You have heard the saying that people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones? A lesson obviously lost on Congresswoman Lois Capps!
Lois Capps has been slamming her opponent Abel Maldonado relentlessly for months because his family’s farming operation has a dispute with the IRS over their tax return. Abel’s family believes the IRS is wrong and they are suing the IRS accordingly. Unlike Lois Capps, I will wait to cast stones until after their day in court.
In August, residents of the Central Coast learned of Congresswoman Lois Capps’ failure to report more than $40,000 in rental income from her staffer to the IRS for 10 years.
But it gets worse…
Recently news broke that Capps failed to report over $500,000 of her income.
Lois Capps’ actions and statements hardly fit with the “lifetime of service built on trust” she’s made the centerpiece of her campaign.
Capps Failed to Report Over $500K: Representative Lois Capps left more than half a million dollars in income off financial disclosure records for an eight-year period, according to documents required by the clerk of the House of Representatives. – Santa Barbara Independent, 10/16/2012
Capps caught again: Congresswoman fails to report over half a million dollars in income: This is not the first time Capps has been in hot water over financial disclosures. In early August, The Daily Caller reported that Capps rented a room in her personal home to one of her congressional staffers, Jeremy Tittle, for years and did not report the income to the IRS for more than a decade, until 2012. Capps also withheld that information from the proper congressional authorities for five years, from 2001 until early 2006. – Daily Caller, 10/18/2012
With regard to ballot propositions, I can heartily recommend that you vote NO on all of them, with the possible exception of Prop. 32, which I need to explain.
I respect unions too much to tell you to simply vote yes on Prop. 32. However, I also do believe that unions have a disparate influence on election outcomes and a stranglehold on Sacramento as it affects the real reform we need to get our State going in the right direction once again.
Proposition 32 affects the ability of unions to collect money from their members for political purposes without their consent. If passed, there is a chance that union members themselves would volunteer to forego giving to their own union because they themselves do not agree with the position the unions take in their name and with their money! Can’t really argue with that.
The California Teachers Association is the worse culprit with respect to this phenomenon. If Proposition 32 only affected the CTA, I would be walking door to door for your support for Prop. 32!
Conversely, I believe that historically union influence overall helps the rest of us in the workplace. Unions won working conditions, pay standards and rights for all of us and I don’t want to see them crippled entirely! Because I believe in public safety, I like the fact that public safety unions help keep the pressure on our politicians to fund it accordingly.
Andy Caldwell is the Executive Director of COLAB and the host of the Andy Caldwell Show weekdays from 3-5 p.m. on AM1440.