SPIN THEM RIGHT OUT

Two DuPage Forest Preserve Districts employees are fired for possible mis use of taxpayer funds and the District compounds this matter by squandering $66,000 in additional funds to hire two public relations firms to "spin" this latest scandal away (Daily Herald, November 24, 2011). Its very appropriate therefore, that the larger of the two no bid PR contracts went to a politically connected firm with the dubious name of Reverse Spin, LLC.

Since my tax dollars are being used to pay for this needless spinning, I'm going to give the DuPage Forest Preserve District some free advise.

First: implement common sense procedures and develop a public service culture to prevent corruption in the first place
Second: Don't compound alleged wrongdoing to using my hard earned tax dollars to paper over these shenanigans with spin, or Reverse Spin, in this case.

Forest Preserve spokesman Bill Weidner, defended the $66,000 in outside PR consulting contracts in addition to a 6 person PR staff costing $400,000 annually, by saying that with their "intensely busy environment....they could go on and on and on". When it comes to wasting our precious tax dollars they sure can and they sure do.

DuPage voters are well served by the Daily Herald's use of the Freedom of Information Act to ferret out the details of this episode in public waste and mismanagement. Maybe its time for these same voters to spin the DuPage Forest Preserve District incumbents right out of office.

Originally published in the Daily Herald, December 3, 2011

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

Divorce and extra marital affairs are no longer the fatal obstacles to gaining the Presidency that they have historically been. Ronald Reagan became the first divorcee elected President in 1980, in part because his idealized 28 year marriage to his second wife obliterated the divorce taboo. Bill Clinton attained the Presidency in 1992, in spite of tape recordings of him and his longtime blond bombshell lover engaged in pillow talk. They simply generated a collective yawn from the public since Clinton never postured as a holier-than-thou family values guy. His lack of hypocrisy, tons of charisma and connection to the needy easily overcame his marital transgressions.

Newt Gingrich, the current GOP Presidential frontrunner, pushes the moral forgiveness factor to a new threshold. He cheated on wife No. 1 with soon to be wife No. 2, and even discussed his impending to divorce from wife No. 1 while she was recovering from uterine cancer treatment. Wife No. 2 soon fell victim to Newt's adulterous affair with eventual wife No. 3, the current Mrs. Potential First Lady. He was carrying on this new marital peccadillo as he was preaching family values as a reason to impeach his nemesis, President, Bill Clinton. When wife No. 2 asked him how he could preach family values during the Clinton impeachment, Gingrich replied: "It doesn't matter what I do...people need to hear what I have to say."
Wife No. 2 apparently also fell victim to Gingrich's aversion to sickly spouses, having acquired MS on her long road to divorce court.

Full disclosure: I could still vote for the obviously brilliant Gingrich to be my President if he wasn't a heartless, compulsively lying, corrupt and soulless political creature; possibly the least qualified human being to seek the Presidency in my 60 years of following politics, his marital woes notwithstanding. I fully understand that potentially great political leaders can compartmentalize family dysfunction from successful public service. God only knows what skeletons lurk behind Obama's bedroom doors, but I will will support him to my last campaign dollar.

But I do have a word of advise for Newt's current better half: DON'T GET SICK.

THE BALANCED BUDGET AMENDMENT HOAX

Congressman Peter Roskam
150 S. Bloomingdale Road, Suite 200
Bloomingdale, IL 60108

Dear Congressman Roskam,

Your latest email blast to IL 6th District constituents "15 Trillion" concerning the US national debt hitting 15 trillion dollars set off my sophism detector like a geiger counter at the melted down Fukushima Nuclear plant. Sophism, as you've become a practiced master of, is the use of false arguments to deceive people. The enormous falsity presented was that our 15 trillion dollar debt is the fault of the Congressional Democrats who nixed your November 18th Republican vote on a Balanced Budget Amendment.

What you don't tell your constituents is that a balanced budget amendment doesn't actually balance the budget, it merely "requires" Congress and the President to do so. Yet you already have that power and never, ever, utilize it for a number of reasons. You and your colleagues have been too preoccupied enacting trillions of dollars in tax cuts for your wealthy base of supporters. You know that some of those tax cuts will end up in you campaign coffers as a reward for your generous tax legislation. You also have given a blank check to the war party for endless trillions for their foolish and self destructive wars without a peep of complaint or oversight. That money rathole is sacred.

What you don't tell your constituents is that your amendment would allow a deficit if both houses agree by a three-fifths vote.

What you don't tell your constituents is that your amendment would allow a deficit by just a mere majority for a "serious military threat to national security"; and given our propensity for endless belligerency around the world, when is there not?

What you didn't tell your constituents is that from 2000 to 2006 you were the Republican Whip and floor leader in the Illinois state Senate, a state that just happens to have a balanced budget provision in its state constitution and also a colossal debt. Illinois, like many other states that have a balanced budget provision, gets along by cooking the books on expected revenues and expenses, or simply stops funding its pension obligations or paying its bills from desperate small business vendors till the next fiscal year begins. How easily you forget.

Sir, in these desperate times with 40 million without adequate health care, with 45 million subsisting on food stamps and 49 million living at or near poverty, we could use more than just additional dollars to begin solving our problems. We need Congressmen who will begin talking sense.

Respectfully yours,
Walt Zlotow
IL Sixth District resident

TEA PARTY HAS NOTHING IN COMMON WITH OCCUPY WALL STREET....THANK GOD!

Dear Jerry (Moore, My Suburban Life Opinions Editor): I agree whole heartedly with letter writer (and fellow Glen Ellynite) Dan Schuchardt, who argues against your editorial premise that the Tea Party and Occupy Party have more in common that they realize. Of course they don't.

The Tea Party is a creation of powerful and vocal elements of the 1%, such as fossil fuel billionaires the Koch Brothers, and former Congressman Dick Armey, current chairman of FreedomWorks, a 1% propaganda arm promoting "lower taxes, less government and more freedom", which is code for "keep your hands off my 1% wealth". It also includes their media arm Fox News, which breathtakingly covered every non-noteworthy Tea Party rally while conveniently ignoring the vicious anti Obama signs and chants.

Due to its top down origins, The Tea Party has virtually disappeared as a political force. Except when a 1% media star like Glen Beck showed up, the demonstrators were actually members of the 99% crowd now occupying Wall Street and even our own Naperville. They just didn't know it. They've melted away because they inevitably understood the 1% has nothing to offer them, and they've tired of doing the Koch Brothers' dirty work. Conversely, the Occupy Movement, a bottom up phenomenon, will only grow in size and influence because the economic despair inflicted on the 99% grows relentlessly. Even affluent Glen Ellyn is home to some of the 40 million without adequate health care, the 45 million on food stamps and the 49 million living at or near poverty.

Come on neighbor Dan, join me at next Saturday's Occupy Naperville event. We may not share the same planet but by sharing a ride, we'll reduce fossil fuel emissions and help save both planets. Heck, I'll even that a bath.

Originally published in the Glen Ellyn News, November 30, 2011

WELL......EXUUUUUUUSE ME!

The accidental killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers by NATO forces is only a front page story because of the repercussions it has caused the prosecution of our senseless, murderous and utterly futile war in Afghanistan. Pakistan immediately closed a vital route providing roughly half of all supplies to NATO forces fighting in Afghanistan, and gave the US fifteen days to shut down Shamsi airbase in Balochistan province.

Our government, our media, our war profiteering corporations give not a hoot for the thousands of innocent civilians and allied soldiers will kill and maim and make homeless. All they care about is keeping open the supply routes and the bases so our weopons of mass death keep flowing and firing.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, made members of the war party, expressed condolances to their Pakistani counterparts and their utmost support for NATO's "intention to investigate immediately." They should save their breath. We don't need no stinkin' investigation. We just need to pack up our bullets and our bombs and our canon fodder and get out of the Middle East.