I live in California District 01. This is a district that is dominated by Republicans...mostly ranchers and orchard owners and folks that live in the foothills (BTW, the largest orchards around here are owned by the Church of Latter Day Saints...interesting, no?)
Now this is too rich!
No ethical or moral Republican voter should ever seriously consider voting for Doug LaMalfa under any circumstances. That is why this Conservative Republican Leader is advising any Republican voter in the 1st Congressional District to withhold their vote from Doug LaMalfa.
Well a law was passed in California that changed how primary elections work. Now, instead of the the person with the most votes from the Democratic Party and Republican Party meeting in the general election, the top two vote getters square off in the general election...no matter the party to which they belong.
In CA01, we all thought it would be two past-middle-age GOP white guys in the general election. Nope. It ended up - to our surprise - to be Democrat Jim Reed going up against Republican Doug LaMalfa.
Doug LaMalfa is a very rich man. He is a rice farmer. He has made his fortune primarily from farm subsidies paid for by YOU the tax payer. There is a limit of $180,000 per year per farm owner allowed in farm subsidies. So what did Doug do? He divided his rice farm into "six different family owned parts" so he can collect ---> $1,080,000 each year of Federal Money.
He owns a home reportedly worth $4,000,000 up at Lake Almanor in the Sierra mountains just about a one and one-half hours' drive away from his home in Richvale, CA (interesting name no? Rich Vale).
Of course he wants to drown government in a bathtub BUT fights hard to keep farm subsidies going. You know, IOKIYAR. As we all know, the Republican Party ain't your dad's Republican Party. It is now dominated by the Tea Party faction (run by the richy rich and having a lot of John Birch-esque beliefs), the uber rich and corporations and evangelicals who are all about "social issues."
So of course Doug LaMalfa is totally opposed to the high speed rail proposed for California and anything to do with keeping a healthy water habitat for fish in the Sacramento Delta - or for building infrastructure, paying firefighters, police officers and school teachers. Of course he also wants to end ObamaCare. He wants everything to be privatized ultimately EXCEPT for Farm Subsidies because, you know, he got super rich and continues to stay super rich from farm subsidies. IOKIYAR
His campaign is a corrupt mess. He has seriously awful people running his campaign who have no ethics at all. Lying and smearing is their game (Lying? Sound like Mitt Romney's campaign?)
Now, the amazing thing is Doug LaMalfa is even seen as despicable by the current menagerie that is the GOP of 2012...YUP...for real.
Doug LaMalfa claims to be “One of Us”. I don’t resent his wealth one bit – until you mix in the $5million in federal farm subsidies he has taken from us. Then I look at the stuff he and his family have – including a monster home in the Lake Almanor area reputed to be worth $4million. Then, I got angry – I get angrier when I look at his record of writing bills in the legislature to benefit himself and splitting the family farm six ways to circumvent the $180,000 a year per person farm welfare limit.
When I attended NN11, I was staying in the same hotel as the RightOnLine group. I had no choice but to walk past their conference to get to and from my hotel room. Well, I saw all the topics they were flogging on posters outside the doors of each conference room they were using. They had meetings about such things as how to screw up Wikipedia with lies. How to use FourSquare, etc. Compared to NetRoots Nation, RightOnLine was rather basic. (I also just happened to share an elevator with James O'Keefe and also found myself blocking Andrew Breitbart from crashing through an entrance to the main stage at NN11).
WELL, the RightOnLine folks put out a Don't Vote For LaMalfa deal out on the internets. Here's a sample:
Doug LaMalfa’s Chief of Staff is getting sued for libel, his consultant had his office raided in the Bill Postmus corruption scandal and was routinely lambasted in the local media for bald-faced lying in mailers. Doug LaMalfa’s former campaign manager, David Stafford Reade has been the subject of legend in the North State and was most recently up to his neck in trying to decimate the California Republican Party Platform. Doug LaMalfa’s staff and delegates were recruited in to that effort.
You can read the whole thing here:
http://www.rightondaily.com/...