The Honorable
Howard P. “Buck” McKeon
Member of Congress
U.S. House of Representatives
2184 Rayburn HOB
Washington, D.C. 20515

Dear Mr. McKeon:

We the constituents of California’s 25th Congressional District, in order to restore integrity and honesty to the elected office you have tarnished with corruption and discrimination, do call upon your immediate and unconditional resignation from the United States House of Representatives.

By your repeated refusal to vote for legislation that would ensure equality for women and minorities, and your unyielding opposition to marriage equality for all citizens, you have revealed a lack of respect for the great diversity in our country;

By opposing the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act, the American Jobs Act and voting to repeal the Affordable Health Care Act, you have chosen partisan loyalties and the interests of your wealthy donors above the needs of the hard working men and women in our district;

By accepting a loan on your personal home from Countrywide Mortgage at a preferential rate, a discount that was unavailable to the public, you have shown yourself to be less than honorable;

By signing an ironclad “pledge” indicating a pre-determination of how you will vote in office on a particular issue, you have violated your congressional oath to “take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.”

By using your wife to funnel hundreds of thousands of dollars from the proceeds of your campaign contributors into your personal bank account, you have demonstrated a lack of ethical behavior;

By failing to resolve the Cemex issue, you have clearly shown yourself incapable of providing the kind of leadership the constituents of the 25th District deserve;

By repeatedly spewing out your partisan campaign rhetoric (usually at taxpayers’ expense), you have alienated your constituents and have proven that you do not serve in the best interests of all of us.

You have failed us as a leader, both at the national and local levels.

For these reasons and others, we demand your immediate and unconditional resignation from the United States House of Representatives.  We cannot afford to wait until November.

Sincerely,

The undersigned Constituents of California’s 25th Congressional District

The poll not only documented constituents’ dissatisfaction with McKeon and his corruption, but its removal serves as a sad commentary of the sorry state of journalism at The Signal.

Talk about having the press in your pocket! While we have no proof that McKeon or his staff ordered the poll taken down, there is no refuting that it no longer exists on the website. A shadow of doubt now looms large over everything The Signal publishes. How can readers ever depend upon its independence and reliability as a source of honest reporting?

Fortunately, we have a screen capture of the poll and are reproducing it here for your review:

If you go to The Signal’s page of ”Latest Polls” http://www.the-signal.com/polls/ and move your cursor over the questions, you will see that each one has a unique number. For some reason the paper uses even numbers only — 2,4,6,8, etc.  You’ll notice there is no number 324 — it’s gone. Vanished.

If Buck McKeon thinks he can keep information from getting to his constituents, he is mistaken.

TheBuckStopsNow.org will continue to bring you the truth about Buck McKeon.

There is no doubt Buck has to go.  And he can take The Signal with him.

The Buck Stops Now

Defeat Buck McKeon

If you’re going to rip off the taxpayer for tens of thousands of dollars, however, the least you could do is utilize proper spelling.

McKeon received this discount loan while Countrywide was charging higher fees and rates to more than 200,000 minority borrowers across the country. Bank of America, who acquired Countrywide in 2008, agreed to pay a settlement of $335 million in a statement released by the Justice Department.

Dr. Lee Rogers announced, “We’re calling on Representative McKeon to release his mortgage documents so that the public can see the terms and determine for themselves if they believe McKeon when he says he ‘had no inkling’ he was receiving preferential treatment.”

Additionally, Rogers sent a letter to the House Ethics committee asking for an investigation. The letter points out that McKeon also received over $12,000 in campaign contributions from Countrywide and Bank of America PACs since his 1998 loan.

“How can we trust our legislators who are supposed to be watching out for their constituents when they’re taking financial favors and turning a blind eye to egregious predatory lending by some in the financial services industry,” Rogers said.

Dr. Lee Rogers is a candidate for US Congress in California’s 25th district. He lives in Simi Valley with his wife Susan and daughter Emma.

He paints in broad sweeping stokes about the stark contrasts between what he calls “these two different youth movements,” as though both the Occupy Movement and the United States Defense structure were comprised entirely of young people. After setting up these two “straw men” he proceeds to disparage the motives and intentions of each and every protestor while romantically glorifying the motives and intentions of anyone who has committed to military service.

He supports this ridiculous contention with a series of comparisons; depicting the protestors as spoiled brats, who after graduating from private universities with their elitist “expensive degrees in academic fields” are now whining about their student loan debt and poor job prospects using $300 smart phones. He contrasts this with our nation’s military service men and women, selflessly placing their lives on the line “in the name of our flag and our freedom.”

He concocts this cynical calculation to whitewash an entire generation of our own sons and daughters; grossly oversimplifying and misrepresenting what is, in reality, an extremely broad and complex range of personal motivations and economic circumstances that dictate the direction of each of our lives.

Then he uses this despicable charade as his continued justification for pouring vast amounts of our nation’s blood and treasury into the most enormous war machine the world has ever known. He laments the fact that Congress’s own “Super Committee,” having failed to raise taxes on the top 1% or enact draconian cuts to vital social programs, is now compelled to turn its attention to the massively inflated defense budget. What Mr. McKeon refuses to acknowledge is the unalterable fact that military spending has nearly doubled in the last 10 years, is higher than at any point since World War II, and the cuts he and Mr. Panetta claim will result in a “hollowed-out military” will actually just bring DOD back to 2007 spending levels.

Last month, Buck defended the war machine’s bloated budget and broke into tears during a hearing about soldiers in Afghanistan. Almost on the same day, a Stimson Center study demonstrated how the U.S. military had used money, pegged for soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, on $1 trillion for tanks, ships and jets since Sept. 11, 2001.

Twenty-two percent of that $1 trillion came from “supplemental” war spending bills. In other words, $232.8 billion of taxpayer money that would’ve provided our young fighting men and women with better body armor, for example, was spent on Abrams tanks and jet fighters, both projects enrich war contractors while doing nothing to bolster the safety of our troops or our nation’s safety at home.

It’s should come as no surprise then that Lockheed Martin’s biggest political benefactor is Rep. Howard McKeon, who made this all possible. He is looking out for the safety and well being of his real 1% alright, they are not our young men and women however, but his fabulously wealthy defense contractor CEO sponsors.

If Mr. McKeon were truly interested in the safety of our fighting forces as well as the long-term prospects for the nation they will some day be returning home to he would do well to dispense with all of this divisive nonsense and start doing his job as the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Cut the defense budget where the real bloat is. End massively expensive weapons systems that don’t work and stop these now decade long wars we should never have been fighting to begin with.

Doing this would save over $300 billion a year and do more to provide for the long-term safety of our young men and women in uniform than hundreds more F-35 jet fighters and Abrams tanks ever could.

Jeff Courtney
Proud and Hopeful Citizen of the 25th District

McKeon states:

“Their villain is the 1 percent — the purveyors of power who the movement holds accountable for our fiscal woes.

As chairman of the Armed Services Committee, I support a somewhat different 1 percent. Despite ten years of war, we have been kept safe by 1 percent of Americans who have volunteered to wear the uniform, volunteered to stand a post and volunteered to keep us safe.”

McKeon’s premise is that the 99%-ers are wasting their time, futilely battling some non-existent corruption perpetrated by the financial elite, and the real 1% they should be paying attention to are the men and women who volunteer to serve in uniform.

He does not understand that volunteering to hold a sign, exercising one’s First Amendment rights to petition the government for a Redress of Grievances, is just as important to our democracy as volunteering to serve one’s country to defend those rights. He brushes aside the legitimate issue of corporate malfeasance as if it doesn’t exist, stating:

“It is the 1 percent, not the 99 percent, that will bring its integrity and its character into law, government and business and spread it to all corners of society. They are our greatest hope, and they are our way forward.”

With these two sentences, McKeon insults a majority of his constituents, completely discounting their concerns and aspirations. For an elected official to display such animus toward his own constituency exposes as much about his lack of humanity as his lack of intellect.

There is so much wrong with McKeon’s letter, it can hardly be explored in a single article.

For starters, McKeon’s prose is as befuddled as his mind. Exactly what is the analogy he’s trying to make? Is he really comparing the 1% of America’s wealthiest individuals to the 1% who serve in the military? (How many servicemen do you know who make over $350,000 a year?) He’s trying to associate two disparate things that have nothing to do with one another. The 99%-ers don’t have a beef with the men and women in the military.

Perhaps he thinks he is being clever, linking these two groups together because, well, they both have that “1%” denotation in common.

The problem is that his math is wrong. There are currently about 1.5 million active members of the United States Armed Forces. The 2010 census shows the total U.S. population at about 309 million. That means about .48% — less than one-half of one-percent — of the total population serves in the military.  It is clear these two groups have nothing in common, not even the percentage.

There is no analogy here, no clever litarary device. Buck lacks the brain-power required for such thought-provoking exposition; he shouldn’t even try. If the purpose of his email was to show his contempt for the protestors in the Occupy movement and pander to the extremists in his consituency, then he has succeeded. But why? In an election year where he will have more serious challengers than he has ever faced, why go to such lengths to piss off a majority of voters? Once again, he demonstrates his ineptitude and his hatred in the same breath.

But if one chooses to muddle through his mixed metaphors and poor grasp of syntax and mathematics, it seems McKeon’s message to the 99%-ers is:

Instead of:

a) protesting against those who have perpetrated great economic crimes, by exercising their first amendment rights of free speech and peaceful assembly,

they should:

b) distract themselves by honoring those who serve in the Armed Forces.

Apparently, McKeon believes those two concepts are mutually exclusive. They are not.

We can be proud of the men and women who serve our country, while at the same time protesting the abuses and injustice of a system corrupted by the greed of the rich and powerful.

99%-ers Pay a Visit to McKeon's Santa Clarita Office

McKeon also wrongly insinuates that military personnel are somehow above the “Occupy” movement or do not identify with its causes. To the contrary, our veterans have experienced as much as anyone, if not more, the disastrous effects of Bush-era deregulation. How many veterans have lost their homes? How many have been unable to find employment once they reenter civilian life?

(Fortunately, Congress finally passed a small portion of President Obama’s American Jobs Act that provides tax credits to businesses that hire veterans.)

Veterans across the country are declaring themselves part of the 99% and joining the Occupy movement, sometimes at their own peril. Kayvan Sabehgi, a former marine who served in Iraq, was beaten by police at the Occupy Oakland rally on November 2, 2011. Does McKeon respect this service member any less because he held up a sign and took a stand for equality and fairness?

McKeon’s letter continues:

“Several months ago, I visited Fort Jackson, S.C., to watch 500 new recruits graduate from U.S. Army Basic training. They stood quietly and proudly at attention, with adoring families looking on, having volunteered to serve their nation during wartime. Eight of those young men and women were immigrants, earning their citizenship through their service. I am very proud that my granddaughter was among them.”

While we are all proud of our fellow citizens who choose to serve their country, McKeon should consider that many of those young recruits volunteered to defend our nation because they couldn’t get jobs anywhere else.

(If McKeon really wanted to show how proud he is of his granddaughter, he would have supported the very first bill that President Obama signed into law: The Lilly Ledbetter Act, guaranteeing women equality in the workplace. He voted against it.)

Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon has been teetering on the downside of public opinion for quite some time. With this latest email he has etched his hatred for his constituents in electronic mail for all to see. There can be no doubt whose side he is on, and it is not the side of 99% of those he claims to represent.

Braddon Mendelson, Editor-in-Chief
The Buck Stops Now

“Defeat Buck McKeon”

Buck may be a hawk, alright, but not for the reasons one might think. His interest in maintaining an ever-increasing military budget comes not from a desire to provide new equipment to our troops, defend our country from foreign enemies, or secure our borders from terrorist attacks.

His objective is to increase his own personal wealth.

Buck McKeon is an opportunist, who continues to game the system to benefit himself financially. For years he has been funneling campaign contributions into his own bank account, using his wife as a cover – paying Patricia McKeon a $120,000 “salary” pilfered from his own campaign coffers.

“Rep. Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) leads the pack [of members of Congress] in payments to his spouse. Since 2007, McKeon has reported disbursements to his wife, Patricia, topping $264,000, including a bonus of $4,600 in January 2007. Her compensation more than doubles the salary of the next-highest-paid employee on McKeon’s campaign and does not include thousands in reimbursements for food, travel and other expenses.”

Roll Call, July 26, 2011 

While his staff members will tell you “it’s perfectly legal,” the ethics behind it reek of nothing more than war profiteering. Buck has been selling his votes to the armed services industry, and using the funds received to put his wife on the payroll, thus increasing his effective take-home pay.

Add the $174,000 salary he already receives as a Member of the House to Mrs. McKeon’s $120,000, and that represents a 160% pay raise.

Rumors of Buck’s corruption have been circulating for years, but now the documentation is conclusive.

In their report “Funds for Favors: Exposing Donors Influence on Committee Leaders,” the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington illustrates how the increase in contributions to McKeon’s campaign from the defense industry directly correlates to the increase in the amount of times McKeon has cast votes that favor those very same donors.

In 1998, he received $40,000 from defense contractors. In 2008, that number jumped to $86,450. In 2010, upon assuming the HASC chairmanship, the number skyrocketed to $469,000.

But more significantly, as the payments to McKeon from armed service industries increased, so too did the percentage of times he voted in agreement with these industries. 

From 2007-2008, Rep. McKeon voted on average 25% in agreement with the industries regulated by the Armed Services Committee. The average Republican voted in agreement with the industry 26% of the time.

From 2009-2010, Rep. McKeon voted on average 67% in agreement with the industries regulated by the Armed Services Committee. In contrast, the average Republican voted in agreement with the industry 55% of the time.

Since January 2011, Rep. McKeon has voted on average 100% in agreement with the industries regulated by the Armed Services Committee. The average Republican has voted in agreement with the industry 88% of the time.

–Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington
(Read the whole report here.)

His constituents have talked about this for some time, but now — thanks to the CREW report — there can be no doubt. Buck is bought and paid for by his true employers: the defense industry.

Buck McKeon is a poison seeping into the welfare of every family in the 25th District. While his constituents struggle to find work and to pay their mortgages, Buck reaps a continual monetary jackpot by placating his Sugar Daddies at Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and others.

Howard P. “Buck” McKeon is a stain on our district. We need to cleanse this man from Congress. Since he cannot be recalled, we will have to wait until election day on November 6, 2012. Working together, we can remove this parasite and replace him with someone better.

And that shouldn’t be too hard — Buck has lowered the bar as far down as it can go.

Braddon Mendelson, Editor-in-Chief
The Buck Stops Now

“Defeat Buck McKeon”

However, McKeon is no stranger to earmarks. Between 2008 and 2010 McKeon requested $78.5 million in earmarks, 76% of which were directed to defense projects, including a $9.6 million payday to the Northrop Grumman Corporation. Additionally, he is responsible for loads of fat in the National Defense Authorization Act, including a $650 million slush fund that earned him the title “Porker of the Month” from Citizens Against Government Waste in July 2011.

McKeon passes blame for his inaction onto Rep. Doc Hastings, chair of the house committee on natural resources, who labeled the Cemex deal an earmark. McKeon has previously stated that he personally doesn’t believe the land swap is an earmark. McKeon and Hastings are equals in the House, both chairs of committees. McKeon could pressure Hastings by threatening to reciprocate the earmark label on defense-related allocations that would benefit Hastings’s district.

The Washington Post reported yesterday that even with the earmarks ban lawmakers are still funding hundreds of pet projects. Lawmakers generally try to fund projects in their home districts, but as can be seen from the statistic above, McKeon is funding defense projects that benefit his main source of campaign contributions.

There are a lot of things that McKeon could do, but that does not explain why he hasn’t done anything in the past. In five of the past seven congressional terms, Republicans had majorities in the House, and there was no ban on earmarks in any except the latest. Yet with the deck stacked in his favor, McKeon didn’t even get a committee hearing on the Cemex bill in any of those sessions.

McKeon may blame the earmark moratorium for his inaction on Cemex, but he’s really just passing the buck.

Dr. Lee Rogers,
Candidate for US Congress
25th District, California
www.LeeRogers2012.com

This ridiculous and ignorant “No Tax” pledge has been the direct cause of the serious budget problems facing Congress, from the Debt Ceiling debacle to the current “Super-Committee” deadlock.

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Buck McKeon is one of the GOP buffoons who signed this dim-witted affirmation, an act which has harmed the welfare and security of all his constituents, not to mention the folks in the rest of the country.

How can you successfully and honestly legislate on behalf of the public with negotiating points to unknown issues already pre-determined? How can one party make a deal with another party who has vowed — in writing — not to deal? Imagine trying to haggle over the price of a used car when the seller has made it clear from the outset that he’s never going to sell it to you, under any circumstances. If the salesman were an employee of a car dealership, he would be fired immediately.

So it is with the our congressman. Buck McKeon works for us. By signing the Norquist pledge he is informing his employer, i.e. his constituents — those who voted for him and those who didn’t –  that he is refusing to perform his job.

His employment with the people of the 25th District needs be terminated.

Signing an agreement to vote in a specified manner, pledging in writing that you will never yield, never compromise, never offer any flexibility – before knowing any of the legislative issues one will encounter on the job – is the ultimate sign of incompetence in an elected official.

It is also unconstitutional.

Article 6 of the Constitution requires that members of Congress “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution.”

The text of that oath, contained in US Code – Section 3331, reads:

“I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Note the line: “I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion.”

Any legislator who has signed Norquist’s pledge, has not “taken this obligation freely, without any mental reservation…”

The Norquist pledge is unconstitutional; it’s a fraud, and so is McKeon.

While Buck and his cronies are always more than eager to whip out a copy of the Constitution from their back pockets to prove how patriotic they are, they are sure quick to disregard its contents to score political points.

This is just another reason Buck must go. We can do better. We need to do better.

Defeat Buck McKeon.

Braddon Mendelson, Editor
The Buck Stops Now

In a press release, OSC said it intends to rally citizens “who believe we deserve safe bridges on which to travel.” To call attention to the dismal state of the bridges, the group will hold a press conference on Tuesday, November 15th at 4:00 p.m. at one particular defective bridge, the one located at the first entrance to Central Park on Bouquet Canyon Road in Saugus.

View Larger Map

In addition to issues of safety and updated infrastructure, OSC emphasized the role  these bridge repair projects would have in creating local jobs.

Occupy Santa Clarita said it particularly wanted to call Congressman Buck McKeon to task for his opposition to the “American Jobs Act.”

“As our representative, McKeon should be protecting our citizens and funding job creation in our city. We should not allow our infrastructure to crumble.”

To see the data on our community transportation infrastructure for yourself, visit http://t4america.org/resources/bridges/#?latlng=34.3912993,-118.54384349999998&bridge_id=53C0478

Occupy Santa Clarita is a coalition of citizens working to return our government to the people. For more information on Occupy Santa Clarita, visit their Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/OccupySantaClarita/ or their Tumblr at http://occupyscv.tumblr.com.

Occupy Santa Clarita is part of the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York City on September 17, 2011. For more information on the Occupy movement, see http://occupywallst.org.

For more information contact: Occupy Santa Clarita

Carole Lutness carolelutness@att.net 661-755-3772

Grant Colet GrantColet@gmail.com

Samantha Christe samanthchristine@yahoo.com

http://www.facebook.com/OccupySantaClarita

The Buck Stops Now

Defeat Buck McKeon