Republicans have ideas, but they’re bad ones. The Democrats have no ideas. – Bill Maher
“So, what was Ron right about,” you ask?
Apparently jealous of all the political scrutiny DuPage County sheriff James Mendrick reaped for his very public reticence to enforcing Illinois’ temporarily-on-hold assault gun ban, Ron issued his own semi-similar declaration at a recent Kane County board meeting:
Please remember, I’m an elected Democrat. I’m pro-no cash bail. If they want to ban any sort of weapon, whatever, we’ll enforce it. But our legislators here in Kane County, especially with the (Democratic) Party next to their names, do not listen to law enforcement. They refuse to communicate with us. They create legislation based on what they read on social media and knee-jerk reactions in the news. I’m tired of having to clean up the pieces and try to figure this out afterward. I’m embarrassed to have a D next to my name.
And I thought I had a knack for winning friends and influencing people. Perhaps I might be moving up a couple of notches in those Mr. Congeniality standings. Let’s just say the local Democratic legislator response to Ron’s abundantly accurate statement was swift, severe, and snippy.
State senators Christina Castro and Karina Villa, along with state reps Anna Moeller, Martha Hirschauer, and Barbara Hernandez, took time out of their busy schedules of mostly doing nothing just long enough to issue a letter “to the people of Illinois” containing the following curt comeuppance:
If the Sheriff had cared to pay attention or check his facts he would have seen that several representatives from law enforcement spoke on the record in support of the bill at a hearing on December 20, 2022. But, much to the detriment of the people of Kane County, Sheriff Hain doesn’t care about facts, he prefers to spread misinformation and stoke the flames of controversy.
Oh snap! Considering the missive’s sources, I’d make a joke about women refusing to even consider the possibility being wrong, but then my wife might see it and I’d likely no longer enjoy breathing as much as I do right not.
And “several representatives from law enforcement spoke on the record?” Translated from the political pandering-anese, that means two or three handpicked low-level officers, who hadn’t even bothered to read the poorly written legislation, said they were in favor of any assault gun ban.
That’s hardly involving law enforcement in the legislative process, now is it? It sounds a lot more like one of the Grand Cheeto’s new “intimate” campaign events where he’ll only address a handpicked crowd.
But our intrepid legislators weren’t done yet because women never are:
Again, we ask Sheriff Hain to step back from public disputes and commit to working together on public safety policies that will benefit the people of Kane County. Our doors are always open for collaboration and he knows where to find us.
Their “doors are always open?” No, they’re not! Illinois Democrats, who claim to be the scions of tolerance and open to all possibilities, don’t want to hear anything but the echo of their own shrill, stilted, supermajority voices. It’s a fascinating phenomenon that leads them from one statutory debacle to another.
Hain correctly noted the SAFE-T Act as another prime example of an abysmally crafted statute. We’ve already discussed how the black and progressive caucuses concocted that cashless bail bill in secrecy, proudly eschewing any law enforcement input. Then they proceeded to bungle it so badly that it will never see the light of day and any subsequent cashless bail possibilities will fall even flatter than our Gang of Five’s “letter to the people.”
Now it’s the assault gun ban, an effort I’m fully in favor of, that’s rife with constitutional issues. But having learned nothing from the bail fiasco, and rather than risk having to hear something they didn’t want to hear, those Springfield Dems adamantly refused to ask for any outside legal or law enforcement counsel, so it too, is tied up in the courts.
Given their capacity for these kinds of self-inflicted wounds, I’m starting to think Illinois’ Republicans’ best strategy is to simply let their counter-party counterparts proceed unhindered.
But the worst example of this law-enforcement-sucks progressive Democratic dynamic occurred right here in the city of Elgin with the disaster known as the Community Task Force on Policing. Those folks made a point of banning law enforcement participants which resulted in fascinating initiatives like:
- A citizens police review board with racial quotas where five of the nine members had to be black
- Illegally baring veterans from that board because “They’re used to killing people who look different than them.”
- Bestowing unenforceable subpoena powers upon that board
- Freezing EPD hiring
- Dismantling the EDP’s community policing programs
Despite that $340,000 taxpayer dollars and time-consuming debacle, the task force accomplished nothing other than making it much more difficult for Elgin to attract quality police officers.
I’ve had my own issues with law enforcement, but the fact that this life is far from perfect doesn’t absolve our elected officials from the blitheringly obvious requirement of seeking advice from all appropriate sources whenever an attempt is made to move forward with a political solution to a social problem. Because not only will that initiative fail, it inevitably makes the situation worse than it was before.
“Our doors are always open?” No, they’re not!
Correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t it incumbent upon the nitwits who actually concoct these laws to actively ask for all relevant advice? Perhaps Their Springfield Highnesses Castro, Villa, Moeller, Hirschhauer, and particularly Hernandez, could hoist their ample asses out of their Barca loungers and come down from Olympus long enough to host a law enforcement symposium on the possibilities of bail and assault gun reform.
But they don’t want to hear from the likes of Ron Hain, well, with the exception of his endorsement at election time, and any of their protests to the contrary are an outright lie. They don’t want to hear from anyone who doesn’t agree with what they want to put on a pizza, and then the sheriff is supposed to show up on their doorstep with hat in hand?
Can you say “abject arrogance?” I knew you could! We really do need a better word for chutzpah than chutzpah.
Ron did manage to get the last word in (for now) in a rebuttal letter to our insipidly imperious Kane County Gang of Five, “The inflammatory language of their rebuttal speaks to their continued ignorance of facts, laws, and the totality of the constitution.”
The sad thing is, that accurate assessment barely begins to scratch the surface of the Democratic general assembly’s ignorance. The great Albert Einstein purportedly warned us that, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.” And he’d never even been to Springfield.
P.S. Please let me state for the record that Laurie Lightfoot will wake up tomorrow to the realization that she’s become one of those rare one-term Chicago mayors. I’ve never seen any politician aggravate absolutely everyone involved as quickly she did. And some of you bleeps have the nerve to tell me that I don’t get along with people!
