February 23, 2018
Chicago Tribune
The absurdity of teachers carrying guns
How long after teachers start coming to school armed for battle until a principal somewhere in America makes this embarrassing announcement over the PA system? Attention, a Glock 9 mm pistol with a 22-round magazine was left in the teacher’s lounge - again. Will the owner please come to the office to retrieve it?
We jest, because the idea of allowing teachers and administrators to carry firearms in school is so absurd and irresponsible, it needs to be laughed off - quickly. Then the country can get back to reality-based discussions about how to better protect kids, and everyone else, by deterring mass shooters.
As we’ve written, there are steps to make it harder for a villain to obtain weapons, including background checks on every gun purchase. Schools can do more to protect themselves, too, by tightening security and holding more active shooter drills. But no, let’s not get distracted by the fantasy that teachers should pack heat. President Donald Trump was in full fever on Friday suggesting that having a certain number of armed teachers on staff would have stopped the Feb. 14 massacre at a Florida high school. “A teacher would have shot the hell out of him before he even knew what happened,” Trump imagined.
That’s unlikely. There are tens of thousands of schools across the country. What are the chances of an armed, trained, literally-cool-under-fire social studies teacher taking down a gunman? The odds are much higher of an accidental discharge during study period, or a disturbed student disarming the teacher. Worse, we picture an angry teacher on a bad day pulling a gun on a student with an attitude. And if there were a shooter in the hallways? Given the chaos, terror and suddenness of an attack, chances are an armed teacher strikes a bystander, or gets shot mistakenly by law enforcement rather than disarming or disabling the bad guy.
Even contemplating this scenario presupposes that faculty members would enlist. We expect many would reject the idea of being armed. They wouldn’t want the responsibility and see the folly. These are teachers, after all, who recognize the dystopian lesson: Kids, you live in a dangerous world you can never hope to improve through peaceful means. So let’s lock and load.
Teachers and administrators do important work, as do police and other first responders. Let teachers educate children, and leave the protection of civilians to other professionals.
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February 23, 2018
The (Champaign) News-Gazette
Different year, same old ruse
Do legislative leaders really care what the people think? Not as much as one would hope.
In a state where politics routinely trumps policy, politics often drives faux policy - especially when it comes to advisory referendums.
That’s one of the reasons why a state Senate committee took steps this week to put an advisory referendum on marijuana legalization on the fall ballot.
On its face, it doesn’t sound like a terrible idea. After all, many candidates have proposed the legalization of marijuana for recreational use, including all the Democratic gubernatorial candidates with the exception of Chris Kennedy.
They appear to be of the opinion that recreational use of marijuana represents an unadulterated social good that will have the additional benefit of producing millions and millions of dollars in new revenue for the fiscally failing state.
But this idea - a purely advisory referendum - is being used by the General Assembly’s Democratic leadership as a means of boosting voter turnout in a way that will benefit them.
Why is that so?
Four years ago, in the 2014 gubernatorial contest between incumbent Democrat Pat Quinn and Republican challenge Bruce Rauner, House Speaker Michael Madigan did the same exact thing.
Madigan & Co. put advisory referendums on the ballot that they perceived would be helpful in attracting voters to the polls to vote both in favor of the referendums and to re-elect Quinn.
How does the public know that Madigan’s motive was purely political in putting advisory measures on the ballot? Because he said so.
During an August 2015 interview with a Springfield television station, Madigan explained:
“Now let me just explain this: There was an advisory question on the ballot in November of 2014 concerning the minimum wage. And the thinking was that if somebody came to vote for the advisory question on the minimum wage, their political thinking would be such that they would vote for Gov. Quinn. Well, there were 650,000 Illinoisans who found their way to vote for the advisory question on the minimum wage, but couldn’t find their way to vote for Gov. Quinn. And that’s where I would say that Quinn lost the election, not Rauner won.”
That’s straight from the horse’s mouth.
As to the referendums themselves, they received an overwhelmingly favorable vote.
Having heard the people express their will, did the General Assembly under Madigan’s supermajority leadership pass a $15-an-hour minimum wage or a surtax on millionaires during Rauner’s first two years in office? No.
Madigan and Democrats could have flexed their political muscles and passed both proposals. In 2017, they passed a $15-an-hour minimum wage, but only because they knew they didn’t have the votes to override a Rauner veto. (They could do so again this year.)
But it was strictly for show, just like the advisory referendums.
The simple fact is Madigan & Co. didn’t care about the results of the advisory referendums. They cared about what they hoped would be the political benefits of putting the advisory referendums on the ballot.
It’s the same thing with legalization of marijuana. There seems to be little doubt that legalization will come soon or later, just as it has in other states. But the advisory referendum proposal, like so much else in Illinois state government, is a sham embraced by the politicians to manipulate the voters.
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February 23, 2018
Shaw Media
Big money is crippling our politics
If you’re frustrated at the easy availability of assault rifles in America, don’t blame the National Rifle Association.
If the rise of “sanctuary cities” infuriates you, don’t blame liberal groups like Democracy for America, either.
The real problem lies with our political system’s failure to rein in the outsized influence of money in politics.
Limits on political donations by individuals, businesses and political action committees are rendered moot by the unlimited spending by so-called Super PACs, which can marshal the resources to relentlessly attack or boost candidates of their choosing.
In its 2010 decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, the U.S. Supreme Court held it unconstitutional to limit the amount of money that unaffiliated groups, or so-called Super PACs, could spend on political campaigns. Other groups, often funded by corporate interests, spend money on political messaging without registering with the election commission at all because electoral politics isn’t their primary function.
As a result, more than 20 percent of the $6.4 billion spent in the 2016 presidential and congressional campaigns was from groups with no limits on the amount they could raise or spend, according to OpenSecrets.org, an online database of filings with the Federal Election Commission.
In the case of the NRA, its affiliated super PACs spent more than $52 million in the 2016 election campaign, most of it to support Donald Trump and six Republican candidates for Senate, five of whom won. Individual donors were limited to giving $2,700 to candidates in 2016.
In the wake of the tragic shooting deaths of 17 students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, many people have tried to shame politicians for accepting contributions and support from the NRA, which advocates for Americans’ rights to guns, including the AR-15 rifles that have become the weapon of choice for domestic terrorists.
Had those candidates not taken the money, the NRA would have found a candidate who would, and thrown their weight behind them. Then their Super PAC could spend as much as they wanted to get that person elected.
We can’t blame the NRA, the pharmaceutical industry, trial lawyers, or other groups for spending as much as they legally can to advance their interests.
The blame lies with the political system that grants them this outsized power and influence.
It is within our power to change the rules. This could require a constitutional amendment imposing strict limits on campaign contributions and spending, something that will preserve the rights of individuals to advance their views, without allowing a few people or interest groups to dominate.
Only by imposing stricter limits on the role of money in our electoral process will average Americans be able to reclaim the power that is rightly theirs.
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