Posts from — November 2007

In their efforts to distract voters from from their record of corruption and incompetence, the Republican Party has adopted the strategy of waging war against undocumented immigrants. Voters should beware. The destruction that the Bush administration’s politically-guided management has left in Iraq and New Orleans alone should be ample proof that politics, or at least Republican politics, makes bad policy. Real people’s lives, the lives of our brothers and sisters, our friends and neighbors, will be affected by the decisions made regarding immigration policy. We should reject any attempt to make changes in policy a tool for political gain, whether by Republicans or Democrats.

The New York Times ran a story on November 17th that highlights the effect that the Bush administration’s stepped-up enforcement is having on the children of undocumented parents, many of whom are U.S. citizens and are being forced to choose between remaining in their own country or being with their parents when the parents are deported. An estimated 3 million children with undocumented parents are U.S. citizens. More and more of them will be affected by parental deportation as the Republican war on immigrants heats up prior to the 2008 election.

It is my hope that citizens of the 6th Congressional district will reject Peter Roskam’s anti-family immigration policies and reject any Democrat who embraces them.

Kudos to John Laesch, who is running for Denny Hastert’s seat in IL-14 and is standing up to Jim Oberweis on his anti-immigrant campaign. It’s a shame about Jim Oberweis. I’ve always wanted to try his ice cream but he keeps running for stuff on the same hateful platform and I can’t bring myself to do it. Hope IL-06 Dems will follow John’s lead.

On Wednesday, November 14, Peter Roskam voted to continue the war in Iraq and refused to outlaw torture and inhumane treatment of prisoners in the conduct of that war, continuing to demonstrate his unfailing support for the policies of the Bush administration.

Roskam voted “no” on H.R. 4156: Orderly and Responsible Iraq Redeployment Appropriations Act, 2008. The bill, if enacted would:

• Express the opinion of the Congress that U.S. military personnel, should be commended for their work in Iraq and Afghanistan, that the war in Iraq should be brought to a rapid conclusion and our troops brought home as quickly as possible, and that funds allocated under this bill should be used, not to prolong the war, but rather to end it. (These are non-binding provisions).
• Prohibit allocated funds from being used in violation of the United Nations conventions regarding torture
• Prohibit the president from deploying a military unit to Iraq that he has not certified as “fully mission capable”
• Prohibit allocated funds from being used to establish permanent bases in Iraq or from being used to exercise control over Iraqi oil
• Require the administration to report to Congress on it’s plans for attaining regional stability in the Middle East and on measure of progress in Iraq
• Provide funding for the troops

The bill passed in the House and was referred to the Senate.

On Saturday, in his weekly radio address, President Bush berated the Congress for not supporting the troops and, paradoxically, threatened to veto the spending bill that he was demanding they pass. Why? Because, he says, Congress is telling his generals what to do.

But aside from expressing the sense of the Congress regarding an end to the war, the bill only demands 4 things:

1. Don’t torture
2. Don’t steal Iraqi oil
3. Don’t set up permanent military bases in Iraq
4. Keep the Congress informed as to how things are going

So what does Peter Roskam’s and George Bush’s refusal to support this bill to fund the troops?

• They want to be able to continue to practice torture and other inhumane treatment
• They want to control Iraqi oil reserves
• They want to occupy Iraq permanently
• And they believe that they should be able to do whatever they want without any accountability to the American public, and, in Peter’s case, to the voters in his district

I had been hearing Stan Jagla’s name as a challenger for Peter Roskam’s seat for a while but didn’t know anything about him. Now I see that now he’s got a web site up and I like what I see in his mission statement a lot better than what I see from Jill Morgenthaler, who appears to want to enlist in Peter Roskam’s anti-immigrant campaign, a stance that would make her very hard to support.

In his introductory statement Stan says:

“We cannot stay the course. We must change the course. We must take our country back from those who govern for the benefit of the privileged few, and return it to democratic policies that benefit the vast majority of Americans.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

From reading Bridget in the Sixth I learned that there is a petition challenge. I wish Stan well with that challenge and with his primary campaign.

On Thursday, Nov 15th, just before leaving for his Thanksgiving vacation, Peter Roskam again voted against a package of services that would help Illinois veterans.

The measure, H.R. 3043, would have provided significant aid to veterans returning from service in Afghanistan and Iraq and facing problems associated with job loss and disabilities such as traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. The vote was to override President Bush’s veto. Peter Roskam and many of his Republican colleagues voted to support the President in his effort to deny funding for veterans services including:

• $228 million for employment programs for veterans
• $3.6 billion for job training programs
• $3.4 billion in unemployment-insurance and employment-services programs
• $906 million for mental health services
• $23.6 million for homeless veterans

The President and the Republican delegation labeled these items as “pork” in defending their decisions.

Roskam likes to pose for pictures with wounded veterans to promote his political aims, but when it comes to supporting our returning soldiers with funding for needed services, Roskam says “no”.

Peter Roskam has evidently decided that there are votes to be gained by being a bully. He and his Republican colleagues are scared. 7 years of Republican administration have left the country in miserable shape. We are fighting a horribly misguided war in Iraq that is leaving our military in a dangerously weakened state. Our reputation in the world is in tatters. The lawless administration has embraced torture and endless detention, even of U.S. citizens with out recourse to courts. The regulatory agencies that protect the quality of our environment and the safety of our food, drugs and workplaces over to industry lobbyists. And we are beginning a descent into recession as a result of unsound Republican economic and regulatory policies.

And so what does any good Republican like Peter do when faced with the disastrous consequences of his own policies? Why find someone weak and voiceless to blame it all on and run for office based upon their toughness against this so-called enemy. That is what Peter Roskam and his allies have done in their endorsement of anti-gay bigotry and that is exactly what they are trying to do now with their get-tough policies regarding undocumented immigrants. There is no immigration crisis. There is only a crisis in the Republican party relative to their dismal prospects in the 2008 elections.

Now Peter Roskam has launched another salvo against undocumented workers in the form of H.R. 4176, the Prevention of Unsafe Licensing Act. The bill, if enacted, would prevent the individual states from issuing drivers licenses to undocumented workers. It is another attempt to appease and incite the xenophobic right and the expense of a class of our hard-working, tax-paying friends and neighbors. This bill will not only take food from the mouths and clothes from the backs of these workers but will increase the financial risk to all Illinois citizens as unlicensed motorists cannot obtain insurance.

We have laws already to allow the Federal government to detain and deport undocumented workers. This bill is simply piling on for political gain and it should be rejected. Common decency and humanity demand that it be rejected.

In a new op-ed on his congressional web site dated 11/24/2007 (a week from this coming Saturday), Peter Roskam trumpets that “The time for mandatory employee verification is now.” That left me scratching my head for a minute but I have since regained my composure.

Roskam, reaching for votes from the xenophobic right while trying to scare the rest of us into supporting a bad law, goes on to conflate the issues of undocumented immigration and airport security, and, if that wasn’t enough, to blame the failures of George Bush’s incompetent Department of Homeland Security on Governor Blagojevich.

That the Bush Administration can’t get airport security (or much of anything else) right is no excuse to victimize thousands of ordinary workers, documented and undocumented alike, who just want to provide for their families.

E-Verify doesn’t work. As many as one in ten “ineligibles” will be a false-positive, potential denying a United States citizen the right to work. And even if it did work, its blanket application would be just plain mean-spirited. There are higher laws than the immigration code to which we must answer.