Didn’t know until today, I’m an environmental extremist.
Labeled such by Orange County’s toll road purveyors, the TCA.
Me and my extreme ilk are TCA’s excuse for hiring a secret army of high-paid lobbyists (TCA’s Board didn’t even know, oops) to stuff hungry congressman with TCA schmooze, booze and food, as TCA’s secret sell-squad extoll the virtues of OC toll roads while Pierre flames the soufflé and Andre pours more bubbly.
TCA claims their failing toll road effort is our fault.
Us eco-extremists, credited with stopping their long dreamt 241-south extension from paving pristine habitat. But after reading the Orange County Register’s secret lobbyists’ funny money fund expose, the accurate title for us is — Job Creators!
TCA’s secret feedbag lobbyists owe us eco-extremists for their exorbitant, ongoing, lunchtime sell-fest up in Sac & D.C.
Hail to us. We’re your Job Creators, you secret, free-range capital table hoppers.
The main course, please: Reported in the Register, OC’s toll road purveyors-TCA’s been secretly slipping tens of thousands of dollars to lobbyists (unbeknownst to their board), to counter our (environmental extremists) success: stopping TCA’s moronic 241-toll road extension from paving South County’s pristine natural habitat, the San Mateo Watershed.
A toll road plan so lame, if paved, would have become the least used vehicle venue in all of OC by 2030, according to the Orange County Transportation Authority. Hence the funny business that is TCA: creating underperforming, financially fraught OC toll roads few reading this ever use or see turns out to be a fat lunch op for sharp-suit lobbyists, paid for under TCA’s secret lunch table, out of sight of TCA’s too-busy board of directors.
Had TCA’s too-busy board bothered squinting at TCA’s mice-type Tome of Confuscation, kept purposely murky as not to burden TCA’s too-busy board with teeny-weeny details (where the devil always lives), they’d find TCA’s Lobbyist Donor Lunch Fund slithering between soup and salad, looking to circumvent what us eco-extremists succeeded at stopping: TCA’s irrelevant 241-south extension, while TCA’s secret lobbying army lunch, munch and lavish voraciously in D.C. & Sac, feeding needy SoCal electeds (Rep. Issa from Vista: richest in Congress, loves free toll road hospitality); (Rep. John Campbell, Riverside, notoriously overstuffed, a big eater of free); (Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Huntington Beach, loves toll roads, eats anything free).
Scroll TCA’s list of Sac & D.C.’s Free Lunch Bunch.
It’s as obvious as the foie gras juice dripping down the congressman’s triple-chin.
And it’s all due to us eco-extremists!!!
We’re TCA’s secret-sell-jobber’s Job Creators.
Without us, there’s no secret TCA lobbyist lunch cart.
Without us, hungry legislators would have to troll elsewhere on K Street for free lunch chits.
Who knew we’re responsible for keeping TCA’s secretly funded lobbyists fat and happy, and their Congress of Luncheon Co-conspirators even fatter?
But does TCA’s Free Lunch Bunch Brigade text us for lunch?
We eat too ya’know. And we eat cheap, being vegan and all.
So for all you fat-cat, shiny-suited TCA lobbyists forking it into that succulent congressman, guzzling his second bottle of 2008 Didier Dagueneau Silex Sauvignon Blanc on TCA’s dime, you owe us.
Jerry Collamer, a San Clemente-based activist and cartoonist, serves on the Voice of OC Community Editorial Board.