Democrat Ben Lowe Responds to Peter Roskam’s Hysterical Funding Pitch with Gentle Humor

On April 4, 2010, in Ben Lowe, Congressional Elections, Peter Roskam, Peter Roskam's Corporate Agenda, by RSR
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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.

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Peter Roskam Launches Campaign to Strip Constituents of New Health Benefits

On April 4, 2010, in Healthcare, Medicare, Middle Class, Peter Roskam, Senior Citizens, by RSR
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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.

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6th District Congressional Candidate, Democrat Ben Lowe, Reacts to Jobs Numbers

On April 2, 2010, in Ben Lowe, Congressional Elections, Economy, Peter Roskam, Unemployment, by RSR
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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.

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Rep Gutierrez States Intent to Vote For Healthcare Reform – Peter Roskam Continues to Obstruct

On March 18, 2010, in Healthcare, Immigration, Medicare, Peter Roskam, Senior Citizens, by RSR
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We owe a big thank you today to Democratic Representative Luis Gutierrez who today, together with the rest of the House Hispanic Caucus, announced his intent to vote for the Democratic healthcare reform bill when it comes to the floor, possibly as soon as Sunday. Representative Gutierrez had been hesitating to offer his support for the plan because of its ban on undocumented immigrants buying into the plan, and because of  the administration’s failure to push aggressively for immigration reform during the President’s first year in office. We too are disappointed on both fronts but we think that Rep. Gutierrez chose the best course in agreeing to vote for healthcare reform. We fear that a defeat on the present healthcare plan, with all of its weaknesses, would not only set the cause of improving our healthcare system back by years, but would probably jeopardize any chance of movement on immigration reform for the foreseeable future. We thank Representative Gutierrez for his vote and for his determined efforts on behalf of justice for immigrants. I’d encourage you to call and thank him but the best thanks is probably to give his staff a break from phone calls.

Republican Peter Roskam is another story. Roskam appears to be unbending in his decision to vote against increased access to healthcare for residents of the sixth district. Indeed, Roskam today unveiled a new talking point on Twitter designed to work the anti-statist teabaggers up into a frenzy: that healthcare reform will give enormous new powers to the Internal Revenue Service and that we will all be soon set upon by an army of 16,000 new auditors. We find Roskam’s anti-IRS rhetoric a tad frightening in light of the recent suicide attack on the IRS facility in Austin.

Roskam had to change his tactic todaywhen the Congressional Budget Office today released its scoring of the Democratic bill, making ridiculous Roskam’s claims that it would increase the debt. The CBO found that the bill actually REDUCES deficits by $130 billion over the first 10 years, and by a staggering $1.2 trillion over the second 10 years. This while providing an additional 32 million Americans with coverage and eliminating the worry of denials based upon pre-existing conditions. Plus the seniors who Roskam has been trying scare about Medicare cuts will have their prescription drug doughnut hole, a gift from President Bush and the last Republican Congress, closed, making their prescriptions more affordable and thereby preventing avoidable hospitalizations related to drug non-compliance.

Peter Roskam is on the wrong side of history in his opposition to this bill.


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Peter Roskam Still Won’t Denounce Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Bill

On February 28, 2010, in Gay Rights, Human Rights, Peter Roskam, by RSR
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Peter Roskam has still not signed on as a cosponsor of H. Res 1064 condemning the pending Ugandan anti-homosexuality bill that we first wrote about on February 15th. The bill, currently pending in the Ugandan legislature, is expected to come to a vote sometime early in March. The Ugandan measure criminalizes homosexual acts and applies lifetime imprisonment and even the death penalty in some cases.

H. Res 1064, introduced in the House on February 3rd by Democrat Howard Berman of California, resolves the following:

Resolved, That the House of Representatives–

(1) strongly believes that–

(A) all people possess an intrinsic human dignity, regardless of sexual orientation, and share fundamental human rights;

(B) the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009’ introduced in the Ugandan Parliament, which includes the extreme penalties of death and life in prison, poses a serious threat to the life, liberty, and security of the person and, if enacted, would set a troubling precedent for other countries; and

(C) the requirement that individuals report suspected homosexual individuals to the Ugandan Government could undermine Uganda’s efforts to combat HIV/AIDS, and interfere with care and counseling by family members, doctors, pastors, teachers, and others; and

(2) calls upon the President and the Secretary of State to–

(A) impress upon the Ugandan Government the United States belief in the intrinsic human dignity of all Ugandans, regardless of sexual orientation;

(B) express unequivocal United States opposition to the ‘Anti-Homosexuality Bill, 2009’ introduced in the Ugandan Parliament; and

(C) ensure that resources committed to the global HIV/AIDS response are utilized in a manner that is efficient, effective, and appropriate to the local epidemiology of the disease, including in Uganda.

So why won’t Peter Roskam sign on to show his support. He’s had plenty of time to do so. Why he’s already signed on to a resolution introduced on February 24 recognizing the 189th anniversary of the independence of Greece (yes, the 189th anniversary, not the 15oth, not the 200th) so he could have easily gotten his name on 1064.

We think the reason is partly Roskam’s hyperpartisan nature (he almost never crosses the aisle to support Democratic initiatives, even no-brainers like this one). More importantly, we believe that Roskam has a fundamental hostility to gay rights (he voted against hate crimes legislation, he voted against employment non-discrimination) and a deafness to human rights concerns in general. We also believe that he is sympathetic to the Christian extremists like Rick Warren and Sen James Inhofe who have stirred up an anti-gay hornets nest in Uganda. Both Warren and Inhofe have, after pressure, renounced the Ugandan bill. We think Peter Roskam needs to do the same.

Please contact Peter Roskam and ask him to cosponsor H. Res. 1064. You can reach him at (630) 893-9670 in Bloomingdale or at (202) 225-4561 in Washington.

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Congratulations and Thanks to President Obama and Democrats for Success of Stimulus

On February 17, 2010, in Barack Obama, Economy, Peter Roskam, by RSR
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On the first anniversary of the the signing into law of the $862 billion economic stimulus passage it is appropriate to extend thanks to President Obama and to the Democratic leadership in Congress for its success in bringing the country out of recession and away from the brink of economic collapse that may have rivaled the Great Depression. While recovery is not complete and there are large numbers of  Americans still unemployed, there are many hopeful signs. The economy grew at a rate of 5.7% in the fourth quarter of 2009, the fastest rate in 6 years.

While there is room to argue about what has helped and what hasn’t, there is no excuse for the nasty display of trash talk exhibited today by Peter Roskam and his fellow Republicans, many of whom hypocritically touted stimulus money being spent in their districts after having voted against it.Their behavior today was appalling. They take joy in signs of new economic difficulty hoping that the country’s failure will bring them political success in upcoming midterm elections. But their behavior is destructive to the nation’s morale and destructive to the recovery itself. This is not what they were elected to do. The nation deserves better.

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