I live near Kevin McCarthy’s house. Not the place where he actually lives—that would be the 7,000+ square foot penthouse in DC—but his legal residence in Kern County. I assume he chose the area for the same reasons I did; central location, a good school district, proximity to CSUB, the bike path, good parks, and other amenities.Last week, my partner was walking on the bike path a few blocks from our residence, near where local children had set up dirt ramps to jump bicycles, and was attacked by a pack of vicious dogs (the two very large pit bull mixes did most of the damage) presumed by Animal Control to be owned by people in the homeless encampment on the dry riverbed. She required extensive medical treatment, and will have severe scarring on her hip and both legs for the rest of her life.
In the past 6 months, my vehicles (a conversion van and a motorcycle, both over 12 years old) have been stolen, broken into, or had the catalytic converters stripped, on 5 separate occasions. On two old vehicles that I have been maintaining largely myself, I have accumulated well over $5,000 in damages. I have promptly filed police reports, notified my insurance, provided photographic and video evidence, installed cameras, coordinated with my neighbors, all with absolutely nothing to show for it.
The single effective instance occurred when my neighbor, a nurse getting off her shift at 1AM, saw two men stealing my motorcycle and frantically contacted me. I was able to hold one of them at gunpoint with an old WWII Russian infantry rifle for over 35 minutes until the cops finally showed up, after being called multiple times by multiple people.
These are especially significant obstacles for me, as I am currently on a very fixed income due to disability from long COVID, which I contracted in an area where less than 43% of the population have gotten the initial jab, much less the booster. I went from a 405 lb deadlift (and 25 mile days on foot with a 40 lb pack in the mountains) to losing my breath just walking up a few steps. A significant percentage of my lung tissue is now scar tissue. The neurological issues are worse, but more pressing is the fact that I have not been able to access my disability payments and when I make my daily call(s) to the SDI office and navigate their labyrinthine automated system, I am disconnected because too many people are also trying to call, and our call volume has exceeded the maximum hold time. I have sent emails and been reassured I will be contacted in 4-10 business days, but that certainly has not happened.
12 weeks to the day after formally going on disability, my employer informed me that the monthly cost of my insurance would increase from around $130 to over $500. This is for the insurance that requires a copay of $35-65 for every interaction with any sort of medical personnel, and with the issues I have been having, any given week could be over $200 in copays alone.
I have worked since I was 14. I worked 40 hours a week through most of my undergrad, causing lasting damage to my body and letting my education suffer so I could get through with no debt. I worked in education, and got my teaching credential and a Master’s in English Language Learning. I saved up and purchased every vehicle I have ever owned with cash, doing the majority of the maintenance myself. I kept 6 months worth of expenses in my savings account. I have the means to protect myself. I have emergency supplies and even chose a vehicle I can live in if things get really bad.
None of that has mattered. I am flat broke and in debt, with two badly damaged vehicles. My body has been destroyed, and my safety and the safety of my family is constantly threatened.
I can trace literally all of these issues to the rampant corruption and inequality in our decaying pseudo-oligarchy. We don’t give a fuck about The Least of These in this town. There is not enough housing of any kind, no affordable housing, the job market is abysmal, our safety nets are nonexistent, and Animal Control and the cops just seem to exist for record keeping and flying helicopters over Rosedale suburban sprawl for security theater. Our environment is being destroyed, and just breathing the air here (even the air that doesn’t have Valley Fever spores) is almost as bad as half a pack of cigarettes a day. There are no mental health services of any kind available to most folks (and even if it is accessible it will be subpar at best,) and substance abuse treatment is a sham. People don’t live on the river and keep vicious dogs or try to steal shit (in the county with the highest rate of people killed by the police per capita in the United States) for shits and giggles. These are desperate people that the system turned its back on forty years ago and they are out of options. Most of them, like me, have mental health issues. I would probably wind up doing the same things were I in their shoes, in spite of every advantage and privilege I have experienced.
My representative and alleged neighbor, Kevin McCarthy, one of the most influential Republicans in D.C., has not made any effort to address any of these issues. He claims to visit “nearly every weekend,” but he has never held a local town hall meeting, and his priorities, as someone living nearby, confuse the hell out of me. He has not supported any legislation that might address these issues.
Instead, he has spent his time:
-voting against medical marijuana for veterans prescribed it for PTSD by their VA doctors
-doing damage control for co-workers that got caught having sex with children
-defending government officials spending massive amounts of taxpayer money at resorts Trump owned
-giving a record-breaking 8.5-hour speech on the House floor to delay the passage of the infrastructure bill
-making multiple jokes on camera about attacking an 81 year old female Democrat with a hammer
-purging non-Trump Republicans from positions of influence
-having at least one documented affair with a co-worker in D.C.
-trying to sell 60 million acres of public land for resource extraction
-repealing the ACA and stripping medical coverage from 24 million Americans
-tweeting that George Soros is “trying to buy the election” the day after the home of Soros was the target of a terrorist bombing attempt
-disseminating misinformation about the most secure and investigated democratic election in our nation’s history
-disseminating misinformation about the most dangerous virus of the contemporary era
-filing a frivolous lawsuit about mask mandates in D.C.
This man does not represent me, or anyone who works for a wage, or anyone who has to live in the district he is leveraging for his own political ends.
He represents slumlords, exploitative corporations, special interest and lobbyist groups, and the robber barons trying to get rich off the land under our feet, and at our expense.
Remember that in 2022.
