When you factor in that Barack Obama is my president, Joe Biden is my vice-president, Nancy Pelosi is next in line, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer are my senators, Brad Sherman is my congressman, Antonio Villaraigosa is my mayor and Jerry Brown is lurking in the wings to be my governor, do you really think I’ll be turning my pen into a plowshare anytime soon?    

But at least now you might have a better handle on why I look back so fondly on what I have come to regard as the good old days when an American’s major complaint was that he had taxation without representation. 

On top of everything else, I live in Los Angeles and have spent most of my adult life laboring in Hollywood, a place that some people regard as less an actual location than a state of mind.  I agree it is a state of mind in the same sense that paranoia and schizophrenia are states of mind. 

After working in the field of entertainment for about 40 years, I swear to you that there are a fair number of normal, decent human beings who work in the industry.  But truth compels me to say that the lower you go in the pecking order, the likelier you are to find them.  That’s not to say that every producer, actor, director and writer, is an arrogant, leftwing, coke-snorting, bottom-feeding egomaniac, but that’s certainly the way to bet. 

Sometimes, when I’m daydreaming about what Hell must be like, I envision a place where every day you wake up and have to go work for someone like Barney Frank, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, nasty sourpusses who think that their every whim should be immediately pandered to and who regard themselves as God, but with a bigger expense account, a larger staff and a better pension plan. 

In short, Pelosi, Frank and Reid and their congressional cronies, could find true happiness working at a TV network, a movie studio or a theatrical agency.  Perhaps you think I’m making this up, but I’m not.  Liberal politicians are doing their best to shove Obamacare down our throats, pretending it’s manna from Heaven, but you may have noticed that they haven’t the slightest intention of leaving their own medical care up to a lottery system.  And can you really blame them?  Do you think Pelosi wants a bunch of strangers deciding if she can get another dozen face lifts?  You think Robert Byrd wants to leave it up to a death panel to determine if it’s time to put the old Ku Kluxer on an ice floe? 

You could call them hypocrites, but I call them Hollywood hopefuls.  They’d fit right in.  This is the town, after all, where people are still whining over the fact that a handful of mediocre actors and hack writers were blacklisted 60 years ago because they were, for the most part, unrepentant Communists whose allegiance was to the evil Soviet Union.  But these same people think nothing of blacklisting writers and directors who have done nothing worse than made the fatal mistake of turning 50. 

Many years ago, radio wit Fred Allen observed that “You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, stick it in the navel of a flea, and still have room left over for two caraway seeds and an agent’s heart.”  I say he was being too kind.  Although I regard myself as basically a loyal person, I’ve had about two dozen agents in my life.  What’s more, in what was a moderately successful TV writing career, by getting my own jobs, I made money for all of them, except the last one.  Which was just as well because she’s the one who went to the slammer for stealing her clients’ money.

 The reason, by the way, I kept leaving agents wasn’t simply because none of them ever earned his or her 10%, but because eventually they all lied to me about what they would do for me or, worse yet, what they had already done. 

In my experience, agents are people who like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them.  Those are the male agents, of course.  Female agents, on the other hand, like to have lunch, shmooze with other agents and con young women into having sex with them. 

In other words, if a genie somehow managed to switch everyone in Hollywood with everyone in Congress, you would barely notice it.  In fact, aside from the fact that the paparazzi would all have to pack up and move east and that “Henry Waxman: The Musical!” would finally be green-lighted at Universal, life would go on as usual.

And for the other bad guys…

A while ago, I wrote a piece titled “Blowing the Whistle on Waxman.”  In case you missed it, I explained that Henry Waxman and I had been friends beginning almost 50 years ago at UCLA.  I also said that we had seen each other infrequently over the intervening years once he went to Sacramento as a state assemblyman and later to Washington as a member of Congress. 

Over the years, I moved politically from left to right, while Henry moved from left to far left to over the edge.  Still, I had a soft spot for him and, as a result, refrained from including his name when I would list the usual suspects, those left-wingers like Pelosi, Reid, Rangel, Boxer and Murtha, who were doing their utmost to destroy America.           

However, once Obama was elected and began pushing his radical agenda, while simultaneously surrounding himself with advisors who should never have been allowed within a mile of the White House, Henry began feeling his oats.  Suddenly, with the Democrats in control of the House, he was no longer a back-bencher.  He even got to have his name on a piece of major legislation, the Waxman-Markey Cap & Trade bill, a singular disaster that would send all of our energy costs soaring while simultaneously providing China and India with a tremendous advantage over what remains of our American industry. 

That was bad enough, but even after those notorious ACORN videos aired on Glenn Beck’s TV show, Waxman and 74 of his left-wing cronies on Capitol Hill voted to continue funding ACORN, and that cut the Gordian knot for me.  At that point, even old school ties weren’t enough to dissuade me, and, in a very sad frame of mind, I wrote the article. 

An hour or so after it was posted, I received an email from Waxman’s office in Washington.  It began: “Dear Burt, I can understand that we have disagreements about politics.  I can see that you have some embarrassment about our past friendship, but you are not responsible for me and I am not (thank G-d) responsible for your views or actions.  But I do resent that whatever I may have said to you in a conversation years ago is now being dredged up (and maybe made up) to make me look bad.  I never thought I had to remember things I may have said to you to be provocative at the time, would be repeated and distorted, as if it were ‘on the record.’” 

(Note:  Just for the record, I made up nothing and I distorted nothing.  What I said he said about the steroid-using baseball players he called before his committee was exactly what he said; namely that he had no idea they were even famous until he saw his fellow congressmen lining up for their autographs; and, in response to a question I posed strictly out of curiosity, replied that he had no idea how long after an athlete stopped using steroids, they would continue to show up in drug tests.  Besides, neither of those statements is particularly provocative.  They merely indicate how unqualified and unaware a congressman can be and still feel himself entitled to sit in judgment of other people.  The other thing I addressed in the article was Henry’s boasting that he and his colleagues were going to investigate Fox for biased news reporting, and my responding that I thought it was a swell idea so long as they then did the same with the NY Times, the three major networks, CNN, MSNBC and the Washington Post.  That time, I even had a totally impartial witness, my wife Yvonne.) 

Responding to his first paragraph, I wrote:  “Dear Henry, I don’t blame you in the least for being angry.  But you can imagine how I felt when I saw your name included with the other 74 Democrats who voted to continue funding an organization as corrupt and vile as ACORN.  For the life of me, I could not think of a single reason why you would wish to align yourself, even for partisan political reasons, with a group that has not only been guilty of election fraud, but, as those now famous videos made clear, have no objection to assisting a pimp to set up a brothel.  And not just any brothel, but one employing abducted 13-year-old girls from Latin America.  Also, I did send you a note some months ago wishing you a speedy recovery when I heard that you had been rushed off to the hospital, so even though you never acknowledged it, it would suggest I’m not entirely heartless.” 

Waxman’s email went on: “As I recall our poker friendship, you used to keep a card with every cent I ever lost to you to be sure you were paid.  When you sent out a letter pleading for your friends to help you out at a difficult financial time in your life, you promised that you would repay every cent.  I sent you $100.  I never asked you for the money, nor have you offered to repay it.  I did not want to embarrass you then or now.  But since you have no hesitation to try to publicly hold me up to scorn, I see no reason not to ask you to repay your debt to me.  I would like to use that money to donate to the ACLU or some other group that will defend your rights, along with everyone else, to free speech and other Constitutional protections.  Sincerely, Henry Waxman.” 

To this, I replied, “The card you mention was not for poker losses.  Those were always minimal because none of us had any money, and were invariably paid off at the end of the game.  The card was to keep track of the money I loaned you, and which you took an extremely long time to repay.  It was to help you continue playing blackjack during one of our occasional trips to Tahoe or Vegas.  I am truly sorry, though, that I did not pay back the $100.  That was an oversight because in moving from one rental to another, as circumstances forced us to do several times once Hollywood ageism made me unemployable, I lost the IOU list.  When, some years later, I was finally able to earn some money, I did pay back those whose names I remembered and those who subsequently reminded me.  I regret that I forgot your generosity.  I will have the check in the mail to you this afternoon.  You are free, of course, to donate it to the ACLU, to ACORN or even to help pay for Nancy Pelosi’s next facelift.  It’s your money, after all, unlike the money that Waxman-Markey will cost American taxpayers and American businesses.  Regards, Burt.”) 

Do I regret that Henry Waxman is one of 250-odd Democrats who are only too happy to rubberstamp every piece of legislative lunacy concocted by Obama, Axelrod, Emanuel, Jarrett, Holdren, Jennings, Sunstein and Jeff Jones?  Of course.  Do I regret that Henry Waxman has so totally lost his moral compass that even when 172 of his fellow liberals  voted to stop funding ACORN, he stood steadfast with the sleazebags?  You bet.           

Worst of all, he probably sees it as being politically courageous.  On the other hand, normal human beings, who haven’t spent most of their adult lives feeding at the public trough, recognize it as aiding and abetting.

First off, I’d like to know why the 535 members of Congress have to congregate in Washington, D.C.  As Dick Morris and Eileen McGann made perfectly clear in “Fleeced,” they don’t do very much in the nation’s capitol that they couldn’t do just as well or just as badly if they stayed home in their bathrobes.  Half the time, the sessions are devoted to naming post offices and other equally earth-shattering events. 

So far as I can tell, the actual motives are to allow senators and representatives to have fiefdoms both in Washington and in their own state or district; to make things more convenient for lobbyists – one-stop shopping, as it were; and to keep our representatives as far away as possible from their constituents. 

I keep hearing commercials for teleconferencing systems and I think they’re worth a try.  With my plan, there is even an advantage for the politicians because they wouldn’t have to waste time and money flying back and forth.  What’s more, they wouldn’t have to spend all that extra dough sending their kids to private schools, thus ensuring that their offspring be spared having to attend public schools in Washington, D.C.  You know, those schools that politicians are always raving about when they’re out seeking campaign contributions from the Teacher’s Union, the ones where liberal candidates pose for photo ops during presidential campaigns. 

My second question is how it was that of the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence, only 24 were lawyers or jurists, but of the current 100 senators, 60 are lawyers?  While it’s true that there are slightly more than a million lawyers in America, that is less than one percent of the adult population.  So how is it that 60% of the U.S. Senate and slightly over 30% of the House members, in addition to their party affiliation, are entitled to put Esq. after their name? 

I believe the problem is two-fold.  One, it’s just too easy and too much fun being a politician; two, it’s just too hard and not enough fun being a lawyer.  If people enjoyed being lawyers more, they wouldn’t be so darn eager to run off to Albany, Sacramento, Springfield, Atlanta or Washington, D.C.  Frankly, I don’t know how to make the practice of law a more exciting career.  So, instead, I think it behooves us to come up with ways to make politics a less attractive option.  The one notion that popped into my head was to take a leaf out of the Aztec playbook and initiate human sacrifices.  Would any of us really have strong objections to Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Barbara Boxer, Arlen Spector, Susan Collins, Henry Waxman, Charles Schumer, Olympia Snowe, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank, being offered up to pacify the angry spirits of the Founding Fathers? 

My final question is, why, in 2009 America, are mulattoes invariably identified as blacks?  Surely there is nothing wrong with being a mulatto.  There is no stigma attached, as once there was.  It merely refers to those who have one white parent and one black.  There are many notable individuals who are mulattoes, including Halle Berry, Derek Jeter, Lisa Bonet and Barack Obama.  Tiger Woods, on the other hand, is a true amalgamation, being one-quarter Chinese, one-quarter Thai, one-quarter black, one-eighth Native American and one-eighth Dutch.  And, yet, with the possible exception of the New York Yankee shortstop, we insist on identifying all of them as black. 

It’s as if there is something shameful about their being half or even one-eighth white.  If there is, I’d sure like to know what it is.  If, on the other hand, there isn’t, why do we insist on acting as if there were?

The allegations raised in “White House Creates ACORN for the Arts” and prior stories about the NEA enlisting artists who receive government grants to support President Obama’s political goals certainly raise a number of issues.  Foremost among them is whether such actions violate White House policy and potentially federal law.  The White House Counsel was concerned enough about the conference call that it was compelled to issue new guidelines for public outreach meetings, noting that some of the comments on the call may have been “misunderstood as seeking to inappropriately politicize activities of the NEA.”  But beyond violating these White House guidelines, which could result in further forced resignations but little else, what is really at issue with the alleged conduct?

By seeking to enlist the private sector in lobbying for the President’s agenda, the alleged conduct may have violated the Anti-Lobbying Act (18 U.S.C. §1913), which as Ben Shapiro pointed out in a previous piece, explicitly provides:

No part of the money appropriated by any enactment of Congress shall, in the absence of express authorization by Congress, be used directly or indirectly to pay for any personal service, advertisement, telegram, telephone, letter, printed or written matter, or other device, intended or designed to influence in any manner a Member of Congress, a jurisdiction, or an official of any government, to favor, adopt, or oppose by vote or otherwise, any legislation, law, ratification, policy, or appropriation, whether before or after the introduction of any bill, measure or resolution proposing such legislation, law, ratification, policy or appropriation.

The Anti-Lobbying Act, according to government handbooks, prevents government employees from engaging in “substantial ‘grass roots’ lobbying campaigns … expressly urging individuals to contact government officials in support of or opposition to legislation …. Provid[ing] administrative support for lobbing activities of private organizations”

(more…)

I knew from personal experience that Henry was a fish when it came to poker, but it was some time later that I found out how truly awful he was.  Before being elected to Congress, he had gone to Sacramento as a state assemblyman.  Wherever politicians congregate, you will find two things — poker games and lobbyists.  As you can imagine, lobbyists are not there to win money from those they spend their lives trying to influence.  But it seems that Henry was so inept that, in spite of their best efforts, they kept beating him.  This so embarrassed the lobbyists that they finally banished him from the game. 

Naturally, once Mr. Waxman went to Washington, I saw him less and less frequently.  Periodically, he would return to L.A., but that was in order to spend time  meeting with constituents and holding political fund-raisers.

Over the years, Henry continued to be a liberal.  He continued to think FDR was a combination of Moses and Santa Claus.  I, on the other hand, who had been raised in a similar middle-class Jewish home, spent the intervening years wising up.

So it was that while attending a party a while back, a celebration of Henry’s 30th year in the House, I asked him what he was up to.  When he said that one of his committees was preparing to investigate Fox News for biased reporting, I couldn’t keep my yap shut and maintain my status as a polite guest.  Instead, after telling him that I thought it was a swell idea, I went on to suggest that when he and his colleagues finished investigating Fox, I trusted they would turn their eagle eyes on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, the Washington Post and our own Pravda wannabe, the L.A. Times.

Henry simply gawked at me.  He looked even more than usual like a fish out of water.  It was as if he thought his old school chum had been replaced during the dead of night by a space pod.

I assume he had heard from mutual acquaintances that I was no longer a Democrat, but he was so obviously unprepared for my transformation into a conservative that I almost felt sorry for him.  There was a moment of shocked silence, almost as if he was hoping I was going to laugh and admit I was just pulling his leg.  Then the moment passed, and he moved off to be among those who thought three decades of Waxman in the U.S. Congress was something worth celebrating.

For old times sake, I have generally left Waxman out of my attacks on liberals in the House.  After all, with the likes of Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, Charles Rangel, John Murtha, Barbara Lee, Linda Sanchez, Bernard Sanders and Barney Frank, taking up space, I didn’t think it was necessary to focus on my old college buddy.

But things have changed.  First there was the totally irresponsible Waxman-Markey cap & trade bill, which would destroy America’s industrial capacity and send energy costs soaring for every American household, while simultaneously providing our competitors in China and India with every possible advantage.

But, for me, the final straw was Waxman’s voting along with 74 other House Democrats to continue funding ACORN with our tax dollars.  Just as there’s no need to catalogue all of ACORN’s crimes and sins at this time, there’s no reason to bother trying to find a good excuse for Waxman’s defending this gang of creeps and thugs.

At this late date, I am not easily shocked, but I was so shocked and disgusted to find Waxman siding with ACORN that I decided I was going to share a piece of information that should add a measure of embarrassment to his well-deserved shame.

A few years ago, Henry garnered a great deal of publicity when he chaired a committee investigating the use of illegal substances in major league baseball.  I suspect there were a lot of people who had never even heard of Waxman prior to the hearings.  For my part, being a lifelong baseball fan, I was glad to see Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmeiro, sweating on the hot seat.

Those punks had done everything in their power to destroy the national pastime by cheating, thereby erasing such honorable names as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Roger Maris, from the record book.

Shortly after the hearings, I had lunch with Henry.  He confessed that he knew so little about baseball, he had no real idea who the players were, and that he was amazed to discover they were so famous that members of Congress and their staffs actually crowded into the hallways to collect autographs.

That was bad enough.  But I then asked him, “If a minor leaguer uses steroids or human growth hormones in order to reach the majors, but stops once he gets there, how long will he continue to test positive?”

Henry admitted he had no idea.

So here was a congressman investigating baseball who not only had no idea who its most famous players were, but no pertinent information about the substances they were being condemned for using.

Now, seriously, do you really think that he knows any more about energy than he does about baseball or poker?

So, what would Ari David do about the NEA and ACORN scandals?

I would unleash Congressional hearings on ACORN and hearings on all of the government officials involved in the NEA propaganda conference call. I would also immediately call a press conference and do whatever I could to make the media cover the story. One perk of being in public life is being able to draw attention to an issue. These scandals are issues that are screaming for more public attention.

As Ben Shapiro pointed out in his BH piece, laws may have been broken and if they were, we must find out what Obama administration officials knew and when they knew it. We must find out what they did and what they tried to do to either obey the law or break it.

The public hearings I would hold on the NEA scandal would have all the players involved testify under oath. This would include Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel,  Buffy Wicks, Yosi Sergeant and many others. As we say in Hollywood, it would star a cast of thousands.

I would grill these people and hold them to account for breaking President Obama’s pledge to clean up Washington and keep lobbyists and lobbying out of his administration and then, if criminal wrongdoing occurred and if no prosecution or investigations by the justice department took place, I would call Eric Holder to testify as to why.

On the ACORN issue, I would call the Rathke brothers to testify about the institutional failure and corruption that the community group is filled with and make sure the public had every opportunity to be aware of the collusion between ACORN and the SEIU. I would also do everything I could do to force ACORN to open their accounting records to the public.

The NEA and ACORN scandals must end with accountability for the responsible parties at every level. It would be one of my jobs as a Congressional member to ensure that the public had access to the truth.

ACORN has been involved in a myriad of scandals and it is not unreasonable for any Congressman from either side of the political aisle to question ACORN’s recent actions out of concern over the way they conduct business. Judging from the results of the vote to cut their funding, many Democrats did just that.

The vote passed overwhelmingly, with only 75 House members (all Democrats) voting against the bill. Only the most vehement supporters of the Democrats’ liberal agenda voted to continue ACORN funding, with Congressman Waxman showing his true colors as a member of this fringe.

Waxman portrays himself as a voice of reason and deal maker. The truth is that he’s a left-wing fanatic and an abusive bully who, by siding with ACORN on this vote, revealed that he has no problem with the thug-like tactics and electoral fraud activities of ACORN continuing with the help of  huge amounts of taxpayer money.

As more is revealed about ACORN, I hope moderate, centrist Democrat voters (and there are a few) from Henry Waxman’s district realize that our local Congressman from Los Angeles has totally lost touch with his constituents’ needs and has been seduced and corrupted by extremist views.

Waxman spent years turning over every stone looking for government corruption in the Bush administration and steroid abuse in major league baseball. But when it comes to ACORN’s indefensible activities, the last person to notice or care appears to be Henry Waxman.

As a citizen, candidate, and voter in Mr. Waxman’s district, I thought that this would be a plum of a chance for Rep. Waxman to hear what’s on my mind.

That is when it got weird.

Firstly, I found out that one had to RSVP to the event to reserve a space. OK, I thought, Henry Waxman’s personal popularity has never been higher and people really want to be around him so his magic can rub off on them. Maybe they expect quite a throng and thus must have crowd control in place to make sure that the event runs smoothly.

I called his office and asked to be put on the list. A staffer told me about the ticketing process, and lo and behold the reservation system was not even being handled by Henry Waxman’s office but out of California State Senator, Fran Pavley’s website. How odd, the headliner, Waxman, is keeping access to the event focusing on his landmark energy bill hidden behind the opening act of a rather anonymous State Senator. I wonder why?  Kind of like pitching Bill Smitrovich in “Iron Man “instead of Robert Downey, Jr. and Terrance Howard.  Not to knock Mr. Smitrovich’s wonderful rendition of General Gabriel in last years monster film, but it is Robert Downey, Jr. who puts the folks in the seats.  What is Mr. Waxman afraid of?

Next, I went to Senator Pavley’s website to follow the RSVP instructions for the event and instead of just having an online page to confirm that I am coming, the page took an “application” for the event and requested certain data about me in the “required fields” such as name, email address, organization, position in the organization and (not required) phone number.

I filled this all in and the page gave me a message that my application was being processed and I would hear back from them shortly.

Ok, so minus salary information and my SS# this was equal to the amount of information I gave on my first credit card application.

In an effort to guarantee a friendly crowd, can Waxman and company be running a voter background check on all applicants to make sure that only high propensity Democrat voters, (i.e. leftist crazies) are let in? I can understand this because NPR reported that the conservative media has been sandbagging Democrats at town halls across the land by sending in wild-eyed “mobs” of conservative God-fearing menopausal home makers to wreak havoc on the meetings by berating legislators for destroying the free market system, liberty, and our medical care system.  When Code Pink and Cindy Sheehan did the same during the Bush years it was patriotism, now it’s called mob behavior.  Things change fast! 

There are many issues at play here. One is that the most powerful elected official from the LA area is either afraid of or smart enough not to face his voters after doing his best to wreck their lives with his two latest pieces of legislation. Another is transparency. When the Democrats took over Congress after the 2006 elections, Nancy Pelosi promised to “drain the swamp” of the culture of corruption. This theme was repeated when Obama took office and promised a “new age of transparency and government accountability.”

Some accountability this is. 

Passing thousand page bills in the middle of the night that no one has or could read, rushing the bills through by claiming how urgent they are and then taking a couple days vacation to find the right photo opportunity for the signing… If anything this is the least transparent and most opaque government American’s have had in generations. We have no idea what the Cap and Trade and the health care bills will actually contain once they are written – other than a bunch of horrible things that will make our lives harder and cost us more money.

In order to counter Henry Waxman’s lack of openness, I decided to hold my own town hall meeting at UCLA on the same day as his. 

Mine will be from 12:00PM-1:30PM in the Humanities Building room 169 and I will take an audience of people from all political persuasions and address their questions in an open and constructive way. 

We will also have a panel of experts to answer questions the people have on numerous pertinent issues. 

I hope that these events provide a contrast between Henry Waxman the ELECTED representative of the 30th district of California who is not representing our needs and myself, the NOT-YET ELECTED representative but someone truly representing the district’s constituents and not afraid of them. 

I hope to see you there, and do me a favor: please ask me the tough questions that you would want to ask Congressman Henry Waxman, if you could. 

TOWN HALL ON HEALTH CARE

WITH

ARI DAVID

 Ari will be holding a town hall discussion for the public and the constituents of the 30th district on the issue of health care reform.

Friday, August 21st
Noon – 1:30 pm
Humanities 169, UCLA Campus
405 Hilgard Ave, Los Angeles

Enter UCLA Campus off of Hilgard and park in lots #1, #3 or A

Map of UCLA http://maps.ucla.edu/campus/

Please come and join in this informative discussion with the next Congressman of the 30th district!

 RSVP@AriDavidforCongress.com

www.tinyurl.com/aridavidforcongress

“The first unintended victim of almost every government program is common sense. I would like to bring some common sense back to our political sphere.” - Ari David

Did you ever have an encounter with a thief? If not, how many times have you read or heard about their sudden attacks in newspapers or TV and thought or gasped, “I hope that never happens to me”?

Well, it is happening. As I write this, we have politicians all over the country stealing from us. Many of you are now more than aware of this new Cap and Trade bill brought to us by “our” representative in the 30th district of California, Mr. Henry Waxman. Well, you may also want to know that Mr. Waxman has been quite busy these days not only promoting the biggest tax in history, but also by helping to give away land he does not own.

Whose land?

The land of our revered Veterans.

This land is slowly being doled out to special interest groups that benefit Mr. Waxman and his friends who are known as the “Westside Political Machine.” Sadly, he is not the only one doing this; politicians all over the country are “giving” land they do not own to special interest groups. Eighty-five acres of Veterans’ lands were just annexed in Chicago. Where did it go to? Who got it?

In order to get the big picture of what’s happening all over this country, let’s start with a little history on the Veteran land here in Waxman’s Los Angeles district.

Veteran land is land deeded to Veterans to take care of their physical and emotional wounds. One of these lands, the West Los Angeles Veterans’ Home (WLA VA), the largest parcel on land for Veterans in the USA, was donated by Arcadia de Baker and John P. Jones in 1888 to the government for the sole purpose of providing permanent care to our Veterans ONLY.

At that time, the hospitals on the land were providing care to returning Civil War Veterans, and to emphasize the intensity of their suffering they were called asylums. What Arcadia de Baker realized was that the peaceful and isolated land was perfect for healing the physical and emotional wounds of people who served their country.

What Arcadia de Baker did not know, though, that in time this isolated land would end up in the middle of one of the most affluent areas of the country. The WLA VA is the largest Veterans Healthcare Center in the Untied States. It also just happens to be located in an area considered the Fifth Ave of California, a place with multi-million dollar mansions and fancy condos surrounding it. Being a piece of prime real estate, many are vying for it.

In Henry Waxman’s Brentwood district, homeless Veterans sleep outside the gates of their own land while TV productions rent empty hospitals that neither the VA nor Waxman will open for our Veterans claiming the buildings are damaged.  Yet, these same damaged buildings are rented to “Grey’s Anatomy,” among others, and net seven-million per year. Now, would anyone rent damaged buildings for seven million a year?

Recently, the WLA VAMC gave Veterans Park Conservancy (VPC) (a non-veteran group consisting of wealthy residents of Brentwood) $1 million to help build a wrought iron fence to beautify the entryway into their community, while Veteran health-care services and facilities continue to go under-funded. Was the beautification of an already very wealthy community a priority?

The WLA VAMC also gave VPC permission to engrave in stone on Veterans property, “Beauty, Honor, County,” thereby seriously insulting and denigrating the Military creed of “Duty, Honor, Country.”

The VA also “rents” this land for special fundraising parties. I was recently at one such $1000-per-ticket celebrity-saturated fundraiser with a Vietnam-era Veteran, Robert Rosebrock.

Mr. Rosebrock, founder of “Veterans’ Revolution,” was not allowed to enter the Veterans’ land and was harassed by a hired security guard who kept a camera on him the whole time.

For 72 consecutive Sundays, Mr. Rosebrock and Veterans from all wars gather in front of the WLA VH to protest the land grab perpetrated by the VA and federal politicians in conjunction with affluent Brentwood neighborhood community organizations, businesses and Mr. Waxman’s Westside political machine.

In this shameful orchestration, the VA rented about 16 acres of Veterans’ land (worth more than a billion dollars) for a dollar per year to the Brentwood Homeowners Association. Yes, you heard me right, a buck a year. Why, you ask? So the people of Brentwood, some of the wealthiest in the country, can have a park. A park on Veterans’ land when there are empty hospitals our Veterans need!

Another game being played by the LA bureaucrats is the building of “apartments” at the cost of about $325,000 per unit in the unused hospitals that they now rent for TV productions at the Sepulveda VA. These very expensive so-called “apartments” are meant to house recovering addicts, etc. They say some Veterans can live there (this is really generous of them, isn’t it?), but the truth is these apartments will end up being fancy condos sold for millions in a few years.

In accordance with the Flag Code of the United States, the Veterans decided to turn the flag upside down as a sign of distress. In return, the federal police almost arrested them for “disturbing” conduct! Domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers can stomp the flag, anarchists can burn flags on the steps of the Congress, paint flags, rip flags, put flags in dung and call it art — but Veterans who fought for what the flag represents cannot, in accordance with the law, hang the flag upside down as a call of distress? Last week Mr. Robert Rosebrock was cited for having the American flag in distress attached to the Veterans gate, yet, the VA allowed the Iranian flag to be displayed on the Veterans gates!

Something is very wrong with this picture in America. Right now in history we have a group of renegade politicians who have buried our Constitution under the structure of false laws that we must abide by, “laws” that allow them to steal in the dead of night. And make no mistake about it: if they can steal our Veterans’ land without blinking an eye, they will soon be able to steal yours.

These “thieves” work on people’s minds, making them believe they are spotless individuals who do no wrong. Their abuse is silent and “lawful.” It is always for “our good.”

Our Founders fought a long battle to give us freedom and we cannot let anyone steal it from us. The first stand is with our Veterans to stop this land grab. Call your representatives, write your senators, demonstrate with your fellow Veterans, and do not allow this to go on any longer. In many ways, their land is your land — for without these good people freedom would be just a word.

For links, more facts, updated information and to contact representatives, visit www.veteranslandgrab.us

THE VETERANS REVOLUTION NEEDS YOUR SUPPORT! The sleazy VA bureaucrats have spied on us and lied to us, stalked, harassed, intimidated, threatened, challenged, insulted and persecuted us, yet we’ve done nothing wrong.

WHAT: THE VETERANS REVOLUTION TO “SAVE OUR VETERANS LAND” – You are respectfully requested to join this noble gathering of Fellow Veterans and Friends of Veterans standing shoulder-to-shoulder protecting the sacred land of the Los Angeles National Veterans Home.

WHY: TO DEFEND, PROTECT AND PRESERVE THE NATIONAL VETERANS HOME, which was deeded 121 years ago as a safe and permanent haven for America’s Military Veterans to heal from war. This is the largest VA Healthcare Center in the nation and we must preserve and protect this sacred national trust for today’s Veterans and future generations of Veterans.  Stop the public park and billion-dollar land giveaway!

WHO: FELLOW VETERANS and FRIENDS OF VETERANS  Includes 60, 70 and 80-year old World War II, Korean and Vietnam War Veterans and Members of The California American Legion, Military Order of the Purple Heart, Disabled American Veterans, The American G.I. Forum of California, AM VETS, the National Veterans Coalition, Veterans Untied For Truth, the Gathering of Eagles, and community and business supporters.

WHERE: AT THE FRONT GATE of the National Veterans Home, at the Northeast Corner of Wilshire and San Vicente Boulevards adjacent to Brentwood. (The West LA VA address is 11301 Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90073)

WHEN: SUNDAY / 1:00 – 4:00 PM