Was it good for you, District 4?
Steven Horsford thinks it was. After having served slightly over a quarter of his term, Steven Horsford has announced that he intends to run for re-election next November. It may seem odd that someone who has spent such a short amount of time in the office he was elected to, would already be asking to be re-elected, especially since he has spent the last month recovering from heart surgery that he underwent in early July.
While we all wish the congressman a speedy recovery, we wish that asking us to re-elect him wasn’t his first move after coming back to work. In the non-political world, most people feel that they have to prove themselves worthy of the job entrusted with before they ask for a raise or promotion. Apparently in politics, getting elected once proves your worth and making some vague grand statements proves you are capable.
Over the past few years, the country has expressed a strong dislike of politicians, regardless of their party. The endless campaigning is a key element of our dissatisfaction. Horsford spent thirteen months running for the office he currently holds and has now decided fifteen months ahead of time that he has done well enough to be re-elected. His constituents sent him to D.C. to get work done, not to spend the majority of his term back in Vegas shaking hands with his donors begging for money to fund his tireless campaign. Horsford is not the only politician that is disappointing voters in this way, but he seems to have no qualms about it.
According to Horsford he has amassed quite the impressive record over the past seven months. He argues that he opposed the White House on the NSA spying controversy, though he was still recuperating from his surgery when the House voted on the issue. However in April he voted for the “CISPA” bill, which encourages the sharing of information between private internet companies and the government. This bill has been criticized by both right and left wing groups as an invasion of privacy. The bill passed the House but has failed in the Senate; oddly enough the Obama Administration threatened to veto the bill if it came to the President. Somehow Horsford has managed to oppose the President from both sides of the issue…
Horsford also voted against restoring the Welfare Work Requirement, a provision that has contributed greatly to getting healthy people back to work and off of welfare since it was passed in 1996. President Obama sidestepped the rule last year. While Horsford brags that he is focused on creating jobs, he has opposed the “Keystone Oil Pipeline” as well as the “Offshore Energy and Jobs Act” which would have opened large amounts of areas off our shores for drilling. Both of these bills would have created jobs and reduced regulations that are holding the country back from a full recovery from the recession.
After I wrote the previous section, I decided to visit a townhall meeting held by Congressman Horsford in North Las Vegas. The topic for the night was “Voting Rights Act and Social Justice.” with special guest Maxine Waters of California. From the tone of the meeting and and the many panelists that were called upon to discuss the topic it is clear that Horsford is only interested in appealing to a very select group of his constituents. In a district where whites make up the majority of residents, it is a bit disconcerting to attend a meeting with our elected officials and hear targeted attacks against “white males”. As the lone conservative voice that was heard during the night pointed out, the townhall meeting’s goal was not to hear both sides of the argument or even attempt to resolve any issues. The goal of the night was to present a lopsided view of the world in which re-enslaving blacks is the overriding goal of “white males.” And unless you support Horsford, the right to vote will be stripped away from minorities.
Horsford and Waters spoke rather eloquently about the hard work it took for the Civil Rights movement to get the “Voting Rights Act” bill signed into law and then lamented the recent Supreme Court ruling that made Section 5 inoperable. Their belief that blacks will be disenfranchised en masse without the protection of “VRA” strikes me as odd considering the many advances have been made in the nearly 50 years since it’s enactment. I cannot believe that the goal of the Civil Rights leaders was to create a permanent belief that blacks must seek the protection of the government instead of finding the voice and power to protect themselves.
A panelist at the Townhall described the VRA as an umbrella protecting blacks from the rain. Now that they are no longer getting wet we believe that we can get rid of the umbrella. His point is that as soon as the protection of the umbrella is removed, the rain of racism shall fall unchecked on the black community. I agree with him that the umbrella of VRA provided very necessary protections, however times change and rain clouds pass us by. Continuing to hide under an umbrella after it has stopped raining is silly.
In arguing for the VRA, the speakers continually stressed how important the right to vote is, and at the same time they railed against voter ID laws. To me the contradiction of those two positions is staggering. If voting is such a important right, then protecting the integrity of the vote is paramount, and voter ID laws do just that. Any falsified ballot cast is a direct subtraction upon our own vote. However, the aims of the speakers was not reasoned analysis, but fear mongering and hyperbole.
If Steven Horsford really wants to be sent back to Congress, he should be spending more time mending fences and pursuing actual job creating policies instead of hiding behind rhetoric and blaming the Tea Party for every problem in the world.
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