Roskam to 18 million: "I've got mine...now gimme back yours!"

If you read the heartless rhetoric from my Congressman Peter Roskam's website www.roskam.house.gov, you'd surmise he's never received a single constituent communication expressing profound gratitude upon receiving first time health care insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). There are 20,000,000 given that lifeline so based on evenly distributed population, about 45,000 of them live in the Sixth District. But last Friday the 13th sure was an unlucky day for those 20,000,000 as Roskam joined the Republican majority to abolish it. Just four days later the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office published a devastating analysis warning that 18,000,000 of them would lose coverage the first year under RoskamRepeal, and upwards of 32,000,000 would go without over a decade. In addition, RoskamRepeal would jack up rates 20% to 25% in that first year. 

Peter Roskam and family enjoy the finest medical assistance that his CongressCare provides; not just a Cadillac policy, a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost. He's spent the last eight years sowing fear and loathing of the ACA because he panders to the anti government wing that re-elects him every two years; the public interest be damned. What's more important? Twenty million folks in need covered, with 50,000 of them avoiding death; or a lifetime ticket to the House?   

Least Roskam join the Republican chorus blasting the CBO report, he should consider that Keith Hall, the CBO Director who signed off on the inconvenient truths Roskam ignores, was selected and appointed by Republican Congressional leaders in 2015. 

Don't wait 48 years to prove Trump's treason

"My God, I would never do anything to encourage South Viet Nam not to come to the table."

Thirty-nine years after Richard Nixon proclaimed his innocence in 1977, we now know he did exactly that nine years earlier to help win the 1968 election by working to delay the Vietnam Peace Talks till after he was elected. Recently discovered notes of his top aide, H.R. Haldeman show Nixon directed him to utilize Madamn Anna Chennault, WWII wife of General Claire Channault, to back channel Nixon instructions to Vietnam President Thieu on getting a better deal from Nixon than Hubert Humphrey. President Johnson uncovered the plot but couldn't go public since he didn't have the smoking gun tying Nixon to the plot.

Today, we have smoke, but no gun tying Donald Trump to Russian hacking of Democratic information used to damage the Clinton campaign. After vehemently denying Russia had anything to do with the hack, Trump swallowed the irrefutable intelligence reports and sputtered 'Yes, they did.'

But Trump refuses to even answer the question whether anyone connected with his campaign was in on the shenannigans. And of course, no such evidence has emerged. But given the secrecy of Trump's extensive ties to Russian business and political leaders, the smoke is thick enough to cut with a machete.   

Nixon's treason rests on laws against a private citizen doing anything to 'defeat the measure of the United States.' We don't know if Nixon's treason sealed his victory. Nor do we know if South Vietnam scuttled peace talks with Johnson to aide Nixon. But we do know that another 28,000 US boys died while Nixon spent his entire truncated presidency grasping for a face saving peace treaty that may have been within reach of Johnson in 1968. 

Let's hope it doesn't take another 48 years to determine if Trump committed similar treason just a few months ago.  

No need to imagine of Rauner gone

The Illinois Policy Institute's Diana Rickert spent hundred of words in her Tuesday's Trib op ed pondering an Illinois General Assembly without Michael Madigan as House Speaker. Since Madigan will surely be re-elected Speaker, Rickert was left with 'imagining' a General Assembly without Madigan, who has served as speaker all but two years since 1983. She congers up the possibility of term limits for Assembly leaders, loosening of House rules and closer cooperation with Republicans.

But you don't have to imagine what Madigan accomplished during his long reign as Speaker: negotiating budgets with both Democratic and Republican governors which cared for the needy, funded higher education for deserving low income students, paid state vendors, and improved state infrastructure. Once Bruce Rauner assumed the governorship two years ago, that spirt of compromise was shattered. Rauner held the budget and the people of Illinois hostage to implementing a budget with non-budgetary wish list items for the wealthiest Illinoisans that must remain the subject of the legislative, not the budgetary process. That form of political extortion which betrays the state's less fortunate was an unconscionable breach of political bi-partisanship and has rightly been resisted by Madigan and his Democratic caucus.

Unlike a General Assembly without Madigan, we don't have to imagine a General Assembly without Gov. Rauner. We know exactly what it would promptly do ...pass a budget.

A sad day

I've lived thru some truly sad days in American history among my 26,225 and counting. But never have I witnessed a man about to assume the presidency, display his unfitness to hold office in such clear and striking fashion as Trump did in his first post election news conference. He revealed his unfitness as Republican candidate and Republican nominee, but ascended to the presidency with a minority vote and a demogogic appeal to the electorate, securing his election on a fluke of the process and a mere 80,000 votes in three swing states.

But no votes can save him from the self destructive character and temperament on full display to the American people Wednesday. Richard Nixon, arguably the most temperamentally unfit man to achieve the presidency, hid his character flaws through his first term and reelection, before self destructing. Trump's have been on display since he announced 18 months ago.

Only two questions remain.
How long will it take Trump to self destruct?
How much damage will he do to America and the world before he does?

Walt Zlotow
Glen Elly