The Year in Review

It has been a bittersweet year for the Conejo Valley. We’ve seen the worst—a crippling downturn in the housing market, a rash of store closings, a sharp increase in unemployment, the reelection of Elton Gallegly and Audra Strickland, the election of Tony Strickland, the passage of antigay legislation—and we’ve seen the best—the election to the presidency of Barack Obama.

Only one mark in our favor seems trifling, pitiful, laughable. But it is not. The nation can always and forever be proud to have elected an African American to the highest office in the land. The Democratic party can always be proud that it was the first party to successfully run an African American candidate. But most of all, the American people can never cease to be proud of what it has accomplished by the election of this man to the White House.

We have rejected eight years of regressive policies, economic mismanagement, willful ignorance, and petulant statesmanship. We have accepted in its place a new openness. We have confirmed America’s place at the standard bearer of liberty, as a place where the Constitution, not a muddled theocratic conception of the world, is the highest source of law. We have reclaimed our rightful place among the community of nations.

Barack Obama, there is a lot on your shoulders, but we believe in you. Do not ever be discouraged. There is a nation depending on you.

There was a telling few seconds of video on the NBC Nightly News the other night. The story dealt with California’s fiscal crisis and Republican obstructionism. A brief snippet of video showed Tony Strickland in the Senate chamber lethargically poking away at a Blackberry while the important business of the state passed him by. His answer to the budget crisis was a simple “no.” No is not a responsible answer. No simply abdicates responsibility to someone else. No is not leadership.

It would be easy at this point to bemoan the loss of Hannah-Beth Jackson to Strickland in the narrowly contested Senate race. But what matters is where we go from here. We have a budget; there is still much work to be done. So Democrats lick the wounds they’ve suffered from during the last year, but  can be confident in the knowledge that they have won the fight—and that their good work will continue to invigorate our nation.

Congressman Waxman Speaks in Thousand Oaks about Oversight and the War

Congressman Henry A. Waxman visited Thousand Oaks Sunday morning to speak about the Iraq war and his efforts as chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to monitor the Bush administration’s handling of activities related to the war.

 

Waxman bemoaned the administration’s prevarication about the reasons for entry into the war.

 

“We were told we had to fight in Iraq to stop Saddam Hussein to get weapons of mass destruction. We were told we had to fight there to stop terrorism. We were told we had to fight there because we were going to have a model of democracy that’s going to change the whole Middle East. Then lately we’ve been told we were going to have a surge, and the purpose of the surge is to give the Iraqi government a chance to make a stable country. We’ll settle for a stable country.”

 

Waxman said that Iraq was “decimated” and that “as soon as we leave, they’re going to blow altogether, unless there are areas where the Sunnis are gone or the Shiites are gone and so there’s no one to fight anymore.”

“I thought the best answer to why we’re fighting in Iraq was in a New York Times cartoon today where President Bush was asked, ‘Why are we fighting in Iraq?’ and he said, ‘So we can kick this over to the next administration and we can blame them for Iraq.’ But how many people are we going to kill and lose in the meantime?”

 

Waxman emphasized the role of the Congress in providing oversight of the executive branch, and chastised the formerly Republican-controlled Congress for failing to perform this task.

 

“They [Republicans in Congress] wouldn’t hold a hearing on the misuse of intelligence by this administration to trick us into going into war. They wouldn’t even look at the issues of the waste of money in the reconstruction, so called, of Iraq. They wouldn’t do anything that might embarrass President Bush, which meant they chose to be good Republicans first, and to be leaders of an independent branch of government second.”

 

“They have refused to answer questions of the press, of those of us in Congress who have asked them questions. They’ve tried to operate without transparency, without openness, and of course without accountability. Their attitude is that the government belongs to them, not to the American people. That’s what happens when you get so powerful and you think it all belongs to you.”

 

Waxman criticized “fraud, waste, and abuse” in the conduct of the war, and emphasized the role of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in investigating these issues.

 

“Our first hearing was on the shipment of $12 billion in cash to Iraq. In hundred-dollar bills, put together in brick form, put onto pallets, forklifted onto airplanes, and flown into a war zone. And then our man in charge, Ambassador Bremer, handed out $8.8 billion that he can’t account for. We asked him, where did that money go? Well, he said, well, I gave it to the Iraq ministries so they could pay their payroll. And we found out that some ministries said they had thousands of employees when they had maybe a hundred. So money was passed out without any accounting for it. Did it end up in the pockets of those that received it? Of course. Did it end up in Swiss bank accounts? I wouldn’t be surprised. Did it end up funding the insurgents? Probably. So we ended up funding both sides in Iraq.”

 

The crowd listened in respectful silence to Waxman’s speech, but grew animated during the more than half-hour question-and-answer session. It was clear that the group of mostly Democrats was largely anti-war and highly critical of the Bush administration. The dominant theme was one of concern that Democrats aggressively pursue investigations into the misdeeds of the president and his cabinet.

 

Local Democratic party luminaries attended the event, notably Jim Dantona, who is running against Tony Strickland for the seat for California Senate’s 19th district that is likely to be vacated when State Senator Tom McClintock‘s term expires, and Ferial Masry, who is running for the 37th district assembly seat currently held by Assemblywoman Audra Strickland, wife of Tony Strickland.

 

Waxman appeared at the invitation of the Democratic Club of the Conejo Valley. The eventwas held at the Conejo Recreation and Parks Community Room.

 

Be sure to check this website later in the week to read the full transcript of Waxman’s speech.