San Mateo County, Jackie Speier, and California Seceding?

Saturday we attended a coffee for Jackie Speier. She’s running for the vacant seat that the late Congressman Tom Lantos had. As you can see, she was surprised with a visit by the Easter Bunny, which was very cute. A good laugh for everyone attending, too.

Some of the key points Jackie mentioned were that California gives $50 BILLION to the federal budget and get practically nothing back in assistance. California is the Piggy Bank for the country. If California were to get the average amount of funding that most other states get, we’d see $3 Billion more than we do now.

She thinks California should secede from the US. As the 5th largest budget in the world, we are a pretty big state. She feels that the mentality in Washington DC is ABC: Anywhere But California and that needs to end. Obviously she’s joking but it is discouraging to watch Washington ignore our state with any aid while it expects us to keep paying in.

Jackie feels that higher education should be free to all who can qualify to attend. We have free education in primary and secondary schools and as a world-class country we should offer free college. There were over 200,000 students who were fully qualified to attend college last year and were unable to do so because of financial issues.

She’s for a single payer health system. She’s against earmarks.

The election is April 8th. Yes, it is another election squeezed between the presidential primary and our general primary in June. So what you say? You need to vote so San Mateo County has representation in Congress. Right now, we don’t.