THE UNIVERSITY AND THE CHURCH

Friday was not a good day for two venerated institutions.

In Bellefonte, PA, former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky was convicted on 45 counts of child molestation and faces 60 years in prison, a virtual life sentence for the 68 year old serial pedophile. A side issue in Sandusky's case is that some folks in the Penn State football colossus either knew about or even witnessed Sandusky's transgressions and covered up the wrongdoing to protect the Penn State money machine or even legendary coach Joe Paterno's heir apparent himself. Two such officials await trial charged with lying to a state grand jury about their knowledge of Sandusky's crimes.

In nearby Philadelphia, the covering up of pedophilia was front and center as 61 year of Catholic Church Monsignor William Lynn became the first US church official convicted, not of pedophilia, but covering it up. Lynn's crime? He moved known pedophile priests to unsuspecting perishes with the explanation that they were being moved for health reasons. Lynn faces up to seven years in prison.

These two cases should teach us there is absolutely nothing inherently good or moral about any institution, regardless of how venerated. They all are merely the sum of the character and actions of their members. There is also a powerful impulse for those charged with protecting the image of such institutions, to shield them from scandal regardless of the cost to innocents brutalized by deviants within, cloaked in an almost Superman-like aura.

Hopefully, the folks currently turning a blind eye to wrongdoers within their own ranks, will look at Sandusky and Lynn cases...and finally see.

Cong. Peter Roskam
Washington DC

Dear Cong. Roskam,

You have spent the entire three and a half years of the Obama Administration either working feverishly to either prevent passage of Obamacare or, once passed, trying to overturn it. With forty million uninsured folks just now beginning to reap the enormous benefits of this legislation, such as the seven million young adults who can stay on their parents insurance till age 26, it is heartbreaking that you would devote your energies to such a hurtful endeavor. You know full well that tens of thousands of Americans die each year from lack of proper medical care and tens of millions more suffer declining health and economic ruin.

Your plan? No kidding: this is straight from your website:

*******************************************************************************************************************************

Roskam 5 Principles for Healthcare Reform

1. Enhance the Doctor-Patient Relationship

Preserving and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship is critical to healthcare reform. Patients should always have their choice of doctor, hospital and procedure. No bureaucrat – in Washington or at an insurance company – should be able to delay or choose who, where and what patients receive.

2. Reduce Skyrocketing Costs

Healthcare costs have ballooned in recent years and are crippling family and small business’ budgets . We must find ways to lower healthcare costs. Substantive ways forward include clamping down on the rampant waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare, enacting meaningful tort reform and promoting health information technology.

3. Preserve Medical Innovation

Government takeovers of healthcare necessarily mean bureaucrats deciding what procedures are allowed and how many are allowed each year. Without our medical ingenuity, Americans will suffer restricted access to innovative and technology intensive procedures like hip-replacements, heart valve replacements and brain surgery. Ensure Every American Can Receive Health Insurance. We need to deconstruct the “bumper sticker” number of 47 million uninsured and identify the real number of Americans who do not qualify for health insurance to ensure their access to coverage and care. For those millions of Americans who want and need health coverage yet can’t afford it or aren’t accepted because of pre-existing conditions, our healthcare system is broken. The status-quo is unacceptable, and any plans moving forward must ensure a path to coverage for those Americans.

4. Allow “Patients’ Rights to Know”

Americans deserve greater transparency from their providers. Patients should be able to make informed decisions for the good of their own health and the accountability of their provider. Transparency will provide an incentive for hospitals to perform better.
*************************************************************************************************************************************
Besides only listing 4, not 5 principles, there is no substance here to help the uninsured,whatsoever. It makes a well off, well insured person like me just laugh. But those long term medically uninsured can only cry. This is clearly written for the mega millionaire captains of the health insurance industry and Big Pharma, who are your real and apparently only worthwhile constituents.

Sir, how dare you declare that "We need to deconstruct the 'bumper sticker' number of 47 million uninsured." Instead of trivializing that massive number of Americans as a "bumper sticker" that you and your party have worked so hard to shut out of the health care system; walk a mile in their health care deprived shoes for awhile. How about foregoing your Rolls Royce health insurance plan that we taxpayers pay for and go without any health insurance for you and your family for the next three months? You foes of Obamacare love to point out that these masses of uninsured can easily get good health care from the Emergency Room. OK, for the next three months you and your loved ones can only get heath care from your local Emergency Room. Based on your philosophy, that should work out just fine. Prescription drugs? Going without health insurance for drug coverage means you will have to pay full price. In your case, that means dipping into your near 1% wealth. For the actual uninsured, it means dipping into rent money or food money or clothes money. Get the picture?

As painful as the Obamacare Challenge might be, it will vastly improve your insight and appreciation into the suffering many thousands of your constituents face every day. If it helps you to adjust your belief system to begin serving their interests instead of the interests of the 1% who finance your lifetime career as a Congressman, you will be truly blessed. You will begin to achieve real success in life, if not a glimmer of greatness.

Respectfully yours,



Walt Zlotow
IL 6th district resident

CARRY, CONCEAL...AND KILL

The masthead of the website IllinoisCarry.com states: "A website devoted to advancing your right to carry in Illinois". Amazingly, Illinois is the only state that doesn't allow citizens to carry a concealed firearm in public. However, Illinois does have carry and conceal. It's just not legal. Maybe the folks running that website should take a stroll down Chicago's mean streets after dusk on Saturday night to see how effective all those thousands of concealed firearms carried around by the local citizenry are in preventing violence. I suspect those carry and conceal devotees might just change their tune about the crime fighting effectiveness of even more thousands of concealed firearms carried around those blood soaked streets.

Originally published in the Chicago Tribune, June 19, 2012
Also published in the Lombardian, June 27, 2012