Republican Peter Roskam has been a staunch supporter of the Bush-Cheney brand of militarism that has bankrupted our country and gave us an illegal and totally unnecessary war in Iraq and has left us in a quagmire in Afghanistan through neglect and mismanagement. So we were not at all surprised when we heard him on WLS AM this morning, trashing the new START treaty with renowned disarmament experts Don Wade and Roma. If you like wars and lots of them, Peter Roskam is your man. If you like military spending that exceeds that of the next highest 45 countries combined, then Peter Roskam is your man. If you think the quest for ever more destructive weapons is a good thing, then Peter’s your guy. If you want a new cold-war style nuclear arms race, Peter’s on it.
We happen to think there is a better way and we support the leadership of President Obama in taking the first step toward elimination of nuclear weapons since the original treaty was signed in 1991. And we think that Peter Roskam’s opponent, Democrat Ben Lowe of Wheaton is of the same mindset.
Ben doesn’t have the same instant access to media that Peter Roskam does, so you didn’t get to hear him on the radio this morning to present another side to the issue of the START treaty. But we did receive from his campaign this morning a statement, so here it is:
“Today’s signature and renewal of START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty), sends a strong message to the world that the United States is committed to being a leader in the reduction of nuclear weapons, as well as their systems of delivery. We must not be under any pretensions that this treaty in any way eliminates the danger of massive nuclear damage to our civilization. However, we are convinced that it is a significant step in the right direction towards a world free of nuclear weapons. Ultimately this event highlights American leadership in light of rogue states heading in the opposite direction in their nuclear warfare programs, and, proposes a significant shift towards a more sensible moral compass on life and inter-government cooperation.
We are also in agreement with President’s Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review released a few days ago, and encourage the assessment of nuclear weapons as a measure of very last resort. The administrations decision to refrain from using nuclear weapons in the face of biological and chemical attack is extremely controversial but we agree with it on the principle that responding to a non-nuclear attack with a nuclear attack could easily spiral out control as the attacking enemy would be dealt a far more devastating blow than they originally inflicted upon the US, and, would be far more willing to entertain an even more disastrous nuclear response.”
We received a breathless fund-raising email from Peter Roskam last Monday. Apparently his huge stash of corporate cash is not sufficient for him to buy enough attack ads this fall to crush his unfunded grass roots Democratic opponent and he needs to beg his constituents for their hard-earned dollars so that he can return to Washington and vote against any bill that might actually help them. Here is the way Roskam’s message began:
The Democrats are out of control. Never in my life did I anticipate serving in a Congress that is poised to take over 1/6 of our nation’s economy through the procedural slight-of-hand known as reconciliation. With the Democrats’ passage of the Senate bill in the House of Representatives, the stakes for our country have gotten even higher. But the fight to defend our healthcare system from a government takeover is far from over – in fact, it has just begun.
Because that is what this election year will be – a fight against a Democrat political machine powered by liberal “back room” politics and I believe Americans like you and I have seen enough. We’re tired of watching the Administration cut deals with members of Congress to secure votes on a health care bill that the vast majority of Americans know to be irresponsible, misguided, and even harmful. Here in the Illinois 6th district, we know dirty Chicago politics when we see it, and it’s time to put an end to this madness.
Just a tad over-dramatic, no? We think Roskam should at least get some sort of literary award for fitting so many slurs into two short paragraphs. Roskam is, of course, ridiculous. There is no government takeover of healthcare, only an insurance regulation bill that will float a lot of new business to the insurance companies. Reconciliation is a parliamentary technique that Roskam’s own Republican party has used repeatedly when they held the majority. And Roskam’s Democratic opponent this fall can only wish that he had the support of a “democratic political machine” – he is, so far anyway, pretty much dependent on a small band of volunteers from the district who are fed up with Roskam’s obstruction and bullshit. If you want to see a political machine, look instead to the Republicans who control Du Page County Government and the big corporations like Exelon and Bank of America who fund Roskam’s campaigns in expectation of influence over his votes on environmental legislation and banking regulation.
Anyway, we got a smile when we received a fundraising email in response from Roskam’s opponent, Ben Lowe of Wheaton. Bent sent this out on April 1st and his message displays a great deal of plucky humor approopriate to the day:
Hi, I thought I should introduce myself.
My name is Ben Lowe.
I’m the out-of-control, liberal, left-wing, big-government, backroom deal-cutting, game-playing, dirty Chicago politician, engaged in a hostile, irresponsible, misguided, harmful, insane government takeover of health care, that your Congressman, Peter Roskam, warned you about in his recent fund-raising letter.
My naive mother is crushed to learn what I have become since I left the gentle protections of her tender bosom, for the corrupting influence of Wheaton College, the twisted machinations of suburban Wheaton, and the left-wing radicalism of a Midwestern evangelical church. My pastor-father cannot figure out where he went wrong! It must be the extreme liberalizing result of Wheaton College’s student life policies, with its exuberant embrace of swing dancing. Or perhaps the consequence of a nature-goddess worshiping environmental-studies college major and profession. Or maybe the effect of a socialist-inspired radical experiment in communal living among the drug-addled, prostitution-riddled projects of blighted Wheaton and Glen Ellyn.
Fortunately for you, Congressman Roskam is not alarmist, but reasonable, commonsensical, and conservative.
Albeit hard-up for funds. After all, he currently has only $547,000 or so left in his campaign war-chest after spending as much on an uncontested primary, and that may not be enough when stacked up against my whopping $2,000 campaign account balance. It certainly is not enough to finance limitless television and radio ads, and a steady stream of life-enhancing robocalls. Donate big, donate often, for the free government postage granted to Washington politicians, the free publicity generated by news media interviews, and the other perks of incumbency are not enough to overcome the threat that I pose to our town, our district, and our American way of life.
This is going to be a tough race. True, Obama won this district with 56% of the vote. And though his national approval rating has fallen to 46%, one can never be too careful in defense of our country from liberal political schemes and harmful government borrowing and spending (which are immeasurably more insidious than the private-sector plagues of deregulation-induced, recession-causing, finance-industry implosions of our economy, or the oil-and-power-company pollution of our environment, the health-industry abuse of the uninsured poor, or the lawyer-enriching tort-cases with enormous verdicts against medical professionals).
Health care reform, in particular, has progressed at break-neck pace in the century since that radically-liberal, communist-inspired, former-Republican Teddy Roosevelt first proposed it in 1912, along with his other nefarious strategies, such as occupational safety, child-labor laws, minimum wage, and Sundays off.
We’ve got to slow this speeding snail before it breaks the sound barrier!
Now is the time for incremental reform!
I urge you to reduce government spending today by contributing to Congressman Roskam’s campaign fund!
Or join us instead, and help bring reason and common sense back to congress. We cannot win without your support.
Yours,
Ben Lowe
Advocate for informed political debate
Democrat for Congress, 6th District Illinois
Ben is a fine person. We’ve met him. We’ve read his book. We are certain he would make an excellent Representative for the 6th District. If you are tired of the Republican obstruction and corporate money that is crippling our nation’s ability to cope the very serious problems it faces, please consider giving your time and/or money to help Ben’s campaign.
Congressman Peter Roskam, the Republican representing Illinois’ 6th Congressional District in Chicago’s western suburbs, this week launched his campaign to repeal the landmark healthcare reform legislation recently signed into law by President Obama. Roskam, who campaigned vigorously against the bill and who voted against its passage, complains that the legislation raises healthcare costs and taxes on the middle class, piles on to the national debt, and interferes with the doctor-patient relationship.
Roskam’s complaints, are, of course, baseless. The health reform legislation will provide subsidies for low- and middle-class families to make health insurance more affordable, reduces the deficit by $132 billion over 10 years, and does absolutely nothing to disrupt the relationship between patients and physicians. And it will make health insurance available to millions of working Americans who do not have access to coverage today – 32 million by 2019. Roskam, however, is determined not to let that happen. He says the plan is a radical government takeover of healthcare. It isn’t. It is simply sound insurance regulation coupled with subsidies to make insurance more affordable. In fact, as the President has pointed out, the health exchanges that will be created under the new law are very similar to a plan created by the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The Kaiser Family Foundation has produced a couple of excellent resources to help you understand what is covered under the new healthcare legislation and the timeline over which changes will take place. If we had real representation in Congress, your Congressman would be helping you to understand this information. Since he will not, we will try to help to the degree that we are able.
Roskam’s opposition to the healthcare bill appears to be rooted in large part, not so much in the details of the reform plan, but rather in an overwhelming desire to see the President fail in order to advance his own party’s electoral prospects. Roskam is also a steadfast opponent of any kind of consumer-friendly industry regulation, be it in the realm of healthcare, banking, or the environment. We have all already seen the disatrous results of the Republican deregulatory ideology in creating the recent banking and credit crisis with the resultant recession. Now Roskam, if he has his way, would replace the Democratic reform legislation with a massive deregulation of the health insurance industry that will do nothing to help working people but will help line the pockets of the insurance companies that fund his campaigns.
Though his his claims about the dangers of the healthcare reform legislation are without merit, Roskam has enormous resources at his disposal. His Congressional office gives him tremendous access to corporate media eager to help him in his misinformation campaign and his Congressional budget and franking privileges allow him to produce mailers like we saw last summer designed to scared district residents about reform. We will have to be strong and fight hard to keep him from taking away our hard-won health benefits.
We encourage you to contact Peter Roskam to voice your support for healthcare reform and to ask him to cease his efforts to take away your benefits. You can reach him at (630) 893-9670 in Bloomingdale or at (202) 225-4561 in Washington.
Roskam has also taken to Twitter as part of his efforts to kill health reform. You can talk back to him directly there. He is @PeterRoskam and he is tweeting about repeal using the tag #218hcr. We are doing are best to counteract his misinformation there.
We received this statement today from Daniel Salcedo, Director of Communications for Ben Lowe, the Democratic candidate running to replace Peter Roskam this fall as U.S. Representative for Illinois’ 6th Congressional District:
Wheaton, IL April 2, 2010. Candidate for Congress Ben Lowe released a statement regarding the job report published today by the Labor Department. The report shows that the US economy added 162,000 new jobs in March, with less than 30% (48,000) being temporary census positions. This result is in stark contrast to the over 700,000 jobs that were being lost this time last year, and signals the largest creation of jobs in the past three years.
“Today’s job report clearly shows that, in spite of Republican obstruction, the strategic steps taken by the Obama administration have indeed turned the tide of the economic recession that began during the Bush presidency. The economic stimulus, while enormous by all measures, was necessary to stabilize the damage that rampant deregulation of financial markets had wreaked upon the entire economy. The stimulus saved the country from a repeat of the 1930’s depression era, and the eventual profits from the TARP program infused even more funds into small businesses, generating new jobs.
While today’s employment report is encouraging, it shows an economy that continues to struggle, with businesses of all sizes wary to expand, lest the recovery is fleeting. The best economic forecasts available, and taking into account the costs and savings of the healthcare bill, offer confidence that the economy will continue to grow following the steps that the Democratic Party has been implementing and the Republican Party has been largely rejecting.”
We agree with Ben’s assessment and are growing weary of Peter Roskam’s trash-talking about the economy and about Democratic initiatives. Roskam is not interested in constructive solutions but only in sabotaging economic recovery for his own short-term political gain. His conduct ill serves the people he was elected to represent, working families who are now struggling because of the economic crisis provoked by failed Republican policies of deregulation and discredited ideology of trickle-down economics.
We encourage our readers to visit Ben’s campaign website to learn more about his candidacy and to make a donation to help Ben fight Roskam’s campaign of misinformation so heavily funded by banks and insurance companies.
