If the last few months of watching crazy as bedbugs House Republicans and Speaker Boehner have taught us anything, it is this: Democrats must regain control of the House and reinstall Speaker Pelosi. The Illinois Tenth Congressional District, where I live, is as good a place to start as any.
Let's begin by considering the incumbent, Republican, and renowned authority on bedbugs, Robert Dold.
You can't make this stuff up.
U.S. Rep. Robert J. Dold will speak at the BedBug University: North American Summit to address the key issues around federal government involvement in bed bug issues as well as potential legislation that can affect pest management firms.
The summit, which will be held by BedBug Central, Sept. 25-27, at the newly renovated Hyatt Regency O’Hare in Chicago, Ill, is designed to serve as the educational blue-print for all industries affected in the battle against bed bugs.
According the Phil Cooper, CEO of BedBug Central, Dold was invited to speak at this year’s summit due to his unique perspective that understands the concerns of the pest management industry and legislative bodies.
Dold doesn't just have street cred in the never ending Global War on Bed Bugs. He has also been a front line volunteer for the House Republicans' War on working Americans.
See how proud Dold is of being the first in his class to pass a bill in the new Congress. His idea? Let's repeal a $50 million program to assist refinancing of underwater FHA insured mortgages, you know, for homeowners.
Anchored by his small business roots, Dold saw a problem in a law he believed created government waste and went about finding a solution.
“It's not quite that simple in Congress, but I'm trying to take that approach,” Dold said in an interview with Patch. “I tried to bring those on the other side of the aisle on board by reaching out and making the case that this was the right thing to do.”
Sponsored by Dold, the FHA Refinance Program Termination Act passed the House of Representatives March 10 with some bipartisan support (17 Democrats), 256-171. It now goes to the Senate for approval.
The proposed law will eliminate a program that spent $50 million refinancing mortgages that exceeded the value of the property they encumbered. The program has restructured 44 loans since it was initiated in October.
By the reasoning of this distinguished gentleman from Illinois, a $50 million dollar program started just a few months ago must be unacceptably inefficient if it has only completed 44 restructures in the first half of the fiscal year. This over-simplistic logic is typical Republican doublespeak that ignores commonsense realities such as the time necessary to establish newly authorized programs and the time required for the first approvals to emerge from the pipeline.
Dold is yet another pale pink Republican in our beleaguered district North of Chicago where current Senator, Mark Kirk, R, IL-Sen, long warmed the seat with phony feints toward moderate positions and unswerving support for all Israel all the time, while at the same time the district went for every Democratic Presidential candidate back to Bill Clinton. Dold appears to have studied Kirk well.
Ilya Sheyman is exploring whether to try and take Dold out in his first reelection campaign. From the website for Ilya's exploratory committee:
A first-generation immigrant to America, Ilya first arrived in Illinois with his family over two decades ago as a Jewish refugee from the former Soviet Union. His quintessentially American story was only possible due to his family’s commitment to hard work and the generous support of the community and government.
A product of quality public schools in Skokie, Buffalo Grove and Lincolnshire, Ilya’s first job was at the local Jewel-Osco in Buffalo Grove, where he became a proud member of the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
A community organizer currently living in Waukegan
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Jobs:
It is time to invest in our shared prosperity by passing a new jobs bill that would provide a life vest of unemployment assistance to those drowning without work, that would guarantee state aid, so that communities wouldn’t have to continue letting go of cops, firefighters or teachers, and that would stimulate public and private sector job creation through direct hiring for infrastructure projects and the creation of a national green jobs bank that will provide loans directly to small businesses.
Investment:
I support a fixed timetable to extricate ourselves from the quagmire in Afghanistan and to finally bring every brave man and woman home from Iraq—so that we can start building bridges and roads, schools and hospitals, mass transit and a green economy right here in Buffalo Grove and North Chicago instead of Kabul and Baghdad.
Security:
I will defend our commitment to Health and Retirement Security with a plan that asks the wealthy to pay their fair share into Social Security, keeping its promise to future generations. And I support gradually expanding Medicare to cover every single American, and stand behind the promise that quality, affordable health care should in fact be a birthright of every single American.
Opportunity:
I will fight for real immigration reform that finally takes 12 million of our neighbors out of the shadows and gives them a pathway to citizenship and an ability to realize their dreams and aspirations right here in the United States of America.
Equality:
I will work with allies in our community and in Congress to introduce a Civil Rights Act for the 21st Century that guarantees the full spectrum of over one thousand rights, responsibilities and privileges that come with equal citizenship to all our LGBTQ brothers and sisters.
I immediately went to
ActBlue and pitched in.
If you live in IL-10, please give. If you do not, please consider putting our district on your list of recipients of your out of area donations.
Dan Seals tried and failed to take this seat the last three times in a row. But Dan is a pretty much corporatist type of guy and ran that kind of campaign on the issues. Maybe what this district needs is a real progressive to blow this seat free for the Democrats. If so, Ilya offers us that opportunity. I've seen no Democrat stand forward in response to Ilya's announcement of exploration for the campaign so I do not know where the district would turn without his candidacy.
Ilya is a long-time Kossack, longer than me, anyway. Yet his diary announcing his interest in running for the seat was sparsely heeded when he published it last month.
I read many voices at dKos lamenting the lack of progressive choices on their ballots. Here is a chance to support one.