Costoza in flames

In an aggressive new tack, the National Republican Congressional Committee on Wednesday began running a 60-second radio ad attacking Reps. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, and Jim Costa, D-Fresno. The ad running throughout the week links the two Democrats to systemic irrigation-water shortages.
"Cardoza and Costa can't persuade Democrat leaders to change radical environmental laws," the ad intones. "So while the congressmen fail ... the Valley goes dry." -- Fresno Bee, July 2, 2009

There are a large number of Americans, as we've seen in recent years, and an even larger percentage of Californians, who will believe any political statement as long as it is a Big Enough Lie.
Let's face it, Valley water has become a plaything of national and international corporate powers. For three years, the international public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, helped the Friant Water Users Authority try to scuttle the San Joaquin Valley Settlement in Congress. Among others B-M and the Users called upon was Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Fairy Shrimper-Chesapeake Bay. Cardoza's (who maintains an address in Merced County) play was to represent the anxieties of the Merced, Turlock, and Modesto irrigation districts, all of which empty into the San Joaquin River. It was known as the Tributary River Gambit and it was effective for awhile. Costa of Fresno was involved in the last go-round on the Settlement as a member of the House Natural Resources Committee. In 2006, Democrats regained control of Congress, chairman of the former House Resouces Committee, Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, was unseated, the committee was renamed House Natural Resources Committee, Cardoza was not reappointed to it, and the Pomboza, the daring duo of Pombo and Cardoza, the pro-growth, anti-environmental law team that had thrice tried to gut the Endangered Species Act, split up. Last year we saw the development of a new daring duo, the Costoza.
Cardoza, caught in the collapse of the speculative housing bubble, was looking for a new sugar daddy and came up with the old Valley standby, Agribusiness, which owes most of its entire publicly subsidized irrigation system to Democrats. Agribusiness saw its huge gamble on Hillary fail and they got ... Obama, little friend of all agribusiness creditors, in the middle of a drought. Meanwhile, Rep. Devin Nunes, Burson-Marsteller's Visalia mouthpiece, in the heart of Friant-User territory, was screaming about the death of civilization south of the San Joaquin with a fervor unknown since the last serious farmworker strikes 40 years ago. He and B-M even teamed up with or created something called the Latino Water Coalition, led by some guy out of LA showbiz who claims to be the son of illegal alien farmworkers, to have 40 acres of nectarines in Dinuba and to not be taking a dime from anybody, and they've done "grassroots" farmworker marches to protest restrictions on the Delta pumps ordered by federal courts in lawsuits the Costoza couldn't touch because we still have the semblance of separate branches of government.
Meanwhile, in terms of congressional politics, the Costoza positions itself in the Blue Dog camp, which, the Republican flaks are quick to recognize, is an expendable bunch of rural corporatist losers, known by their constituents to be for sale to whatever local plutocracy controls at the moment. Despite their manly threatening of Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, almost the equal of the taunts of Republican Valley congressmen, Nunes and Rep. George Radanovich, R-Mariposa, two weeks ago in Fresno, Cardoza and Costa are now held in such political contempt that Merced County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Deidre Kelsey felt she could get away with a snide remark about "the Portuguese" at this morning's board meeting. (It doesn't help that Southern California Dutch mega-dairies are mopping the floor with their smaller Portuguese competitors in this year's mega-milk-price disaster.)
Nevertheless -- we have covered most of the gruesome steps here on Badlands -- Costa and Cardoza have stood four-square for breaking every environmental law necessary to open the Delta pumps to supply water to agribusiness south of the San Joaquin River. Their reward for betraying the environmental values of their party (hey, at least on a good day in a liberal urban district) -- attacks from the Republican Party.
All things considered, if he had truly wished to be effective within the current Democratic majority in Congress and in the White House, Cardoza should have been on that stage at UC Merced with First Lady Michelle Obama instead of sloshing the juleps at the Preakness with the Blue Dogs' plutocrat donors. But, when you're a Fairy Shrimper from Chesapeake Bay, and your congressional district is nothing but a rotten borough to you, you forget that the Man might just take some offense at the insult to the First Wife. The insult was so blatant as to suggest that Cardoza is thinking of retiring to become a house-husband and weekend-shrimper on the Chesapeake while his wife practices medicine at the University of Maryland. 
Costa should have been wiser. People who team up with Cardoza get hurt. Maybe Honest Graft Tony can find something for him to do if the Reeps find a Bill Thomas clone to replace him. Too bad, because Costa actually understands water politics and would be a better advocate for his district than some numbskull ideologue. But, he keeps bad company.
For us, the citizens? It's beginning to look like a plutocrat-led Great, Valley-Wide Reaction against reality. We are in an economic crisis. We have a significant number of people who cannot find their backsides with both hands that are capable of exercising their vote franchise in any given year to vote against their own interests in favor of some political propaganda confection du jour with unknown consequences.
The depth of the pathos in this situation is that neither Cardoza nor Costa are stupid politicians. Either one of them might once have been able to articulate reasonable positions involving their entire constituencies. Neither have had the character to do it. The Republicans have a real opportunity here to knock out both of them with a pair of numbnut knuckleheads inferior to what they replaced. So, down goes the democracy to the polluting plutocrats and the rest of us will just cough a few more times a day.
Badlands Journal editorial board
7-2-09
Fresno Bee
GOP ads link Dems to Valley water crisis
Radio spots attack Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa...Michael Doyle
http://www.fresnobee.com/1072/v-print/story/1511134.html
WASHINGTON -- Republican strategists are now roughing up San Joaquin Valley congressional Democrats with radio ads linking them to the region's water woes.
In an aggressive new tack, the National Republican Congressional Committee on Wednesday began running a 60-second radio ad attacking Reps. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced, and Jim Costa, D-Fresno. The ad running throughout the week links the two Democrats to systemic irrigation-water shortages.
"Cardoza and Costa can't persuade Democrat leaders to change radical environmental laws," the ad intones. "So while the congressmen fail ... the Valley goes dry."
The Republican Congressional Committee did not offer further explanation for this particular ad or the targeting. The campaign committee is, however, running a number of ads against Democrats. For instance, this week, the committee also initiated ads attacking 14 other Democrats on energy issues.
The ad's consequences may be hard to track, as the next election is still 17 months away. Both incumbents represent Democratic-leaning districts and neither has attracted a strong Republican challenger in the past.
Factually, the ad omits some crucial context.
The primary law being referred to is the Endangered Species Act. Federal judges including U.S. District Court Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno, who was appointed by President George H.W. Bush, have ordered water diversions for species protected by the law.
Representing rural districts, with farmers and developers among their regular campaign contributors, Costa and Cardoza have been consistently critical of the current Endangered Species Act.
The two Valley Democrats have also aligned themselves with Valley Republicans on water-related votes and championed myriad water projects.
"I don't believe anyone has done more to advocate the water issue than I have for the past 25 years," Costa said Wednesday.
Cardoza added that the ad was "unmitigated baloney" and said, "We need cool heads to prevail and a whole lot less partisan rhetoric."
Among political strategists, though, attack ads are sometimes employed not to defeat an incumbent or push a policy but primarily to keep the lawmaker on the defensive.
Two weeks ago, Costa and Cardoza were among 37 House Democrats voting for an unsuccessful amendment that would have blocked a federal decision steering more irrigation water toward animal protection.
The decision issued last month by the National Marine Fisheries Service will cut urban and irrigation water deliveries by between 5% and 7% to protect salmon. Wanger had ordered the agency to prepare its revised "biological opinion" after concluding that a 2004 decision was inadequate.
"When will this stop? When our valley has no more water left for its farmers and its farmworkers?" Costa asked during the June 17 House debate, adding that "this is not a Republican or a Democratic issue."
The author of the California water amendment, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, blasted House Democratic leaders for "destroying the economy of the San Joaquin Valley." Nunes, nonetheless, stressed that Costa and Cardoza are "trying their best to deal with their leadership to try to bring some attention to this problem."