Comments on: Garamendi visits CD10 again today

By: Rich

Rich — Thu, 28 May 2009 00:36:21 +0000

I agree the voters deserve choice, but I don’t think it makes sense to elect John Garamendi a guy from the Sacramento Valley to be the Congresman from Contra Costa. The Sacramento County region is known for sprawl, smog choked air, mediocre schools, weak transportation links, and low wages. Garamendi has to be reponsible for some of this, he represented Sacramento County in the legislature for much of the 70′s and 80′s. Contra Costa County, in contrast, is known for it’s high wages, good schools, and very good transportation links, good parks, and the like. We have this progressive tradition in the county, a direct result of all these progressive politicians we’ve had like George Miller, Tom Torlakson, Tauscher and so on. I find it sort of laughable that Garamendi is coming to Contra Costa County to tell us how we need
do things here. If we just had big John Garamendo running the show in contra Costa, things will improve here locally. I mean he should stay in Sacramento and try and fix the air quality in the Sac Valley, in my view.

By: Adriel Hampton

Adriel Hampton — Sun, 24 May 2009 02:30:10 +0000

Well said, Thepolity. The Lt. Gov. is the most experienced candidate in the race and has clearly articulated his reasons for running and vision if he is elected. I hope that his candidacy will force the race to be about issues and vision and not simply who has which endorsements. The voters deserve rigorous debate and real choice.

By: thepolity

thepolity — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:03:53 +0000

John Garamendi is a kind-hearted person and eloquent public speaker. Great to read that he spoke at the Solano Community College commencement yesterday because his advocacy for higher education and career technical education is unsurpassed.

By: REW

REW — Sat, 23 May 2009 00:26:23 +0000

Garamendi’s needs to visit the CD 10 district a lot -especially Contra Costa County – because he doesn’t know the voters, or local elected officials, nor is he familiar with local issues. Basically he’s a Sacamento based out-of-town ringer trying to get himself elected to the CD 10 seat, despite weak ties to the district, Contra Costa in particular. The bulk of the voters in this district are from Contra Costa, a place Garamendi flies over from time to time when he’s landing at the Sacramento air-port. If he’s familair with our county it’s only from looking out the window of a jet. He has spent much of his time recently campaigning for Governor in LA, a campaign he gave up on because nobody was taking his run for Governor seriously. Inasfar as this CD 10 seat is concerned, Garamendi is basically a central valley politician trying to horn in on a bay area based congressional seat.

By: RR

RR — Fri, 22 May 2009 22:16:04 +0000

Hope he doesn’t get lost if the GPS is out of date.

By: JK

JK — Fri, 22 May 2009 16:53:43 +0000

I wonder if Garamendi will explain his role in the Enron case of the 1990′s: Executive Life.

What happened to the millions spent to supposedly assist policyholders to recover the billions lost in this blatant case of fraud? Why did Garamendi charge the policyholders millions of dollars for consulting fees with top investment bankers to set a value on Executive Life’s junk bonds, when he never disclosed their finding? This allowed him to tell the court that ‘he didn’t know the value of the bonds’ and to sell them to Credit Lyonnais and Leon Black at fire sale prices. What happened to a report that his own department staff completed that set a face value to the bonds but was never made public?

John Garamendi accepted big bucks campaign contributions from law firms that the Department of Insurance retained to litigate the Executive Life case. Was the money a gratuity or an incentive?

Annuity holders of Exec Life lost $5B. They
lost their homes and retirements.

When will Garamendi answer these questions?