Rep. Joe Baca
10:00 PM PDT on Sunday, June 19, 2011
The Press-Enterprise
Between the U.S. Open at Congressional Country Club and the rabid anticipation of this past weekend’s “golf summit” between President Barack Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, Washington has been consumed with the sport.
Inland Rep. Joe Baca , one of the most avid golfers on the DC scene, was in the middle of the fun. In recent days, mentions of Baca’s prowess on the links were in the New York Times , the Washington Post and even this month’s Sports Illustrated golf supplement, which contained speculation that the Rialto Democrat might be tapped to fill out the presidential foursome.
Ultimately, Vice President Joe Biden and Ohio’s Republican Gov. John Kasich were selected to join Obama and Boehner.
“I probably would have helped the president a lot more than the person he selected,” Baca joked late last week, before Saturday’s planned round.
Baca, who has played with the likes of Arnold Palmer, Bill Clinton and Chi Chi Rodriguez and is chairman of an actual group called the Congressional Golf Taskforce, might have a point.
He is ranked 20th on Golf Digest’s new list of Washington’s top 150 golfers, which shows him with a 4.2 handicap. Baca insists his handicap is closer to 3. Biden, meanwhile, was listed as 29th, Boehner 43rd and Obama came in at number 108 on the list, which includes lobbyists, members of Congress and administration officials. Rep. Mary Bono Mack , R-Palm Springs also made the list at number 133.
Baca, who repeatedly asked Obama to play a round with him, said Obama finally agreed when Baca approached him during a recent meeting with lawmakers.
“He said. ‘Yes, we’re going to have to make it happen,’ ” Baca recounted. “First he was telling me, ‘I have to wait until my putting is a little better.’ ”
As for advice for Obama, who is new to the game, Baca stressed the importance of not overestimating one’s ability when deciding which club to choose for any given shot.
“So often all of us have the tendency of letting our egos get in the way,” he said.
Issa’s wealth
Members of Congress were required to disclose information about their personal finances last week. Once again, Rep. Darrell Issa is near the top of the list.
Issa, R-Vista, whose invention of the Viper car alarm helped him amass a fortune, is worth a minimum of over $220 million, and possibly much more.
It is difficult to tell the exact worth of lawmakers, since they provide information about the value of personal assets and holdings. Issa, for example, disclosed 17 assets worth between $5 million and $25 million each and two assets as simply more than $50 million.
The $220 million figure is based on the low end of the spectrum for each of the scores of assets disclosed by Issa, who represents much of southwestern Riverside County.
OpenSecrets.org, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics, has set out on its annual mission to analyze each member’s personal finances and rank them according to overall wealth. . Because the exact numbers are unknown, the final tally represents the “average estimated worth” of each member of Congress, said Dave Levinthal, the group’s spokesman.
To read entire notebook, click here.
This is not a surprise. Worthless Joe Baca spends most of his time golfing and otherwise screwing the taxpayers. What little time he has for earning his overpaid paycheck he spends advocating for illegal aliens. This guy is beyond loathesome.
If he was half the congressman that he is the golfer…
3 handicap my ass lololol….He also says he can pitch a baseball 80mph…typical politician douche bag…He is a 9 handiap TOPS (and yes I have played with him)
“According to the Los Angeles Times, Baca, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, directed Caucus funds from its PAC[5] BOLDPAC (Building Our Leadership Diversity)[6] to the unsuccessful California campaigns of his sons, Joe Baca, Jr. and Jeremy Baca.[7] At the time, Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) and five other members dropped out of the PAC in protest of these actions.[5] They alleged that the funds, meant to elect Hispanic candidates, should not have been used to help Baca’s sons run against Hispanic candidates and that in a previous race funded by the PAC, Joe Jr. had run against Hispanic candidates.[6]
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) released a report stating that Rep. Baca had paid his daughter $27,000 from campaign funds and donated more than $20,000 to his sons’ political campaigns from his own campaign funds.[8] They also report accusations that were made in 2006 by former members of Baca’s Washington staff that they were sent to California in 2004 for a staff retreat and pressured to work on Joe Baca, Jr.’s campaign for the state Assembly on their paid time for the senior Baca.[1]
On January 31, 2007, The Politico reported that Rep. Baca had called Loretta Sanchez a “whore.” Citing Baca’s alleged insult and the perceived impropriety in Baca’s election to chairman of the CHC, as well as Baca’s treatment of Latina members in the CHC, Loretta Sanchez resigned from the Caucus along with her sister, three other female California members and one female member from Arizona.7″
“HC Chairman Joe Baca (D-CA) is named one of the 10 Worst Members of Congress by Esquire Magazine! Way to go Working Joe!
October 25th, 2008
Esquire magazine has released a list of the 10 Worst Members of Congress, and the Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Representative Joe Baca (D-CA) has made the list. Esquire states:
“As chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Baca steered CHC funds to the campaigns of his two sons. When Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez called him on it, he did the mature thing and called her a “whore.” Nice. So Baca’s corrupt and venal.”
We have known that Congressman Baca has been trying to get his kids jobs for years. His son Joe Baca Jr. currently sits on the Rialto city council in San Bernardino County, California, and his other son Jeremy, has lost both an assembly race and a run for the Colton city council. Jeremy Baca also has a drunk driving conviction and an earlier arrest related to a fight with an ex-girlfriend. What a lovely role model for los jóvenes in Colton, no? And if you really want proof of how shameless Working Joe Baca can be about trying to hook up his children with jobs, you must listen to this clip of his daughter singing at the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala, courtesy of the bloggers at the Coconut Caucus. If the Baca children had more talent, I don’t think that the their pops would be labeled among the worst, but I don’t see any Kennedy, Daley, Roosevelt, or even Bush dynasty potential in this gene pool.”
The Baca’s, Mexico’s answer to La Raza.