I took only one photograph today, a pretty one; but I had plenty on my mind that isn't pretty.

PLAYING AT LEGISLATING

With the nation recovering slowly from an economic melt-down created by banking/lending malfeasance, which was aided and abetted by policies of a previous administration, the Obama Presidency is caught between a rock and hard place as it attempts to move toward better times for the American people.  The hard place is the Republican side of the aisle in Congress which refuses in this election year to budge from it’s refusal as the majority in the House even to consider working with the Democratic minority to get anything of substance done.  Gridlock is the order of the day and of the entire season leading up to the November election. The rocks in the hard place are distractions initiated by Tea Party extremists, mostly minor issues of no real consequence, designed to take the Administration's attention away from the important work of the Executive Branch of Government. In their vowed determination to take down the Obama Administration, the Tea Party legislators seem willing to risk bringing down the Government of the United States.

The wealthiest member of the House of Representatives, Congressman Darrell Issa with a fortune estimated to be 450 million dollars is chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. His district takes in part of Riverside County and a big chunk of Northern San Diego County. People who have known Issa since he dropped out of high school at age seventeen to join the army say his being in charge of a committee that is supposed to oversee and reform government is a little like putting the fox in charge of the chicken house.  In the army he became an explosive ordinance disposal technician and was trained to defuse bombs.  Early in his career as a Republican politician he liked to tell stories about his army career, including a few which were later found to be pure fiction.  He said he was part of a detail that swept stadiums for bombs during the 1971 World Series. He said he helped make sure a stadium was safe before a game attended by President Richard Nixon.  He doesn’t talk about that detail any more or about some other anecdotes he once liked to include in political stump speeches after a San Francisco Examiner investigation found that President Nixon didn’t attend any World Series games in 1971.  He also doesn’t talk anymore about his distinguished service record after that same investigation found that Issa was actually transferred to a supply depot after he received an unsatisfactory evaluation in his explosive ordinance disposal job.  He asked for and got permission to leave the army not long after because of an illness in his family. 

Long before he became a rich man, Issa threaded his way through a couple of close brushes with the law, including an accusation by someone with whom he had served in the army that he had stolen a car and left it abandoned on an expressway.  People who know his rise from struggling business person have hinted that he had something to do with burning down his place business to collect the insurance, but arson couldn’t be proved.

 

The obvious reason for my present keen interest in Congressman Issa’s history, besides his being a congressman from the California county where I live, is that the House panel he chairs moved today to hold Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. in contempt for failing to cooperate with a congressional inquiry into the “Fast and Furious” gun-tracking operation.  Holder has refused for National Security reasons to hand over sensitive papers that could compromise the nation's work to control gun smuggling across the Mexican border.  While there is plenty of real work to be done by Congress, Speaker of the House John Boehner is making sure nothing which might help the economy grow will get to the floor for consideration.  Issa’s issue, of course, will get approval from the Republican majority to move forward because it is designed to set up a clash between Congress and the executive branch which will take months to play out... months that Issa and his colleagues hope will advance the Republican candidate for president in the November election.