So What Do Santa Clarita Republicans Think Of Buck McKeon's Hand-picked Successor?

This week the Santa Clarita Valley Republican Assembly posted a resolution they had just passed on their Facebook page. Short version: "thanks, but no thanks." Santa Clarita Republicans-- not to mention normal people in Santa Clarita, absolutely detest Tony Strickland, the carpetbagger who switched districts from CA-26 to CA-25 this month. (People in CA-26 who contributed money because they preferred him to Julia Brownley, are just out of luck. He's not giving anyone their money back.) Anyway, here's the resolution:

WHEREAS; California's 25th congressional seat is a safe Republican seat and deserves to be represented by a conservative Republican;

WHEREAS; moderate former state Senator Tony Strickland has announced his intention to run in the 25th congressional even though he does not live in the district;

WHEREAS; Tony Strickland failed to vote "No" on AB 2189 which would have granted driver's licenses to illegal aliens;

WHEREAS; Tony Strickland attacked hunter's rights by voting "Yes" on SB 1221 which banned hunters from using dogs to hunt bear or bobcats;

WHEREAS; Tony Strickland voted "Yes" in AB 2470 mandating health plan requirements that increase government control and has driven up the cost of health care;

WHEREAS; Tony Strickland was the only Republican elected official listed on the California Air Resources Board web site as a supporter of AB 32, the so-called Global Warming Solution Bill;

THEREFORE; be it resolved that the SCVRA opposes Tony Strickland running for the 25th congressional district and encourages state Senator Steve Knight to run if Congressman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon decides to retire in 2014.

They're right about one thing: Strickland would be a ghastly choice to send to Congress. Their crackpot candidate from Palmdale, Steve Knight (son of Pete), is even worse. Polling shows the district would love to get rid of McKeon, but they want to replace him with Democrat Lee Rogers, not with someone even more extreme than McKeon.

Knight's voting record would be ultra-conservative if he represented a backward district in Alabama or Mississippi. In suburban L.A., it's just bizarre and a throwback to another century. Widely considered a shill for the NRA and an automaton for the most extreme right-wing proposals that ever come up in Sacramento, Knight was one of only 11 senators who voted against increasing the minimum wage and, despite representing a district with a huge Hispanic population, he was one of only 8 senators who voted against drivers licenses for undocumented immigrants. When the Governor decided to expand Medicaid in line with the Affordable Care Act, only 7 die-hard right-wingers opposed it, Knight being one of them. He was also one of only 8 senators to fully back unregulated fracking in earthquake zones in California. He is vehemently anti-Choice and anti-gay and voted against every piece of legislation promoting equality that has ever come before him. For example, last May he was one of only 9 senators to vote against a bipartisan bill that prohibits tax-exempt status for organizations that discriminate against the LGBT community and he also one one of only seven sociopaths who opposed an anti-bullying bill that passed the Senate with huge bipartisan support. One legislator told me that Knight isn't a bad guy on a personal level but that he's "an inflexible ideologue… probably the single least effective member of the state legislature… Sure, Strickland is no prize but Knight makes even him look almost good!"

McKeon & Knight-- 2 anti-Latino, anti-LGBT, anti-Choice, anti-family dickheads

UPDATE: As The Two Right-Wing Careerists Savage Each Other, Antonovich Begs McKeon To Stay On


From behind the Antelope Valley Press paywall:

Knight's list of supporters include Antelope Valley leaders like Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, Board of Equalization member George Runner and his wife, former state lawmaker Sharon Runner, as well as city council members from Lancaster and Palmdale.

But more importantly in his quest to take votes from Strickland, a former state lawmaker from Moorpark, Knight secured endorsements from Simi Valley City Council members Mike Judge and Glenn Becerra, as well as Ventura County Supervisor Peter Foy.

…Knight and his backers are already taking shots at Strickland's candidacy, noting he lives just outside the 25th District and ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2012 in the neighboring 26th District.

"Steve has been the guy who is in our community, representing our community," said Drew Mercy, a local GOP activist and leader.

Strickland and Knight each have represented parts of the 25th District in the state Legislature, though, and much of the battle is likely to take place in Santa Clarita and central portions of the district.

While he doesn't live inside the 25th District's boundaries-- by law he doesn't have to in order to represent it-- Strickland said he grew up in Simi Valley and has significant ties to the southern portion of the district.

"I'm not as well known in the Antelope Valley, and I have to get to know the citizens there," he said. "But I've represented Santa Clarita for four years, and Knight has represented it for 12 months. I'm as much a part of the district as Steve Knight."

With McKeon's intentions for next year unknown, it's also unclear which candidate the longtime congressman will support should he choose to retire. Officials close to the congressman say he has made no decision and consider the announcements premature.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, one of the region's seniormost and most influential officeholders, has gone so far as to appeal to McKeon to campaign for another term and damp down a GOP bloodletting.

Speculation has been that McKeon will back Strickland, though some suggest he could sit out the race until the general election, assuming one of the two is eliminated in the primary.

While Strickland didn't say he expects McKeon's endorsement, he said he and the congressman "have been very close."

Knight's backers believe Strickland has been jockeying for McKeon's support for years, pointing to the 2012 state Assembly race in Santa Clarita. Strickland, who was campaigning for Congress in the nearby 26th District at the time, initially endorsed eventual winner Scott Wilk in the Assembly race. But when Patricia McKeon, Buck's wife, launched her campaign, Strickland rescinded his support for Wilk, then endorsed McKeon.

Irony: NRCC Backing Gay Candidates While Steve Israel's DCCC Gives A Big Push To A Virulent Homophobe

LGBT activists in Ohio were shocked when they heard Steve Israel was recruiting virulent homophobe Jennifer Garrison to run for Congress. Israel is now pressuring pro-equality Democrats in Congress-- including gay members-- to contribute money to Garrison's campaign. She isn't a garden variety anti-gay politician. She built her entire political career on intense homophobia. It's how she was first elected to the state legislature (where she was able to kill a workplace anti-discrimination law and where she stopped an anti-bullying law). This is literally the most contemptible human being Israel ever picked to run for a congressional seat. Of course, it's important to remember that Israel himself is an "ex"-Blue Dog and pal-ed around with all the Democratic homophobes who vote against hate crimes legislation in years past. In 2007 when the House finally passed a hate crimes bill that included LGBT citizens, 25 Republicans crossed the aisle and voted with the Democrats. As they crossed, they passed 14 of Israel's closest allies going in the other direction. Of the 14 Democrats who voted against the Hate Crimes bill, almost all were subsequently defeated for reelection. The only ones left in the House are Israel cronies Mike McIntyre (Blue Dog-NC) and Collin Peterson (Blue Dog-MN), both of whom Israel is determined to protect with DCCC money, some of it given by gay donors who are specifically told their contributions would go towards insuring LGBT equality.

Clearly, gays and lesbians should not be giving a nickel to the DCCC or to anything Steve Israel is involved with. That said, the NRCC is worse than the DCCC, a lot worse. How an organization can be worse, let alone a lot worse, than one that is already graded an "F," is worth a separate discussion. For now, let's remember that while the NRCC was trying to teach congressional Republicans how to talk to women voters without insulting them, they don't offer similar tutorials yet on how GOP elected officials could approach Hispanics, Blacks or gays without insulting them!

“Let me put it this way, some of these guys have a lot to learn,” said a Republican staffer who attended the session in Boehner’s office.

There have been “multiple sessions” with the NRCC where aides to incumbents were schooled in “messaging against women opponents,” one GOP aide said.

While GOP party leaders have talked repeatedly of trying to “rebrand” the party after the 2012 election losses, the latest effort shows they’re not entirely confident the job is done.

So they’re getting out in front of the next campaign season, heading off gaffes before they’re ever uttered and risk repeating the 2012 season, when a handful of comments let Democrats paint the entire Republican Party as anti-woman.

Individual Republicans have continued to give Democrats plenty of ammunition about being insensitive to women’s issues. From Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) talking about rape and pregnancy at a Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this year, to House Republicans passing a 20-week abortion ban in June, to Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) blaming military sexual assault on “hormones,” there have been repeated instances where GOP lawmakers have come off as tone-deaf to female voters.

…[T]he longtime “gender gap” between the parties continues to be pretty stark for the GOP. Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney lost women to Barack Obama by 11 percentage points in the 2012 election, and the 2013 campaigns saw a similar trend. A series of recent polls show a continued double-digit lead for Democratic candidates among women, with the margin soaring to much higher levels among single female voters. The GOP-- which lost female voters by large margins in every competitive Senate race in the 2012 election-- also saw a 10-point increase in its unfavorability rating to among women to 63 percent, according to an October ABC/Washington Post poll.

So it makes sense that some Republicans want to try to learn how to talk to women voters without alienating them (even if most GOP congressmen are deriding that whole idea and refusing to participate). And when it comes to gays, the Republicans won't even try. In fact, despite NRCC attempts to portray the party as an equal-opportunity committee, most Republicans in Congress are committed homophobes and are consumed with fear of and hatred for the LGBT community. Let's take 6th term Virginia conservative Randy Forbes for example.

Forbes, a former Sunday School teacher, isn't known in Washington for having accomplished anything legislatively. In fact, since his election in 2001 the only thing he's done aside from collecting a paycheck, warmongering and talking smack about gay people is founding the Congressional Prayer Caucus.

Even though the Republican-controlled Virginia legislature tried making Forbes' swing district safer by cutting out black-majority Petersburg and putting it into an already D+27 district, voters in Chesapeake, Powhatan and the Richmond 'burbs he represents, only gave Romney the same narrow margin over Obama that they had given McCain-- 50-49%. VA-04 is a winnable district even if Steve Israel refuses to allow the DCCC to go up against Forbes. Due to Israel's sheer incompetence, there is no multi-cycle DCCC plan to defeat Forbes and he knows he is free to act out the most extremist right-wing positions without any fear of electoral accountability. And his latest escapade involved attacking the NRCC for being… pro-gay!

Buck McKeon, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee-- and a future arms manufacturer and war contractor lobbyist (his family already started the firm for him)-- wants to put his crony Mac Thornberry (R-TX) in as his successor. But Forbes wants that job. McKeon, himself a virulent homophobe who was the conduit for millions of Morman dollars flowing into California's anti-gay Prop 8 battle, has been conducting an especially nasty whispering campaign against Forbes who is determined to get that Armed Services chair (and is less likely to allow pork to flow through McKeon's lobbying firm). What McKeon's operatives did was get Politico to expose Forbes' insane homophobia and blow it up into a Belway scandal-in-a-teacup.

Even as Democratic congressmen keep donating wads of cash to the DCCC despite the Jennifer Garrison recruitment, Forbes has said he will withhold his NRCC dues if the NRCC supports gay candidates, which they are doing in two instances. Politico is covering for McKeon by saying he isn't the only source:

Forbes has waged a lengthy crusade to convince his colleagues and the National Republican Congressional Committee brass they shouldn’t back some gay candidates. His efforts on Capitol Hill were described to Politico by more than a half-dozen sources with direct knowledge of the talks.

The issue is particularly acute because House Republicans have two promising openly gay candidates in 2014 vying for seats held by Democrats. Richard Tisei, who narrowly lost to Democratic Rep. John Tierney in 2012, is running again in northeastern Massachusetts. And in San Diego, Carl DeMaio, a former city councilman, is trying to knock off Democratic Rep. Scott Peters.

On Wednesday, Forbes told Politico he thinks “GOP leaders can do whatever they want to do,” in terms of giving money to gay candidates.

He said he is more concerned about members being asked to contribute to the campaigns. The NRCC is partially funded by collecting tens of millions of dollars from House Republicans, who pay dues to the organization.

“There would be a different situation if they tried to force other members to give money,” Forbes said.

Asked whether he would have a problem with the NRCC donating money to DeMaio, Forbes said, “That’s a little different situation.”

“I don’t think they’ve done that yet,” Forbes added.

When asked if he would withhold political contributions to the NRCC if they backed DeMaio, Forbes said, “I’m not going to be hypothetical on what we would or wouldn’t do at this particular point in time because you’ve got a lot of scenarios. I don’t think we’ve had primaries and nominations to nominate people. So I don’t want to prejudge.”

The mirror image of this came in DCCC-ville this week when Steve Israel requested contributions for homophobic fanatic Jennifer Garrison-- that's her with her phony smile on the right-- from Democratic members. Do any have the guts to just say no? We're watching. Needless to say, Steny Hoyer is as attracted to Garrison's across-the-board, right-wing perspective and he's already given her $5,000 and is pressuring unions, other Members and his lobbyist cronies to fund her.

It's worth mentioning that it isn't only GOP closet cases who refuse to go to bat for LGBT equality. Fearful and mentally ill gay closet cases like Patrick McHenry (R-SC), Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Aaron Schock (R-IL) and Lindsey Graham always vote against equality but even openly gay Republicans leave much to be desired in that realm. Take Carl DeMaio for example. He's running against conservative corporate whore, New Dem Scott Peters and I could care less which one wins. But when DeMaio couldn't decide what to run for, he was briefly a mayoral candidate this year. He went out of his way to make sure voters knew LGBT equality would not a priority for him and pledged to not advocate for social issues while in public office. While DeMaio says he supports same-sex marriage, he was publicly silent when Proposition 8 was put on the state ballot and has accepted campaign contributions from deranged homophobic backers of Proposition 8. During last year's mayoral campaign, the Union-Times pointed out that the LGBT community wasn't backing DeMaio. "During the mayoral campaign," they wrote, "DeMaio has been booed at various LGBT-centric events, including a mayoral debate in Hillcrest, a rainbow flag-raising ceremony for the community and the annual Pride parade in which he walked alongside his longtime partner. Meanwhile, Filner drew loud cheers at the debate and parade and won every voting precinct in Hillcrest-- the heart of the city’s gay community-- in the June mayoral primary.

Will California's GOP Solve Its "Latino Problem" ( i.e., Racism And Bigotry)?

Allan Hoffenblum, a Republican consultant in California politics since the Nixon era, told the NY Times that “Until we solve our Latino problem, we’re not going to be a viable state party, and it’s hard to understand how that’s possible without fixing immigration.” The Times explains what everyone in California is already well-aware of:

Advocates of a comprehensive immigration overhaul argue that California is a cautionary tale for Republicans in the rest of the country and that if the party does not help pass legislation this year, it will risk losing Latino votes for decades to come. Frank Sharry, the executive director of America’s Voice, which is pushing for an immigration overhaul, points to 1994 as the start of problems for the state Republican Party. Pete Wilson, the governor at the time, led the campaign for a state ballot initiative severely limiting access to public services, including schools and emergency medical care, for illegal immigrants. Voters approved the measure, but it was ruled unconstitutional by federal courts.

“California became one of the bluest states in the country because the Republican Party followed Pete Wilson off the anti-immigration cliff,” Mr. Sharry said. “McCarthy isn’t going to want to lose more seats, and he has to see that members who are becoming champions of immigration reform aren’t just living to tell about it, but they’re getting love letters.”

Across the state, other Republicans have softened their stance on immigration. Representative Ken Calvert, whose district covers Riverside County, has said he supports citizenship for those who were brought to the country as children and would consider some kind of legal status for others. Representative Gary G. Miller, whose district in San Bernardino, east of Los Angeles, is roughly 50 percent Latino and considered a prime target by Democrats, removed several strongly worded statements against immigration from his Web site this year.

That's funny about Miller because his entire political career has been based on two pillars: greed and racism. The Times story highlights Kevin McCarthy and David Valadao and mentions a couple of other beleaguered Republican congressmen in passing. In all 10 California congressman have 30% or more Hispanic populations in their districts:

• David Valadao (72%)
• Gary Miller (49%)
• Devin Nunes (46%)
• Jeff Denham (40%)
• Buck McKeon (38%)
• Paul Cook (36%)
• Kevin McCarthy (35%)
• Ed Royce (35%)
• Ken Calvert (33%)
• Duncan Hunter (30%)

The DCCC isn't used to fighting tight battles in California and they ignored almost all of these districts in 2012 when they should have-- at the very least-- been building an infrastructure to win them all in 2014 or 2016. Most people blame Steve Israel's lack of vision, but it's important to remember that Israel-- whose only talent is to suck large amounts of campaign cash from Wall Street's corrupt special interests and from wealthy elites-- was appointed by Nancy Pelosi and, astonishingly after his dismal failures in 2012, reappointed by Pelosi to the same post this year. McKeon, Denham, Miller and Valadao would all be working as lobbyists today if not for Israel's incompetence. This cycle the DCCC won't be able to start the focus on McCarthy because they have to make up lost ground on the 4 relatively easy races they blew in 2012. And, at least in the case of Valadao it may be too late-- even though Obama beat McCain in his district 52-46% and last year routed Romney 55-44%.

When Representative David Valadao came out in favor of a path to citizenship for millions of people living in the country illegally at an open forum this summer, the crowd erupted in applause, and young activists nearly knocked one another down as they rushed to embrace him.

Since then, Mr. Valadao, a freshman Republican, has become a bit of an unlikely celebrity among Latino farmworkers and their families in California’s Central Valley, where immigration has shaped the agricultural industry for decades.

Another Republican career, saved by Steve Israel's sheer incompetence. While Obama was slaughtering Romney in the district, Israel blew the Democratic nomination with a botched primary and a loser candidate, John Hernandez, who underperformed Obama by 14 points in the district. Valadao spent $1,181,113 to win CA-21, while Hernandez spent $99,754. Rove poured $592,026 into the district to help Valadao. The DCCC spent exactly nothing after Israel's candidate, Blong Xlong, lost the primary. So far this year, the DCCC has no candidates running against Valadao, Nunes, McCarthy, Royce, Calvert, Cook, Hunter and they have another messy primary to contend with in CA-31, Gary Miller's blue district (which Obama won 57-41%). So far, Israel is putting all his eggs in one basket: CA-10, where he's backing a bee farmer, Michael Eggman against Denham.

As the immigration debate simmers in Washington, California Republicans face a very different reality than a majority of their party colleagues, who elsewhere largely represent districts that are overwhelmingly white.

More than half of California’s 15 Republican members of Congress have districts that are at least 30 percent Latino, making them potentially vulnerable to Democratic challenges and prime targets for those pushing for a path to citizenship. In Mr. Valadao’s district, Latinos make up 70 percent of the population.

With Republicans all but relegated to a minority party in California-- Democrats hold every statewide elected office, maintain a large majority in the State Legislature and hold a vast majority of Congressional seats-- many here blame the party’s decline on its stance on immigration.

...All of this has put pressure on Representative Kevin McCarthy, a Republican whose district is about one-third Latino and includes part of Bakersfield, a working-class, immigrant-heavy city that Mr. Valadao also represents. As the majority whip, the third-ranking leader of the Republican-controlled House, Mr. McCarthy is expected to play an important role in deciding which legislative proposals end up being voted on and which are squelched this fall.

In the past, Mr. McCarthy has called the immigration process broken, saying that the priority must be on securing borders and that he is opposed to an amnesty. Aides to the lawmaker did not respond to repeated requests for an interview.

One commercial appearing on cable television in his district attacks “obstructionists” blocking an immigration overhaul. Another accuses him of “talking about legalizing 11 million illegal aliens, making it easier for them to take jobs.”

After a union-backed protest in Mr. McCarthy’s district in August, demonstrators marched into his office with pictures of immigrants, along with farm tools and produce, in an attempt to illustrate their impact on the community here. In the arid Central Valley, where dairy farms and peach and almond orchards stretch for miles, immigrants have provided the steadiest source of agricultural and service employees.

Mr. McCarthy told a local radio station last week that most of the protesters had come from outside his district. [From next door in McKeon's district?] Mr. McCarthy also faces pressure from those against illegal immigration. “He’s shown that he is flexible on immigration and has said we need to be more open to foreign workers, but the great irony is that he’s in a district with high unemployment,” said Joe Guzzardi, the national media director for Californians for Population Stabilization, which opposes any kind of citizenship for those in the country illegally.

...Angelica Salas, the executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, said Republicans were “sort of wedged between a rock and a hard place of their own doing.” The coalition organized dozens of events singling out Republican congressmen last month.

She said Mr. McCarthy had met with her and other activists and signaled that he was open to supporting citizenship. “What I see him trying to deal with is the recognition that there’s a real interdependence on immigrant labor in his district,” Ms. Salas said, “but also some very shrill Republicans who either don’t get it or don’t care.”

While Mr. Valadao said he did not have plans to increase pressure on his Republican colleagues, other local leaders have been more willing to openly voice criticism.

“We have people who graduated from our colleges who can’t get jobs because they can’t get citizenship,” said Mayor Harvey L. Hall of Bakersfield, a Republican who spoke onstage at a protest directed at Mr. McCarthy. “All you have to do is go out on the weekend, and you can see that our growth as a city depends on the immigrant population.”

Lee Rogers at the immigration reform rally in the Antelope Valley yesterday. His approach is very different from McKeon's desire that Hispanic immigrants "self-deport"

Last year when he ran against McKeon, Lee Rogers won in the Antelope Valley, which McKeon shares with McCarthy, and which has a lot of recently-registered Latino voters. For many independents in CA-25, regardless of partisanship, the economic argument is the winning argument. This morning, Rogers, who is running against McKeon again-- unless, as rumored, McKeon chickens out and becomes a lobbyist-- told us that "the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the California Chamber support immigration reform because our broken system has to be repaired to keep America competitive in the world. Even more good news is that the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office calculated that the Senate Bill would reduce our federal deficit if it became law. I stand with American businesses knowing that immigration reform will be a shot in the arm to the U.S. economy and reduce our deficit. Any member of the California delegation who rejects comprehensive immigration reform is sacrificing our economy for their own xenophobic ideology." You can help Rogers defeat McKeon here and remember, this Republican problem isn't confined to California, not by a long-shot.

How Democratic Candidates Should Respond To Irresponsible GOP Threats To Throw The U.S. Into Default

You've probably seen a parade of Republican clowns wooing teabaggers by insisting that the government be sent into bankruptcy unless Obama agrees to defund the Affordable Care Act. That's all their irresponsible-- and/or delusional playing for the cameras. Most of the noise has been coming from far right Confederates in all white gerrymandered districts. But Wednesday Tom McClintock was up to the same trick in California. Watch him up top. His district is very safe-- with a PVI of R+10. Romney beat Obama there 58-40% and McClintock won reelection last year with 61% and taking 8 of the 10 counties, including the 2 big ones, Placer and El Dorado. So far, he has no Democrat running against him in 2014.

A bit further south, one of his compadres, Buck McKeon, has a much shakier district and a strong opponent, Lee Rogers. Rogers has a very different perspective on fiscal responsibility that either McClintock or McKeon. This week he warned supporters that Republican brinksmanship could force the U.S. into a default on its debt right around Labor Day.

Congress is getting ready to have another political battle over the debt ceiling again. Once again this will create market uncertainty and instill doubts about U.S. credit because of a lack of political leadership.

You'd think Congress would have learned in 2011 that brinksmanship and threats of default hurt America, but it seems that the fiasco is doomed to repeat itself.

We cannot extend our debt ceiling indefinitely, nor can we run a functioning economy without paying the bills we’ve already accrued. Our country is in dire need of leaders offering real solutions instead of political games.

The solution last time around was the Budget Control Act of 2011, which set up the policy known as “sequestration”-- it was not a viable solution. Eliminating wasteful government spending requires deft maneuvering and precision, not a meat cleaver.

There are many real solutions we can initiate today to reduce our deficit, such as ending Cold War era defense programs the Pentagon doesn't want, eliminating subsidies to oil companies, reducing health care costs, and closing loopholes that allow the wealthiest Americans and corporations to pay less than their fair share in taxes. 

 

Partisan bickering and childish battles in the 2011 debt ceiling battle resulted in a downgrade of U.S. debt to the detriment of millions of middle class Americans. Sequestration is currently threatening half a million jobs in California alone. We cannot allow a do-nothing Congress to posture for personal political gain at the expense of the economy again in 2013.

Average citizens are not responsible for the current level of debt, and we cannot balance the budget on the backs of working Americans. I want to be your next Representative for California’s 25th Congressional District and I will use common sense to make reforms that will actually reduce our deficit.

Blue America has endorsed Rogers. If you'd like to see a sensible and committed progressive in Congress instead of a Beltway hack like McKeon, please consider contributing what you feel comfortable with here through ActBlue.

The Way Forward on Guantánamo-- Guest Post By Michelle Ringuette Of Amnesty International

President Obama and prominent members of Congress, including House Armed Services Committee Chairman Howard P. "Buck" McKeon (R-CA), have rather conveniently started blaming each other for the lack of progress toward closing the Guantánamo Bay detention facility. But their arguments are self-serving and political: Congress has done little to help, and President Obama doesn’t need their help anyway.

The Fresno Bee, in a May 4 editorial, saw McKeon’s words for what they were, noting that Congress was continuing to put up roadblocks to transferring detainees out of the facility and saying that McKeon’s claim Obama was not putting forward an alternative plan was "stretching the truth, at best." Rep. McKeon and others in Congress who share his views about Guantánamo want to have their cake and eat it, too: at the same time as criticizing the president for his failure to act on the detainees, McKeon argued that "until a better solution is offered, at Guantánamo they must stay."

Senator John McCain meanwhile told Fox News Sunday that he still supported the president in his commitment to close Guantánamo but then presented an argument for why Guantánamo should stay open. "The fact is there's been no coherent plan presented to the Congress of the United States as to how we do dispose of these individuals. And one of them is not to send them back into the fight where they can kill more Americans," McCain said.

So it seems that for once, the words of members of Congress match their actions, because in fact they have imposed restrictions all along on the President’s ability to transfer detainees out and close the prison.

In reality, though, President Obama has no excuse to wait another day to start emptying the prison, because even within the congressional restrictions, there is plenty of wiggle room. As the Washington Post noted in this April 30 editorial, he can use the certification process and waiver provision passed by Congress to resume transfers of detainees. And the plan for closing Guantánamo? That should be simple: each detainee should either be charged and fairly tried in federal court, or released.

When you set the politics aside, the smoke clouding this subject clears right away. As Amnesty International explained in detail in a report released May 3, the Bush Administration had no trouble asserting its executive authority to set up the prison in the first place, an act of muscle-flexing certainly not disowned when the current president took office and aptly mimicked ever since any time the administration, using the Military Commissions Act of 2006, goes to court to prevent detainees from seeking remedy there.

This contradiction calls into question why the administration has proven so reluctant to flex its muscles a little more in order to follow through on the President’s pledge when he took office to close the prison down within a year.

One need only look at the case of Shaker Aamer to see the moral hollowness of the arguments being presented in Washington’s corridors of power. He has been cleared for transfer by two Presidents and the UK government has repeatedly called for him to be free with his wife and children in London. The UK parliament was prompted to debate his case last month after 100,000 people signed a petition demanding his return to his wife and children in London. President Obama can and should resolve this case today.

The cases of all 166 detainees are not identical, of course. But without leadership, the situation will never be resolved. The White House needs to appoint a senior official to oversee Guantánamo’s closure, instruct the Pentagon to avail itself of the certification process and waiver authority Congress has already granted, and start making its international human rights obligations the priority in its decision making on Guantánamo. Those actions would match the President’s words when he said last week, “The idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried, that is contrary to who we are. It is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop."

Michelle Ringuette
Chief of Campaigns & Programs
Amnesty International USA

Sunbelt State Republicans In A Bind Over Solar Power

As we saw yesterday, the American conservative movement is a captive of-- and virtually inextricable from-- the self-sustaining, cash-soaked universe of Big Oil and Gas. Conservative politicians' careers have been financed by Big Oil and they will fight to the death for their corporate masters. Unfortunately, the death their fighting for is our death, our country's and our planet's death. As Bill McKibben mentioned in his sermon, tiny Bavaria in southern Germany (27,239 square miles-- smaller than South Carolina) now more solar panels functioning to create cheap, clean electricity than the entire United States (3.794 million square miles). Right-wing reactionaries and hatemongers accept that shilling for Big Oil is part of their job. When I woke up yesterday reactionary sociopath Bryan Fischer had just gratuitously tweeted:

Meanwhile, Juan Cole was pointing out that the rest of the world is sensibly forging ahead on the back of the incredibly shrinking cost of solar energy. Because the pace of technological innovation in the solar field has so rapidly accelerated, it is now as inexpensive to build a solar plant as a gas or coal one and in the Southwest solar is at grid parity, as it is in several European countries that have no oil, like Italy, Spain, Germany, Portugal.

By 2015, solar panels should have fallen to 42 cents per watt. Reneweconomy.com says that the best Chinese solar panels fell in cost by 50% between 2009 and 2012. That incredible achievement is what has driven so many solar companies bankrupt– if you have the older technology, your panels are suddenly expensive and you can’t compete. It is like no one wants a 4 year old computer. Conservatives shed no tears when better computers drive slower ones out of the market, but point to solar companies’ shake-out as somehow bad or unnatural. No wonder US solar installations jumped 76% in 2012. The reductions in cost over the next two years are expected to continue, at a slowing but still impressive 30% rate.

In the last election, the part of the Antelope Valley in CA-25, voted, for the first time, against the virulently anti-environmental Republican incumbent, Buck McKeon, and for environmental-friendly opponent, Lee Rogers. Had the rest of the district voted the way Antelope Valley did, McKeon would have lost and Rogers would be the congressman now. Both the congressmen from the Antelope Valley. McKeon and Kevin McCarthy, have taken considerable legalistic bribes from Big Oil and Gas, McCarthy $420,650 and McKeon $32,200 and now both are in an awkward situation back home. As Cole reports. the biggest solar plant in the world, the 579 megawatt Antelope Valley Solar Project is being built straddling their two districts. "It will provide electricity to 400,000 homes in the state (roughly 2 million people), and reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 775,000 tons a year." McKeon and McCarthy, of course, both want to be seen leading the parade-- at least back home. Both their voting records in Washington are horrifically anti-environmental and pro-Big Oil. McCarthy's career-long ProgressivePunch score on crucial votes involving air pollution, biohazards, clean water, global warming, and renewable energy is a ZERO. McKeon's overall record on the environment is nearly as hideous, 3.68 (out of 100). McKeon's votes in favor of renewable energy have all been tied up in pork and kickbacks he can be on the receiving end of.

Important new research also shows that hybrid plants that have both solar panels and wind turbines dramatically increase efficiency and help with integration into the electrical grid. Earlier concerns that the turbines would cast shadows and so detract from the efficiency of the solar panels appear to have been overblown. Because in most places in the US there is more sun in the summer and more wind in the winter, a combined plant keeps the electricity feeding into the grid at a more constant rate all year round, which is more desirable than big spikes and fall-offs.

That Germany, then China, then the US are the world’s largest solar markets is no surprise. But that number 17 Japan will increase its solar installations by 120% in 2013 and so may be the second hottest solar market, just after China, this year, would mark a big change. Japan may well have 5 gigawatts of solar installed by the end of this year, even though the relatively new prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is no particular friend of the renewables. In my own view, if Japan made the right governmental and private investments, it could overtake China in the solar field and reverse its long post-bubble stagnation.

ABB has been commissioned a large solar electricity generating plant on the edge of the Kalahari Desert near Cape Town, South Africa. It will supply the electricity needs of around 40,000 persons and reduce annual emissions by 50,000 tons of carbon dioxide. South Africa emits 500 million tons of carbon dioxide annually, and is third in the world for per capita emissions. (Still, it only emits a 10th as much over-all as the US). But they just need a thousand more plants like the Kalahari one, and voila! South Africa is also imposing a carbon tax, which will hurry things along. (At the moment, South Africa is far too dependent on dirty coal plants, which not only fuel climate change but also spew deadly toxins such as mercury into the atmosphere, whence it goes into human beings.

Because of South African and Israeli demand in particular, demand for solar panels in the Middle East and Africa has risen over 600% during the past year. Saudi Arabia’s announced plans to save its petroleum for export by going solar at home will add a great deal to regional demand if it sticks to those plans. (In most countries, petroleum isn’t used much for electricity generation as opposed to transportation, but in oil states such as Saudi Arabia it often is used in power plants; but that cuts down on foreign exchange earnings.)

The two Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan are emerging as the solar giants in India, with each having now passed half a gigawatt in solar electricity generation capacity. The two account for some 88% of all of India’s solar power. But Rajasthan may soon outstrip Gujarat, given the state’s solar-friendly commitments, its ample amounts of scorching sunlight, and its vast deserts.

Not Enough Retirements In The House To Make Room For New Ideas And Energy?

McKeon (left) with his muse (right)

Crooked Santa Clarita Republican Buck McKeon has been running around Capitol Hill and his district like a chicken without a head insisting he's not a lame duck. There were widespread reports last week that he's intent on retiring... or even resigning. Speculation that his shady dealings with China-agent/Vegas mobster Sheldon Adelson, an unending river of ethics scandals, a tough rematch looming with Lee Rogers, and a GOP rule that requires him to step down next session as House Armed Services Committee chairman-- the source of all his ready cash-- are prompting him to leave Congress for a K Street lobbyist job, has been thunderous-- and, for many of his Republican colleagues in Congress-- very welcome news. But McKeon, after confiding to a dozen intimates that he would step down, now says he's going to run for another term. Not everyone believes him.

Wednesday, Roll Call dealt with congressional retirement rumors, featuring a photo of North Carolina Republican Howard Coble, 82, looking pretty corpse-like. They also speculate that North Carolina Democrat Mel Watt, 67, may be ready to pack it in.

Among the other elder statesmen routinely on retirement watch lists, New York Democratic Rep. Charles B. Rangel, 82, raised $35,000 and had a negative amount of cash on hand; Florida Republican Rep. C.W. Bill Young, 82, raised $58,000 and had $209,000 on hand; and Texas Republican Rep. Ralph M. Hall, who turns 90 in two weeks, raised just $15,000-- not counting the $20,000 Hall loaned his campaign, leaving him with $16,000 on hand. Hall is the oldest member of the House.

Retirement speculation continues to rumble in California GOP circles about Rep. Howard “Buck” McKeon, who must relinquish his chairmanship of the Armed Services Committee at the end of this term. McKeon raised $69,000 in the first quarter but still had $508,000 in cash on hand.

There are no provisions for forcing retirements from senile congressmembers and many of hung on long past the dates where they could make any kind of contributions. Strom Thurmond was causing a problem in the Senate not just because he was suffering from extreme dementia but because he was incontinent and stunk up the place for over a year before finally retiring. (He had been forced out of the chairmanship of the Senate Armed Services Committee as he approached the century mark.)

Not all the oldest Members of the House are senile, but several of them are. Here are the 25 most elderly current members:

• Ralph Hall (R-TX)- 89
• John Dingell (D-MI)- 86
• John Conyers (D-MI)- 83
• Louise Slaughter (D-NY)- 83
• Bill Young (R-FL)- 82
• Howard Coble (R-NC)- 82
• Sam Johnson (R-TX)- 82
• Charlie Rangel (D-NY)- 82
• Sander Levin (D-MI)- 81
• Don Young (R-AK)- 79
• Alcee Hastings (D-FL)- 76
• Grace Napolitano (D-CA)- 76
• Jim McDermott (D-WA)- 76
• Bill Pascrell (D-NJ)- 76
• Hal Rogers (R-KY)- 75
• Lois Capps (D-CA)- 75
• Nita Lowey (D-NY)- 75
• Buck McKeon (R-CA)- 74
• Frank Wolf (R-VA)- 74
• Maxine Waters (D-CA)- 74
• Steny Hoyer (D-MD)- 73
• Joe Pitts (R-PA)- 73
• Henry Waxman (D-CA)- 73
• Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)- 73
• John Lewis (D-GA)- 73

104 Republican Congressmen Voted To Reduce Benefits For Seniors And Vets

Looks like somebody stepped in it

The GOP is trying to decide how to best use Obama's screw up on Chained CPI for their own purposes. It's a Republican Party policy that he foolishly adopted for his dead-in-the-water budget at the urging of Boehner and McConnell. When will he ever learn that their ideas are toxic? (That's a rhetorical question; he'll never learn.) But while some Republicans praise the idea or say it doesn't go far enough, the chairman of the NRCC, Greg Walden (R-OR) has decided to use it in an attack against Democrats aimed at seniors and people who expect to be seniors someday. H was quick to run to CNN and tell Wolf Blitzer viewers that "the budget really lays out kind of a shocking attack on seniors, if you will. And we haven't seen all the detail yet, and we'll look at it, but I'll tell you, when you're going after seniors the way he's already done on Obamacare, taking $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare, and now coming back at seniors again, I think you're crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine, certainly, and around the country. I think he's going to have a lot of pushback from some of the major senior organizations on this and Republicans, as well... you're trying to balance this budget on the backs of seniors and I just think it's not the right way to go."

And yet... and yet... 104 House Republicans already voted for Chained CPI on March 20th, when it was presented as part of the Republican Study Committee's alternative budget. So whatever game Walden wants to try playing, the candidates he's charged with reelecting aren't running against Barack Obama. They're running against Democrats who, in most instances are strongly opposed to Chained CPI, no matter if it's being proposed by Boehner, Obama or a bunch of crackpot extremists. Let's take Buck McKeon, for example. McKeon is an extremist in a moderate suburban Los Angeles area district (CA-25). His likely opponent in 2014 will be Dr. Lee Rogers, one of America's most distinguished podiatric surgeons, a man who already came closer to beating McKeon than anyone else in his career. As soon as Alan Grayson and Mark Takano circulated their letter pledging not to vote for any cuts to benefits for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Rogers announced he would have signed it on the day it was drafted. "As a doctor I am adamantly opposed to cutting benefits to our population in most need. I announced several weeks ago, I would have been a day-one signer of the letter Mark Takano and Alan Grayson authored pledging to protect seniors and veterans from cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits, including chained CPI." So for voters in Santa Clarita, Antelope Valley and Simi Valley, there is a clear choice: McKeon (and Obama) want to cut social security benefits for seniors and veterans using Chained CPI. Rogers is adamantly opposed. 104 Republican incumbents are in the same boat and although most of them are crazy fanatics in gerrymandered blood red districts with constituents as ignorant as they are, there are several, like McKeon, in more precarious political positions.

This is a list of Republicans (with their districts' PVIs) who already voted to reduce benefits for seniors and veterans and could be vulnerable to competent independent-minded Democratic opponents in 2014:

• Justin Amash (R-MI) R+4
• Joe Barton (R-TX) R+11
• Kerry Bentivolio (R-MI) R+4
• Dave Camp (R-MI) R+5
• Steve Chabot (R-OH) R+6
• Ron DeSantis (R-FL) R+9
• Scott Garrett (R-NJ) R+4
• Randy Hultgren (R-IL) R+5
• Doug LaMalfa (R-CA) R+10
• Patrick McHenry (R-NC) R+11
• John Mica (R-FL) R+4
• Steve Pearce (R-NM) R+5
• Robert Pittenger (R-NC) R+8
• Scott Rigell (R-VA) R+2
• Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) R+7
• Pete Sessions (R-TX) R+10
• Lee Terry (R-NE) R+4
• Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) R+8

There are Democrats serving in Congress in districts with PVIs higher than these. It won't be easy for any of them, but it's not impossible either. The Democrats running against these guys-- and every one of them is a male (even Patrick McHenry and Dave Camp)-- have an opponent who voted to cut Social Security for seniors and vets. They did it already. That should be what the election in those districts are about.

Two of the Democrats in the Blue America Save Social Security contest, Nick Ruiz and Ken Sanders, are in that sweet spot, respectively running against John Mica and Joe Barton. As you can see, each is already running against Chained CPI and other unfair cuts their opponents back. Sanders has a message that will resonate in the suburbs between Dallas and Ft Worth, maybe even down in Waxahachie, Midlothian, Ennis and Corsicana:

"We cannot balance the budget on the backs of seniors, veterans, and our nation’s most vulnerable citizens. Our Social Security system is critical to protecting middle class families, and we cannot allow it to be dismantled one inch. Chained CPI, cutting Social Security, is a terrible idea and a pointless exercise. Besides, Social Security isn't in serious trouble. The Social Security trust fund is flush for at least two decades. If we want to ensure it's there beyond that, there's an easy fix-- just lift the ceiling on income subject to Social Security taxes, which is now $113,700. This way people making above $113,700 will pay like everyone else does, is a far better way of keeping Social Security secure long into the future. We need Congressional leaders who support middle class families, seniors and veterans; those who have helped make this nation great. I will fight to defend social security from Chained CPI. Seniors spend 20-40% of their income on healthcare. Two-thirds of seniors rely on Social Security for most of their income; one-third relies on it for at least 90% of their income. These people aren’t stashing their Social Security checks in the Cayman Islands and buying vacation homes in Aruba-- they are hanging on by their fingernails to their place in the middle class. Right now, corporate profits are at an all time high, the wealthy are doing phenomenally well and we must not balance the budget on the backs of some of the most vulnerable people in this country. Support me and I will be your voice in Washington to fight against Chained CPI and any other cut that threatens the shrinking middle class families of this country."

Nick Ruiz is running in the suburbs just north of Orlando-- Winter Park, Altamonte Springs, Oviedo, Maitland, Apopka, and all the way up to Deltona and Orange City. He'd make a great neighbor for Alan Grayson, who represents the suburbs on the other side of Orlando. They sure see eye to eye on protecting Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Ruiz: "I would never vote to diminish Social Security benefits.These benefits cover retirees, widows, children, disabled persons and veterans-- none of whom receive enough as it is by current economic standards of reasonable cost, inflation and common decency. In fact, it's part of my platform to actually increase Social Security benefits, financed by lifting the FICA cap, and Wall Street cost-sharing. My GOP opponent, John Mica wants to CUT Social Security benefits and make seniors retire even later in life, at 70 years of age. It's unacceptable. Help me stop him."

If you'd like to vote in our contest, just contribute at least one dollar to one of the anti-Chained CPI candidates on this page. The candidate who gets the most donors wins $1,000 from the Blue America PAC and everyone who donates is eligible to win an RIAA-certified platinum award for the eponymous 311 album. Win-win!

Steve Israel Won't Allow DCCC To Challenge Republican Committee Chairs Like Paul Ryan And Buck McKeon

I'll talk about DCCC corruption and complicity with the Republicans after the election and in a more systematic way, although this particular theme-- about Israel opposing spending any money to challenge Republican leaders and committee chairs is something we've gone over several times before. We've been making the point all cycle that, for various reasons, "ex"-Blue Dog/New Dem Steve Israel-- founder of the ultra secretive let's-all-us-insiders-be-friends-and-get-rich-together Center Aisle Caucus (which pledges to never try to defeat fellow members-- has had a strict hands off policy when it came to targeting powerful senior Republicans. If the Democrats don't take back the majority-- in the light of a likely Obama win against Romney tomorrow and voter rejection of GOP extremism and obstructionism-- it will be because of Israel's blundering. He may well be the reptile Nancy Pelosi boasts he is, but his reptilian instincts have only been brought to bear against progressive Democrats and a few unheralded, powerless Republican backbenchers and assclowns. Who cares if he defeats inconsequential DCCC top targets like Chip Cravaack, Bobby Schilling, Francisco Canseco and Daniel Webster and replaces them with equally inconsequential zeroes like (respectively) Rick Nolan (who the DCCC and their affiliates spent $5 million on), Cheri Bustos ($4,250,000), Pete Gallego ($4,300,000) and Val Demings ($4,500,000)? These goofballs are nothing-- not the targets and not the DCCC candidates hoping to replace them-- and eating up so much money to do so. Meanwhile, the DCCC hasn't spent a nickel trying to replace toxic monstrosities like Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan, Armed Services Committee chairman Buck McKeon, Intelligence Committee chairman Mike Rogers or Energy and Commerce Committee chairman Fred Upton with high-quality independent-minded progressives, respectively, Rob Zerban, Lee Rogers, Lance Enderle and Mike O'Brien-- all in districts Obama won in 2008 and is expected to win again tomorrow.

 
Over the weekend The Hulk ignored Steve Israel and came out for Rob Zerban. Kenosha, Wisconsin native, activist and actor Mark Ruffalo asked his own network to help Zerban defeat Paul Ryan, even if the Democratic Beltway Establishment is trying to protect his seat. "And as a Wisconsinite," he implored, "I'm writing to ask for your support for Rob Zerban for Congress on Tuesday. Rob is running against Paul Ryan because Paul Ryan's policies don't help families like the one I grew up in." 

Paul Ryan would end Medicare, privatize social security, and try to balance the budget on the backs of seniors and working class folks. Just so that billionaires and Big Oil companies can keep huge tax breaks and bonuses.

  Paul Ryan wants to squeeze every last drop from the middle class to benefit the few. That's not going to bring back jobs, and it's certainly not going to help people while they're looking for work.

  But Rob Zerban will help get us back on track. He is a successful small business owner, and he is on our side on all the issues that matter to us: protecting clean air and water, reforming Wall Street's recklessness, protecting the safety nets and creating opportunities for working and middle class folks.

That's why I'm supporting Rob Zerban for Congress, and I hope you will too.

Lee Rogers, who could have overcome McKeon easily with a fraction of what Israel is spending on any of his pack of mangy Blue Dogs or "business-friendly" New Dems, ended his campaign with a call for comprehensive campaign finance reform. Riding a wave of voter discontent to pose the first serious challenge to McKeon in his 20 years in Congress, Rogers told the local media that if elected he would push for full disclosure of all campaign contributions, including preferential treatment offered to candidates or incumbents by banks, auto dealerships, or any other business seeking to influence the legislative process in Washington. As we explained when Blue America endorsed him last year, he supports citizen-led campaigns, which would couple small donations with public financing for candidates who refuse large campaign checks, and would push for a constitutional amendment to overturn the Supreme Court’s dreadful 2010 Citizens United ruling, which has opened the floodgates to a torrent of “super-PAC” money and made the 2012 election cycle the most expensive in history.

“We cannot trust lawmakers to represent us when they’re taking hundreds of thousands of dollars from industries they’re supposed to be regulating and passing some of that money into their personal bank accounts,” Rogers said.

“Our campaign finance system is broken from top to bottom and is corrupting many members of Congress because fundraising takes up such a disproportionate amount of their time and energy. We don't want powerful committee chairmen like McKeon caving in to the interests of defense contractors or mining companies. It’s long past time to put voters first, ahead of the lobbyists and the special interests, and to put the American people back in charge of their own democracy.”

The first thing Rogers would do if elected is introduce a bill he is calling Enhance the Honesty and Integrity in Congress and Staff, or ETHICS. This would ban payments to family members working on campaigns and prevent members and their staff from receiving preferential treatment or discounts on significant financial transactions, as Rep. Darrell Issa recommended in his report on the Countrywide scandal.

From there he would push for even more comprehensive campaign finance reform, including the constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United.

“It’s no surprise that Congress has dismal approval ratings in public opinion polls when the system is awash in so much money and so little regard for the public good,” Rogers said. “Buck McKeon doesn’t see anything wrong with the status quo and has personally benefited from it. And that’s why it’s time for voters to throw him out of office.”

McKeon’s wife, Patricia, is his Campaign Treasurer and has received $617,956 in the past ten years. His son, David O. McKeon, has received a further $60,951 since 2009 through three different shell corporations based in Las Vegas. The anti-corruption watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) recently put McKeon on its list of the most corrupt members of Congress, finding that his family campaign payments were among the largest of any member.

This isn't a battle that ends tomorrow, regardless of which candidates win. Grassroots progressives have an enemy-- the Inside-the-Beltway, two-headed monstrosity-- and Steve Israel, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Steny Hoyer and Joe Crowley are every bit as culpable as John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan and Buck McKeon. This is our country and we have to take it back from a bunch of fancy pants careerists who have long ago lost track of who they work for. And it looks like even if the hacks at the California Democratic Party decided to take their cues from Steve Israel, normal voters in Santa Clarita aren't-- and this in a newspaper that just endorsed McKeon (again):

Why Aren't Drones Over American Skies The Defining Issue In This Election?

There are people talking about voting for a third party candidate or just sitting out the election because they're unhappy about tens of thousands of drones being green-lighted to fly over American skies-- not over Somalia, Yemen, the badlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan, but right here over Tampa, Phoenix, New Hampshire and Montana. I have a better idea... how about helping defeat the members of the Congressional drone caucus? The official name is the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus and it's really just a way for the drone manufacturers to pay off some of the most corrupt Members of Congress, ones who have been willing to push through their agenda. Needless to say the founder and chairman of the caucus is Congress' most corrupt member, Buck McKeon of Santa Clarita, California. McKeon (AKA- Congressman Drone) has taken more in legalistic bribes from arms manufacturers and war contractors than any TWO other Members of Congress combined-- and that doesn't even count the large sums of money they've funndeled into his personal bank account by backing a fake bid for California state Assembly by his ditzy wife Patricia. (She lost her primary badly, of course, but not before he solicited and she accepted large bribes from major arms manufacturers who had never before contributed to a local legislative race.)

These are the 15 most notoriously corrupt members of the drone caucus:

Buck McKeon (R-CA)- founder and co-chair 
Henry Cuellar (Blue Dog-TX)- co-chair 
Todd Akin (R-MO) 
Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) 
Rick Berg (R-ND), running for U.S. Senate 
Shelley Berkley (New Dem-NV), running for U.S. Senate 
Brian Bilbray (R-CA) 
Ken Calvert (R-CA) 
Joe Heck (R-NV) 
Darrell Issa (R-CA) 
Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) 
Mike Pompeo (R-Koch Industries) 
Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), already defeated in a primary 
Mike Rogers (R-MI) 
Joe "You Lie" Wilson (R-SC)

The Senate version was co-founded by two of the most corrupt warmongers in that body, Jim Inhofe (R-OK) and Joe Manchin (D-WV). The drone manufacturers are paying off Members of Congress-- McKeon more than anyone-- to allow for a barely regulated humongous expansion in their business. Some activists around the country have been protesting, but most people are barely aware of the drone industry and their paid shills in Congress.

[P]rotesters think the drones will really be used to spy on the public, including folks like themselves. "The prospect of having drones flying around, spying on people, is kind of horrific," said Nate Adeyemi, one of the local organizers. "It's such an infringement upon the human right to privacy." The group is also protesting the university for its involvement and the local officials who gave the company a loan.

Another target for activists has been the organization that lobbies on behalf of the industry, the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International (AUVSI). The group created in 1978 "to promote and support the unmanned systems and robotics industry." The organization has ballooned to include 1,400 members-- all anxious to feed at the government trough. Activists have crashed their press conferences, conventions and fairs.

Given their close connections in Congress-the companies give millions in campaign contributions and get, in return, billions of tax dollars-- AUVSI can even show off its wares right inside the Capitol. At an exhibit hosted by the Congressional Drone Caucus in September 2011, activists broke up the lovefest, unfurling white sheets covered in fake blood and falling to the floor, moaning and writhing in pain. "Stop the killer drones," they wailed, while another protester carrying a large cardboard drone made a loud buzzing noise as he zoomed around the room. Startled, the Congresspeople, staffers and corporate employees were forced to stop their conversations-- until the police arrived and escorted the group out of the building.

Buck Mckeon is-- by far-- the biggest recipient of money from arms merchants this election cycle ($497,600, more than twice times his closest competitor). Career-long, McKeon's $1,297,200 is surpassed only by bribes to C.W. Bill Young ($1,352,275) and Jim Moran ($1,587,096) among all current House Members. Since 1992 McKeon's 5 biggest campaign contributors, again, not counting the illegal money he's gotten out of them for Patricia, are Lockheed Martin ($186,400), Northrop Grumman ($171,800), Boeing ($87,150), SLM ($86,250), and General Atomics ($94,300). And he always puts their interests above the interests of his Santa Clarita and Antelope Valley constituents.

In a study of the 26 votes Congress has taken since 2010 that involve government surveillance of citizens, which is, of course, the well-founded fear many people have about drones, McKeon scored a zero. Do all Republicans score zeroes? No; civil liberties rollcalls aren't partisan votes. Reactionary, authoritarian Democrats like Jason Altmire (PA), John Barrow (GA), Jim Cooper (TN), Henry Cuellar (TX), Joe Donnelly (IN) and Larry Kissell (NC) also scored zeroes, and Republicans concerned about the intrusive nature of what Eisenhower warned about in his Military-Industrial Complex speech-- like Walter Jones (NC), Ron Paul (TX), Rob Bishop (UT), Raul Labrador (ID), Jimmy Duncan (TN), Chris Gibson (NY) and Michael Fitzpatrick (PA)-- scored 100%. McKeon's zero probably won't sit well in his district. I asked Lee Rogers, the doctor running against him-- who has been endorsed by Blue America-- and he had the same kinds of reservations most people in the district have:

The Unmanned Systems Caucus is an appropriately named group for McKeon to found. He's been letting the defense budget run away like an unmanned ship since he's been the chair of the House Armed Services Committee. The military industrial complex rewards him greatly, but now also rewards his wife for this. I think most people would agree that drones are very useful to our military and save the lives of our troops on the battlefield. But McKeon's vision for drone filled skies in our own country, to be used by government agencies to spy on citizens, is a violation of our most basic freedoms.

McKeon's drone bill, which will allow 30,000 drones to fly over America in four years passed Congress 248-169, 24 Blue Dogs and New Dems joining all but 12 Republicans to take another giant step into Big Brother Land. All the usual suspects-- corporate whores like Cantor, Ryan, Rogers, Upton, et al-- joined McKeon to push this through. Interestingly enough so did several Tea party-supported Republicans who were elected by people who aren't interested in drones snooping into their lives. Remember, the problems with the drones isn't just about killing in other countries. There isn't enough of a market for that. And Lucky Bucky and his band of whores stepped in to help the industry solve that by pushing to have drones flying all over a sky near you... very soon. That bill McKeon was paid very well to see passed was approved by the House and by then by the Senate "to open U.S. skies to unmanned drone flights within four years."

The FAA is also required under the bill to provide military, commercial and privately-owned drones with expanded access to U.S. airspace currently reserved for manned aircraft by Sept. 30, 2015. That means permitting unmanned drones controlled by remote operators on the ground to fly in the same airspace as airliners, cargo planes, business jets and private aircraft.

Currently, the FAA restricts drone use primarily to segregated blocks of military airspace, border patrols and about 300 public agencies and their private partners. Those public agencies are mainly restricted to flying small unmanned aircraft at low altitudes away from airports and urban centers.

Within nine months of the bill's passage, the FAA is required to submit a plan on how to safely provide drones with expanded access.

Forcing Congress to look out for basic civil liberties of American citizens, rather than weapons manufacturers' unquenchable thirst for more and more profits isn't going to be furthered by sitting out the election. It's going to be furthered by defeating corrupt Members of Congress like Buck McKeon, Henry Cuellar, Todd Akin, Rick Berg, Darrell Issa and Mike Rogers. There's nothing someone serious about stopping the proliferation of drones over American skies can do more useful than helping Lee Rogers replace Buck McKeon in California or helping Lance Enderle replace Mike Rogers (chairman of the Intelligence Committee) in Michigan.

Buck-- monetizing our tax dollars for himself... as usual