Category — George Bush

Earlier this month, Peter Roskam voted to give a big gift to telephone companies: retroactive immunity from civil lawsuits for their role in George Bush’s illegal scheme to spy on Americans. Peter Roskam, would tell you, no doubt, that large campaign contributions from telephone companies and Roskam’s close personal ties to lobbyists for Verizon had absolutely no influence on his vote to obliterate the constitutional rights of his constituents. 

The vote came on 6/20. The bill was H.R. 6304, FISA Amendments Act of 2008. This so-called “compromise” on FISA allows the federal government to conduct mass untargeted surveillance of all communications coming into or going out of the country without any need to seek court approval, even if there is no evidence of wrongdoing. In those circumstances where court review is required, where there is a specific target, a prior court order is not required and the courts are not allowed to know who is being targeted. They may only review general procedures for establishing targets. When a court rules against the government it will be allowed to continue spying while it exhausts all appeals. The measure allows no effective check to the power of the government to spy on Americans and no effective oversight regarding the manner in which it applies that power.

The gift to the telephone companies contained in the bill is the assurance it provides that all lawsuits pending from the companies’ illegal activities in support of the Bush spying program will be dismissed. It does this by changing the standard so that the companies are not required to have received a legal order - any order is fine. ATT, one of Peter Roskam’s largest campaign contributors, and Verizon, who’s lobbyist’s Jason Roe and Kirsten Mork have close ties to Roskam, are no doubt pleased by this provision. Maplight.org, a campaign finance watchdog group , found that those lawmakers who voted for the bill received, on average, twice the amount in donations from large telephone companies.

Roskam’s vote is just one more example of his consistent pattern of giving a “rubber stamp” of approval to the worst abuses of the Bush administration and of placing corporate interests over the interests of his constituents. Voters who care about civil liberties should contact Roskam to protest his vote. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

Before the FISA amendment becomes a law, it faces a vote in the Senate. That vote has been delayed until next month. Concerned voters should also contact Senators Durbin and Obama to pressure them to do the right thing and protect our civil liberties and deny immunity to the telephone companies that have broken the law.

Peter Roskam has signed on as co-sponsor to H. CON. RES. 362, a resolution intended to dramatically escalate tensions between the United States and Iran and take another step toward George Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s dream of yet another war, this one against Iran.

This resolution, if passed, would express:

the sense of Congress regarding the threat posed to international peace, stability in the Middle East, and the vital national security interests of the United States by Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and regional hegemony

Further provisions include:

• Declaring that preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon is vital to our national security interests and must be dealt with urgently
• Urging the President to impose sanctions on banks and energy companies doing business with Iran
• Demanding that the President initiate immediately and dramatically an international effort to increase pressure on Iran to verifiably suspend uranium enrichment activities by imposing a blockade
• Urging the president to “lead a sustained, serious, and forceful effort at regional diplomacy to support the legitimate governments in the region against Iranian efforts to destabilize them, to reassure our friends and allies that the United States supports them in their resistance to Iranian efforts at hegemony, and to make clear to the Government of Iran that the United States will protect America’s vital national security interests in the Middle East.

All of this language, of course, is highly ironic, given that it is the United States that has disrupted peace in the Middle East through its unprovoked invasion and occupation of Iraq, and that the U.S. has been attempting to destabilize Iran for years, and that the U.S. Middle East policy is pretty much all about the U.S. maintaining hegemony in the region. The U.S. has been complicit in nuclear proliferation in the region and our “friend and ally” in the region, Israel, has been a nuclear power for years. If anybody poses a real nuclear threat of obliterating anyone else it is the threat that Israel poses to Iran. Israel has a right to defend itself. But does not Iran also have that same right? Iran has no history of aggressive war in the region. Both the U.S. and Israel do. Who is posing the real threat to peace and stability?

What this is all about mostly, is winning the U.S. election this fall, even if doing so has to mean armed confrontation with Iran, or at least threatening such confrontation.

Just as when Bush attacked Iraq, this build-up is all being based as an attempt to enforce United Nations resolutions. But the chief of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency denies that there is any urgent danger. Mohamad ElBaradei told Al Arabiya television in an interview:

“I don’t believe that what I see in Iran today is a current, grave and urgent danger. If a military strike is carried out against Iran at this time … it would make me unable to continue my work,”

“A military strike, in my opinion, would be worse than anything possible. It would turn the region into a fireball,” he said, emphasizing that any attack would only make the Islamic Republic more determined to obtain nuclear power.

“If you do a military strike, it will mean that Iran, if it is not already making nuclear weapons, will launch a crash course to build nuclear weapons with the blessing of all Iranians, even those in the West.”

Just as in the case of the war against Iraq, Bush & Roskam & company are basing their campaign for a new war on lies. Iran has renounced the use of nuclear weapons as contrary to Islamic law and the United States’ own intelligence estimate concluded that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003. Despite this the United States has continued feeding the IAEA incorrect reports of nuclear sites.

Bush’s war against Iraq has brought the U.S. economic misery, cost thousands of young lives, and is rapidly leading us to $5/gallon gasoline. Meanwhile it has cost Iraq a million excess deaths due to violence, almost a third of them at the hands of the U.S. War against Iran will bring more of the same, and worse.

If you live in the 6th district and want to stop this chain of agressive wars, please contact Peter Roskam and demand he renounce his support for Bush’s new war against Iran. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

The House voted overwhelmingly last week (5/14) in favor of the long-awaited Farm Bill which included substantial improvements in funding of food programs to help the poor.

Among the food program provisions are improvements to the food stamp program:

• Increasing the $10 minimum monthly benefit (unchanged for 30 years) to $14, and indexing it for inflation
• Increasing and indexing the standard deduction for households of three or fewer
• Removing the cap on the deductible amount of child care expenses in eligible households
• Indexing the food stamp household asset limits ($2,000; $3,000 for households with elderly or
disabled), which have gone unchanged for decades
• Allowing more families to save without penalty by excluding education savings and tax-preferred
retirement accounts from food stamp asset limits.

In my opinion any President or Congressman who would oppose these modest provisions for the poor is without heart and without conscience. Peter Roskam voted against them. President Bush then vetoed them today. Then Roskam voted against them again.

There has been a bit of a snafu regarding the veto and the veto override today. It seems that a clerical error resulted in an incomplete copy of the bill being sent to the President so it seems the exercise will have to be repeated. That gives Roskam a chance to vote again and redeem himself. Please call him and ask him to quit being a creep and vote to help our brothers and sisters who are hungry. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

Then go and read Ellen of the Tenth’s post on the farm bill vote. She “scooped” my usual sources and I first learned about the vote last week from her blog. Ellen shares some insight on what its like to depend on food stamps.

MoveOn.org has launched a campaign to pressure Republican presidential candidate John McCain to fire his chief advisor, Charlie Black, who in his work as a lobbyist has represented some pretty creepy foreign clients including dictators Ferdinand Marcos in the Phillippines and Mobuto Sese Seko in Zaire and mass murderer Jonas Savimbi in Angola. Here is MoveOn’s ad:

Charlie Black is a long-time Republican political operative who has served as an adviser to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who themselves showed little compunction about cozying up to tyrants and terrorists when it served their ultra-right pro-corporate agenda. He is obviously without conscience and I concur with MoveOn that he should be dismissed.

In addition to contacting McCain at (703)-418-2008 to urge him to dismiss Charlie Black, residents of the 6th should contact Peter Roskam, who serves on the McCain Campaign’s Illinois Leadership Team. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

After you’ve made your phone calls, mosey on over to WBEZ’s web site and listen to the Worldview interviews from May 19th with Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and with James
Jordan of the Alliance for Global Justice.  The theme was the so-called “democracy-building” agenda under President Bush and predecessors. I think the show points out pretty starkly what a sham and failure this agenda has been, back as far as Nixon and Reagan and should help motivate you to throw out the McCains and the Roskams and their spooky hangers-on like Charlie Black. The world can’t handle much more of their brand of “democracy-building”.

Addendum 5/22: The Washington Post published an article about the Black controversy today.

Peter Roskam does not say much to his constituents about the war against Iraq. He doesn’t seem to think that we are concerned and doesn’t even  list it in the issues section on his House web site. He apparently doesn’t believe that he is accountable to his district regarding the war. This is a mistake and a big part of the reason that Roskam will be defeated in his re-election bid later this year.

Roskam did, helpfully, this week, with his votes on HR 2642, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2008, go on record as to precisely where he stands on Iraq:

• Peter Roskam is OK with leaving our troops in Iraq indefinitely
• Peter Roskam is unwilling to have Congress reclaim the war powers bestowed on it by the constitution, preferring to allow President Bush to engage in whatever military adventure he desires
• Peter Roskam is OK with the continuing to allow the Iraqi government to avoid sharing fully in the costs of reconstruction - that’s what American taxpayers are for
• It is fine with Peter Roskam if American troops in Iraq are charged more for fuel that Iraqi troops are charged - we have plenty of money
• Peter Roskam opposes any requirement that troops be combat-ready before deployment to Iraq and does not believe that Pentagon-established guidelines defining how long troops should be deployed should be enforced
• Peter Roskam believes that U.S. contractors operating in Iraq should enjoy immunity from prosecution for violations of U.S. law and opposes extending the statute of limitations for fraud committed against U.S. taxpayers during the war.
• Peter Roskam thinks permanent bases in Iraq are just fine
• Peter Roskam does not believe there should be restrictions on the practice of torture

What do you do if you are a cocky, first-term Republican Congressman who has hitched his wagon securely to the most unpopular President in American history, and now, as the time for re-election draws near, you realize you are in trouble?

What do you do if you have spent your first term in office ignoring the real needs of your constituents in order to cater to the wishes of the fat cats who paid for your campaign?

Well, if you are Peter Roskam, you come up with some lame gimmick to try and convince the residents of your district that you give a damn.

Roskam recently announced, in front of an auditorium virtually devoid of an audience, his “There Ought to Be a Law” competition, asking his constituents to go to his website and submit their legislative ideas. Roskam will then pick the top five ideas and allow his constituents to vote on which should be drafted into a bill by Roskam.

Roskam rationalizes the contest this way:

“As a new member of Congress, I have learned first-hand what most 6th District residents already know, Washington is broken. Partisan politics have hamstrung Congress’ ability to find solutions to the most pressing problems our nation faces.

“The constituents I represent are reasonable folks with sound ideas – and it’s time to send a little more 6th District solutions to Washington.

This, of course, is ridiculous. What is broken, what isn’t working, is Roskam. Roskam has been presented with a wealth of good ideas during his first term:

• A fair minimum wage
• Equal pay for equal work
• Non discrimination in employment
• Help for homeowners struggling with out of control mortgage payments
• Tougher standards to prevent workplace injuries
• Development of alternative energy sources
• Ending the practice of torture
• Providing health coverage to uninsured Illinois children
• Congressional ethics reform
• Health and employment services for returning veterans

To name just a few. Democrats in Congress, working for change, have proposed them all. Roskam has opposed them all for partisan reasons and to please those who lavish campaign contributions upon him. Roskam has a lot of nerve complaining about partisanship.

Nevertheless, I shall humor my Congressman. Here are my 5 modest ideas for your consideration, Peter:

1. De-fund the present occupation of Iraq and provide for an orderly withdrawal of American troops from that country.
2. Reclaim Congressional war powers and act to prevent the President from initiating a new military conflict with Iraq.
3. Draft articles of impeachment against the President and Vice President for their illegal use of domestic surveillance, their illegal practice of torture and rendition to torture, for their politicization of the justice department, for outing an inteligence officer, etc. etc. etc.
4. Definitively outlaw the practice of torture and of warrant-less domestic surveillance.
5. Sign on in support of the new GI bill to help the men and women who have put their lives in jeopardy in Iraq and Afghanistan for the good of us all and are returning to face unemployment and economic and medical hardships.

So that’s my entry, Peter. I’m afraid that if I enter them on your web site they won’t see the light of day. So I’m challenging you here, publicly, to take them up. I know from my logs that your office reads this blog.

You will probably label my ideas as extreme or nutty. But I know that I am not alone among your constituents in thinking this way. I encourage my fellow residents of the 6th to really speak their minds and see if you are for real.

For my part, if you do these 5 things, I promise I’ll vote for you in November.