and is widely viewed as an ineffectual rubber stamp who rarely strays from the party line. For example, even though the no-strings-attached Wall Street bailout (TARP) was catastrophic for Riverside and Orange counties, and highly unpopular among voters in his district, he stuck with Boehner and Cantor even when a majority of Republican congressmen voted NO. Calvert knew his decision would be unpopular back home but, unlike 108 Republicans, he couldn't say NO to Boehner. He NEVER says no to Boehner... which is why Boehner placed the single most corrupt earmark crook on the Appropriations Committee! In fact he did the exact same thing when it came to voting for taxpayer incentives for U.S. companies to ship jobs to China-- something voters of both parties in the Inland Empire oppose but which Boehner and Calvert supported.

Yesterday, just when Calvert distracted himself from the task always first and foremost on his mind-- using his office to enrich himself personally-- he was blasted by the most influential right-wing think tank in Washington, the Heritage Foundation. They demanded he be removed from the House Republican Steering Committee, which advises Boehner on committee assignments. Citing his horrifying record on spending and earmarks, Heritage Action For America blasted him as part of a group of members "responsible for Republicans losing their way on spending...."

Basically, what they're recommending is removing known criminals like Calvert, Jerry Lewis and Hal Rogers, taking some of the power away from corrupting elements like Boehner, Cantor and Tom Cole and putting in some of the extremist loons who are more ideologically pure (albeit insane) like Jeb Hensarling, Tom Price, Tom McClintock, Scott Garrett, Jeff Flake, and Tom Graves.

"Plain and simple, Ken Calvert was a willing accomplice to President Bush's creation of massive amounts of debt," said Bill Hedrick, Calvert's Democratic challenger, a member of the Corona-Norco Board of Education and the Blue America-endorsed candidate. "From his vote to bail out Wall Street, his abuse of taxpayer-funded franked mail and his profiting $435,000 after increasing the value of his properties through his own earmarks, the guy just cannot be trusted to do the right thing with our money."

Even far right GOP fanatics agree that Calvert's consistent record of crooked self-dealing is a disgrace that needs to be dealt with, even if it means losing his seat to a more honest Democrat. Below is a Fox news report by Chris Wallace on just one aspect of Ken Calvert's shady and criminal behavior. It isn't too late to help Bill Hedrick win this one.