John Shimkus in the news

Our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), is in the news, having questioned whether prenatal care should be part of the cost of men’s health insurance. After all, men don’t have babies. That’s like a totally female thing.

Here, from Consumer Reports, is a helpful explanation of why men should have to pay for prenatal care. An excerpt:

Health insurance, like all insurance, works by pooling risks. The healthy subsidize the sick, who could be somebody else this year and you next year. Those risks include any kind of health care a person might need from birth to death—prenatal care through hospice. No individual is likely to need all of it, but we will all need some of it eventually.

So, as a middle-aged childless man you resent having to pay for maternity care or kids’ dental care. Shouldn’t turnabout be fair play? Shouldn’t pregnant women and kids be able to say, “Fine, but in that case why should we have to pay for your Viagra, or prostate cancer tests, or the heart attack and high blood pressure you are many times more likely to suffer from than we are?” Once you start down that road, it’s hard to know where to stop. If you slice and dice risks, eventually you don't have a risk pool at all, and the whole idea of insurance falls apart. [My emphasis.]

Notice though that Consumer Reports has limited the question to childless men. Shimkus was speaking of all men.

Heidi Stevens of the Chicago Tribune offers offers further reasons why men should have to pay for prenatal care:

Because lots of men have sex with women.

Because a lot of that sex produces babies.

Because men and women have an equal stake in those babies being born healthy.

Because all of us, even when we’re not the parents of those babies, have a stake in those babies being born healthy.

Because healthy babies, ideally, turn into healthy children.

Another Tribune item sums up matters in its headline: “U.S. Rep. John Shimkus’s foot finds warm welcome in mouth.” But Shimkus’s suggestion about prenatal care is not a mere gaffe, an “unfortunate choice of words,” as they say. His words reveal a fundamentally ungenerous regard for those who are not in his own comfortable shoes. It’s the same narrow, selfish thinking that underwrites, say, an older voter’s choice not to approve a bond issue for schools or libraries: “I don’t have children in school.” “I don’t use the library.” “Why should I,” &c.

*

March 11: Shimkus is standing by his remarks.

Three more posts with John Shimkus
Shimkus and the NRA : : Shimkus says that Bruce Rauner can make the trains run on time : Waiting for Godot Shimkus

Shimkus fail

Terrible news out of Las Vegas this morning. Violence and hate are never the answer.

— John Shimkus (@RepShimkus) October 2, 2017

My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), has offered nothing more than this tweet. He hasn’t even mentioned the now-obligatory “thoughts and prayers.”

Shimkus has an A lifetime rating from the NRA. He leads Illinois congressional Republicans in total contributions from the NRA. Truly, his concern about “the destruction of human life” seems limited to prenatal life.

I called Shimkus’s office this afternoon to suggest that while violence and hate are never “the answer,” legislation concerning gun-ownership would be at least a large part of an answer to the problem of gun violence. No hunter needs an assault rifle to hunt. No hunter needs a “bump stock” or “gat crank” to turn a semi-automatic rifle into a homemade machine gun. No modern industrial nation knows the levels of gun violence that we in the United States know.

Have you called your representative and senators today?

Other john Shimkus posts
At work and play : No town halls (1) : No town halls (2) : Shimkus on prenatal care and men’s health insurance : Shimkus and the telecommunications industry : Shimkus unwittingly likens an Illinois gubernatorial candidate to Benito Mussolini

Shame on John Shimkus

My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), likes to post Bible passages on Twitter. Here’s what he posted today:

Deuteronomy 21:22-23 If a man has committed a sin worthy of death and he is put to death and you hang him on a tree, his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same (for he who is hung on the tree is accursed of God)...

— John Shimkus (@RepShimkus) February 17, 2018

It’s possible that this tweet is the work of some automated verse-a-day service. But in that case, there would likely be contemporaneous tweets from other users showing the same passage. I find none. And hours after this tweet appeared, it’s still there.

I called John Shimkus’s Washington office to explain why I think that tweets about hanging people from trees are not appropriate: 202-225-5271. I left my number and await a reply.

*

2:50 p.m.: Shimkus is attempting an explanation of an earlier tweet that, in light of events in Parkland, Florida, struck some readers as utterly grotesque: “The one who touches the corpse of any person shall be unclean for seven days” (Numbers 19:11).

Shimkus’s explanation (that the tweet has nothing to do with Parkland) notes that the passages in his tweets come from his “daily Bible study” — in other words, he chooses them himself. He has finally commented on events in Parkland, offering “prayers” for “those victims, their families, and all who have suffered because of the evil in this world.” Nothing thus far about those who have suffered because of firearms in this country. Again: “The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.”

Shimkus has also said nothing thus far about his choice of a passage about hanging people from trees.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

Waiting for Godot Shimkus

Senator Bernie Sanders, speaking to CNN yesterday: “If you don’t have the guts to face your constituents, then you shouldn’t be in the United States Congress.”

Our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), doesn’t believe in facing his constituents in town-hall meetings:

Rep. John Shimkus told fellow lawmakers he‘d never held a town-hall meeting during his two decades in Congress, and offered advice on how to handle constituent relations, according to two sources in the room. A Shimkus spokesperson wouldn’t comment on the private conference, but did confirm that Shimkus has never held an in-person town hall, saying he prefers telephone town halls and one-on-one constituent meetings.The spokesperson added that Trump won the Illinois district with 70 percent of the vote, and his constituents were “pleased the president is delivering on his promises.”

Well, not every constituent. Eight of us went to one of Rep. Shimkus’s local offices today. All efforts to arrange a meeting with him had failed, so we just showed up. (It’s a forty-five-minute drive.) For a little more than an hour, we spoke to a district aide, who took notes and promised to pass on our concerns, which included “alternative facts,” Cabinet appointees, climate change, the executive order on travel, funding for the arts and PBS, health care, LGBTQ rights, mass deportations, Planned Parenthood, our president’s lack of plain decency, a promised wall, Russian influence in the 2016 election, and, above all, fear about the future of our democracy. It was a respectful meeting, with an aide who was admittedly out of his wheelhouse. That wheelhouse would be what’s usually called “constituent services” — helping people with IRS and Social Security problems and such.

We eight constituents thought our time was well spent. I don’t know if we’ll we ever get to meet with Rep. Shimkus. But as someone once said, “If you don’t have the guts to face your constituents, then you shouldn’t be in the United States Congress.”

[The Fifteenth District has a population of 710,000. As a member of our group pointed out, one-on-one meetings leave an overwhelming majority of voters without access to their representative. In 2016 Shimkus ran unopposed; he won reëlection with all of the vote.]

Shimkus

My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), has announced that he will not seek reelection. This is the same John Shimkus who has declared that we don’t need to worry about rising sea levels (because of a divine promise not to destroy the world with a flood), who has unwittingly — and favorably! — compared a Republican gubernatorial candidate to Benito Mussolini, who has wondered whether prenatal care should be part of the cost of men’s health insurance, who has called the separation of children from parents at the border an “unfortunate result” of a “broken immigration system,” whose response to a war of tariffs is to say “I’m just a legislator,” whose sole response to a mass shooting is to tweet that “Violence and hate are never the answer,” who fails to show up for debates, and who refuses to meet his constituents in town halls and advises fellow Republican members of Congress to do the same.

Good fucking riddance.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

[If you’re reading in a reader, you’ll most likely not see the point of the post title. There’s a line through the name: Shimkus.]

A “government handout video”

David Begnaud is a CBS News correspondent:

BREAKING: Border Patrol @CBP just gave us this video of the detention facility we toured yesterday in McAllen, Texas. We weren't allowed to bring in cameras, or interview anyone. To be clear: this is government handout video. pic.twitter.com/Zjy80qIZFZ

— David Begnaud (@DavidBegnaud) June 18, 2018

These images make my heart break. What kind of country are we living in?

My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), is missing in action on this matter. When I called his Washington office on Saturday, an aide told me that he’s not aware of Shimkus having any position on the separation of parents and children at the U.S.–Mexico border. To remain silent is to be complicit.

*

9:00 a.m.: I called again. No, the aide hasn’t talked to him about this issue, no position that she knows of, he’s not in the office today.

*

3:57 p.m.: I called again. Answering machine. “Mailbox full.”

*

June 19, 10:16 a.m.: No, the aide still hasn’t spoken to him about this issue. But you must be getting a lot of calls? Yes, that’s why it will take time to get back to people. Truth and logic, defenestrated.

*

3:14 p.m.: Finally a position, or an evasion, really: the separation of parents and children is an “unfortunate result” of a “broken immigration system.” An aide read a short statement over the telephone. I jotted down those phrases. Legislation is pending for later this week in the House. Would Representative Shimkus vote for a narrowly focused bill that prohibits this practice without attaching other provisions? Legislation is pending for later this week in the House.

Calling a policy an “unfortunate consequence,” supporting what I presume will be a bill that puts billions of dollars toward a wall in exchange for ending this practice: you’re a real profile in courage, John Shimkus.

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All OCA John Shimkus posts

John Shimkus at work and play

Mike Viqueira, a reporter from NBC News, asked some Republican members of Congress if they had read the bill that they were about to vote on to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Some said they had. Some walked on by. And then there was our representative, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15):

“Good morning, Mr. Shimkus, have you had a chance to read this bill?”

“Uh, I just got back from baseball practice.”

When I heard about it, I thought someone was kidding. But it’s no joke. It’s on tape.

There are no words. (It’s before 10 p.m.)

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All OCA Shimkus posts

Inopportune, opportune

In late April, when Representative John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15) scheduled time for a staff member to meet with voters, no one could have foreseen that the meeting would be taking place the day after Shimkus voted to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

It should be an interesting morning.

A regular reader may recall that Rep. Shimkus does not do town halls.

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All OCA Shimkus posts

Little Luther

Reformation 500 Flat Luther with Lutheran Pastor Frederick Muhlenberg the first Speaker of the House of Representatives. pic.twitter.com/2Vu6qLSprg

— John Shimkus (@RepShimkus) October 26, 2017

It appears that my representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), likes to play with paper dolls. Okay. But it’s not okay to affix a paper doll to a painting that doesn’t belong to you. This 1881 painting of Frederick Muhlenberg hangs in the United States House of Representatives. Representative Shimkus has also shared a photograph of the doll nestled in the arm of a statue of John Peter Gabriel Muhlenberg. The 1889 statue stands in National Statuary Hall.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

[Look closely and you’ll see that there’s no photoshopping involved. The doll is attached to the frame. The doll’s shadow falls on the wall.]

Not exactly a profile in courage

Our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), commenting on the possibility of Chinese tariffs on soybeans and other crops: “I’m just a legislator.”

And: “I think what I can do is publicly talk about, which I do, that there is a dilemma here that we’re facing.”

And: “I don’t think anyone wins a trade war. Maybe Trump thinks he can. But we have to try to get him to be more targeted on these things.”

Shimkus is in a sticky situation: his gerrymandered district (whose shape suggests a dancing dinosaur or feeble rooster) is the reddest congressional district in Illinois. (In the 2016 presidential election: 71% R, 24% D.) That stunning disavowal of agency — “I’m just a legislator” (not a member of a co-equal branch of government?) — makes it clear that Shimkus is unwilling to cross the boss. I wonder though how many voters in the 15th District have begun to regret their choice for president.

Related reading
All OCA John Shimkus posts

The New York Times : “End the Gun Epidemic in America”

The New York Times has a front-page editorial today, the first since 1920: “End the Gun Epidemic in America.” An excerpt:

It is a moral outrage and a national disgrace that civilians can legally purchase weapons designed specifically to kill people with brutal speed and efficiency. These are weapons of war, barely modified and deliberately marketed as tools of macho vigilantism and even insurrection. America’s elected leaders offer prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequence, reject the most basic restrictions on weapons of mass killing, as they did on Thursday. They distract us with arguments about the word terrorism. Let’s be clear: These spree killings are all, in their own ways, acts of terrorism.

Opponents of gun control are saying, as they do after every killing, that no law can unfailingly forestall a specific criminal. That is true. They are talking, many with sincerity, about the constitutional challenges to effective gun regulation. Those challenges exist. They point out that determined killers obtained weapons illegally in places like France, England and Norway that have strict gun laws. Yes, they did.

But at least those countries are trying. The United States is not. Worse, politicians abet would-be killers by creating gun markets for them, and voters allow those politicians to keep their jobs. It is past time to stop talking about halting the spread of firearms, and instead to reduce their number drastically — eliminating some large categories of weapons and ammunition.

I have just discovered, via this helpful website, that my representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), has in the course of his political career received $31,050 from the NRA. Representative Shimkus is up for reëlection in 2016. He may be best known for saying that we don’t need to worry about rising sea levels, because “God said the earth would not be destroyed by a flood.” In my household, Shimkus is also known for unwittingly likening Bruce Rauner to Benito Mussolini. I have called Representative Shimkus’s office before; I will be calling again on Monday.

On a brighter note, Illinois senator Mark Kirk was the only Senate Republican to vote this week to prohibit people on the F.B.I.’s terrorist watchlist from purchasing guns or explosives. I will be calling Senator Kirk’s office on Monday, too.

John Shimkus, profile in courage

A Washington Post article about House Republicans leaving Congress notes that John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), one of those leaving, “declined to say whether he had any problems with Trump”:

“The president is the de facto head of the party by definition, but the party for me is less government, individual responsibility, lower taxes, more personal freedoms and liberties,” he said.

“People come and go. Personalities are personalities,” he added.

Shimkus has served in the House since 1997. He became our representative (after redistricting) in 2012. We may get someone even worse next year.

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All OCA John Shimkus posts

Congressman compares gubernatorial candidate to Mussolini, favorably

[From a local newspaper.]

That’s Congressman John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), speaking of the Republican candidate for Illinois governor, Bruce Rauner. Whether Shimkus knows it or not, he’s comparing Rauner to Benito Mussolini — and favorably.

The comparison fails in three ways: 1. Mussolini wasn’t responsible for making trains run on time. 2. The claim that he did make trains run on time is typically advanced as a grim joke: “Yes, but he made the trains run on time.” 3. It is inadvisable to laud an American political candidate by likening that candidate to a fascist dictator.

You may remember Congressman Shimkus making the news in 2009 for his observation that we need not worry about rising sea levels because God promised not to destroy the world by flood.

For more on Mussolini and trains, see snopes.com.

Whoa again, at least a local whoa

Commenting on Donald Trump’s decision to remove U.S. troops from Syria, our representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), told an interviewer, “Pull my name off the ‘I support Donald Trump’ list.” Shimkus called Trump’s decision “despicable.” He later released (where?) a statement:

While my votes will continue to support the president’s domestic policy agenda, because of this terrible foreign policy decision I asked that my name be removed from his campaign’s official list of supporters.

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All OCA John Shimkus posts

John Shimkus and S.J.Res.34

Here, from The Verge, is a list of the members of Congress, all Republicans, who voted in favor of S.J.Res.34, along with the total contributions they received from the telecommunications industry in their most recent electoral campaigns. I am surprised to see my House representative, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), doing so well. In his most recent (2016) campaign, he received $104,425 in telecommunications contributions. Only twelve senators and three representatives received more money from telecommunications in their most recent campaigns. Shimkus had no opponent in the general election, only a Republican primary challenger. To paraphrase an old song: they’ve got an awful lot of money in east-central Illinois.

No doubt many Democratic members of Congress received contributions from the telecommunications industry as well. This list has only the names of those members of Congress who voted for S.J.Res.34. Two Republican senators did not vote. Fifteen House Republicans voted no; six House Republicans and three House Democrats did not vote.

The real reason for “no town halls”

I know that speaking to a member of Congress is unlikely to change that member’s mind. I know that speaking to the district director for a member of Congress is even less likely to change that member’s mind. I read The New Yorker.

But I went this morning to the office hours of Representative John Shimkus’s (R, Illinois-15) district director, as did fifty or so other voters, and we made our concerns about yesterday’s vote on the Affordable Care Act — and much else — heard. The director had no explanation of why Shimkus voted to repeal the ACA: he was on a plane; she was busy organizing a dinner for him.

In the aftermath of this meeting, I think I figured out the real reason why a member of Congress might choose not to hold town halls. When you meet with people only in ones and twos, they have much less opportunity to see themselves as members of a polis, as participants in a political community. Likeminded citizens have less opportunity to identify one another and find common cause. Citizens at odds on matters of policy have less opportunity to listen to each another and perhaps rethink their allegiances. (Imagine, for instance, hearing an argument for gun legislation from a firearms owner and hunter in your own community. It happened this morning.) Talking to constituents in ones and two means that there are, in effect, no witnesses, no one else listening and thinking and making up or changing her or his mind. No reporters either.

Related reading
All OCA Shimkus posts

[“He was on a plane; she was busy organizing a dinner for him.” I know: what?!]

“Prayers and condolences,” again

“Fuck you. We don’t need your fucking prayers. GET BETTER GUN CONTROL”: a tweet from a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Parkland, Florida, responding to a presidential tweet offering “prayers and condolences.”

More here: “Students who survived Florida school shooting don't want President Trump’s ‘prayers and condolences’” (Daily News).

[My representative in Congress, John Shimkus (R, Illinois-15), has yet to offer a tweet of “prayers and condolences” or “thoughts and prayers.” Shimkus leads Illinois congressional Republicans in total contributions from the NRA.]

“Here’s what it’s like to live in the shadow of a Big Ten school”

The University of Illinois today announced the hiring of a new football coach. In such circumstances, our local news outlet (“Your News Leader”) turns into a muzzy cheer squad. “Crazy!” said the anchor. The first twelve minutes of tonight’s hour-long newscast were devoted to the hiring, with more coverage promised later in the hour.

Also today, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner appeared in two nearby towns “to hear [our] concerns” and stump for congressional candidate John Shimkus (who in 2014 described Rauner as someone who “can make the trains run on time”). At the first of these events, a journalist (a former student of mine) was denied entry. Citizens pressing for a resolution to the state’s budget crisis were also denied entry. I don’t know what happened at the second event. Our local news outlet covered neither event.

The school where I spent thirty years as a professor of English is down the road a ways from the University of Illinois, in more ways than one. My school is not a Big Ten school, not a Research I school. It’s what’s called a “teaching university”: students are the faculty’s first priority. My school is small and scrappy and chronically underfunded. And now, in the absence of a state budget, hundreds of employees have lost or will soon lose their jobs. None of that made tonight’s news either.

The U of I’s new coach has a six-year contract that will pay him twenty-one million dollars. Even the reporter explaining the contract’s details seemed to understand the unseemliness of that kind of money, noting that it comes not from the university budget but from “athletics.”

A new bill to fund Illinois state schools asks for forty million dollars for the state’s community colleges. One football coach equals about half that. As someone recently asked, “Where are our priorities?”

[Post title in the manner of The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd .]

Where’s Mary?

From Axios: “Mary Miller missing from IL GOP messaging.” She was missing from a Republican Day rally at the Illinois State Fair:

When reporters repeatedly asked IL GOP chair Don Tracy about her absence at the rally, he responded, “I don’t know where Mary Miller is.”

Given Miller’s Adolf Hitler moment and her celebration of “white life,” it may be that those in charge thought it would be safer not to have her present. Or perhaps she chose not to show up because she might have to answer a question from a news outlet. She doesn’t do that. (She refuses. Sometimes she hides.) Nor does she answer letters from at least some of her constituents. I’ve written four, the first of which had no response but put me on her newsletter list. (They must have had an e-mail address for me from her predecessor, John Shimkus.) I immediately unsubscribed. The other three letters had no response.

Regular readers of OCA will know that Mary Miller is “my” representative in Congress.

Related reading
All OCA Mary Miller posts (Pinboard)

Recently updated

A “government handout video" John Shimkus, still missing in action.