WENDELL ROBINSON . COM

The other night I had the opportunity to catch a few minutes of an interview with Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones on CSPAN’s Q&A program and I couldn’t help but be struck by how little she knows about the job she currently holds as well as the offices she’s previously possessed.  As someone who lives in Ms. Tubbs Jones’ district, I was doubly troubled by this revelation.

CSPAN’s Brian Lamb asked Tubbs Jones numerous questions about the duties and administration associated with her new position as Chairwoman of the House Ethics Committee.   Sadly, she had a great deal of difficulty explaining her responsibilities and she showed a limited knowledge of the staffing and associative personnel.  It would be one thing if she was a new member of the committee, but… she’s been serving on the committee for six years and a member of Congress for eight.  I’m not expecting her to know every person that works in the Capitol building, but I am expecting her to know with whom it is she works.

As troubling as her answers were about her new duties, her comments about her time (ten years) as a judge were even worse.  When she was asked about the death penalty, she quickly offered her adamant opposition.  When asked if she had ever been involved in a death penalty trial as a judge she said (and this is a quote because it surprised me so much that I had to write it down), “two… maybe three.”

Huh?  Was it two or was it three? No offense Congresswoman, but if you’re so strongly opposed to the death penalty, I would think that you MIGHT REMEMBER HOW MANY TIMES YOU WERE ASKED TO CONSIDER PUTTING SOMEONE TO DEATH - especially if it were only two or three times.

As if contemplating Ms. Tubbs Jones’ lack of knowledge about what she’s done and now does, I found myself looking out the back window of my house, across the backyard and into conman Dennis Kucinich’s district.  You see not only am I a constituent of Stephanie Tubbs Jones, but I live right on the border of Ohio’s 10th and 11th Congressional Districts.  The back end of my backyard is the demarcation line!  My address is so unique that I receive official mailings from both Tubbs Jones and Kucinich’s congressional offices.

As I stared out the window onto Cleveland’s westside, I declared to the empty room that my home is dead center in the middle of the NRZ - the No Representation Zone.  Woe is me for living someplace where my own member of Congress knows so little about her job and the guy on the other side of the fence is so disinterested in his own.

Just to illustrate this last point, the conman was on WKYC TV-3’s Sunday political round-up show, “Between the Lines” with Tom Beres (sorry I was going to include a link with the video - Beres seems to be the only local TV media person who’s main focus is politics and he does a good job covering both local and national stuff - but TV-3’s website is a non-navigable electronic disaster) where he declared to Beres that his appointment  as Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommittee of the Government Reform Committee will give him a forum to help promote his presidential ambitions… what happened to serving your commmunity and the constituents that voted you into office where you’re supposed to be a congressman - not a conman?

One of the rallying cries last year for local Democrats was how important it was to gain majority control in the House and Senate so that our members of Congress, Tubbs Jones and the conman would be able to promote the community.  It’s very early, but what I’m seeing right now is not very comforting.

Please Congresswoman and conman on behalf of this community - please do your jobs.  We can’t afford to live in the NRZ.