It's Not A Job...It's A Paid (And Paid-For) Vacation
Why serve the people when it's so easy to make them serve you -- margaritas on the beach in some exotic local? Sleazy Congressturd Loretta Sanchez loves to travel -- especially when the taxpayers are footing the bill. Richard Simon writes in the LA Times:
Reporting from Washington - At a time when congressional travel is coming under new scrutiny, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) has the distinction of taking more trips at taxpayer expense than anyone else in the California delegation.In the last 3 1/2 years, she visited the South Pole, snorkeled at Australia's Great Barrier Reef and joined world leaders at a security conference in Munich, Germany. She met with Darfur refugees in Sudan, attended a "legislators' dialogue" with European Parliament members in Slovenia, delivered a speech on transportation security in France and inspected anti-terrorism defenses in Genoa, Italy, and Mombasa, Kenya.
All told, she has made 20 overseas trips since the start of 2006, touching down on every continent. Last year, she went abroad seven times. Many times she used military flights, but one commercial flight from Australia to Britain cost $8,383.
Sanchez, a congresswoman since 1997, said the travel was important to her work as the ranking female lawmaker on the House Armed Services Committee and as vice chairwoman of the Homeland Security Committee.
"I am a much more effective legislator when I am better educated on the issues," she said.
The issue of what happens when your snorkeling gear isn't properly fitted is, I'm sure, an issue of great interest to those she "represents."
via @KateC
I don't believe this will change her reelection chances whatsoever. Spending the taxpayers money is a requirement of the job.
TW at September 13, 2009 2:49 AM
As I understand it, she's one of those in a "safe" district; i.e. she could stand out on a street corner and shoot someone in broad daylight in front of 500 witnesses and every TV camera in town, and they'd send her back to Congress the next time anyway. This is the kind of arrogance, not to mention intransigence, you get when you gerrymander districts to produce a predetermined result.
This is now the case in most of the House districts, most of the state legislative districts, and most of the local council districts in this country. These elections have been fixed beforehand, by rigging district demographics through computer modeling, using race and political affiliation statistics freely available from the census and the board of elections to bunch like-kind people into their own districts. This makes incumbency almost 100% safe -- for both sides.
These rigged districts, IMO, are the #1 problem in our politics, and the cause of much of the rest of the rot that exists therein. I for one refuse to participate in these elections, knowing my vote is unlikely to ever impact anything in those races.
cpabroker at September 13, 2009 6:11 AM
WAKE UP PEOPLE OF GARDEN GROVE AND SANTA ANA! This is what your representative (Loretta San chez) does with your tax dollar! As a former resident of that area, I know what kind of struggles you (the people) are going through! You are having a hard time paying your mortgage or rent and food! And yet you defend this woman day after day saying that she is one of you, fighting for you, just because she has a spanish last name. We all have cut our budgets, EXCEPT FOR THE GOVERNMENT! Remember, WHO WORKS FOR WHO? LIMIT GOVERNMENT POWER!
Dave Phillips at September 13, 2009 10:37 AM
Amy Alkon
https://www.advicegoddess.com/archives/2009/09/its-not-a-jobit.html#comment-1667450">comment from Dave PhillipsLIMIT GOVERNMENT POWER!
Right there with you, but it starts with the voters. Is the entire area of Garden Grove and Santa Ana in a coma?
Amy Alkon
at September 13, 2009 10:41 AM
I need a job like that.
NicoleK at September 13, 2009 1:22 PM
The LA Times article about Loretta's excessive use of congressional travel privileges this past Sunday misses an even bigger story--that she used such travel to pursue her adulterous relationship with her assigned military travel escort! Basically, she used her travel privileges to obtain tax-payer funding of her honeymoons with a married military officer, which led to his early retirement from the Army and divorce. When a congressMAN did that a few years ago, the scandal was investigated and reported widely (google Vito Fossella). But not Loretta! See http://latinopoliticsblog.com/2009/06/02/the-making-of-the-%E2%80%9Cloretta-sanchez-scandal%E2%80%9D/
USjobs at September 14, 2009 3:28 AM
Who does she think she is, the leader of some banana republic?
liz at September 14, 2009 2:29 PM
Check out Baird of Washington state. He and other law makers (& spouses) went to the galapogos islands for environmental and global warming issues. The experts they talked to were flown in to talk to them from Seattle in Baird's home state.
The Former Banker at September 14, 2009 9:38 PM
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