Comics writer assails halls of Congress

The 24th district in California takes up most of Ventura and Santa Barbara Counties, just north and west of Los Angeles. Currently — and for the past twenty-odd years — a man named Elton Gallegly represents the district in Congress. Elton has generally been a reliable, if lackluster, operative of the conservative agenda. He supports tax cuts for people earning over 200-thousand dollars a year, and has voted to make those tax cuts, including the elimination of the estate tax, permanent. He voted to declare the war in Iraq part of an ongoing war on terror without an end date, and against earmarking funds to provide troops in the field either with armor or bomb-safe personnel transports. His votes are consistently anti-labor, with a 7 percent AFL-CIO rating, including completely de-funding OSHA’s ability to enforce workplace safety regulations. He supports making the so-called Patriot Act permanent, and as far back as 1996 he voted to deny the right of habeus corpus in appeals of convictions. His rating from NARAL is actually 0%: he opposes funding for health care providers who give counsel on abortion, and opposes all stem cell research. He buys the whole package.

I’m running to oppose this guy, and I plan to win. This time, I’m going to make very clear who I am and who I’ve been. “Truth, justice and the American way” is my personal torah and I’ll say so everywhere I go. I’m asking the community of people who have, over the years, shared my thoughts and many of my values, to get this thing started.