Peter Roskam: A congressman you can depend on

Beginning his eighth year a Illinois 6th District Congressman, Peter Roskam demonstrates steadfastness of purpose on which one can always depend.

Women know he will always vote for Big Government interference in their reproductive health. Just last week Roskam co-sponsored and voted to pass H.R. 7 which astonishingly uses the tax code to penalize in...surance companies and employers providing certain reproductive services under the Affordable Care Act.

The forty million folks being helped by the Affordable Care Act have come to depend on the congressman to vote dozens of times to repeal it, to weaken it, to defund it.

The 1.3 million long term unemployed depend on Roskam to work with the hundreds of other heartless souls in the GOP to cut their emergency unemployment insurance. Similarly, the small business community can depend on our representative for reduced revenue as the critical cash the unemployed would have received would immediately have been spent on necessities.

The 12 million undocumented surely count on Congressman No. He always sides with the xenophobe wing of the GOP which demands immigration reform be a whoppingly high fence and nothing else. Roskam ludicrously claims immigration reform is too big to handle in one big bill, but must instead legislated in chunks. Roskam's chunk? A whoppingly high fence.

How about the millions trying to survive at or near America's unconscionable minimum wage of $7.25 an hour? Roskam has a perfect record of shouting "No raise for you!" whenever minimum wage legislation is proposed. Coming from a congressman making $83.65 an hour denying as much help as he can to the needy, that dependability is devastating.

Of course, some folks do welcome Congressman Roskam's dependability. The war party depends on his support for the trillions required for their senseless and failed wars. As the President mercifully winds those wars down, they depend on Roskam to cheer on new crazed military ventures such as demanded for their current bete noir, Iran.

The Koch brothers and their fellow fossil fuel magnates destroying the planet, including the polluters of West Virginia water, always depend on Roskam to champion reduced regulations. There's not an iota of Teddy Roosevelt style conservationism in Roskam's plan for Mother Earth.

Lastly, consider the greedy rich. Year in, year out they depend on Ol' Reliable Roskam to demand lower taxes so they can continue funneling middle class wealth into their personal Ft. Knox. They may be relatively few in number but their wealth is staggering and growing daily as workin' folks get poorer.

That is my congressman and career politician Peter J. Roskam. A good motto for his fifth House election race might be:

ELECT PETER ROSKAM: 100 % FOR THE 1%; NOTHING FOR THE REMAINING 99

Only one group Seeger wouldn't sing to

Pete Seeger, who died Monday at 94, sang to thousands of groups in his 70 year music career. A true egalitarian, he would only turn down one signing request, that issued by the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1955. Oh, Pete offered to sing to them all right, as long as it was his canon of pro union, civil rights, environmentalism, and human inclusiveness songs. But HUAC demanded he sing out the names of fellow communists Seeger palled around with in the 30's and 40's. That was a time long before Russia was our imagined Cold War enemy; when communist affiliation was common among humanitarians. The McCarthyite panderers on HUAC were doing nothing to make America safe; simply scoring political points with the fanatical anti- communist crowd. On his passing its good to recall his words which, at the time, were nearly certain to land him in jail:

 ´´I am not going to answer any questions as to my association, my philosophical,
religious or political beliefs, how I voted in any election, or any of these private
affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be asked,
especially under such compulsion as this.´´

Though blacklisted from mainstream media for 17 years, Seeger avoided the ten year jail term imposed for being a true American to his Congressional inquisitors. They're long forgotten. Seeger will never be.