Today in Illinois: Another one of Governor JB Pritzker’s paroled child killers goes missing. Government doesn’t solve problems. Government is the problem.

Due to the state’s budget cuts and the excuse of COVID-19, Illinois has been letting out some really bad folks from the slammer.

In 1972, Ray Larsen was on a special leave from prison (due to other felonies) to “visit his grandmother” when he murdered a 16 year old boy in the Cook County Forest Preserve.

On May 13th, Larsen was paroled and wasted no time disappearing. This comes after the state sent a man who raped and murdered a six year old to live in Chicago, and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx refused to even fight the release of convicted cop killers.

It’s pretty clear who is running Illinois. Governor Pritzker has signed numerous laws from what calls itself the “Black Caucus”, but I call it the Burn, Loot, Murder caucus. The police don’t need to be reformed so much as the criminals need to be put away never to be heard from again.

However, this didn’t stop Pritzker from signing the BLM caucus bill to end cash bail by 2023. Pretty soon, we won’t even be able to prevent these folks from staying in custody until arraignment to see if the judge does want to set bail. Thank the Democrats, kids!

They always tell us that government governs by consent of the governed. I don’t recall them asking me if I wanted them to parole rapists and child killers. I don’t recall consenting to live near that and inevitably have them abscond. I also don’t recall having them ask if I liked having my gun ownership rights restricted by law while all hell is breaking loose in Chicago under Lori Lightfoot.

Also worth mentioning since we’re here anyway, is that the Democrats promised minorities that they would get a fair shot at licensing for marijuana dispensaries, and then gave all of the licenses to white people, ensuring that by the time there are any black or brown licensees, they won’t be able to open a shop anywhere desirable due to the 1,500 foot rule.

The state also didn’t bother to stop employers from drug testing anyone. Drug tests are mostly a way to humiliate blue collar workers and misdemeanant probationers and remind them who daddy is, but also serve to get out of paying workman’s comp claims.

So the people who get to enjoy the weed without worrying so much about getting tested for it are white people with degrees. More of Governor Pritzker’s equity-centric approach.

After seeing the state’s response to the BLM rioters who were burning down and looting the county (and adjacent ones) where I live…

I don’t think that a thinking person can still be a part of this party.

I’m not sure what I’ll do in the next election, but I won’t be supporting Governor Pritzker again. The Democrats and Republicans are fighting over what way to ruin the state. Maybe I will just support the Libertarians.

Richard Stallman seems to be misguided about the Green Party.

Whether they intend it or not, they served as Putin’s troll to try to give Trump another term, and their lawyers are Republican law firms.

Even if they were a legitimate party, for the sake of argument, their policies would be a disaster. There isn’t enough money in the world to do what they’re proposing.

Those of us who have been watching (American) government for a while now have seen that everything that they start doing that they weren’t doing before ends up being an even bigger mess than it has ever been.

Before the ACA, if you were uninsured, you could see the doctor for $50-60. Now you have to pay hundreds or thousands a month for insurance that doesn’t kick in, and then $260 is the “negotiated rate”.

Doctors and hospitals have no incentive to keep costs down to what the market believes is fair, because they can get more money from the government whenever they decide to hike prices again.

Equally insidious to the subsidies, which hide the true cost of care from people who are broke, and which encourage them to ask for lower wages and less hours, is that if you go over, the government doesn’t do anything for you. (And before the 2017 tax law, fined you for not buying a policy with no help.)

Stallman called this a “mild positive reform”. I’m just not sure what planet this guy is on, politically, to where the ACA is positive in any sense of the word.

In national politics, Joe Biden got my vote not because I agreed with him, but because I believe that we had our darkest hour in many ways, under Donald Trump.

Donald Trump was a viciously cruel and immoral man. He served to underscore the fact that conservative Christians will support anything, no matter what, as long as they think they’ll gain power from it.

I don’t recall the part of the bible where it said that you’re supposed to support the six time bankrupt and industrial strength adulterer who hates immigrants. Might just be faulty recollection, though.

If there’s been anything good about the Biden administration, it’s that dealing with USCIS has been much less unpleasant. The Republicans hate immigrants so much that they were implementing policies to clamp down on legal immigration in every form, including ways that try to shut out people with immigrant spouses.

Since my spouse is an immigrant and I generally don’t take kindly to “doubleminded” people who say that immigrants should follow the legal process, but that there shouldn’t be a legal process, I was essentially forced to support Biden due to a lack of options.

The irony is that instead of admitting that they supported a bad guy who pushed people away from the Republican Party, the dominant faction in that party is a personality cult around the guy who lost them the election.

If they want to stay in the doghouse for the next decade, the way to do it would be to bring back Trump to lose again.

Globally, “Trumpism” came in a wave, but I think what might keep it away for a while is that these people caused a major disaster in their own countries that ended up getting a lot of their own supporters killed. In an effort to stave off bad polling numbers just a few minutes longer, they spent an entire year pointing at folk medicines and quack doctors to try to make the situation seem less awful than it was.

I came across an NPR article about denial of science during a pandemic. It cited doctors in New York in the 1980s who went to the newspapers to write op-eds mocking the very idea that something like AIDS could even be out there, and blaming it on all sorts of other things.

Every time there is a public health disaster, it seems someone with “M.D.” at the end of their name gets a loud megaphone to lead the public astray. Sometimes because they really are idiots, sometimes because they’re political hacks, and sometimes for money. Trump had some that pushed “herd immunity” despite lack of a vaccine for several more months.

Lingering doubt about the efficacy of vaccines, and belief that Trump was telling the truth about COVID not being so bad really, continues to threaten the lives of my mom and brother.

What do you do when the whole world has gone crazy around you?