by Mike Keleher
Well the mid-term election is over…thank you very much! It is now finally safe to turn on my TV, radio, pick up my mail or even answer my phone again and not be bombarded by negative attack ads!
Good grief. I have been on the planet for quite a few spins around the sun and have never, ever see such nasty, name calling, obfuscation and outright fear mongering in an election cycle as we have just endured. I have a more than average appreciation for "the law" and legal process, (not so much with law makers) and have been amazed with all the election verbosity and blowing everything so out of proportion or extended to bizarre potential consequences (Lives will be lost! Families Shattered! Dogs and Cats living together!). I don't want to be law maker-heeding the old advice that people who love the law or sausages should never see where either one is made.
According the the campaigns, it is a wonder we can ever live without your elected leader of choice. They all claim to be so wonderful! How can we manage our own lives without them? They must be so wise and important and have answers to all of our societal problems-which continue year after year here in Illinois.
Watching the Judge Kavanaugh hearings I thought we had finally hit bottom with just how low the liberal agenda could go with their attacks, but this election phase has renewed my disappointed belief in there being no bottom in that well. The Democratic side has been emboldened to even trot gun control back out into the spotlight as a campaign issue. They had burned fingers on it a couple of elections ago, but this year the whole kitchen was open to throw anything in it out at the voters. As and example of Ridiculous In Action, I saw one negative ad alleging a candidate was backing the NRA agenda (oh the horrors!) and thus they obviously wanted to give machine guns to criminals and mental patients. Puh-lease.
No topic was too dumb or too outlandish. The touting of how bad "beliefs" held by a candidate could somehow be converted if elected to the exalted position of Dog Catcher into over throwing the Constitution, the Supreme Court interpretations of that document and our entire way of life if some they were some how voted into that lofty position of power.
Nationwide, the Republicans had a pretty good election. The Dems had a very good election sequence. Here in Illinois, we were kicked in our collective teeth this year with the Democrat candidates winning all the big state jobs to include Governor. Incumbent Governor Rauner, was of course not much of a choice to cheer about- he was something like the third worst rated governor in the nation and had an approval rating in one study of 2.7% (might have been just his family giving him the thumbs up in that poll). Newly elected Governor J.B. Pritzker is no bigger prize. He is enourmously wealthy and widely acknowledged to be a Mike Madigan insider, and was caught by the FBI on wiretap with Gov Blago begging a high powered state job and making negative racial comments back in 2008. I am sure alliances with the new Governor will rival any seen in an episode of "Game of Thrones." Gee how could the fiscally doomed state of Illinois be so lucky? With a tradition rich with federal indictments against sitting or former Illinois Governors our future is so bright we out to wear shades!
How about those plans to tax gasoline more to support the failing state and Metra trains? There is another doozy supposedly being kicked around about taxing people for using the roads by their mileage-wow, turn the whole state into a gigantic toll road process! Brilliant. Reminds me of the old Beatles song about the tax man taxing the street and if you go too far he will tax your feet. Get ready. Down in Springfield, new legislatures never met a tax they did not like.
I saw some numbers in print which said Pritzker spent something like $160 million dollars campaigning for this $177,000 a year job. Could have tossed that money against the state pension debt and covered almost two thirds of it.
So what can we anticipate from this new Governor? Well we don't have to worry about him declaring Illinois to be exempt from Federal Immigration Law….Republican Rauner already did that. How about firearms laws? Well, going back to March of 2018 Pritzker laid out his beliefs in that arena at a public debate. They were all bad for law abiding gun owners. He said he supported banning Bump Stocks, banning "assault rifles" (whatever definition he makes of that scary phrase), banning high capacity magazines, and supports the state scheme to license firearms dealers (who are already vetted and regulated by the federal government) to insure "only the right people" can sell guns in Illinois. None of these liberal responses of course have any iota of impact upon criminals who don't follow the law in the first place! Wait….what? You mean those people don't follow the laws we have in place now? They are still shooting people in Chicago? Well, buy God! We need to make some new laws for them to ignore!
No Bump Stocks have ever been connected to a crime in Illinois-the federal government is still wrangling that thorny issue declaring that piece of technology to be "too dangerous". We already suffered through assault rifle import bans and high capacity magazine restrictions under the Bill Clinton era rulesl-and it did not change any crime statistics. Rifles are so rarely used in crimes, more people are actually killed with sticks, rocks and bludgeons every year than with rifles. It's just bad law.
There was a terrible shooting last week in California when a murderer shot twelve people to death in a bar. California already has some of the most stringent (and ridiculous) gun laws in the country to include pistol magazine magazines being restricted to 10 rounds. Yet some how this murderer took a gun into a bar and shot more than 10 bullets-gee he must have reloaded. That magazine law does not stop criminals from committing evil acts-it just restricts law abiding citizens from aspects of their Constitutionally protected rights. Is the whole idea behind a magazine restricted to 10 rounds something akin to they will be committing less evil? Is that a thing?
This other fanciful scheme from the "Good Idea Factory" to have Illinois commission a panel which will review and license all gun dealers in the state-who are already vetted, licensed and regulated by the federal government . This plan is just plain ridiculous, or alternatively more evidence of Illinois law makers thinking our laws are better than other entities laws…oh and we can generate some revenue too along the way while insuring only "the right people" can sell guns in this state. Stop over at the Cook County jail and see how many inmates pending shooting trials purchased their guns legally, passed background checks, and from federally licensed gun dealers -none.
Lots of Democrats will be serving in Springfield in 2019, and if they can serve up some anti-gun legislation in 4 to 6 months I am sure J.B. Pritzger will sign it into law next summer.
What can you do about it? Well as a political pessimist-stock up now on 30 round P-Mags and AR's! The other idea is to take a look at the elections map-there are a whole lot of Republicans in office across the rest of the non-Chicago areas-looks like a red wave actually-but the number of delegates in the high-density areas still call the tune when the money flows.The NRA, Guns Save Life and Illinois State Rifle Association are still going to need your help campaigning against the anti-gun agenda now being openly touted by the liberals.
Keep your local elected officials on speed dial. Call em, write them letters and emails-they are supposed to represent you-give them the benefit of your knowledge and views to campaign against unabashed gun control agendas. In my crystal ball it looks like rough seas ahead for Illinois and after watching all the election campaigns no one is offering up plans to make it any better-unless you think they can tax the remaining population into somehow fixing the bankrupt state with the some of the strictest gun control laws, highest real estate taxes and lowest financial ratings. Maybe I missed it, but did anyone offer plans to fix the state budget and horrific financial status, real estate taxes, fleeing populations and businesses, or Chicago crime rates? I was willing to listen. Honest.
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