Chicago
A dairyman and career capitalist are trying to unseat Sen. Dick Durbin and Gov. Pat Quinn in Illinois, respectively, with screeds against “career politicians” and higher taxes.
The “career politician” epithet sounds populist and appealing until you look at its opposite: bumbling, naïve, politician-wannabes who embarrass themselves like the Tea Party Congressman who mistook U.S. government officials for foreign diplomats from India and the Tea Party candidate who mistook a bus full of YMCA kids for immigrants last summer.
Capitalist, “let’s run this country like a business” politician-wannabes like H. Ross Perot to Mitt Romney are even worse. In addition to lacking political savvy from ever being in Washington, these “richies” lack basic understanding of the common man, trying to make his rent or mortgage payment.
Last week in Chicago, a gunman attacked a city train with an assault weapon luckily killing no one. Still, gubernatorial candidate Bruce Rauner says assault weapons may be valuable for home defense and target practice and a ban would be unconstitutional. What?
Meanwhile, senate candidate State Sen. Jim Oberweis told the Chicago Tribune editorial board that continuing gun violence in Illinois is proof that laws don’t work since Illinois has tough laws. Two days later, a city train was shot at with an assault weapon from… Indiana. Everyone knows Chicago crime guns often come from Indiana, Wisconsin and Mississippi. Except, apparently Sen. Oberweis.
Both candidates are squarely against the “tax and spend” practices of their opponents yet both have ceased to look at the “gun tax” that everyone in the city of Chicago pays. According to the Chicago Sun-Times taxpayers pay about $52,000 per gunshot victim, most of whom are uninsured. In 2011, John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital alone, the county’s Level 1 trauma center, saw 670 gunshot victims. You do the math.
The candidates’ ads lament the national debt our “grandchildren” will have to pay in decades to come and ignore the cost of gun violence taxpayers are paying right now. We won’t even talk about the lost lives.
Why should taxpayers subsidize gun owners’ hobbies because gun owners don’t have to carry insurance? Why should guns not be registered like cars and their owners licensed like car drivers for that matter? No, when the richie candidates talk about “taxes” they are referring to taxes on second and third homes and boats not the cost of everyday gun violence that those of us who are not rich live with.
Join this action to tell corporate America to get off the gun violence “sidelines” and take a stand against “can’t miss” sniper weapons sold to civilians. When corporations want sane gun laws, we will have sane gun laws.
