JOB CREATOR...OR JOB DESTROYER?

In the four and a half years Peter Roskam has been IL Sixth District Congressman, I have yet to hear or see a single significant statement or action from him to improve our struggling economy.

From Day One he has been preaching the twin priorities of more tax cuts for the rich and less regulation on business. Yet, the six years prior to his entry into Congress in 2007, were based almost solely on those policies by the George W. Bush Administration. Roskam entered Congress just when those policies helped bring on the worst recession since the Great Depression and bulge our debt by five trillion dollars.

In his second two year term, Roskam devoted all his efforts to prevent a stimulus program with saved or created three million jobs and a national health care law estimated to save nearly a trillion dollars in health care costs over ten years; finally putting some brakes to our spiraling health care crisis.

Now in the first six months of his third term, the Congressman has risen to Republican Chief Deputy Whip and helped sheppard through Congress the Debt Ceiling Bill which virtually every economist of integrity estimates will throw an additional 300,000 hard working folks off the employment rolls.

I'm still waiting for Congressman Roskam to be a job creator; but I sure don't have to wait any longer to see his job destruction bonafides.

NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

"If this guy prints more money between now and the election...we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas" - TX Gov. Rick Perry discussing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke at early campaign appearance.

Perry also said such action by Bernanke would be "almost treasonous".

Ouch! The last time a swaggering, tough talking Texan ran for President...he won...eventually unleashing two bankrupting, criminal wars that have created over a hundred thousand dead and wounded Americans and millions of casualties and refugees in the Middle East; all for nothing.

Perry' s fulminations may play well in Texas, but for the rest of us our view is simply: "Read my lips....no new Texans".

Also published at www.chicagotribune.com, August 18, 2011

A REASON FOR THE OTHER 49

"Texas once was a stand alone nation...we can leave anytime we want".

With those words, Texas Gov. Rick Perry became the first elected political leader to talk secession since the Civil War.

Perry is now a bonafide Presidential contender, possibly not realizing that Job One as President is to preserve the Union.

Perry is also a staunch states' rights Republican, so much so, that when NY legalized gay marriage he remarked that whatever the radical state of NY wants to legalize is their business. The homophobe wing of the GOP abruptly reminded Perry that virulent opposition of full citizenship for gays doesn't permit allowing any state that exercise of states' rights. Voila, Gov. Perry now champions a Constitutional amendment to embed second class citizenship for gays into the Constitution.

Gov. Perry's secession talk was based on his belief that the centrist Obama policies were too extreme for his state. Unwittingly, a possible Perry Presidency gives secession justification for the other forty-nine.

Originally published in the Chicago Sun Times, August 14, 2011