Election 2014: James Kimber on Transportation
Today, mail ballots will be delivered all around San Diego County. In a month, San Diegans will vote on a variety of issues and for a variety of candidates. Below is a profile of one of the candidates running for congressional office, James Kimber.
James Kimber is running against incumbent Representative Duncan Hunter. Hunter represents the shaded area shown in the map below. As we well know by now, Hunter is in love with the past with a vision for the future that is decidedly out of step with reality. On climate change, Hunter believes it is not caused by human activity.
View CA-50 (113th Congress) in a larger map
Below is an excerpt of an email Kimber sent our way:
I absolutely would want to join the Congressional Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure if elected. I know Mr. Hunter is on the committee and think it’s shameful how little he has done, particularly in respects to the 50th District which needs more public transportation.
I’ve literally traveled all over the world and it’s amazing how many other countries have great mass transit yet here in the U.S. we are so far behind. I know everyone says ‘Californians love their cars’ but that’s quickly becoming an outdated saying particularly with the price of gasoline just continuing to rise, prices for food and everything else going up and wages stagnant. My office is in Escondido and it’s shocking to me to see the amount of traffic going to and from Temecula every day and it’s puzzling to me why we don’t have a line for the Coaster/Sprinter going that route.
In Valley Center there are so many people who come into Escondido for work yet there is only one bus very early in the morning and one late in the evening. Those who are working spend much of their day getting to and from their work and have little or no time to spend with their families. It seems incredulous that they can’t add one more bus to that route.
I’m a huge fan of the Metro line in Washington DC and have used similar trains around the world and just don’t understand why we don’t put more emphasis on that type of transportation. It’s sad to me that we spend what we do on items for National Defense and not on public transportation and infrastructure. By the way, I served 20 years in the Navy so I’m a huge supporter of our National Defense, but when we spent money on equipment that isn’t necessary or outdated, I don’t know why we can’t spend that money here. For example, in 2010 Congress allocated $35 million for a Command and Control Center in Afghanistan. This is a 64,000 square foot building with state of the art equipment and executive office equipment. The really awful part is this building was never used, not even for one day, and we are tearing it down because we can’t give it to Afghanistan. There is a contract for $771 million to provide aircraft to Afghanistan’s Air Force and they don’t even have the pilots to fly the aircraft. Add to that another $115 million a year in maintenance and training for that aircraft. Earlier this year Congress authorized half a billion to build more tanks for the U.S. Army. Aside from the fact that the Joint Chiefs and the General of the Army said conflicts of the future are not likely to be fought with tanks, we already have too many tanks and we have to store them out in the desert in Nevada. General Odierno, General of the Army, and the Secretary of the Army testified before Congress and told them we don’t need the tanks but Congress went ahead and authorized the funds to build more tanks so we can store them in the desert. By the way, the tanks are built in Ohio (John Boehner).
This is just one of many reasons why I want to run for Congress and I absolutely will fight to increase the funding for increased public transportation and I will not stop pushing until we have greater public transportation in San Diego County.