Deadbeat

How on earth is Laura Richardson still in Congress? Today, the L.A. Times reports that her house in Sacramento has been declared a public nuisance. According to the article, police were called to investigate the house after neighbors called about it being abandoned and potentially housing a squatter. Of course, this isn't the first time Rep. Richardson, a Democrat, has had to explain herself. In fact, she has defaulted on 3 different houses more than once over the past few years, including the Sacramento house, and had several thousand dollars worth of unpaid property taxes. In fact, the Sacramento house was foreclosed and sold, and was able to convince Washington Mutual to rescind the sale only after she, according to the L.A. Times, made a "stink."

Lest one think she's just caught up in the "housing mess," Rep. Richardson has also made a fool of herself by using taxpayer funded cars for her own pleasure. As this article explains, Rep. Richardson leases the most expensive car in Congress. Additionally, when she was a councilwoman in Long Beach, she proceeded to borrow a city-owned car and run up 30,000 miles- in one year! Oh, using a city-owned car for personal business is against city policy, but. . who cares, right? And why did she need to use a city-owned car for travel? Because she abandoned her wrecked BMW at a auto repair shop and claimed to be unable to afford the required work, so, the mechanic sold it for junk.

So, to sum up. . .Rep. Richardson has defaulted several times on 3 homes, one of which ended up in foreclosure, and was only returned to her under questionable circumstances, and which is now declared a public nuisance. In addition, she abandoned a wrecked car with a mechanic, claiming to not have enough money to pay for the repairs, and, as the article notes, had not paid a previous repair to the same mechanic, then borrowed a city-owned car and ran up 30,000 miles in one year as a part of the part-time city council in a city that takes up 50 square miles. And she won her primary and is running unopposed this fall, except for a write-in campaign.

I want to run for congress now, and buy up a ton of property that I have no way to pay for, then take loans out on those properties to fund my campaign, and when I can't pay for those loans, have a member for the congressional leadership hold a fundraiser for me to help pay them off, but then have a fit when the houses are foreclosed and sold, even though I still can't afford to pay for them. Yes We Can.