"Reverse Dust Bowl"

3-31-09
Fresno Bee
Congressmen want more water for California farmers
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/1298951.html

The Associated Press – 3/31/09
By Kevin Freking

Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Atwater, said thousands of families were moving out of his district. He called the exodus the "Dust Bowl migration in reverse."

 
Congressman Cardoza has always been a great leader in the 18th Congressional District of California. His greatest act of leadership in recent months has been to move his family to Annapolis, Maryland and get his wife a job at the U. of Maryland.
Cardoza did everything he could, as a state assemblyman and later as a congressman, to promote real estate, finance and insurance growth in Merced, Modesto and Stockton, today among the top foreclosure rate capitals of the nation. He was particularly effective in breaking every environmental law and regulation in his path to site the University of California campus in Merced, which became the anchor tenant for that hapless county's speculative real estate boom and bust. Only the enormous protections offered congressmen for stating their economic interests prevents the public from getting a clear picture of how much Cardoza personally benefited from the boom.
In any event, as pickups pull away from foreclosed homes in Cardoza's district with all the household goods they can stack in them, some of them are surely headed for Annapolis, following their leader to the end.