Rotary Club 585 - Los Banos California

Congressman Cardoza Speaks At Los Banos Rotary Club
8-25-2009

Story by Charles Guest
On August 25th 2009 representative Dennis Cardoza of the eighteenth Congressional District of California visited Los Banos. During Mr. Cardoza's visit he had the opportunity to speak before the Los Banos Rotary Club at their weekly lunchtime meeting which was held at Espana's Southwest Bar and Grill.

As might be expected, the appearance of a member of the United States Congress brought a number of additional people to the Rotary meeting that day. Along with a small entourage of congressional aides, a pair of reporters for the local newspapers, Chamber of Commerce President Geneva Brett, former Los Banos Mayor Michael Amabile, and even a reporter for "The Hill" (a publication devoted to goings on in Washington DC), the Rotary club also brought in extra tables and seating for several citizens of Los Banos and business leaders who apparently wanted to hear the congressman speak and partake of the opportunity to ask him questions.

The Rotarians did not call their luncheon a 'town hall meeting' but it did, at times, have that sort flavor.

After lunch, Congressman Cardoza rose and opened his comments by holding up a small sheaf of papers saying that his staff had prepared things for him to cover. He then set the papers down and said that he really did not need the outline when he was talking to 'his people'. Mr. Cardoza spoke for a fair bit of time touching upon some of the more hot-button issues of the current political season. The congressman spoke on topics ranging from the water crisis to health-care reform and more.

Mr. Cardoza shared one particular item that received a few chuckles from the assembled Rotarians and their guests - an anecdote he told about the Delta Smelt. The congressman told the story of one particular study of the fish that had been undertaken wherein the ichthyoids had been tagged so as to be able to track them. It seems that when all was said and done most of these tagged smelt apparently had found their final resting place not ground up in the pumps that keep the water flowing into our agricultural lands, but rather at the bottom of some bodies of water known for being excellent striper habitat. (Apparently stripers must have a taste for smelt...)

After Mr. Cardoza had finished speaking, Rotarians and members of the public were given the opportunity to ask him questions directly. Rotary members including Superintendent of Schools Dr. Tietjen and a local physician, Dr. Pete Peraiah asked questions about education and healthcare respectively. Other members of the public asked about various other topics and one person questioned the congressman about congress's own healthcare system.

The meeting lasted a bit under two hours including time for eating lunch and a bit of mingling before and after.

Photos by Charles Guest

The following are additional notes about the presentation made by S.P. of the Los Banos Rotary Club:

8/2509

Speaker: Dennis Cardoza, House Representative - 18th Congressional
District
Congressman Cardoza was accompanied by his Merced and D.C. office staffs
as well as Molly Hooper, a D.C. Correspondent with CQ [Congressional
Quarterly]
Subjects Congressman Cardoza spoke about:
* Water for the Central Valley
C.Cardoza thinks it's not the pumps but, municipal sewage which is
endangering the Smelt.
Tried to change the Endangered Species Act to be more reasonable.
Got bill through the House, but the Senate would not hear it.
* "Economic Downturn"
Central Valley is among the hardest hit with Foreclosures in the nation.
The TARP Bill was to deflect and prevent a Depression, like that of the
1920s.
The TARP Bill gave $700Billion to the large banks.
C.Cardoza voted against the 2nd round of funding because small local
banks were not given the relief to help the local economy.
* Big 3 Auto Bailout
C.Cardoza voted against the Big 3 Bailout as they didn't have a recovery
and re-payment plan that made good business sense.
* Healthcare
Thinks that Health Care definitely needs reform and that it should take
15 to 20 different bills not one all inclusive legislation.
Has ongoing conference calls with hospital administrators to get their
inputs and perspectives.
* Education [NCLB - No Child Left Behind Act]
C.Cardoza said that the promise of the NCLB Act has not materialized and
that we need education funding reform.
Steve Tiejten said that C.Cardoza played a key role in getting funding
for our schools.
Trivia:
* $400 Million in economic stimulus dollars have gone to our
congressional district to aid transportation, education, police, health,
etc.
* Congressman Cardoza says that he prefers to work behind the scenes to
get things done because the media spreads mis-information and is a
generally unreliable method of communication.
* Cardoza's office receives on the average of 2,000 letters and emails a
week.
* He reads all correspondence sent to him. His staff does reply to most
of his correspondence.
* Does not hold town meetings as people show up and yell at each other.
There's very little real communication.
* Holds "Town Halls" via telephone. He has a tele-campaign where his
people call and ask people to talk with them about current issues. Last
tele-campaign they talked with about 5,000 people.
* C.Cardoza is from Atwater.
* Average income in our congressional district is $29,000 per year.
* Said that "Social Security can be an easy fix".
* Paid for our lunch today
Re: CA State:
CA State budget has been cut by half and there will be more cuts to come.
Gov. Schwarzenegger has applied for $4.35Billion in federal funding for
CA schools.
Gov. Schwarzenegger is trying to get around regulation stating that CA
is ineligible for a specific Federal funding package for our schools. As
the funding is based on Teacher evaluations being tied directly to test
scores and CA cannot tie the evaluation of our teachers to the
standardized test scores.