Rep. Breen misrepresents good governance and law in confusing voters on budget crisis

In his latest constituent email, my state rep Peter Breen (R-48), not only misrepresents his role in the Illinois budget impasse, but also a legal concept unbecoming a high profile lawyer.

Let’s start with budget crisis misrepresentation. Breen entered the House when Gov. Rauner entered the Governor’s mansion, and immediately signed on to Rauner’s turnaround agenda. It was an unprecedented and cruel tactic to strangle Illinois payments to state vendors, state universities and the needy by not passing a budget till the legislature capitulated to non budgetary items like term limits, union givebacks and property tax freezes unrelated to a statutorily required balanced budget. Rauner, with Breen’s support, presented 44 such items, and refused to approve a budget for over two years, turning a bad but improving financial situation into a disaster. Rauner’s predecessor had reduced the vendor payment backlog, paid pension obligations and kept the educational and social safety net functioning for students and persons in need. Rauner actually boasted about exploiting the worsening financial crisis he created to get his non budgetary wish list. After two years the legislature finally passed a budget, with Republican votes, reversing the financial catastrophe imposed upon the less fortunate. Breen’s enabling and cheerleading Rauner’s unprecedented, heartless refusal to provide a budget is bad governance which must be called out.

Then there is Breen’s misrepresenting the law. To explain away the 16 Republicans who had to decency and sense to pull Illinois back from the financial precipice, Breen uses the bizarre concept they were blackmailed, calling the GOP supported deal ‘budget blackmail’. Even most non lawyers know that blackmail is the criminal offence of demanding money from a person in return for not revealing compromising or injurious information about that person. Possibly the only voter in the 48th who believes the 16 principled GOP legislators were blackmailed is Peter Breen. On second thought Breen knows full well they weren’t blackmailed. Unlike Peter Breen they were, in the words of one of them ' I'm not working for Governor Rauner… I’m working for the people.’ That, Rep. Breen, is not blackmail. It’s simply good governance.

Friends don't let friends commit crimes against humanity

America's best pals in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Israel, are both perpetuating crimes against humanity which we aid and abet. The Saudi's have intervened in neighboring Yemen's civil war, bombing and blockading the hapless Yemenis, ratcheting up deaths to over 16,000, 10,000 of which are civilians. Their blockade is causing starvation and cholera, making Yemen one of the most sorrowful places on earth to inhabit. The world is aghast except for Saudi Arabia's local Sunni neighbors, UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan and far away supplier of Weapons of Civilian Destruction (WCD) America, who support Saudi atrocities because they view it as a proxy war against Iran.

Not far away two million Palestinians cooped up in Israel's decade long blockade of land, sea and water routes has caused the UN to warn Gaza may be uninhabitable by 2020. Three quarters of Gazans are food insecure; 40% unemployed and 80% rely on humanitarian aid to survive. Israel has recently cut electricity from roughly 5 hours a day to a paltry 3. Yet, every year Congress tosses $4 billion at Israel to buy our largest export...WCD.

The Palestinians plight, like that of the Yemenis is a non story in US media and totally ignored by Congress and president after president. The Yemenis and Palestinians have no clout and no money to buy American military hardware so their pleas for relief are ignored. But any time we want to dispose a foreign ruler we don't like, we make up a fairy tale they're abusing their own people which demands immediate intervention.

American may be the home of the brave and land of the free. But it's also the land of 330 million who are helping destroy those a lot more brave...and a lot less free.

Rasmussan's Job No.1: Finding new corner for boss to paint

IL Gov Bruce Rauner was furious, having discovered there was no more corner to paint around himself. Thirty months into his bizarre, scorched earth assault on Illinois' neediest, 16 of his GOP minions abandoned his quixotic quest to hold Illinois hostage, refusing to do Job 1, fund government, till his oligarch's fantasy was passed. Rauner responded with typical billionaire bravado, firing his chief of staff Richard Goldberg instead of himself. If you guessed he'd learn from 900 days of failure and govern sensibly, guess again. He appointed Kristina Rasmussen, head of the extreme right think tank Illinois Policy Institute to find a new corner for Rauner to paint himself into. Rasmussen is up to the job, having argued that all 44 of Rauner's unconscionable demands before passing a budget must be enacted. She showed up on Day 1 with a new paint brush....and a big bucket of fresh paint.

Peace Essay finalist

Notified today my essay on obeying the Treaty to Outlaw War (Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928) was one of 6 essays selected to be published by the West Suburban Faith-Based Peace Coalition in their publication distributed at their annual luncheon honoring the 89th anniversary of the Kellogg-Brand Pact at the Abbington in Lombard, IL August 26. Sadly, neither Senator Durbin nor Senator Duckworth responded to the plea contained in my submission.

2017 Peace Essay

April 9, 2017

Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL)
Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL)

How We Can Obey The Law Against War

With the bombing of Syria last week Americans were again confronted with our leaders taking the United States to war in violation all international laws and norms forbidding unjust war. These laws and norms go back further than the War Powers Act of 1973, which forbids the president from engaging in military action without a declaration of war by Congress, unless that action results solely from an actual or imminent threat of attack against the United States. They go back further than prohibitions against illegal wars incorporated in the United Nations Charter of 1945. We must go all the way back to the General Treaty for Renunciation of War as an Instrument of National Policy, better known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928. The treaty, authored by US Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French Foreign Minister Aristide Briand, was ratified 85 – 1 by your 1928 predecessors, going into effect July 24, 1929. Kellogg-Briand is still in effect with a total of 62 signatories.

Yet, the United States, with support nearly every member of Congress including yourselves, continues illegal perpetual warfare in seven countries, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and the aforementioned Syria, in complete violation of Kellogg-Briand. Since the September 11, 2001 attack against the United States, three presidents have used that isolated event to engage in perpetual warfare against any persons in any countries deemed to even possibly harbor ill will toward America. This blank check to violate Kellogg-Briand with impunity, causing untold thousands of deaths, injuries and refugees, makes a mockery of our commitment to peace and stability throughout the world.

As my senators, I implore you to live up to your membership in the US Senate, known as ‘the world’s most deliberative body’, and return America to its adherence to Kellogg-Briand. The following steps might be helpful in fulfilling that long discarded commitment:

1. Request that Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-NY) convene a bi-partisan Senate Conference to review Kellogg-Briand.

2. Include historians versed in its origins and history to educate the 100 senators, the oldest of which was born four years after Kellogg-Briand was ratified, likely not even aware of both its existence and prohibitions on their conduct.

3. Include constitutional and international law experts capable of identifying how current US policy of perpetual warfare against millions of defenseless citizens violates all norms of law, morality and decency, including those covered by Kellogg-Briand.

4. Invite representatives of the administration involved in foreign policy, including the President, Secretary of State and the National Security Advisor, to explain precisely why they ignore the War Powers Act of 1973, the UN Charter of 1945, as well as Kellogg-Briand.

5. Request the Joint Chiefs of Staff, consisting of all four services chiefs, to explain how their actions in conducting perpetual military operations against civilian populations furthers America’s obligation to avoid unjust war, as well as serving its national self-interests.

6. Televise this conference on cable and network outlets to educate our citizens and inspire them of the need to promote peace in the honored tradition of Kellogg-Briand.

But please, do not wait for such a conference occurring to comply with Kellogg-Briand. Speak up in the Senate, on your Senate website, at news conferences and Town Halls, on the need to end the perpetual wars we’ve been mired in for the past sixteen years. In so doing you will be honoring your role as citizen and senator. You will be returning America to its cherished place as the world’s beacon of peace and democracy. But most of all you will be finally engaged in preventing untold thousands of needless deaths and ruined lives. Those are the people Kellogg-Briand was designed to protect.

Please consider and respond to this plea. But do not delay. Time is critical. Every day brings new misery, suffering, even death to the innocents trapped beneath our bombs.

Respectfully,
Walt Zlotow
Glen Ellyn

UN nuke ban degraded by absentees, Uncle included

UN member states voted 122-1 last week to ban nuclear weapons. Least you think that's a hopeful sign, 70 nations, including all 9 nuclear powers, led by biggies US and Russia with a cool 7,000 per, boycotted the proceedings. So did most US allies like Japan and South Korea who were persuaded by the US to stay far away from what could have been real progress in saving all our skins. Kudos to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt and Brazil who ignored our crazy Uncle and voted YES to no nukes. Special approbrium to Netherlands which cast the sole NO vote. Seems they've hosted US nukes in the past and don't want to lose out on the loot that goes along with grabbing a piece of of America's military coattails. This story should be the lead in every paper and electronic news show. Afraid of losing access to the US war party, mainstream media left this story to the information fringe.