Illinois general elections are still nearly six months away. For months now we have been bombarded by political ads. It will only get worse as November nears.
I see no reason why we as citizens should be subject to this. The ads are repetitive at best, negative and misleading to the point of posing outright lies at their worst.
I am still waiting for the candidate who vows to restrict campaign ads to 60 days prior to the election. Tht would still allow plenty of time for early voting and mail-in voting. The candidate would need to show me how they plan to enact such a rule.
That is the candidate I will vote for.
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How great would it be if our incumbents were able to do their job(s) instead of spending the final year of their term trying to get re-elected? The same holds true for challengers. They can do whatever their given jobs are. Imagine being able to chose a candidate based on their actual accomplishments.
John Farrell, DeKalb
Violent offenders need to get mandatory sentences
The fact that Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed the bill banning ghost guns doesn’t even hit the tip of the iceberg. Banning, outlawing or just doing away with weapons doesn’t stop criminals.
It’s time we stop rewarding violent offenders with low bonds and short sentences. Police need the support of the community, and the community needs to make judges understand they are fed up.
Let’s start by mandatory sentencing for violent offenders. This small group of people is destroying our country.
Terry Cornell, Evergreen Park
Governors can’t issue pardons for federal crimes
If Richard Irvin is elected governor of Illinois, he might be the most unqualified person to ever hold that position. I make that comment after listening to his political ads where he personally speaks about what he will and will not do as governor.
He promises to cut all taxes, yet pay down bills. He does not explain how he will accomplish this magical task. Still, the best line used is that he would not pardon former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan if he is convicted.
This is the biggest example of Irvin not understanding or thinking people that could vote for him don’t have a complete understanding of what a governor can and cannot do.
Governors cannot pardon a person for federal crimes like Madigan is charged with. If you believe Irvin and are willing to vote for him, he has you roped as an uneducated voter.
Scott Zuhr, Park Ridge
Federal lawmakers should prioritize funding for kidney health
As a husband of a kidney recipient with many complications due to dialysis, I often wonder why dialysis and transplant have been the only options for kidney disease for the last 50 years.
I fear the answer is funding. I’m grateful to U.S. Reps. Mike Quigley, Lauren Underwood and Cheri Bustos for supporting the 2022 federal budget, which increases funding for kidney disease detection and research.
No, this budget doesn’t “fix” kidney disease, which affects over 37 million adults in the U.S. (800,000 of them are in kidney failure), but it’s a step in the right direction.
Medicare spends more than $150 billion annually — 24% of its budget — on treating patients with kidney disease. Studies estimate that over 1 million patients will be in kidney failure by 2030. We also could face a tidal wave of new kidney patients due to COVID-19 infections.
We can’t continue to focus tax dollars on treating end-stage kidney failure with 50-year-old treatment options. Prevention, awareness, research, innovation and early interventions are needed as well as more options.
I’m calling on our federal lawmakers to prioritize funding to address kidney health in the coming fiscal year. The science and ability are there; we just need the will and financial support to do it.
Gerardo Huerta, Harwood Heights
Justice Alito’s draft ruling on abortion attacks other rights
Justice Samuel Alito’s statement in his leaked draft opinion that Roe and Casey be overruled because “the Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision” shows the conservative contempt for the very idea of inherent and inalienable rights on which this country was founded.
This conservative contempt is what allowed slavery, then Jim Crow, then separate but equal, and now their attack on women’s inherent and inalienable right to control their own lives.
The Republican Party calls itself conservative, and so they are illiberal by definition because conservatives oppose the concept of inherent, inalienable rights that is the axiom of liberalism. Alito’s attack on unenumerated rights is open war on rights, as few rights are enumerated in the Bill of Rights.
Conservatives are the threat that James Madison wrote the Ninth Amendment to protect rights against. First, conservatives came for women’s rights, then they will come for yours.
Jeff Biss, Elgin
