FORGET BROCOLLI, MANDATE COMMON SENSE

US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Scalia asked a truly bizarre question this week during oral arguments over Constitutionality of Obamacare. He pondered whether the government mandate requiring everyone to purchase health care insurance, the mechanism that will make health insurance affordable for everyone, sets a precedent that could allow the government to mandate we all purchase broccoli.

I have news for the good Justice. I don't worry about the possibility the government might require me to purchase broccoli. I worry about the fact that it already requires me to use my tax dollars to purchase predator drones and other weapons of mindless destruction which slaughter dozens, hundreds, even thousands of innocent men, women and children around the world in our criminal military enterprises. If I have to buy them I want them put under lock and key to keep them from the neocons and war mongers and sociopaths who salivate at their use.

What we should mandate is for Justice Scalia to buy some common sense.

Also published in the Daily Herald, April 10, 2012

ROSKAM'S WHOPPER: DON'T HAVE IT HIS WAY

March 27, 2012

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

Dear Congressman Roskam,

Once again you used a half truth to spread a falsehood about health care reform passed two years ago. That falsehood promotes you and your party's agenda to repeal the Affordable Care Act which has begun to chip away at the worst aspects of our dreadful health care system in this country for the 40 million folks suffering without adequate health insurance. Many thousands of them reside in your 6th IL Congressional District. At today's Republican leadership press conference your said: "One in four Americans want to leave it intact. In other words, most Americans want to change it". You cite those statistics to support your call for repeal.

While you technically did not tell a lie, you sure told a whopper! What you didn't say is that a large portion of those who want it changed, want it even more helpful to the 40 million folks still suffering under the atrocious private health care system you support unquestioningly. Many of that 75% seeking change want a public option which you oppose to placate your benefactors in the private health care industry. Many more of that 75% want an even simpler system, Medicare for all, which you oppose even more fervently. Add those folks to the 25% who want it left intact and you have virtually nothing left to justify the hollow and heartless position of your party's repeal agenda.

While at center stage today you conveniently omitted the wonderful benefits this law has already provided to IL District 6 residents. Since you can't bother to tabulate them for our district, I'll list the benefits already in place in your colleague Anna Eshoo's 14th California District:

4,800 young adults are now covered by their parents’ insurance policy up to the age of 26.

Up to 36,000 children with preexisting health conditions can no longer be denied coverage by health insurers.

35,000 children and 140,000 adults now have health insurance that covers preventive services without paying any co-pays, coinsurance, or deductibles.

280,000 are free from insurance-imposed lifetime limits on their coverage.

520 small businesses received tax credits to help maintain or expand healthcare coverage for their employees.

7,500 seniors received prescription drug discounts worth $4.5 million, an average discount of $600 per senior.

56,000 seniors have received Medicare preventive services without any out of pocket costs, coinsurance, or deductibles.

On a national level, in the next decade we will experience the following if your scheme to overturn the ACA is thwarted:


Doctors will be rewarded for providing quality and efficient care by allowing them to share in demonstrated savings.

Hospitals will be rewarded for keeping patients healthy so they won’t be readmitted for a preventable reason, saving enormous sums of money.

$500 billion will be saved by taxpayers over the next ten years by rooting out waste and fraud in Medicare and Medicaid.

Seniors will receive free Medicare coverage of key preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies.

Seniors will receive a free annual wellness visit each year.

New tools and resources will crack down on waste and fraud in Medicare.

Seniors will be encouraged to remain at home and stay out of nursing homes, allowing states to offer home-based services to disabled individuals through Medicaid, rather than institutional care.

Nursing home residents will receive more protections from abuse.
America will begin to live up to its promise to care for the commons

Congressman, while you rail against the public mandate to buy health insurance which fights for its existence this week before the US Supreme Court, check out this list of influential Republicans who were for the public mandate before their party decided to make opposition a litmus test in their zeal to defeat President Obama's reelection bid based on repealing the Affordable Care Act:


Frmr. Gov. Mitt Romney (MA) | Frmr. Rep. Newt Gingrich (GA) | Frmr. Gov. Tim Pawlenty | Frmr. Sen. Bob Bennett (UT) | Frmr. Sen. Chris Bond (MO) | Frmr. Sen. William Cohen (ME) | Frmr. Sen. John Danforth (MO) | Frmr. Sen. Bob Dole (KS) | Frmr. Sen. Pete Domenici (NM) | Frmr. Sen. David Durenberger (MN) | Frmr. Sen. Duncan Faircloth (NC) | Frmr. Sen. Slade Gorton (WA) | Sen. Chuck Grassley (IA) | Sen. Orrin Hatch (UT) | Frmr. Sen. Mark Hatfield (OR) | Frmr. Sen. Nancy Kassebaum (KS) | Sen. Dick Richard Lugar (IN) | Frmr. Sen. Alan Simpson (WY) | Frmr. Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) | Frmr. Sen. Ted Stevens (AK) | Frmr. Sen. John Warner (VA) | Frmr. Sen. Hank Brown (CO) | Frmr. Sen. Conrad Burns (MT) | Sen. Dan Coats (IN) | Sen. Thad Cochran (MS) | Frmr. Sen. Paul Coverdell (GA) | Frmr. Sen. Larry Craig (ID) | Frmr. Sen. Judd Gregg (NH) | Frmr. Sen. Jesse Helms (NC) | Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX) | Frmr. Sen. Dirk Kempthorne (ID) | Frmr. Sen. Trent Lott (MS) | Rep. Connie Mack (FL) | Frmr. Sen. Frank Murkowski (AK) | Frmr. Sen. Bob Smith (NH) | Frmr. Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-SC) | Frmr. Sen. Malcolm Wallop (WY) | Frmr. Sen. Don Nickles (OK) | Rep. Cliff Stearns (FL) | Frmr. Rep. Jim (LA) | Frmr. Vice President Dan Quayle (IN) | Sen. John McCain (AZ) | Sen. Scott Scott Brown (MA) | Frmr. Gov. Tommy Thompson (WI) | Sen. Lamar Alexander (TN) | Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) | Sen. Mike Crapo (ID) | Frmr. President George H.W. Bush | Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME) | Frmr. Sen. John Chafee (RI) | Sen. Jim DeMint (SC)

Sadly, your name is not found on the above list because enacting a fair and just health care system has never been on your legislative agenda. You govern to please the status quo health care interests who have spent over $200 million so far to prevent passage of, and now seek repeal of Affordable Health Care. Since you stand to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars or even a million or more in benefits from your Rolls-Royce Congresscare policy during your lifetime Congressional career, you see no need to throw even a few crumbs of health insurance coverage to the less fortunate.

That is not good governance, Congressman. That is simply disgusting.

Respectfully yours,


Walt Zlotow
IL 6th District Resident

HAVE A HEART, DICK

Congratulations to 71 year old former Vice President Dick Cheney for getting a new heart after a 20 month wait following his 5th heart attack. May he live well past the normal survival period of seven years for a person getting a heart transplant over the age of 65. May he even live to 100 or more. Cheney may have already topped million dollars, possibly even two, in health care costs, since his first brush with early death in 1978 at the tender age of 37. Had he been one of those 40 million uninsured, he'd have died long, long ago.

Wouldn't it be fitting if Cheney uses his additional time on this earth to experience an epiphany about his party's ferocious drive to overturn the Affordable Health Care Act. It has already begun to provide relief to the 40 million Americans this Act was designed to help, but its Constitutionality and its future are being challenged before the US Supreme Court in 3 days of oral argument beginning March 26. Maybe Cheney got the heart of a medically uninsured person who died prematurely due to the lack of Cheneycare. At this very moment that beating heart may be causing a reformulation in Cheney's subconscious which will turn him against the heartless souls in the GOP who have no concept of the damage they do to the less fortunate. As Cheney fights for life in intensive care, the Affordable Heath Care Act fights for its life in the intensive care dock before the US Supreme Court.

Let's hope they both make it.

BALES JAILED WHILE UNCLE SAM BAILS

Am I the only soul that sees the horrific irony in the indictment of Staff Sgt. Robert Bales for 17 murders of innocent Afghans by the same outfit, the US government, which maintains our criminal military occupation and defilement of Afghanistan? Uncle Sam knows full well the American people will neither pay for or serve in these criminal ventures on a universal basis. So he borrows money from foreign countries and hires private soldiers who can't get a job in a withering economy. He temps them with flashy uniforms and high tech killing toys. He orchestrates rock star status for these paid mercenaries at sporting event intermissions. He mis-manages their brains with great skill and then hands them a license to kill. He sends them out on tour after tour where the poor saps soon realize they've made a Devil's Bargain with their Uncle. They can't tell friend from foe and begin to fear and despise every one of the foreigners they're supposed to "save". They get their brains scrambled from traumatic shock but after a brief respite are thrown right back into the nightmare of a war with no boundaries, no friends, no rules and no sanity. And if one of them goes nuts and starts blasting away at the locals, Uncle Sam gobbles him up, tosses him in solitary, and draws up a long list of "crimes" that will get him a sentence of life, if not death.

Maybe its time to see Uncle Sam in the dock.