My Representative Caught With His Pants Down

Ugh. I didn't vote for Duvall, but he's supposed to be representing my city in Orange County. I tend to stay away from "self righteous" politicians because "politics" and "righteousness" seems to be such a oxymoron. Talk about family values and you usually get some dirty little secret surface out of the woodwork, and anyone who focuses their campaign or ideology on such a concept seems to not hold up to the litmus test.

Epic fail for Duvall, who, according to the OC Weekly "has been a consistent trooper for the conservative causes," CRI president Karen England announced in March. "For the last two years, he has voted time and time again to protect and preserve family values in California. We are grateful for his support of California
 families.'" CRI President England must be wishing they had different results now. Check out Navel Gazing for a full news breaking coverage on this Sacramento tryst. The best part was this quote by an anonymous Sacramento insider, who said "Their relationship is the worst-kept secret in Sacramento, he's old and fat. She's hot, blonde and about 20
 years younger. He could have never gotten a woman like that before he got
 this job.'"

If things were that obvious then why was he still voted in as "champion for the protection and preservation of family values". It baffles me how this could possibly have been so difficult to address earlier on. Values mean nothing when you got people like Duvall continuously undermining them and organizations like Englands awarding the people undermining them. I got thick skin, so its easy for me to isolate this one case. But it becomes difficult to really sell people on the idea that all politics is not sleezy like Duvall. Maybe my job, or our job, is not to convince anyone of what politics is and is not, however, my fear is that it breaks the ability to have people civically engaged and involved and that is detrimental to the health of democracy.

What is worse is that Duvall actually wrote an op-ed about "lobbying efforts". He felt the use of kids for lobbying purposes was "disgraceful". He stated:

Put simply, our children had been pulled out of their classes during the school day and bused to a hearing miles away, so that they could convey their "thoughts" about a toll road permit that they likely had little understanding of.

And just a week or so ago, I saw a photo of a small child on the front page of a newspaper. The child, sitting on the steps of the Capitol, held a sign opposing this year's proposed budget spending for education. The caption read "Pint-sized protest."

The shameless use of our children as lobbyists, or, worse, as props, is disgraceful.

Given the current circumstances, maybe Duvall is just upset that the kids are not as interesting as 30-somethin-year-old-bombshell-lobbyists from Sempra Energy.