The Second Amendment: the bigger issues

This new call by ex-Supreme Court Justice Stevens to repeal the Second Amendment shows how much we have lost in our understanding about what exactly the United States is.

Tue first Ten Amendments are commonly known as the Bill of Rights, rights that our Founders believed came from God and not from government.  They were hesitant about including a list of rights to the Constitution for two reasons: they thought people might think that these were the only rights they had, and people might think that these rights came from government and not from God.  If they came from government, then, of course, they could be repealed.

And then, since these rights come from God, this also shows that the idea that we are a secular nation is not true. Our freedoms depend on our belief in God.  Our government must favor a belief in God over atheism, because our foundation as a nation depends on it.  So, the idea that schools and government must be neutral to the very idea of God undermines our country at its very core.

No, J.B. Pritzker Didn’t Win the Primary

How could J B Pritzker win an election when more people voted against him than for him?  Eleven out of 20 Democrats who voted in the Tuesday primary did not vote for him, so how can he be the winner? 

Who is the winner then?

We don’t know. 

Oh, and Kwame Raoul didn’t win the attorney general primary either.  Seventy per cent of the primary voters didn’t vote for him.  How could he be the winner?  And Joe Berrios might not have lost the Cook County Assessor race.

We could have runoffs, but that is a very expensive option when just about every government body in Illinois is deeply in debt.  But in these cases we need them.

In the future, we should start using weighted ballots, if that’s what they’re called.

Any election that has more than two candidates, voters should be able to mark their second choices.  And they should be able to rank as many choices as there are candidates in that race.  As the lowest vote getting candidates are eliminated, their voters’ next selections are counted.  And so on until one candidate gets more than 50% of the total votes.

In an election with more than two candidates, nobody should be declared the winner who does not get more than 50% of the votes.   This destroys the very idea of a democracy.  Presidential races are an obvious exception, because there the states elect the President and not the general populace.

When there are more than two candidates, one or more of them generally divides a certain group of voters, essentially giving the candidate that group doesn’t want to win the victory.  Too many people will not vote for who they really want, but they will vote their second choices to keep that other candidate from winning.

Now is the time when we need to rethink our election process, while these results are still fresh in our minds.  The system is broken, and we need to fix it now.  Otherwise, we will forget until the next unjust elections are held.

ending gerrymandering?

The Tribune ran a major opinion piece on gerrymandering (March 16), but the article undercut the very point it wanted to make. 

If you want to end gerrymandering, there is one thing that has to be done.  The people drawing the map, and I don’t care who they are, must not have access to the demographics of the people on the map. 

We think of gerrymandering usually only about political parties, but demographics often correspond to the parties.  Older people tend to vote Republican.  Minorities tend to vote Democratic, as well as younger people. 

The author of the article spoke quite favorably of district boundaries that created majority minority groups, because that almost ensured that a minority candidate would be elected.  So now we are supposed to draw boundaries based on ethnicities?  What about religion, sexual orientation?  Should we try to get all of Boy’s Town into one district to be sure that we can elect a gay candidate?

Frankly, I think those who try to do this, and even courts have come out in favor of it, are badly mistaken.  If you put all of a particular minority into one district, you may well end up with one minority representative who has their interests in mind.  But if that particular minority group is present in a number of districts, then all of those representative will most likely have to represent them well if they want to get and stay in office.

Any demographic, age, religion, sex, sexual orientation, education level, income level, ethnicity, nationality, employment status, occupation, etc., can be used to draw boundaries that can favor one political party over another.  If you justify it for one reason, ethnicity, how can you deny it for another? 

If you want fair elections, those who draw the boundaries should have no knowledge of the demographics of the people.  They should only know where they live and the natural boundaries that exist, like city, county limits, rivers, mountains, major highways, etc.  Anything beyond that can and will lead to mischief.

affordable housing: a letter to my village board

I understand the Village Board will hear a case for an affordable housing development on April 10, 2018.  I would like to express my opposition to the plan. 

I only learned about this project and meeting from the latest Wilmette Life, so I have only the facts that article articulated.  But my objections are two:

1)         When you talk about affordable housing, you are either talking about housing that is cheaply made and thus costs less, or you are talking about subsidized housing.  I am sure they mean the latter, and I would appreciate it if they would just be a little more straightforward about the nature of the project.

So, if it is subsidized, then it must be taxpayers who are paying toward it.  The article mentions that they are seeking state and federal funding.  That is like asking your drunk uncle for money.  He probably won’t turn you down, but he has no business giving you any money in that condition.

The state is approaching $200 billion in debt, while the federal government is over $20 trillion in debt.  Neither has any intention of paying these debts off.  They are content to just waste billions of dollars a year paying interest on these loans.  They cannot be trusted anymore to make wise and responsible decisions, particularly when it comes to spending other people’s money.  Asking them for money is like asking them to use my credit card without asking me if that is how I want to spend my money.  They are as complicit in this abuse of power as any politician.

Winning state and federal funding probably shouldn’t be difficult, but their wasting of other people’s money I find immoral and criminal. 

To approve this project means that you are approving the government’s total mismanagement of the public’s resources.  If your credit card is maxed out, you need to start passing on spending opportunities, even though someone may argue that the case is worthy.

2)         My second objection relates to a comment the WL attributes to a supporter of the project.  It is said that, quoting the article and not a person, “the project would bring needed diversity to Wilmette.”

The project purports to be about the elderly and disabled of Wilmette, but it seems the larger intent is to bring more diversity to Wilmette.  And so, my question is: why is this diversity needed?  Needed for what?  Is anybody asking for it?  I have lived here since 1975, and I never thought to myself that what we need here is more diversity.  Are we somehow diminished as a village without more diversity? 

I object to the government and people telling me what I need and then deciding for me to give me what they think I need and then telling me to like it or I am somehow a bad person.

Perhaps it might sound like I am overreacting or seeing more in this than there is, but I have long learned that most change happens slowly.  Either it is in the right direction or it is in the wrong direction.  And because it happens slowly, even over generations, the changes are minimized, but for those who live long enough, the little changes add up to big changes.  And then people wake up and ask, what happened? 

So I am opposed to this project, and as opposed as I can be.  I hope you will at least consider my objections when you discuss and vote on this project.

Thank you

choosing judges

There has to be a better way to select judges rather than by having elections.  Not enough people know enough about them to make an election meaningful.  Besides, elections involve campaigns, which involve money, and that has a way of influencing outcomes in an unseemly manner.

The Sun-Times offered a chart of organizations who have endorsed candidates in order to promote voter knowledge of the candidates.  But for me, this revealed a very troubling aspect of our judicial system. 

I can see a Chicago Bar Association and a Cook County Bar Association, but I don’t understand why we have bar associations for Asian-Americans, Black Women, Jews (Decalogue, I’m assuming), Greeks, Hispanics, Lesbians and Gays, Puerto Ricans, and Women. 

Don’t these people get along with other people, or is their idea of justice concerned more for the welfare of their particular group than for the general welfare?  Does justice look different for different people? 

We are told that diversity is a good thing.  It makes us stronger, so we are also told.  But if we can’t even agree on what is justice for our society, then this tells me we are not going to achieve any sense of unity as a country unless perhaps we have less diversity. 

Our country has never been more divided, and it seems that even our justice system, the one place you would expect impartiality and fairness, no longer believes justice is blind.  This is no different from politicians who do favors for their donors. 

As for a better way to select judges, I suggest that we make a list of qualified people.  Each association can provide their list.  I’m assuming every lawyer is part of a Bar Association.   Put all their names in a very large hat and pick them at random.  If someone is recommended by more than one association, I would give them another ball in the hat.

The problem in elections with more than two candidates: a letter to the Tribune

The Tribune ran an article (March 11) which deeply troubled me.  But I’m troubled far more by the fact that few people have considered the issue yet alone called for the problem to be fixed.

The article was on instant-runoff voting.  The article noted that, in the Democratic primaries for governor and attorney general, there are 6 and 8 candidates respectively, and that someone can win the nomination with as little as 17 and 12 per cent of the votes. 

People are out protesting something or other every other day.  They should really be up in arms over this, but they’re not.  And politicians want to keep it that way. 

Nobody should win an election without receiving more than 50% of the total votes cast.  The Presidential election is an obvious exception, because there the states elect the President and not individuals.  But that’s another story. 

Winning an election with less than 50% of the vote is contrary to everything a democracy and a republic stand for.  It is also the biggest reason why our country is stuck with a two-party system, and why we are not given more choices, particularly in Presidential elections.  A third-party candidate is only seen as someone who will split the votes on one side and essentially give the election to the other side.

The article provided the best solution to this problem.  A run-off election is costly, but for a lot of elections, one run-off still won’t give you the best outcome.  Limiting it to the top two vote-getters can give skewed results, because the majority of the voters could still not want either one.

The answer to this problem is simple, as the article shows.  In contests with more than two candidates, voters must be given the option to vote for more than one candidate.  The article says that the candidates should be ranked.  I’m not even sure that is necessary, but that will work fine. 

But this is a problem that our newspapers need to keep a focus on until it gets resolved.

American Trade Policy

If the goal of American trade policy is to bring products to the American people at the lowest possible prices, then, by all means, free, unfettered trade is the way to get that.

But when businesses close and jobs move out of the country due to free trade, then the cost to our country is greater than the desired benefits.

We lose the tax revenues from both corporate profits and the workers, and we end up paying the people who aren’t working anymore.  All this puts pressure on the government to raise taxes, borrow money, print money and still add more to our growing debt that can someday collapse.

The question is not tariffs or no tariffs, trade wars, free trade, fair trade, or treaties.  The goals should be keeping American jobs in America, bringing the jobs back that have left, and creating the environment for people to start and grow companies here. 

A policy that looks first or only on consumer prices is not seeing the bigger picture and will do more harm than good.

Solving the gun problem in America: a letter to the Tribune

I’m reading the Voice of the People today (March 5), and it’s making me laugh.  But then I realize that these people are serious.  The topic is guns.

The obvious first step is to make a law against killing people.  That should stop it right away.  If you don’t think that will stop people from killing people, why should all these other laws?  Drugs are illegal, but that hasn’t stopped a million people from getting them. 

Ban assault rifles?  What, confiscate them?  If I were a gun owner, I would own an AR-15, and I would lie to the police before I would turn it in.  You would make millions of law-abiding citizens criminals, and you would do nothing to stop future crime.

There are 300 million guns already in this country.  Do you think making it harder to get a new gun is going to prevent anyone from getting a gun? 

Creating a national registration will only tell you where the gun used in the next massacre came from.  Do you really think making a law against people with serious mental health issues from owning a gun will keep them from owning one?  No, they will just have to get one some other way. 

Allow teachers who are concealed gun carriers to carry their guns to school, and your problem will be solved.  No one is going to try to kill students if they don’t know whether the teachers will run or confront them. 

The problem is a moral one.  We have removed religion and God from our public life and schools, and people no longer have values and respect for life and God.  They no longer have the means to cope with the challenges of life.  The court called supreme was wrong to remove God, prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments from our schools and public life.  Our nation is adrift like a boat without oars or a rudder.

Is taxing imports bad for our country? a letter sent to the Chicago Tribune

The Tribune ran an editorial (March 4) titled Trump’s Terrible Tariffs. 

I believe the issue of taxing imports is one of the most important issues for our country today, and I believe that all products entering the United States should be taxed, preferably at the same rate but exceptions may be made in unusual circumstances. 

There are at least 4 reasons why I believe taxing imports is important.

1)         The bigger issue is bringing jobs back to our country and not whether you can save some money on something you buy.   When Toyota first hit the American market, their prices were higher than that for American cars and without negotiated prices, but Americans were happy to pay the higher prices, because they believed they were getting a better product.

The fact is, though, that anything can be made cheaper somewhere in the world.  And probably more often than not, it is an American company choosing to make its products somewhere else and then shipping them back here.

The product is cheaper, but we lose jobs here.  We lose the taxes paid by those employees, and we then pay the unemployed workers while they are not working.  All this puts more pressure on all the governments, local and federal, to raise taxes or just borrow the money and hope the public doesn’t pay attention to how much money is then paid for interest on that debt. 

Keeping the jobs in America is more important than saving a few dollars on a refrigerator.  Your taxes will be lower, government debt will be lower, and inflation will be lower.

We didn’t even have an income tax until 1913.  Taxes on imports paid for almost our entire federal budget.

2)         Consumer prices may rise a bit at first, but they will go down as more companies start making products here.  Taxing imports is often called protectionism, a label that is supposed to immediately warn us that the practice is bad.  In this case, it is bad,  we are told, because American manufacturers will feel free to gouge the American consumer with their prices.  The editorial specifically named foreign competition as a great incentive for American producers to become more efficient and thus more productive leading to cheaper retail prices.

So whatever happened to domestic competition?  The editorial sounded like American producers collude to keep their prices high and that it is only the threat of a cheaper foreign product that pushes them to try harder and consequently make a cheaper product. 

Not so.  When you have a dozen American refrigerator manufacturers competing for your business, you will get the best prices they can offer. 

When I was growing up, you could always buy foreign products. And they almost always cost more.  But they were genuine foreign products, like Swiss chocolate and French wine, and not American products made somewhere else and then sent back here.

3)         Taxing imports allows us to decide if we want to pay more taxes.  A tax on imports is money that goes directly to our government.  It raises the cost of the consumer item, but you don’t have to pay the tax if you buy American.  So people who buy American will pay less taxes than those who don’t.

Right now the system is skewed a bit, because we have allowed foreign made products to take over our economy.  It’s hard to find anything made in America anymore.  And if you do, it costs more than a comparable foreign made product.  We have more government safety and other regulations than other countries, and we pay our employees more and with more employee benefits. 

Bring the jobs back.  As more people start working, government costs will go down, and taxes will go down.  You can’t judge our economy by the unemployment rate when we don’t count the people who have stopped looking for work, and that’s almost 40%..

4)         Trying to rely on exports for our prosperity is not a wise plan.  Exporting products should always be considered a bonus and not the crux of an economy.  Exports rely on the prosperity of another country for them to be able to buy our goods, and so, in other words, we are hoping for other countries to prosper first in order for us to prosper.  They go into recession, then we go into recession.

Why would anyone want to do that? 

When imports are really American products being made somewhere else and then shipped back here, the company essentially forces all the other American companies making the same product to go overseas as well.  And the cost to the American economy is immeasurable.   

When a foreign product is heavily subsidized by its government to make it cheaper, then we send all our money overseas, and why would we want to do that either? 

Bottom line: everything coming into our country should be taxed and preferably, I would say, at the same rate.  We are not punishing other nations.  We are taking care of our own people first, just like we would expect any other country to do.