Roskam's decade long free ride disrespecting forgotten constituents is OVAH

When my Congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6) shows up to speak at the Glen Ellyn Civic Center, 535 Duane Street, Monday, March 13 at 8:00 AM, he'll again face a gauntlet of district protesters. They're ten years of being ignored by their congressman are over, as long as he chooses to govern strictly to the affluent, ultra right bubble of voters who show up Election Day every two years to return him to Congress. He ignores the majority of registered voters who till now had forsaken seeking relief from real, daunting problems he is charged with addressing, but doesn't.

The biggest current crisis he ignores is health care. Roskam spent the last eight years working feverishly to deny health care insurance to the 20 million now covered by the Affordable Health Care Act. He spent his energy trumpeting the Big Lie that the ACA was a job killer, without offering a shred of proof. The endless upward parade of new jobs after ACA passage royally refuted Roskam's specious charge. He not only erased the 20 million newly insured by the ACA as a success story, he ignored recognizing the 50,000 lives saved by the ACA. When discussing real problems with insurance exchanges and cooperatives, Roskam never acknowledges his role in Republican efforts to kill ACA insurance subsidies which would have avoided much of that problem. Roskam is always all in for drowning government help for the desperate in the bathtub of Republican heartlessness.

But go the Roskam's website, www.roskam.house.gov and you'll find him singing the praises of the the $600 billion tax cut for the rich over a decade, he voted for in the despicable TrumpCare replacement. Missing however will be any mention of the 15 million human beings the Congressional Budget Office will advise next week will be tossed from the health insurance rolls. A lie of omission like that should make Roskam's nose expand the entire length of the Sixth District.

Like Humpty Dumpty, Roskam's free ride making a cool quarter million a year in salaries and benefits to disrespect his constituents is in for a fall. And all the Trump's horses and all the Trump's men, ain't gonna put Roskam's free ride together again.

A tale of two Republican schnozes

Earthy Republican Texas congressman Louis Gohmert likened the outrageous GOP Obamacare replacement, which will give the greedy rich $600 billion in tax breaks over the next decade, to horse excrement. To my congressman Peter Roskam (IL-6) it smelled like Teen Spirit.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn

Does Rauner's governance border on sociopathy?

It has been heartbreaking and horrifying to see Gov. Bruce Rauner degrade life in Illinois for all but the heartless wealthy these past two years, plus. Gifted students flee the state for one that not only values, but funds good education. Businesses that Rauner claims to represent wait months for payment of governmental services and supplies, causing some to close up shop. Services to the elderly, the poor, working mothers, parolees, our precious kids in Chicago's beleaguered schools, the mentally challenged, all dry up, leaving Illinois' most vulnerable worse off. Entrepreneurs take their capital to states that truly support business development. Our crumbling infrastructure crumbles on without repair. Rauner, meanwhile, rolls his eyes and says we must have a permanent property tax freeze and no progressive income tax on the fabulously wealthy; only more draconian cuts on the  powerless to move Illinois forward.

Rauner's governance may not be illegal, never landing him in jail. But it is cruelly immoral and appears to this observer as a form of sociopathy. That is much, much worse.

Trumpet better played in UI Marching Band; not prison outfit

Lindsay Johnson may go from playing trumpet in the U of I Marching Band to tooting in an Illinois women's slammer. That's because Johnson faces incarceration for the little committed and lesser known crime of neonaticide, young mothers who kill their unwanted offspring within the first 24 hours after birth.

Johnson hid her pregnancy from from her support network, sought no medical help before giving birth in her dorm bathroom. Then she suffocated the infant boy. Baby cries and afterbirth alerted the police who found Johnson wandering campus with the body in her backpack.

Johnson, charged with first degree murder, plead guilty in a deal that will likely get her just a couple of years instead of the 75 she faced. But she should get what some of the several hundred cases of neonaticde annually get with the means for a high priced mouthpiece..probation.

Young mothers in Johnson's situation suffer from a form of mental illness. They remain in denial throughout their pregnancy; then panic when the reality of birth shatters their delusions.

Johnson is a well liked, bright, agricultural communications major at Illinois' finest. She needs society's help; not the waste of precious state treasure to lock her in a cage. Let the women's prison band be reserved for truly dangerous, violent offenders. Lindsay Johnson deserves probation and counseling before being reinstated in the marching band as well as society in general.

Little red wagon not needed for Roskam's Obamacare replacement

Back in 2009, my congressman Peter Roskam spent the entire year trying to derail the ultimately successful effort to insure Americans left behind the industrialized world's worst health care delivery system. The resulting Affordable Care Act (ACA) provided coverage for nearly 20 million uninsured, allowing them a semblance of a life removed from fear of unaffordable health issues, bankruptcy, even premature death. During the year long debate Roskam pulled a truly shabby publicity stunt to demean that noble campaign. He joined the heartless GOP chorus bemoaning the fact the ACA was over a thousand pages long, and, goodness, gracious, was simply too big to digest. To make his point, Roskam staged a photo op in which he loaded the proposed ACA bill onto a little red wagon, to demonstrate its massiveness. To the 20 million Americans who ultimately received relief from that massive bill, including 50,000 whose lives were saved, Roskam's stunt wasn't funny.

Eight years on Roskam continues to champion abolishing the ACA in which he's voted over 50 times to repeal, degrade, defund. But now that his party controls the presidency and the Congress, Roskam has to come up with a better alternative, in spite of ruling out the only viable alternative: single payer Medicare for all. Look closely and it's clear Roskam doesn't need a little red wagon to carry his ACA replacement to the Capitol steps. It fits easily into his imagination.

Was Trump's victory his 'Springtime For Hitler?

Of all the Trump-Hitler analogies bandied about, the one which clicks for me is that Trump is simply reprising Mel Brooks 1968 masterpiece, 'The Producers'. Consider this. When Trump announced in June, 2015, many pundits believed he ran simply to build his Trump brand, with no serious intention of winning or governing. Now that his extensive revelations with Russia have come to light, some so stupendously stupid it's inconceivable they could hide them, that scenario makes sense. Trump wasn't careful about his Russian ties because he never expected to win, assuming he, and the connections, would be quickly forgotten. After losing badly, Russia would continue to lavish the Trump brand with business opportunities, and hide his Russian peccadilloes (sexual and otherwise). Trump, the real life counterpart of the washed-up, aging, fraudulent, corruptible, and greedy Max Bialystock of 'The Producers' (Brooks), who envisioned his offensive play glorifying Hitler as a sure failure, allowing him to abscond to Rio de Janeiro with the suckers' investments, sure they wouldn't seek compensation from a broke producer. In the Trump real life version, his racism, xenophobia, sexism, and general loutishness substituted for Bialystock's choice of Hitlermania to guarantee a failure, allowing a refurbished Trump brand to live on in endless splendor at Trump Tower of Mar-a-Lago.

But like the doomed Bialystock, Trump's was too smart by half, watching the victory march on Fox, akin to Bialystock getting drunk in a bar across from the theater as patrons rush in gushing about the glorious 'Producers' opening. In the Producters, Bialystock's success seals his fate and he's sent to prison. Trump's success may likewise seal his fate as his careless machinations with the Russkies are being revealed drip by torturous drip. Trump's 3:00 AM delusional tweets mimic Bialystock's lament “I was so careful. I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast...where did I go RIGHT???”

About the only difference between Trump's triumph and Brooks' is that Mel won an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay. Trump's plagiarism may simply get The Donald a ticket to an impeachment trial.