Cross posted at SayNoToPombo
Last fall, kid oakland wrote an essay on his blog and entitled it We All Live in Richard Pombo's District. Well, that title has become a motto of sorts for the 2006 Congressional race between Richard Pombo and Jerry McNerney in CA-11. Last week, the Washington Times led their feature on Jerry McNerney with it:
DUBLIN, Calif. -- Jerry McNerney, one of dozens of Democrats aiming to unseat congressional Republicans this fall, tells voters: "We all live in Richard Pombo's district."
The slogan, emblazoned beneath a world map in his campaign headquarters, is an attempt to add significance to his race against Mr. Pombo, the chairman of the House Resources Committee.
Meanwhile, Richard Pombo has been attempting to create a campaign issue out of the fact that interested people from outside of his district are getting involved in the race. Pombo's argument posits that a bunch of outsiders shouldn't be able to come in and tell the good people of CA-11 whom they should choose as their representative. But like so many of Pombo's pronouncements, this one is pure
bullshit.
You see, when Richard Pombo, by virtue of his power as chairman of the House Resources Committee, comes into our neighborhoods and starts telling us what should be done in our own backyards, he makes us his constituents as well.
So if you live in Washington or Colorado, where Pombo has single-handedly quashed locally popular wilderness bills, you live in Richard Pombo's district.
If you've been to New York City, where Pombo refuses to designate the World Trade Center site as a National Memorial, you live in Richard Pombo's district.
If you ever go to one of America's coastal areas where Pombo is working to lift the offshore oil and gas drilling moratorium, you live in Richard Pombo's district.
If you live near the Farallones Islands National Wildlife Refuge, which Pombo proposed opening to human depredation, you live in Richard Pombo's district.
If you've ever been to the home of playwright Eugene O'Neill, which is a National Historical Site in Danville, California; the Alibates Flint Quarries National Monument in the Texas panhandle; the Fort Bowie National Historical Site in Bowie, Arizona; Frederick Law Olmsted's home, which is a National Historical Site in Brookline, Massachusetts; the Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial in the Potomac, adjacent to downtown Washington, D.C.; the Mary McLeod Bethune Council House in Northwest Washington D.C.; the Minuteman Missile National Historic Site in South Dakota; the home of Revolutionary War hero Thaddeus Kosciuszko, which is a National Memorial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the home of Declaration of Independence signer Thomas Stone, which is a National Historical Site in Charles County, Maryland — all National Park Service properties which Richard Pombo proposed selling — you live in Richard Pombo's district.
If you've ever been blessed to visit Alaska's Aniakchak National Monument and Preserve, Bering Land Bridge National Preserve, Cape Krusenstern National Monument, Kobuk Valley National Park, Lake Clark National Park and Preserve, Noatak National Preserve, or Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve, all of which Pombo proposed selling, you live in Richard Pombo's district.
If you live in one of the western states where there are huge oil shale deposits that Pombo proposes opening up to strip mining, you live in Richard Pombo's district.
The map below shows mining claims on federally-owned property in the western US that Richard Pombo attempted to sell off at $1,000/acre last fall. If you've ever fished, hunted, hiked, camped or participated in any other form of recreation in an area marked on this map, you live in Richard Pombo's district.
You and I may not live within the physical boundaries of CA-11, but, indeed, we all DO live in Richard Pombo's district. And while we may not be able to cast an actual vote on November 7 for Jerry McNerney, we can certainly vote with donations of our time and our money to take back OUR district from Richard Pombo.