Randi Scheurer is gearing up to run in the Democratic Party primary for the IL-8th Congressional District seat, now occupied by Melissa Bean.

Randi is a strong antiwar progressive, whose son served a year in Iraq and daughter was a Captain in the U.S. Army.

She was a key force in the 2006 campaign of her husband, Bill Scheurer, also a committed peace activist. This campaign gathered 15,000 signatures to get on the ballot, and got over 5% of the vote in the general election, while attracting the frenzied opposition of Rahm Emmanuel, the DCCC, and DLC Dems.

Their campaign had backing from major unions (IAMAW, Teamsters, UNITE, Steelworkers, SEIU) and Progressive Democrats of Illinois. Randi is working to renew that support for her primary challenge to this pro-war, Bush Democrat.

Go to www.honk4peace.org to contact the campaign. Let's get honking!

I do not know for whom Melissa Bean [D-IL, 8th District] was doing a favor when she hired Nicholas Jordan to be her Director of Constituent Services, but she was not doing one for herself, and she was certainly not doing one for her constituents.

In February 2005, we provided Jordan with scores of written testimony and documents, which showed how a Medicare managed care organization had circumvented numerous Medicare regulations with the blessings of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The fact intensive information that we gave to him was not complicated, but there was a lot of it, and we offered to meet with him if he needed assistance in understanding its significance. Jordan did not seem very enthused about a meeting, and he appeared to have no understanding about what a Congressional caseworker is allowed to do on behalf of a constituent.

Our understanding of the guidelines for Congressional caseworkers comes from the US House Ethics Committee, as well as other US government publications. This information is readily available via the Internet.

The following statements are from the US House Ethics Manual via its web site at http://www.house.gov/ethics/ethicschap7.html

Members and staff of the House often assist constituents in their dealings with administrative agencies by acting as facilitators or "ombudsmen". Members may properly communicate with agencies on behalf of constituents:

* to request information or status reports;
* to urge prompt consideration of a matter based on the merits of the case;
* to arrange for appointments;
* to express judgment on a matter (subject to ex parte communication rules); and/or
* to ask for reconsideration, based on law and regulation, of an administrative decision.

The failure of a regulatory agency to enforce the regulations obviously fits into the category of what issues “Members” may inquire about with an agency.

One of the specific violations that we reported to Jordan was that CMS and the Medicare managed care provider had denied beneficiaries their right to make appeals, expedited and otherwise, i.e. due process, and they did so in a variety of ways.

Jordan was unable to grasp that our issue was not about a judicial matter that we wanted Bean to intervene in. There was no judicial matter because we had been denied access to the regulatory judicial process!

Jordan finally sent a "letter of inquiry” regarding our issue, but:
• he sent it to the wrong place.
• he misidentified the issue.
• he failed to provide us with the "answers" that he claimed to have received.

I told Jordan not to send an inquiry to AdministarFederal because they only handle issues involving beneficiaries directly enrolled in Medicare. We are Medicare Advantage [managed care] beneficiaries and thus Jordan should have sent the letter to Matthew Brown, who at that time was the CMS Congressional Liaison in Washington.

Jordan misidentified our issue as being about “health care”. Our issue was about Federal regulations being violated. Bean is not a doctor, and we did not ask her office to become involved in a health care issue.

[By definition, any issue involving CMS will have origins in health care, but we stated in writing to Jordan that we were not asking him to address an issue of health care.]

AdminstarFederal forwarded the letter that they received from Bean/Jordan to our Medicare Advantage policy holder (the HMO that had a contract with the Medicare managed care provider). There is no evidence that the HMO responded to anybody further. Jordan has failed to supply us with any of the "answers that he claimed to have received via a phone call from CMS. We do not think that there was any such "phone call".

[It is not against House rules for a caseworker to communicate with a Federal agency verbally, but doing so is generally not recommended by the House Ethics Rules Committee.]

I spoke with John Gonzalez, Bean’s Chief of Staff, on June 30, 2005. Gonzalez told me that he would look into the matter and get back to me after the Fourth of July holiday, but he never did.

It might be unreasonable for Bean to be held accountable for the actions of her caseworker, but she has to be accountable for her chief of staff. Unfortunately, Bean has not been made accountable for much of anything. Many people have felt that her being a "Democrat" trumped any concern about her job performance and voting record.

If our votes count, then Bean should be concerned about losing ours.

In the primary I will support Randi Scheurer.

Is anyone going to run against Melissa (Blue Dog) Bean? She is the biggest disappointment of the Dems outside of Emmanuel.
I would never vote for a repuke, so please, somebody, please run against her. I'm too old, or I would!!

I am appauld at the fact that Mrs. Bean voted for the extra funding, keeping our kids fighting a needless war longer. She needs to be replaced and I would love to run against her and try and reverse the damage she has done. We need leaders not a bunch of worthless sell outs.