| Ken Calvert has always
supported a Conservative Christian position especially when it comes to
Church and State issues. It is apparent from the data collected, that
the first amendment may be in danger from his past and future actions.
Upon calling his office and asking about the
Ken's religion of
choice, we find that Wicca,
Shintoism,
Islam, and everything except Christianity
"..aren't "Real" religions." What is a real religion, Mr. Calvert?
What you have been practicing? Read the following and remember: "By
their Works may they be known."
(Remember it is best to investigate on your own when looking at
allegations about anyone. Don't believe us, think for
yourself and investigate for yourself! And remember, the First
Amendment Coalition does not represent any political party nor do we
recommend any political candidate, nor are we involving ourselves in the
political process.
Early
Life and Education
Kenneth Stanton (Ken) Calvert (born
June 8, 1953), an
American
politician, has been a
Republican
member of the
United States House of Representatives
since 1993, representing
California's 44th congressional
district. The district is
part of the
Inland Empire
and south Orange County areas of
Southern California.
Calvert was born in
Corona, California
to Marceline Hamblen and Ira D. Calvert, Jr., and still
lives in Corona. In 1970, shortly after high school, he
joined the campaigns of former state legislator
Victor Veysey.
Calvert worked in Veysey's Washington, D.C., office as an
intern after a 1972 victory.
Calvert received an associate of
arts degree from
Chaffey Community College
in 1973 and a bachelors of arts degree
San Diego State University
in 1975. After graduation, he managed his family's
restaurant, the Jolly Fox, in Corona for five years. He then
entered the real estate industry and ran Ken Calvert Real
Properties until he was elected to
Congressional Career
Elections
In 1982, the 29 year old Calvert
ran for the
United States House of Representatives
to represent a newly drawn district. He narrowly lost the
Republican primary to Riverside County Supervisor
Al McCandless,
who had been the choice of the Republican establishment.
McCandless went on to win the general election.
Calvert was first elected to the
House in 1992, when McCandless was re-elected in a different
district. Calvert won the general election with 47% of the
vote (a plurality, but he was the highest vote-getter),
defeating Democrat Mark A. Takano by 519 votes. In 1994, he
was challenged in the Republican primary by Joe Khoury and
won renomination by only 51% to 49%. He was re-elected in
the 1994 general election with 55 percent, again defeating
Takano.
In 1996, he was re-elected with
54 percent of the vote, defeating Democrat Guy Kimbrough. In
1998 he defeated Democrat Mike Rayburn with 55 percent of
the vote. Calvert won again in 2000 with 74 percent of the
vote, facing no major-party opposition.
Calvert was re-elected in 2002,
defeating Louis Vandenberg with 64 percent of the vote. He
defeated Vandenberg again in 2004 with 61 percent of the
vote. Vandenberg, a college administrator, was again
Calvert's opponent in the November 2006 election.[2]
Calvert won with 59.6 percent of the vote; Vandenburg got
37.5 percent.[2]
In 2008, he had a surprisingly
close race. He ran against Democratic candidate
Bill Hedrick,
receiving 51.8% of the vote.[3]
Calvert declared victory immediately, but Hedrick waited
three weeks before conceding, due to higher than normal
turnout prolonging the vote-counting process.[4]
Real estate investments
A map of Calvert's recent real
estate holdings and those of a partner, Woodrow Harpole Jr.,
show many of them near the transportation projects he has
supported with federal appropriations. For example, Calvert
and Harpole own properties close to a bus depot in Corona
for which Calvert sought funding. According to development
experts, improvements to the transportation infrastructure
have contributed to the area's explosive growth.
Calvert said he had used
earmarking solely to benefit his district. Those
appropriations, he said, have had nothing to do with his
investments or financial gains. Noting that property values
have climbed throughout the Inland Empire, he added: "They
haven't passed a law against investing yet."
Calvert's May 2005 financial
disclosure statement showed that he owned eight parcels of
land, most in Riverside County, as of December 31, 2004.[11]
On May 19, 2006, The Riverside
Press-Enterprise, the sixth largest newspaper in California,
editorialized that The Los Angeles Times got the facts wrong
and in fact, there was no impropriety on the part of Rep.
Calvert
[12].
Rep. Calvert has stated that all requests for federal
funding come from local entities.
March Air Reserve Base
In 2005, Calvert and Harpole
paid $550,000 for a 4.3-acre (17,000 m2) parcel
just south of
March Air Reserve Base.
Calvert's real estate firm, where Calvert's brother, Quint,
is the president,[13]
and Halpole is vice president, received brokerage fees from
the seller, Rod Smith of
Greeley, Colorado,
for representing both buyer and seller in the deal. Less
than a year later, Calvert and Harpole sold the property for
nearly $1 million. During the time he owned the land,
Calvert used the earmarking process to secure $8 million in
federal funds for a freeway interchange 16 miles (26 km)
from the property, and an additional $1.5 million to support
commercial development of the area around the base.
Cajalco and I-15 interchange
In early summer 2005, Harpole
bought property with a group of investors at 20330 Temescal
Canyon Road, a few blocks from the site of the what was then
a proposed interchange at Cajalco and I-15. The purchase
price was $975,000. Within six months, after the bill passed
that provided federal funding for the interchange, they sold
the parcel for $1.45 million. Calvert's firm took a
commission on the sale.[11]
Jurupa CS District
In the spring of 2006, Calvert
and Harpole purchased 4 acres (16,000 m2) of land
from Jurupa Community Services District (JCSD), a water and
sewer district in northwestern Riverside County, for $1.2
million, along with five investment partners who jointly had
a one-third interest. A newspaper investigation reported in
August 2006 that the district apparently never first offered
the land to other public agencies, a requirement of state
law intended to provide more recreational land. The
district's general manager said other agencies were
notified, but representatives of those agencies said they
received no such notice. The district could not provide
evidence of the notification, saying relevant files had been
misplaced.
The community services district
did not advertise or list the land for sale, a practice
required by counties and many other public agencies seeking
top dollar on behalf of taxpayers. District general manager
Carole McGreevy, who is stepping down from that position in
late 2006 and retiring in late 2007, said the district
proclaimed the land surplus in the early 1990s after it was
no longer needed for flood control. The record of that
decision was among the missing documents, as was the updated
appraisal that McGreevy said was done in May 2005.
The land could have served as a
community park in a predominately Hispanic, lower-income
neighborhood in
Mira Loma.
The Calvert partnership plans to build a mini-storage
business.[13]
In August 2008, the Jurupa Area Recreation and Parks
District (JARPD) filed a lawsuit against JCSD, alleging
fraud in the sale of the land. In August 2009, the FBI was
looking into the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for Calvert said he
had not been contacted by the FBI or a grand jury and did
not believe that he was a focus of any investigation.[14]
Controversy
Calvert was named one of the 15
most corrupt members of Congress by
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics
in Washington. They accuse
him of gaining personally from
earmarks,
making allegedly illegal land deals, and having questionable
ties to a lobbying firm that is under
investigation by the
FBI.[15]
Personal
In 1993 he was caught by police
receiving oral sex from a prostitute and attempted to flee
the scene.[16][17]
The Riverside Press-Enterprise went to court to force the
Corona police to release the police report. Also in 1993,
Calvert and his former wife, Robin, were divorced after 15
years of marriage. In addition, his father committed
suicide.
After these experiences, Calvert said that the experiences
"have helped me mature greatly... and become a better
person."[18]
References
-
calvert
-
California Secretary of State,
2006 general election results,
U.S. Congress District 44, accessed November 14,
2006
-
California Secretary of State,
2008 general election results,
U.S. Congress District 44, accessed December 8, 2008
-
Riverside Press-Enterprise,
[1],
accessed December 8, 2008
- 1996
Congressional Quarterly Almanac
-
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c104:15:./temp/~c1049CzcDF
-
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.19.IH
-
http://www.calwater.ca.gov/calfed/about/index.html
-
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR02828:@@@D&summ2=m&
-
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/D?d109:10:./temp/~bdynlx::|/bss/d109query.html
-
a
b
Tom Hamburger, Lance Pugmire and Richard Simon,
"Rep. Calvert's Land of
Plenty: He has earmarked funds for Riverside County
projects near properties he sold for a profit.",
Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2006
- The
Riverside Press Enterprise Editorial "False Alarm"
May 19, 2006
-
a
b
David Danelski and Sandra Stokely,
"Sale of park site draws
questions",
Press-Enterprise, August 17, 2006
-
Susan Crabtree. "Rep.
Calvert denies he's subject of FBI investigation".
The Hill.
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/63757-rep-calvert-denies-hes-subject-of-fbi-investigation.
-
http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/summaries/calvert.php
- Alex
Brant-Zawadzki,
Of Pork and Ken: Local
congressman likes toll roads, money, blowjobs",
Orange County Weekly, February 16, 2006
-
http://www.redstate.com/files/calvertarrest.jpg
-
Robinson, Jack. "Two years have brought Calvert
crises, lessons."
Riverside Press Enterprise.
November 3, 1994. Page B01.
External links
Republican Ken Calvert,
representing California's smog-shrouded 43rd Congressional District in the
U.S. House of Representatives, is on record as having earned 100% ratings
from the Christian Coalition. Calvert's rating from the prostitutes'-rights
group COYOTE is unavailable for publication, despite documented evidence of
Calvert's time in the field researching conditions in the hooker workplace.
On October 8, 1998,
Congressman Calvert rhetorically asked his House compatriots: "Did
[President Clinton] obstruct justice in a sexual-harassment case? Did he
intimidate witnesses? Did he abuse his Presidential power? Only impeachment
hearings will answer these serious questions."
Congressman Calvert
probably felt qualified to prejudge the Chief Executive because the
California legislator holds a particular insight into the psychology of a
man of position faced with sexual allegations from his social inferiors.
Would a politician dare to abuse the power of his office to squash public
disclosure of his sordid sexual practices? Ken Calvert knows beyond any
shadow of doubt that the answer is a resounding yes.
During the early-morning
hours of November 28, 1993, police officers from Corona, California, spotted
Ken Calvert engaged in sex in a parked car. The partial truth of this
encounter would be hidden until almost half a year later. For months,
Calvert denied that he had done anything wrong with the woman who had been
ensconced with him in the vehicle. Police later identified her as a known
prostitute, but at the time of the initial press report on the matter,
Calvert insisted that "nothing happened."
Corona police would only
reveal that the Congressman had been observed in his car with a female and
that the couple had exhibited no sign of criminal activity.
Corona Police Captain John
Dalzell explained that Calvert was not detained because "while the officer
saw certain things, he didn't see everything necessary to support a finding
that a crime was committed." According to Dalzell, the responding officer's
decision to send Calvert freely on his way "wasn't a close call. He didn't
even call for a supervisor." Such are the perks of public office.
The Riverside [California]
Press-Enterprise doubted the explanation provided by Calvert and the cops.
The newspaper went to court to force the Corona police to release the
confidential report prepared by the cops at the scene of the "noncrime."
These officers most certainly recognized that they had encountered their
local Congressman with his genitals literally exposed.
The police report is
inconsistent with both Calvert's and the Corona P.D.'s versions of events.
In the words of assisting officers Steve Sears and Fred Austin: "I observed
a male subject in the driver seat....As I made my way to the driver door, a
female immediately sat up straight in the front passenger seat. It appeared
as if her head was originally laying [sic] in the driver's lap.... Both
subjects were extremely nervous....
"I noticed that the male
subject was placing his penis into his unzipped dress slacks, and was trying
to hide it with his untucked dress shirt....The male subject started his
vehicle and placed it into drive and proceeded to leave. I ordered him three
times to turn off the vehicle, and he finally stopped and complied....The
male identified himself as Kenneth Stanton Calvert...and stated 'We're just
talking that's all, nothing else.'...I spoke with [Calvert's female
companion, Lore Lorena] Linberg separately. I asked her if she had ever been
arrested for anything, and she said, 'Yes, for prostitution and under the
influence of heroin.' Linberg said she had last 'shot up' approximately one
week prior and is currently on methadone."
Once the facts had been
forced into the open, Calvert quickly responded with an apology, a simple
explanation and a denial. The Congressman acknowledged that he had been
caught in "an extremely embarrassing situation," then made the
extraordinarily hard-to-swallow claim that he had not paid for sex from an
established professional. Calvert further defied credibility by claiming
that he had "panicked and tried to drive away," but "came to my senses."
Calvert presented a very
plausible explanation for his conduct: "I was feeling intensely lonely."
The lawmaker did not,
however, offer any explanation of why he had lied about an illicit sexual
contact for months, nor why he so vehemently begrudged another man's use of
sexi.e., President Bill Clintonto soften the hard isolation of elective
office.
NEXT From Huffington Post
October 20, 2009:
Rep. Ken Calvert Is an Embarrassment to
California -- Should He Step Down?
Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howie-klein/rep-ken-calvert-is-an-emb_b_327679.html
Ken Calvert, who represents a suburban Inland
Empire district in southern Orange County and western Riverside County
(CA-44), has been on our
radar for a very
long time -- and yesterday's announcement of an
FBI investigation
of one of California's most
incorrigible political crooks
registered as more overdue than unexpected. A former real estate
speculator, Calvert first came to the attention of non-political junkies
when he was arrested -- a Republican "Family Values" hypocrite -- with a
young woman he didn't know in a parked car, his pants down around his
knees. (She turned out to be Lore Lorena Lindberg, a heroin addict with
several prostitution convictions.)
But even before that, Congressman Calvert
was involved with a series of shady real estate deals, the same pay for
play scam that led to the conviction of his buddy and political ally
Randy "Duke" Cunningham, and an
international espionage and bribery caper
in Saudi Arabia with convicted felons Cunningham and Thomas
Kontogiannis.
In Calvert's case, it's hard to know where
to start sorting through all the garbage. Probably the best place to
start is by looking at his real estate dealings and how they have been
impacted by his
earmarks on the
House Transportation Committee. To put it really simply, Calvert would
make sure millions of taxpayer dollars were spent on building roads to
worthless parcels of land that he and his shady business partner, a
character named Woody Harpole, bought for pennies and sold, because of
the government-financed improvements, for dollars.
If you look at Calvert's and Harpole, Jr's
real estate investments, it's impossible not to notice that they cluster
around transportation projects that Calvert supported with taxpayer
dollars -- like in a Corona area which has experienced a good deal of
bubble-like growth because of a bus depot Calvert got funded. Calvert's
firm, which his brother heads, bought a 4.3 acre parcel near the March
Air Reserve Base and Calvert immediately got to work getting an $8
million freeway exchange built so he could sell the land for double what
he paid for it. Same thing happened with a site they bought at Temescal
Canyon Road near a proposed interchange at Cajalco and the I-15.
Calvert, according to the L.A. Times
profited handsomely
for his blatant conflict of interest. Calvert snickers when reporters
ask him about this stuff: "They haven't passed a law against investing
yet."
Even for a speculator like Calvert, it was
an unusually good deal.
During the time he owned the land,
Calvert used the legislative process known as earmarking to secure
$8 million for a planned freeway interchange 16 miles from the
property, and an additional $1.5 million to support commercial
development of the area around the airfield.
A map of Calvert's recent real estate
holdings and those of his partner shows many of them near the
transportation projects he has supported with federal
appropriations. And improvements to the transportation
infrastructure have contributed to the area's explosive growth,
according to development experts.
...What sets Calvert's actions apart
from the traditional efforts of lawmakers to bring federal dollars
home to their districts is that some of the spending has gone for
improvements near his private real estate ventures, and he has used
earmarking to secure the tax dollars... He also has secured funds
for a number of projects pushed by campaign contributors, including
employees of the Washington lobbying firm of Copeland Lowery &
Jacquez, his top political donor in the last election cycle.
But the most serious questions, ethics
specialists say, involve Calvert's participation in real estate
ventures in which his earmarks for highway and other improvements
may have contributed to rising land values and created at least the
appearance that he personally benefited.
The latest bit of malfeasance involves 4
acres Calvert and Harpole bought from the Jurupa Community Services
District in 2006 for $1.2 million. The land was purchased as part of a
sweetheart deal and was clearly done illegally, the district neither
looking for competitive bids nor offering it to other state agencies.
(The Riverside County Grand Jury has already ruled that Calvert's
acquisition violated state law.) A predominantly Hispanic neighborhood,
Mira Loma, wants to use the land as a community park and baseball field;
Calvert is determined to turn it into mini-self-storage units. When
Calvert came under scrutiny for the deal, he lied about it and claimed
he was a silent partner.
But, in the 2006 L.A. Times story
linked above, about another fortuitous land sale of Calvert's, Harpole
was quoted that he had to consult with Calvert when investing Calvert's
money: "[O]f course I have to consult with him if we are looking at
investing his money." Harpole also said at the time, "I told him about
one [deal] and he said, 'No, I don't think so.'"
Calvert's partnership negotiated an extended
escrow period of up to 15 months which worked to Calvert's benefit since
at the time real estate experts argues that prices were rising 15 to 25
percent a year. Additionally, while the property was still in escrow, a
higher offer came in -- and was rejected -- bolstering claims that the
deal was done to help curry political favor with Calvert's office. All
this led to the Riverside County Grand Jury, in 2007, finding that the
Jurupa Community Services District violated state law when it sold the
land to Calvert and his partners without offering it to other local
agencies first, including the Park District, which had shown interest in
the land. The Jurupa Park District announced this summer that it would
be forced to spend $1.7 million in 2009-2010 in expected legal costs
tied to the Calvert land deal -- more tax dollars Calvert is costing the
hard-pressed residents of Riverside County.
Calvert has always denied every single crime
he's been involved in. Even with his penis clearly in plain view
(according to the official police report) he told the arresting officer
he and the prostitute were "just chatting." He claims all his perfectly
routine real estate shenanigans are made to look nefarious because of
political vendettas against him. Last year, the voters in CA-44 seemed
to be having second thoughts about Calvert, who eked out a razor thin
victory against a little-known -- and massively outspent -- Bill
Hedrick, 51-49%. Hedrick spent $191,461 or $1.48 per vote he received.
Calvert spent $1,150,432-- $8.85 per vote!
Calvert fought against this past March's
Helping Families Save Their Homes Act, even though over 16,000 families
have been foreclosed on in his district and even though the 4 year
projection rate for CA-44 is for over 53,400 families to lose their
homes. Now, with Calvert adamantly
opposing meaningful health care reform
against the wishes of his constituents (146,000
of whom have no health insurance coverage), it is likely that the latest
round of scandals will be the final nail in the coffin of his political
career. Bill Hedrick, in fact, is
running against him
again. Unfortunately, the big lobbyists and corporate special interests
who are so well served by Calvert's ethics-free operations have opened
the funding gates wide for him again and he's already up $773,633 to
Hedrick's $122,672.
Read more at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/howie-klein/rep-ken-calvert-is-an-emb_b_327679.html
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