Solutions, not hand wringing, needed from Trib editorials on Chicago violence

Solutions, not hand wringing, needed from Trib editorials on Chicago violence

There was one positive aspect to the Trib's latest editorial on Chicago's massive gun violence problem: 'Why is there so much shooting and killing in Chicago?' For the first time the Trib Editorial Board didn't lay the blame on City Hall for not investing in the South and West Sides, and on the affected residents for re-electing the mayor and aldermen. That is good because such calls are meaningless non-solutions to a century long problem of racism, disinvestment and neglect that cannot be governed away by City Hall. Many thousands of guns pouring into these economic wastelands serve as gasoline on the smoldering ruin of once vibrant neighborhoods, producing uncontrolled violence. Just like the lack of investment in jobs, housing, health care and schools, it's the lack of sensible regulation that allows permits this arming of the most vulnerable and fractured citizenry.

The Editorial Board needs to re-examine its governing mantra of less government, less taxes, less regulation and less involvement in addressing problems unraveling our social fabric. Instead of supporting candidates and policies aimed almost exclusively at widening economic disparity between the privileged and the forgotten, the Trib needs to begin representing the folks left behind trapped in poverty, despair, and violence. Rebuilding these communities with federal and state leadership is not government overreach. It is self interest rightly understood. Curbing the manufacture, sale and distribution of the guns that inflict war like casualties on innocents is not government tyranny. It is sanity.

The Trib laments 'Chicago's weekend from hell.' The residents of Chicago's ravaged communities, walled off from the privileged majority, lament their every day from hell.

Non-theists deserve a Supreme...now more than ever

Though not unexpected, it's disappointing nonetheless for us non-theists Trump picked a Catholic to replace retiring Catholic Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. While we make up 23% of the population, our percentage of the Supreme Court is zero, zilch, nada. Moreover, we've never held a single one of the 113 Supreme slots in the 229 years since the Supreme Court was established in 1789. With Catholic Brett Kavanaugh, Catholics will continue to make up 67% of the Court compared to just 21% of the population (Neil Gorsuch raised a Catholic; now attends Episcopalian services). Jews make up the other 33%, an even bigger anomaly to their tiny 2% of the populous. Though Protestants haven't a single Supreme either, a large majority of all 114 Justices were protestants. The religious monopoly has left its mark on issues non-theists have no interest in interfering with.

A benefit of getting one of our team on the Court is tamping down the extreme prejudice the so-called religious practice against us non-believers. When polled, non-theists rank dead last in terms of a group folks couldn't bring themselves to vote for. Only 4% wouldn't vote for a black; 11% for women; 12% for Hispanics; 45% for gays; and a whopping 53% exclude non-theists. That must change. Though legally twisted and unenforceable, seven states, Arkansas, Maryland, Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee, North and South Carolina still have laws forbidding a non-theist to hold state office.

A fitting coda to the 229 years of religious predilections deciding the most important legal cases on the fabric of our polity might be giving a non-theist a chance to play God.

Rep. Grayson finished Trib health care editorial title back in 2009

The Trib' editorial 'If you haven't had health care...' could not have a more heartless title and message. Without mentioning the numerous ways Trump and the GOP majority have undermined and degraded the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Trib promotes substituting cheaper short term insurance policies which don't qualify for requirements under the ACA which eliminate pre existing conditions and annual and lifetime benefits, but require covering all essential health benefits. That represents a return to the horrendous health insurance system that blocked 40 million Americans from proper health care, leading to bankruptcy, degraded health and unnecessary deaths for over 10% of our populous. To ponder that as "the triumph of personal choice over government diktat', is inexplicably cruel to the millions with little or no means.

Just how has the Trump administration undermined the ACA that brings the Trib to its draconian cure for the medically uninsured?

It eliminated the individual mandate penalties needed to keep overall insurance rates low. It withdrew cost cost-sharing reduction payments to insurance companies. It reduced federal advertising and enrollment assistance during 2017 that affected the 2018 open enrollment period which will lead to an additional 6.4 million people uninsured in 2019 compared with prior law

Increasing the aforementioned short term policy time limit of 3 months to one year, which the Trib applauds, will increase the number of people without minimum essential coverage by 2.5 million in 2019.

The combined effect of Trump's attacks on the ACA will increase 2019 ACA-compliant nongroup insurance premiums 18.2 percent on average in the 43 states that do not prohibit or limit short-term plans. This is not something to celebrate as the Trib does to encourage the uninsured to buy short term health insurance. It is simply the health insurance equivalent of a payday loan.

During the 2009 ACA debate in Congress, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) summed up the GOP health care plan for the 40 million shut out thusly:

"Don't get sick. But if you do, die quickly."

That still applies to today's unfinished Trib editorial title.

Not good for the Illinois 6th; not good for America

My congressman Peter Roskam spent his entire congressional career seeking to deny 40 million people in need from getting life supporting health care. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America.

Roskam has spent his entire congressional career promoting tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of the working poor.  That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America. 

Roskam has spent his entire congressional career denying man made climate change, putting future generations at grave risk. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America. 

Roskam has spent his entire congressional career seeking to prevent humane, sensible immigration policy. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America.

Roskam has spent his entire congressional career taking cash from the NRA in exchange for thwarting sensible gun regulation. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America. 

Roskam has spent his entire congressional career interfering with women's reproductive health. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America. 

Roskam has spent his entire congressional career supporting trillion dollar failed US wars in the Middle East. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America.

Roskam has spent his entire congressional career promoting confrontation, possibly war with Iran. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America. 

Roskam has spent his entire career working to undo the regulations that keep workers safe and earning livable wages. That's not good the Illinois' 6th; it's not good for America. 

Peter Roskam's twelve years in Congress is not a proud record. It's a broken record. 

McCarthy lowers mayoral campaign bar beyond reach

It's unlikely Gerry McCarthy's 8 competitors to unseat Rahm Emanuel as Chicago mayor, can hit the nadir in campaign rhetoric sputtered by McCarthy over the Dan Ryan and Lake Shore Drive protest marches.

"We're spending money to facilitate criminal behavior. We're slipping into lawlessness." McCarthy then pondered whether State Police, who have responsibility for policing expressways, "should have arrested Chicago Police officers, including Superintendent Eddie Johnson, whey they marched arm in arm with Father Pfleger" on the Ryan. McCarthy then boasted about his preventing major highway shutdowns as Police Chief during the 2012 Chicago NATO Summit. But McCarthy omitted that the NATO protesters were outsiders here for a week. The Ryan and Lake Shore Drive protesters represent hundreds of thousands of Chicagoans trapped in the West and South Side swaths of poverty, despair and death for a century. And unlike NATO protesters, the Chicago protesters will never go away.

Non-violent civil disobedience championed by Martin Luther King and others was devised to disrupt the power structure that ignores truly dreadful conditions for a marginalized people,. It was created in the decade before McCarthy's birth in 1959. He knows its history and the truth that calling such protests 'unlawful' and demanding mass arrests, is the tactic developed by Southern police chiefs to maintain Jim Crow. The moral unlawfulness of those sheriffs dwarfed the technical unlawfulness of the protesters. McCarthy would be wise to pitch his campaign to confront 21st century Chicago problems, not pander to frightened Chicagoans of privilege like 1950's Birmingham Police Chief Bull Connor.

Walt Zlotow

Glen Ellyn