tenth newsit may have been december-cold outside, but the evening of december 13th the ambience at...

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Tenth NewsJanuary 2017 Illinois Tenth Congressional District Democrats Newsletter Volume 14, Edition 1

For information or to volunteer:Email us at [email protected] visit our website at www.tenthdems.orgOr call us at 847.266.VOTE (8683) Or write to Hon. Lauren Beth Gash, Chair, Tenth Dems, P.O. Box 523, Deerfield, IL 60015

Editor: Barbara AltmanEditorial Staff: Allan Sperling, Catherine Caporusso, Karen Dillon, Eric Herman, Adrienne Kirshbaum, Ron SchwartzContributors:: Barbara Altman, Ronald F. Altman, M.D., Jack Altschuler, Steven Gan, Eric Herman, Leslie Brenner Lipschultz, Laurence D. SchillerPhotography: Steve Rosenzweig

Design: John BurgerDistribution: Roger Baron, Ron SchwartzThe opinions expressed are those of the writers, and not necessarily endorsed by Tenth Dems

In This Issue:

Be Fierce!. ............... ..1, 2, 11

Friendship and Work ... ...1, 2

Photo Album .3-4,7-10, 13-14

Congress Watch ...............5-6

Ideological Purity ....6, 11-12

Capitol Steps ....................11

Get Used To It? ................12

Democracy & Trump ..15-16

Women’s March ...............16

Food, Friendship, Volunteer Apprecia-tion, and the Work AheadIt may have been December-cold outside, but the evening of December 13th the ambience at the Lake House in Lake Bluff was warmed by the more than 100 who attended the Tenth Dems Annual Membership Appreciation Holiday Party. The pizza was delicious, the salad bar overflowing, and the service was attentive as we gathered to celebrate our 10th District victories while mourning the loss of the presidency.

Following plenty of time to eat and socialize and enjoy the volunteer pianist’s playing, speeches were short but meaning-ful. John Schaye set the tone by talking about Tenth Dems’ accomplishments this election season and recognizing the candidates and elected officials present. John then introduced Nancy Krent, who spoke about the crucial work of the Tenth Dems Election Protection Team on November 8; Laurie Schil-ler who spoke about Let’s Talk Politics events being organized all around the 10th District; and Barbara Altman, who spoke about the upcoming 2017 Tenth Dems Community Con-nection Poetry and Prose Competition and Awards Night, for which planning is now underway.

Finally, John introduced Lauren Beth Gash who introduced Congressman-elect Brad Schneider. Brad graciously thanked all present for the hard work that helped him regain his seat and paint the 10th District blue once again. Brad spoke particularly of his overwhelming Democratic majority in early votes and mail-in votes, which he attributed to the day-by-day ground game of targeting and chasing voters to ensure that every one of his supporters cast a ballot.

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www.tenthdems.org

Wondering how to spend Inauguration Day? See pages 11 and 16.

Be Fierce! Fight Back!By Ronald F. Altman, M.D.

What should Democrats do to prevent Republican destruc-tion of the social safety net that has preserved the social compact since 1934? Fight back! This was the advice of 9th District Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky and 10th District Congressman-elect Brad Schneider on December 17 at the Deerfield Public Library during a Conversation on the ACA (Affordable Care Act, or Obam-

acare) sponsored by ACA Consumer Advocacy.

The 90-minute discussion was organized by a group of ACA consumers, i.e., citizens who have obtained health insurance pursuant to the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). ACA Consumer Advocacy’s goal is to preserve the access to health-care gained by nearly 30 million Americans since the ACA Marketplace went live in the fall of 2012.

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Food, Friendship, Volunteer Apprecia-tion, and the Work Ahead

Be Fierce! Fight Back!

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With the 2016 election behind us, Tenth Dems now gears up for elections in 2017, supporting Democratic slates for township-wide and municipal positions. Then, almost before we know it, 2018 will be upon us, with the opportunity to help Brad Schneider and other Democrats score more elec-toral victories.

An album of photos from this event begins on the next page.


On a cold and snowy Saturday afternoon, a few dozen voters met with ACA Consumer Advocacy organizers and Congres-sional representatives and staffers to share stories of affordable and unaffordable health insurance, and the bad old days of health insurance denied. Ultimately this was an exchange of ideas about how to preserve gains and improve access to af-fordable, quality healthcare in the face of an incoming Repub-lican Congress and President who have promised to repeal the

ACA and to seek radical changes in Medicare.

The conversation began with a slide presentation that out-lined the benefits of the ACA and provided data regarding the growth of the ranks of the insured in Illinois. Notwithstand-ing narrowing provider networks and high deductibles, all plans provide preventative healthcare, including birth control, at zero out-of-pocket cost; no annual or lifetime limits on benefits; no gender discrimination; and no exclusion based on preexisting medical conditions. A related benefit of the ACA’s nondiscrimination on the basis of gender is that for the first time, transgender persons have unfettered access to health-care, as one participant in the conversation pointed out. Also, mental healthcare is one of the essential benefits that the ACA mandates be included in all plans.

Many of the healthcare consumers present were small busi-nesspeople who earned just enough to disqualify them from the ACA’s advance premium tax credits that have helped nearly 70 percent of ACA consumers pay for their insurance. Nevertheless, the ACA provided critical relief to those previ-ously incapable of obtaining insurance because of preexist-ing health conditions and others previously unable to leave salaried positions for fear of losing health insurance.

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Brad Schneider Hosts Pizza Party for Supporters

Democrats in the Illinois 10th Congressional District who are pizza enthusiasts had multiple opportuni-ties to indulge in December. On Thursday evening, December 15, Brad Schneider hosted a holiday pizza party to thank his supporters for their hard work and dedication during the campaign.The event was at the Fuller Center, which also serves as a resale store that supports Fuller Center pro-grams, such as buying, rehabbing, and building affordable housing. The chairs, tables, and sofas offered for sale made for a comfortable and inviting party venue.

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CONGRESS WATCH: TRUMP’S CABINET OF PLUTOCRATS, SCIENCE-DENIERS, AND FOES OF GOVERNMENT -- OH MY!

By Laurence D. Schiller

As predicted in the last column, the lame duck Congress has done little overall and nothing to address the major issues out-lined last month, with the important exception of an emer-gency spending bill that prevents a government shutdown until the spring. The important bills will have to be dealt with by the new Congress. Can you hear the can clinking down the road yet again?

The biggest news of the past month has been the parade of appalling Trump cabinet and White House staff nominations. As a friend of Congress Watch commented, “It seems that the only qualification for being in Trump’s cabinet is contempt for the mission of the agency one is heading.”

Then there are those among Trump’s proposed national security appointments who seem willing to discard the First Amendment rights of Americans for some imagined safety.

Here are profiles of some of Trump’s announced nominees, following the order of succession to the presidency:

• Sen. Jeff Sessions (R. Ala.) – Attorney General – In 1986, a Republican-dominated Senate Judiciary Committee refused to confirm Jeff Sessions’ nomination for a federal judgeship. He was found disqualified because he once called an African-American subordinate “boy”; “joked” about supporting the Ku Klux Klan; and referred to both the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and NAACP as “un-American.” More recently, Sen. Sessions said that he wouldn’t character-ize grabbing women by the genitals as “sexual assault,” voted against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, and twice voted against bipartisan legislation to curb sexual assault in the military. Yet, if confirmed as Attorney General, Sen. Sessions would be responsible for enforcing the nation’s civil rights laws.

• Wilbur Ross, Wall Street Billionaire – Secretary of Com-merce – According to CNN, “Ross can easily be cast as a Wall Street robber baron.” His investments include companies that offshored American textile jobs to China and Mexico,

and a West Virginia mine in which 12 coal workers died in an explosion. He once complained on a television program that “the one percent is being picked on for political reasons.”

• Andrew Puzder, Restaurant Magnate – Secretary of Labor – Andrew Puzder is the chief executive of CKE Restau-rants, which owns fast food chains Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, em-ployers of vast numbers of minimum-wage workers. Puzder opposes raising the national minimum wage or guaranteeing paid sick leave to all workers. He is also on record as promis-ing to reverse an Obama rule that expanded overtime pay requirements to cover workers in positions previously deemed “supervisory,” and thus exempt from overtime rules. Puzder supports repeal of Obamacare. He also backs the increas-ing use of automated technology to keep labor costs down, famously observing that machines are “always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall or an age, sex, or race dis-crimination case.”

• Congressman Tom Price (R-GA) – Secretary of Health and Human Services – A six-term Congressman who chairs the House Budget Committee, this former orthopedic sur-geon has been a robust critic of President Barack Obama’s sig-nature healthcare reform law, the Affordable Care Act (ACA or Obamacare). He advocates repealing the ACA and replac-ing it with tax credits for the purchase of private insurance. He supports defunding Planned Parenthood and is a vocal opponent of reproductive choice and same-sex marriage. He has also signaled support for “reforming” Medicare, which is GOP-speak for “privatizing” this cornerstone of the structure of the social safety net.

• Former Presidential Candidate and Neurosurgeon Ben Carson – Secretary of Housing and Urban Development – When his name first surfaced as a possible cabinet pick, Dr. Ben Carson protested that he was not qualified to run a cabinet department. When tapped for Secretary of HUD, though, the retired neurosurgeon and onetime rival to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination cited his experi-ence of growing up poor in Detroit as qualifying him to lead HUD, the federal department that oversees programs that provide housing vouchers to low-income Americans, combat urban blight, and help homeowners avoid foreclosure. Dr. Carson opposes placing affordable housing in higher-income neighborhoods, and so will seek to reverse an Obama admin-istration initiative to combat segregation by giving financial incentives to wealthy communities to build affordable hous-ing.


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• Former Texas Governor Rick Perry – Secretary of Energy – The Department of Energy was the third cabinet department that Rick Perry famously advocated abolishing in a 2012 Republican presidential debate (the department whose name he forgot). Now he proposes to lead that department, which manages and maintains the nation’s nuclear stockpile, funds research in the physical sciences, and plays a major role in energy security and environmental protection.

• Advocate for charter schools, vouchers, and home-schooling, Betsy DeVos – Secretary of Education – As reported by The New Yorker, billionaire Betsy “DeVos has never taught in a public school, nor administered one, nor sent her children to one.” Like many other Trump nominees, DeVos has no government experience and holds government in contempt. The New York Times has reported that the educa-tion policies DeVos helped impose in Detroit led to a “total and complete collapse” of that city’s school system. She once said that her work on vouchers -- taking taxpayer money away from public schools and giving it to religious schools -- helped “advance God’s kingdom.”

• Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt – Direc-tor of the Environmental Protection Agency – Scott Pruitt is a climate change skeptic and ally of the fossil fuel industry. Before accepting the nomination to head the EPA (which is not officially a cabinet-level agency), Pruitt spent much time suing the agency he is tapped to lead. He has pledged to do away with as much environmental regulation as possible and strongly supports fracking.

Of course, none of these people can serve without Senate confirmation. This means that only three of the

CONGRESS WATCH: TRUMP’S CABINET OF PLUTOCRATS, SCIENCE-DENIERS, AND FOES OF GOVERNMENT-- OH MY!

Senate’s 52 Republicans need be sufficiently repulsed by a nominee’s record – or sufficiently worried by public outrage – for the nomination to fail. Whether either an honest inquiry into nominees’ qualifications or political self-interest on the part of Senate Republicans will doom any of these nomina-tions remains to be seen.

The Consequences of Ideological PurityBy Jack Altschuler

Let’s leave aside issues around whether the Democratic pri-mary was fixed and even your notions of who had the better plan for America. Forget about who was more inspirational or more pragmatic or who and what spoke to your fondest dreams, and let’s simply focus on what we faced in the general election.

It came down to Clinton and Trump plus a few other candi-dates, none of whom could possibly win the Presidency. If you voted for Jill Stein as a protest vote or you refused to vote, you surely made a statement. The question I pose here is whether you made the statement you truly wanted to make. Often, integrity isn’t as simple as we want it to be.

The 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush at last hinged on the results in Florida. It is a sad tale of hanging chads, intervention in the people’s election by the Supreme Court, and the votes of tens of thousands of Floridians being ignored, leaving Bush a victory of 537 votes.

Ralph Nader, the Green Party candidate, ran in that election and garnered 97,488 votes in Florida.


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Be Fierce! Fight Back!

The Consequences of Ideological Purity


Some also pointed out the important role that state govern-ment plays in access to affordable healthcare. Thanks to former Governor Pat Quinn, Illinois adopted expanded Medicaid under the ACA. But more recently, Illinois has not obtained concessions from health insurers, either with respect to premium hikes or the scope of provider networks.

The conversation also addressed Republican threats to Medi-care – specifically, House Speaker Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare by turning it into a voucher program. Congress-man-elect Schneider also addressed Republican plans to change Social Security in ways that would dilute the benefits for working people whose life expectancy is significantly lower than that of the top one percent of American earners.

The discussion turned to ways of combating Republican ef-forts to weaken the safety net and repeal President Obama’s signature legislation. Letters and emails to representatives re-main effective means of advocacy. Congressman-elect Schnei-der argued also for direct telephone appeals to the offices of Senators and Members of Congress around the country. Congressional websites are configured to allow email only from constituents, not from citizens of other districts, but there is no similar restriction on telephone calls. Moreover, a flurry of telephone calls can have an immediate impact on the work of a Congressional office. Congresswoman Schakowsky asked those present to share the personal stories that she could bring to the floor of the House to support arguments against repeal.

Above all, Congresswoman Schakowsky advised those seeking to preserve access to affordable, quality healthcare, “Be fierce!”


This from RealClearPolitics.com:

Political scientist Gerald Pomper summed up the results [of the 2000 Presidential election in Florida] in a 2001 Political Science Quarterly overview:

“approximately half (47 percent) of the Nader voters said they would choose Gore in a two-man race, a fifth (21 percent) would choose Bush, and a third (32 percent) would not vote. Applying these figures to the actual vote, Gore would have achieved a net gain of 26,000 votes in Florida, far more than needed to carry the state easily [emphasis added].”

Had that happened, things would be very different today. For example, we almost certainly would not have invaded Iraq, a country that never attacked us and never posed a WMD threat to us or anyone else. Even though Donald Trump has tried to smear our intelligence agencies, saying that they advised President Bush about Saddam’s WMDs, the fact is that they never said anything of the kind. Vice President Dick Cheney is the one who pushed that lie.

Had Gore been President, do the math on how many now dead people would instead be alive today, how many trillions of dollars we would not owe, and the likelihood of the Middle East being in a far better and less lethal condition right now. But Gore didn’t win, and all of that bad stuff did happen, and even more, all because about 26,000 Floridians stood on their short-sighted principles.

With a switch to Hillary Clinton of only 80,000 Jill Stein votes spread among Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, Donald J. Trump would be holed up in his gold tower right now tweeting nonsense to which nobody would be paying any attention.


When You’re Done Weeping, Join Us for Some Good Laughs

While we continue to do the serious work like reaching out to elected officials and preparing for the next campaign season, we all could use a laugh, too. With that in mind, join Tenth Dems at an upcoming performance by the political satire comedy troupe The Capitol Steps on Friday, January 20, at 8:00 PM, at the Center Theatre, North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. We also plan a get-together for a light meal or snack before the 90-minute show. Details to follow.This will be a fun time that can take our minds off the Presi-dential Inauguration. If you’re interested in joining us, email [email protected], or call (847) 266-VOTE (8683). And if you’re planning to come and can help us sign people in or distribute tickets or with any other task, email [email protected].

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Trump’s Presidency Promises to Spawn an Endless Number of “Get Used to Its!”:A Personal PerspectiveBy Steven Gan

Will somebody slap me around and wake me out of this nightmare, the soon-to-be official Donald Trump presidency? It’s already clear we’ll be subjected to a daily barrage of hap-penings I call GUTIs – i.e., “Get Used to It!”

A GUTI is something that Trump will do just because he wants to. And if experience has taught us anything, his sup-porters will cheer every time he does. Here is a short list of some of Trump’s GUTIs that I expect to continue after he’s sworn in.

Juvenile Tweets - He can’t help himself. Trump must express his opinion, and he must have the last word. Whether it’s to complain about the cast of Hamilton publicly exhorting his Vice President to heal our divisions or to publicly invite China not to return a U.S. underwater drone that was seized illegally in international waters, Trump must have his say. He has 17.5 million Twitter followers, all potential subscribers to a future Trump TV. No one is going to take his Twitter account away from him. So just GUTI.

Victory Tours and Rallies - Like his Twitter account, Trump can’t live without huge rallies. The adulation he receives from his supporters fuels his insatiable ego and narcissism. As I was flipping through the channels, looking for a Law & Order episode and trying to avoid seeing anything about Trump,

I happened upon Trump speaking in front of a cheering crowd, relishing his victory with comments like, “I just love being a winner.” I’ll have to GUTI.

Straining Relationships at Home and Abroad – First, Trump chatted by telephone with Taiwan’s president, deviat-ing from the U.S.’s 37-year-old “one-China” policy. Then he publicly belittled the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that concluded that Russian President Vladimir Putin was behind the hacking of the DNC headquarters servers in an effort to disrupt and influence our election, calling their findings “ridiculous.” Trump relishes being “unpredictable,” so just GUTI.

Mixing Family, Business, and the Presidency – It has been reported that Trump’s daughter Ivanka will have a White House office, and there’s speculation that she may take over

some of the functions of a First Lady. Ivanka also happens to be a senior executive vice president of Trump’s business organization and a valued business advisor. So, if Trump has Ivanka sitting in on high-level meetings with leaders of foreign nations and she then goes to her Trump business office to plan the next golf course or hotel or luxury apartment building in those foreign nations, just GUTI.

I fear we’re never going to see a serious, mature President Trump. So just GUTI?

I say NOT! There may not be a constitutional requirement that the President of the United States behave like a serious grown-up, but there are constitutional prohibitions against a U.S. President’s profiting from personal commerce with for-eign entities. And surely the Constitution does not permit the U.S. President to support one foreign power’s seizure of U.S. property (the underwater drone) or another foreign power’s interference with a national election.

There are rough days ahead, for sure. But GUTI? NEVER.

The cartoon on this page is from D is for Dump Trump: An Anti-Hate Alphabet. This book can be purchased directly from Tenth Dems.


We wouldn’t be fearing extremist policies, unconstitutional actions and the national security threat of the next president cozying up to Vladimir Putin, but we are facing exactly those things.

Note that the voting adjustment proposed above doesn’t even consider the people who stayed home but would have voted for Clinton in a two-way race.

Elections have consequences, so your vote has consequences. When you stand on principle and refuse to concede that the better of a two-choice pair is preferable to enabling the worst to happen, you ensure that the worst does, indeed, happen. It just did. Again.

The Consequences of Ideological Purity

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What Does Democracy Mean in the Age of Trump?

By Leslie Brenner Lipschultz

After weeks of brooding about the election results, railing at the few folks I know who voted for Trump, and Googling phrases like Trump impeachment, I realized finally that unless he institutes martial law or some other suspension of our con-stitutional liberties, Donald Trump’s election simply provides us with an opportunity to demonstrate how powerful our democracy really is.

What does this mean for the more than 65 million of us who voted for Hillary? That if we simply retreat back into our in-dividual lives, letting the forces thrust upon us by our mostly

angry brethren rule the day, potentially changing for the long term the direction of U.S. policies in vital arenas like the environment, education, labor policy, immigration, women’s rights, and so much more, we will have sown the seeds for the undermining of our cherished democratic values. This would be our fault as much as that of Donald Trump and his hench-men.

Rather, we must, as poet Dylan Thomas invoked, “…not go gently into this good night… [but] rage, rage against the dy-ing of the light…” We must speak up, speak out, take to the streets when necessary, and simply not allow the dark forces insinuating themselves into the highest reaches of our govern-ment to prevail over the commonsense wisdom that must be our guide. We must fight the good fight.

And I had another epiphany. Albeit a major Obama support-er, I blamed the President for our not working hard enough to fight the Republicans standing in the way of progressive policy-making. My thought was that he should have exhorted us to rail at those obstructionists for constraining his every ef-fort to create policies for the common good, ultimately enlist-ing enough support to get them to stand down.

But I realize now that it was not President Obama’s failure so much as it was the failure of all of us to take the lead on fighting against Republican intransigence and ill will. Yes, the President could have, with fiery and charismatic recitations, gotten us to step up to hold Republican representatives ac-countable. But we should not have required anyone to remind us of our civic duty, which is to do much more than simply turn out for elections.

And that is where I am coming from in arguing that the elec-tion of an ill-tempered, ill-informed, badly behaved bully like Donald Trump might actually be viewed as an opportunity to test the strength of our democracy. Not one we necessarily are thrilled to be confronted with, but one we must take oh-so-se-riously if we are to survive the onslaught against the principles we hold dear.

Giving to cherished causes that will bring on the lobbyists and other big guns to fight for us always helps. But it will clearly not be enough. Nor will simply railing to a few friends and neighbors regarding our fears about a Trump administration be adequate either. Instead, we must take our democracy-building to the streets, enlisting social media, and much more to build support. But even more important will be the need to build bridges with Trump supporters. That’s an extremely dif-ficult concept for me to even articulate since all I have wanted is to take them to task and demand they explain their irratio-nal action. But the truth is that if our democracy is really to survive and flourish, we need to find common ground with those people.

Mind you, there will be some for whom there will be no common ground because they represent the baser aspects of the Trump campaign. Those who fear that every immigrant is a terrorist; that walls must be built to keep us safe – whether from rapists and murderers, or global competition; and who would be happy if the civil rights era never took place. But my strong sense is that this is a minority of the individuals who supported the president-elect. So it is with the majority we must initiate dialogue and understand how their sense of disenfranchisement, disengagement and economic dislocation led to their support for an “outsider” the likes of whom we


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What Does Democracy Mean in the Age of Trump?

Demonstrate for Women’s Rights!


have never seen (and hope never to see again) as President. Indeed, it is only by seeking our “sameness” that we can stand firm against bigots and extremists.

I leave it for another day, and for people wiser than I am, to begin the enormous job of creating an agenda and action plan to advance such a movement. But suffice it to say that the very survival of our democracy depends upon this in more profound ways than we have faced in a very long time.

Join Tenth Dems activists and others from around the country in D.C. for the Women’s March on Washington. The bus departs from Home Depot, 655 Lake Cook Rd., Deerfield Friday evening, January 20th and arrives the morning of the March. (Note: no overnight parking is allowed.) The bus leaves after the event ends and arrives back in Deerfield on Sunday morning, January 22nd. We will be sleeping on the bus for two nights.

From the March organizers: In the spirit of democracy and honoring the champions of human rights, dignity, and justice who have come before us, we join in diversity to show our presence in numbers too great to ignore. The Women’s March on Washington will send a bold message to our new government on their first day in office, and to the world that women’s rights are human rights. We stand together, recognizing that defending the most marginalized among us is defending all of us. Please visit the event website (https://www.womensmarch.com/) for more information. Go to http://rallybus.net/womens-march-on-washington to sign up for the bus online, and then select Illinois and Deerfield from the drop-down menus. For further information about the bus, please contact Kim at 847-714-3145 (text is preferred) or email [email protected].

Paid for by the Illinois Tenth Congressional District Democrats (www.tenthdems.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee. Contributions are not tax deductible.

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