According to his own campaign website Orange County Congressman Ed Royce has been called California’s Most Effective Conservative Congressman. I guess if you classify extremist as effective, then the claim is accurate. On Monday we gave a bit of attention to the extremist claim by TEA Party Republican Congressman Todd Akin from Missouri that If a woman is legitimately raped, she will not become pregnant. In looking deeper into the stance of Akin and Congressman Paul Ryan on the issue of abortion and rape, I decided to take a look at the position of Orange County Congress members who share their views.
It turns out that all of Orange County’s congressional Republicans the extremist legislation, H.R. 3 the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, from last year. The proposed legislation which passed the House, would have redefined a ban on federal funding for abortions to exempt only “forcible rape” and not “rape” generally.
We asked Orange County Congressman Ed Royce, an initial co-sponsor of the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, to articulate his understanding of the difference between forcible, and non-forcible rape? As anticipated, neither he nor his spokesperson responded to our inquiry. We were however able to get a statement from Royce’s Democratic opponent Jay Chen on the matter.
“It is disturbing that while Republican leaders from Mitt Romney on down have denounced Congressman Akin, Representative Ed Royce still has not repudiated Akin’s remarks,” Jay Chen told us.
“As the President has said, rape is rape. We need elected leaders who recognize the severity of rape, the trauma it causes, and dangers of sexual predators. While I am appalled to hear a sitting Congressman make this kind of statement, it is not entirely surprising given the types of anti-women legislation that this Congress has tried to pass, from defunding Planned Parenthood to weakening equal pay statutes.”
“I call on Ed Royce to officially repudiate Congressman Akin’s statement and join with Republicans and Democrats alike in asking Akin to abandon his bid for the United States Senate immediately. Californians expect their leaders to uphold the dignity of Congress when other members embarrass the institution, and Congressman Royce must demonstrate to his constituents where he stands on these disturbing statements made by his Tea Party colleague.”
Should Congressman Royce choose to respond to our request for a statement, we’ll let you know what he has to say for himself.
Extremist views are nothing new for Royce, and his supporters. At a 2009 health care forum, a Royce supporter was allowed to distribute political literature containing Nazi imagery linking President Obama and Adolf Hitler. Royce was quick to distance himself from the literature in a statement issued after the matter came to light. The Congressman’s stated that an individual “… was able to sneak several highly objectionable fliers… into the meeting” and “Any attempt to portray me or my office as endorsing these repugnant fliers is 100 percent false.”
Our contributor Deborah White wrote:
All well and good, I suppose, except that there wasn’t much sneaking. The young man distributing the 16-page booklets strode confidently up and down stairs on both sides of the room, loudly hawking the slanderous hand-outs as though he was selling peanuts at Anaheim Stadium. “Sneaking” is hardly the operative term.
But regardless, the tone was set. The damage was done. Constituents read the trashy booklets, and they took them home for their families and friends to read. The angry and frightened became more angry and frightened. And rational discussion of health care reform became even more impossible.
I have no doubt this won’t happen again at Rep. Ed Royce’s town halls. I have little doubt that Rep. Royce is horrified that this rubbish was distributed. That’s not the point.
The point is that it was distributed. That his staffers could easily have stopped it. And that they didn’t have enough respect for non-conservative constituents in the crowd to stop it.
Unfortunately for Orange County, this was not the last time that Royce would get caught up in extremist rhetoric. A couple weeks after Royce signed on as a co-sponsor to the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortions Act, he found himself speaking at a rally of TEA Party extremists protesting a fundraiser for a New York based Muslim charity called the Islamic Circle of North America Relief USA.
This was the event where Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauley called the Muslims attending the event ‘terrorists.’ In the video of the event, Tea Party protesters and other conservative groups shout down the attendees and tell them to ‘go home’ despite home being Orange County for many of the Muslims there.
Congressman Royce is no stranger to extremism. He is no stranger to religious bigotry. Those are the values he protects. Unfortunately he attaches greater value to his extremist supporters than the rights of women who are victims of rape.
Ed Royce, is Orange County’s version of Todd Akin.
The Liberal OC:
“H.R. 3 … The proposed legislation which passed the House, would have redefined a ban on federal funding for abortions to exempt only “forcible rape” and not “rape” generally.”
H. R. 3
Section 308 Treatment of abortions related to rape, incest, or preserving the life of the mother
‘‘The limitations established in sections 301, 302, and 303 shall not apply to an abortion — ‘‘(1) if the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest;
‘‘(2) in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.
Read the bill http://thomas.loc.gov enter “HR 3” click
No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act (Placed on Calendar Senate – PCS)[H.R.3.PCS][PDF]
Ed Royce is stuck in this old school Reaganite type of Republican ideaologies and time for him to move on to the new era of how to solve common issues in the 21st century. Let’s not forget he is trying to pass a racial profiling bill (SB1070) in Congress. What a chump, period.
Congressman Ed Royce did not vote for NAFTA.
Obama the 2008 candidate promised NAFTA renegotiations. He lied.
The North American Free Trade Agreement bankrupted the family farms in Mexico; the farmers had little choice but to cross the border for work. NAFTA suppressed wages, and spurred waves of immigration to the United States.
Below is a Link to a 28 minute video of August 11, 2009 from Democracy Now (not a right-wing talk radio program).
http://www.democracynow.org/2009/8/11/obama_reverses_campaign_pledge_to_renegotiate
There is also an interview transcript with guests Manuel Perez Rocha and Laura Carlson. Quoting from the transcript:
30 big corporations:
“Since 2005, this initiative (Security and Prosperity Partnership) that was undertaken by Bush, by former President Bush, by former President Fox and Martin from Canada, the only invited stakeholder to these talks were big businesses. They formed this ad hoc group called the North American Competitiveness Council, in which only thirty big corporations of North America gave — used to give any input to the presidents, and this was what led the agenda of the tri-national relations for three years”.
“There have been an estimated two million farmers that have lost their livelihoods” (as of August 2009).
“LAURA CARLSEN: Well, the Mexicans are calling for corn and beans and basic foodstuffs to be eliminated from NAFTA in order to have policies within the nation that can assure a secure food supply and livelihoods for farmers.”
(Also – US corn for ethanol (for your gas tank) = less corn on the world market for food = higher prices for corn – a basis food for Mexico). [Bio-fuels consume more energy in production than they save as a gasoline additive].
NAFTA exports swine flu to Mexico:
“The massive US-owned hog-raising operations were shifted to Mexico once NAFTA started being implemented in 1994, and big US companies moved their operations to Mexico to make the most of lack of environmental regulations. So this is why, you know, ground zero was located in this area of Veracruz in Perote, where these farms with draconian health conditions and environmental regulations were operating. And this is where the — one of the places where the flu started — started disseminating.”
“Eighty percent of Mexico’s exports go to the US economy. And it’s not Mexican exports … “
(It’s not Mexico’s manufactured goods. It’s US manufactured goods that are assembled in Mexico and then exported back into the US.)
There is more in the transcript.
Conclusions:
Obama is a corporatists and a bankster with a talent for seducing the masses with words.
Obama the 2008 candidate promised NAFTA re-negotiations. He lied.
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