Thursday, January 17, 2013

Time for "Occupy Waxman's Office"

Congressman Waxman is setting up a South Bay office off of Rosecrans Ave. in Manhattan Beach. The real estate is an ideal location, right on the border between El Segundo and Manhattan Beach, near the aerospace industries as well as the Beach Cities.

Someone ought to set up shop outside of his office and demand that he address the following issues:
1. The plight of homeless veterans. The Santa Monica Daily Press reported that Waxman issued another flurry of letters to investigate the amount of money which private lenders are taking in on the Brentwood VA campus. The truth is that the land does not belong to those private interests in the first place, but to the armed forces who return stateside and need care. There is no excuse for veterans to be living on the street or burdened by excessive pharmaceuticals without proper in-patient oversight.
A corp of contactors will be fitting in seismic improvements to the Brentwood VA, in partial readiness for the veterans will be living there. While Waxman "laments" the amount of time that it took for the restructuring to take place, he should look no further than himself, since he was representing the Brentwood VA and the surrounding regions for nearly four decades. Now that Waxman has set up shop nearby, it's time that every veteran in the region give this Congressman more than a piece of their mind on his sluggish response to Veterans homelessness.

Easy Reader News also reported that a Hermosa Beach veteran, Larry Delassus, died in the Torrance Court House last year. He was engaged in fraught ligitation in trying to save his beach-side home from foreclosure. Wells Fargo Bank has assessed his properly incorrectly, relying on an incorrect parcel number. Delassus had paid his mortgage two months in advance. As far as mismanaged paperwork is concerned, the bank took responsiblity for the mistakes in paperwork, according to one source, yet the bank refused to relent on demanding a higher interest rate because the homeowner had missed a payment.

One has to wonder: where was Congressman Waxman when this man was struggling to hold onto his home? He has helped Russian immigrants process their paperwork. He has helped other constituents in their battles with big banks. Where was the Congress when Delassus was left to his own devices (plus the assitance of a strong advocate named Anthony Trujillo)?

2. Stop talking about Cap and Trade and global warming. Now that Congressmamn Waxman has an office in the South Bay, he cannot ignore the truth that the region endured an intense cold snap over the past week. On some nights, the temperature reached into near-freezing levels. So much for the notion that the sun is burning up the earth. The earth is getting warmer, perhaps, but that does not imply that the causes are manmade, or that man needs to do anything about them at this time.

3. Gun-control is all the rage now, and President Obama brought forth a wall of children at his latest press conference, in which he outlined the executive orders for tracking down the criminally insane, toughing sanctions for gun crimes. "Woe to the nation whose prince is a child" wrote King Solomon at the end of his days, when he rued the gross mistakes of his younger days marrying strange women instead of relying on his child-like "hearing heart". For the President to enact sweeping domestic policy following the emotional plea of a small gathering of school-aged children nearly amounts to the same. Like the children at the President's press conference, Congressman Waxman is leading with his emotions and not his reason, and certainly he is avoiding the heart of the matter.

Santa Monica has even discussed banning toy guns from the city. As if children playing cops and robbers is a threat to public safety, Santa Monica City leaders want to disarm the kids. They can take away the guns from "the good guys", but it does not mean that the "bad guys" won't still get the guns and engage in all sorts of crimes. Congressman Waxman has been a vocal supported of resurrected US Senator Dianne Feinstein's assault weapons ban, a sweeping reform which did not prevent gun violence, like Columbine or Oklahoma City.

Of course, there are the three major deadlines pressing on the United States Federal government, from the sequester to the debt ceiling and finally funding the government. Congressman Waxman voted for the fiscal cliff, and he continues droning about protecting the middle class from tax hikes, even though he has a distinct record of voting against middle class tax cuts, and he supported a massive number of tax increases, Obama-WaxmanCare, which haev descended on us starting this year.

Perhaps "Occupy Manhattan Beach" or "Occupy Henry Waxman's Office" would be in order at this time. It would likely be a shock to his system, since for nearly forty years he never had to pay attention to constituents or research series breaches of the public trust, like the ill-treatment of LA area veterans.

No comments:

Post a Comment