J Street's $3 million overcomes AIPAC's $30 Mil

Thankfully, we won't be seeing those disgusting, fear and war mongering commercials opposing the 5 + 1 nuclear deal with Iran anymore now that the deal is done and détente can go forward in the Middle East. We find out today that the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spent $30 million polluting our airwaves trying to sabotage the deal with the help of every Republican senator and 4 Democrats. But peace, decency, common sense and yes, patriotism prevailed to give not just the president, but every American and every world citizen who values peace over war a victory. I've long supported the much lesser known American Israeli lobbying group J Street, which has been a reasoned, cautious counterweight to AIPAC since their founding in 2008. According to their website, J Street "supports a new direction for American policy in the Middle East – diplomatic solutions over military ones", "multilateral over unilateral approaches to conflict resolution"; and "dialogue over confrontation" with wider international support. According to J Street, its political action committee is "the first and only federal Political Action Committee whose goal is to demonstrate that there is meaningful political and financial support to candidates for federal office from large numbers of Americans who believe a new direction in American policy will advance U.S. interests in the Middle East and promote real peace and security for Israel and the region".

J Street also spent money lobbying in favor of the deal, $3 million, just one tenth that of AIPAC. Let's hope American legislators, both enamored and intimidated by AIPAC, will detour left to J Street and expand the peace process in the Middle East

Roskam should visit Gaza

My Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6) just returned from a first class trip to Israel where he led a group of pro-Israeli activists promoting the interests of Israel's Likud Party over that of the his home country, the Good Ol' USA. How so? Roskam claims, incredulously, our shared interests with Israel include sabotaging  American policy of Roskam's  nominal leader, President Obama, to conclude détente with Iran regarding nuclear development. Israel demands destruction of its only rival for hegemony in its neighborhood. Roskam dutifully falls in line.

But equally disturbing is Roskam's complicity with Israel's continued subjugation, indeed destruction, of the 1.8 million Palestinians penned up in the world's largest open air prison Israel maintains in Gaza. Roskam does this by joining senior Israeli officials from the Foreign Ministry, National Security Council, and Strategic Affairs Ministry, to discuss efforts to combat the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. That is the world wide movement seeking to put pressure on Israel to cease their crimes against humanity in Gaza. Roskam has been a ceaseless cheerleader for Israel every time Prime Minister Netanyahu "mows the grass" by inflicting catastrophic carnage on the Gazans, such as the 50 day campaign last year that killed 2,200, including hundreds of children. That was the third such massacre in six years, which apparently poses no problem for my Congressman. Under Israel's eight year blockade, 80% of Gazans require outside humanitarian assistance just to survive. 95% of its water is unfit to drink. Besides water; energy, sanitation, housing and education are all in pitiful, unlivable condition.

I'm ashamed to have a congressman who conducts himself more as a representative of a foreign government than an American congressman. I'm horrified by his ghoulish disregard for the plight of an enslaved people and his enabling of that enslavement. Congressman Roskam should pass on Israel and make his next Middle East trip to Gaza. I'd love to see his website www.roskam.house.gov filled with pics of that trip, instead of bucolic scenes of him being entertained by Gaza's subjugators.  Two bits of advise for the Congressman if he does go. Bring along a good supply of bottled water...and check with his preferred leader, Prime Minister Netanyahu, to make sure it isn't grass mowing time.

Stranczek's tax rebates spiked Crestwood's cancer rate

 

Legendary former Crestwood mayor Chester Stranczek died Saturday at 85. Stranczek was a phenomenon, ruling Crestwood for 38 years while making millions with his trucking company he started in 1959. Stranczek was Crestwood and vice versa.
A work colleague of mine lived in Crestwood and never tired of extolling how Stranczek governed Crestwood so well he had three quarters of his small village tax rebated to him each year.... What my colleague didn't mention, because he didn't know, was that for the two decades Stranczek was pumping out those tax rebates, he was funding them, in part, by pumping contaminated drinking water into the 11,000 residents. Back in 1986, the EPA ordered Stranczek to fix the village well contaminated with vinyl chloride from a dry cleaning business. Stranczek balked at the $385,000 price tag and simply fudged the fix up, all the while ordering aides to keep the bad stuff flowing. It wasn't till 2010 that state agencies determined not only Stranczek's skullduggery, but that Stranczek's 'vinyl chloride Perrier' likely spiked Crestwood's cancer rate. By that time Stranczek had already retired as mayor, turning the gig over to son Robert. When it came time for Chester to walk the legal plank, his lawyer pleased senility allowing him to skate. But two aides who did the literal dirty work for Stranczek so he could play Sana Claus at tax time, were convicted in the scheme.

Stranczek was also a conservative iconoclast who became notorious for displaying political taunts on the Crestwood water tower. While they were all nuts, a valid one could have read:
TAX REBATES FOR EVERYONE; CANCER FOR SOME

What would a catastrophe look like?

When former VP Dick Cheney appeared on CBS Sunday Morning to re-write the history of his criminal war in Iraq, he was asked about the current chaos there involving the Islamic State. Cheney put the whole blame on President Obama saying, "We left Iraq in pretty good shape." If hundreds of thousands dead, millions displaced and tons of depleted uranium from American WMD lying around to kill and main for decades is "pretty good shape", I wonder what it might take for Cheney to declare a catastrophe? Oh yes, it's Obama's efforts, along with Russia, China, Britain and France, to head off an even worse war in Iran which Cheney is working feverishly to sabotage. Cheney should be shunned from speaking in the media, doing all his talking in a war criminal court of law instead. But CBS has to sell Cheney's new book they own, through affiliate Simon & Shuster. 

That's American capitalism in 2015: enabling and excusing war criminals to make a buck.