Posts from — April 2008

Peter Roskam loves to harrangue Democrats about earmarks.

Last year Peter Roskam joined Reagan 21 , a caucus of extreme conservative Republican Senators and Representatives of the likes of Tom Coburn and Jim Demint. Among its other objectives Reagan 21 committed itself to ending all earmarks.

Needless to say, I was surprised when Citizens Against Government Waste released its 2008 Pig Book, a compendium of earmarks, and it revealed 10 earmarks attributed to Roskam at a cost of $12 million. Not a huge number but quite a bit for someone committed to ending all earmarks. I wonder if he’ll have to turn in his Reagan 21 membership card.

The projects involved seem pretty laudable, a big chunk of the $12 million going to PACE and METRA which I support. It just makes Roskam seem a bit silly.

Coburn and Demint honored their no earmarks pledges. I didn’t check on all the other Reagan 21 members.

The Reagan 21 web site looks a bit forlorn as of this writing. I signed up for their mailing list but haven’t heard from them. The site does present an interesting statistic:

“In 1996, there was 3,023 earmarks at a cost of $19.5 billion. The number of earmarks skyrocketed to 15,877 in 2005 at a cost of $47.4 billion.”

But wait a minute. Which party controlled Congress during those years? Kind of makes Reagan 21 look a little silly too.

Seems like the heroes of 9/11 might regard it as a sensitive gesture.

I learned about this from the blog Calitics. It seems Peter Roskam is one of a number of Republicans who have been beneficiaries of the largess of Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA), a former car thief turned car alarm magnate. Roskam has received $3,000 in campaign contributions from the Issa for Congress committee.

Issa is the idiot who, during a recent house hearing on aid to 9/11 rescue workers expressed his concern that the federal government “threw buckets of cash” at New York in the aftermath of a mere plane crash:

“I have to ask, why damages from a fire that had no dirty bomb in it, it had no chemical munitions in it, it simply was an aircraft, residue of two aircraft, and residue from the materials used to build this building, why the firefighters who went there and everybody in the City of New York needs to come to the federal government for the dollars versus this being primarily a state consideration.”

Needless to say, Issa’s remark pissed off a bunch of ground zero workers who are having to fight the government to receive health benefits allocated by Congress. The government appears to be spending more money by far on court costs to fight payouts than it is on actual benefits to workers.

So I think it would be a great gesture to 9/11 workers if Roskam gave Issa his $3,000 back and repudiated his words. And also signed on in support of more robust health benefits for those who are suffering from lung diseases and other ailments in the aftermath of their heroic work at Ground Zero.

Peter Roskam is at it again. He’s using a feeble gesture to attempt to convince Illinois veterans he’s on their side, at least long enough to get their votes this fall. Veteran’s should not be fooled.

There’s a “News Item” posted on Roskam’s House web site today announcing that “today reaffirmed his strong commitment to the men and women of our Armed Forces”. How did he do this? By proposing to make it easier for employers who hire veterans to receive tax breaks.

A commendable idea, I guess. But the problem is, for any program to help Veterans (or anyone else for that matter) to earn Roskam’s approval it has to somehow involve tax benefits to business. Any thing else is a non-starter for him. It is tax breaks that motivate Roskam, not the true needs of veterans.

Veterans do need jobs. They also need adequate medical and psychiatric care. They need rehabilitation. They need re-training. They need homes There are as many as 200,000 homeless veterans on any given night).

Roskam had a chance last fall, right around Veterans Day to help veterans begin to meet these needs. He said no. Twice. Too expensive.

Meanwhile, John McCain, who Roskam has endorsed for President, and who has supported Roskam, refuse to back a new GI Bill in the Senate. On his website, he says “America owes its liberty, its prosperity, and its future to our veterans who have dedicated their lives to protecting our great country.” He’s right. So why is it that he and Roskam will spend billions and billions of dollars sending these men and women off to fight and then won’t help when they come back to us wounded, unemployed and homeless? The only interest Roskam and McCain have in veterans is in getting their votes.

What follows is a short film by Robert Greenwald on McCain’s failure to support the new GI Bill:

Nice post Bridget. I’m voting for you this fall.

Every once in a while since I’ve been writing this blog I’ve found myself thinking that Peter Roskam isn’t such a bad guy. Misguided perhaps. A nice guy who’s fallen in with bad company (read Republicans). Naive about life outside his wealthy and insulated district. I was wrong to believe this. Peter Roskam is a total ass.

Roskam today voted against a global AIDS relief package that even the morally abject White House had supported. Of the Illinois delegation, only Manzullo joined him in voting against the package.

The bill, if approved by the Senate in its present form, would authorize $50 billion over five years for the President’s Emergency Plan for Aids Relief, an ongoing initiative to combat the spread of AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, primarily in Africa, but also in the Caribbean. The bill passed in the House 308-116, with unanimous Democratic support. 78 Republicans joined them including Biggert, Johnson, Kirk, LaHood, Shimkus and Weller. They should be congratulated.

Roskam’s predecessor, arch-conservative Henry Hyde had supported the AIDS initiative in the past, even compromising on provisions restricting funds to family planning organizations, risking the ire of the so-called “pro-life” community.

Apparently the only type of “foreign aid” that Roskam supports is that which our military began providing to the people of Iraq in 2003 and is presently providing to peasants in Colombia through its proxies. Our tax dollars should be spent as the God and the Constitution intends: on corporate welfare and tax breaks for rich folks.

The grave problems that our planet and our civilization is facing over the course of the next few decades requires that we shed ourselves of leaders like Roskam, who work only in the interests of a narrow elite, in favor of men and women who value the good of humanity over destructive nationalism and greed.

In the worst tradition of Republican policy in Central and South America, George Bush is again pushing hard for passage of a Colombia free trade pact, ignoring the ongoing violence against trade unionists and innocent peasants in that country. He called the matter urgent in remarks made as he was about to leave for a visit to the Ukraine yesterday.

Peter Roskam’s friends at the National Association of Manufacturers meanwhile are also pushing hard, urging citizens to contact their legislators in support of the proposed pact:

Roskam, you will recall, has voted the NAM position consistently during his term in office, and he, too, has been pushing for the pact. He journeyed to Colombia early last month to meet with Colombian President Alvaro Uribe and came back proclaiming that everything in Colombia was just fine and that we should go ahead with the free trade agreement with all due speed.

Bush, Roskam and NAM are not telling you the truth. Things are not OK in Colombia.

As documented in a recent story in the LA Times, extrajudicial killings by the Colombian military are on the rise. As a bizarre consequence of pressure by the Bush administration to show progress in it’s fight against leftist guerrillas, poor innocent civilians are being killed and then dressed as guerrillas, to be used as evidence. And this killing is being funded by the U.S. Government in its role as a leading state sponsor of terrorism.

Violence also continues against trade unionists and human rights activists, even being spurred on by advisers close to Uribe. 4 unionists were murdered early in March, just after Roskam’s return from the country. In years past, American corporations such as Drummond Co., Coca-Cola, and Chiquita have been linked to such anti-union violence. And it is on behalf of corporations such as these that Roskam and Bush are pushing the free trade pact.

Illinois unionists, especially, should be horrified to know that their tax dollars are funding violence against their brothers and sisters in Colombia. I urge all my readers to contact Peter Roskam and demand an end to U.S. funding to the Colombian military and the rejection of the proposed trade agreement while violence continues. You may reach his office in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670 or in Washington at (202) 225-4561.

I would be very interested to hear from Jill Morgenthaler her thoughts on this grave issue.

This is a video about the March 6th protest against paramilitary violence: