The follies of politics

The Daily Herald allows 300-word letters. I don’t have enough space to identify the follies of both our main parties.

Starting with Democrats and an old issue that has repercussions today: Back in the 1960s, the Democrats launched their War on Poverty to get people off the government dime and out of poverty. They created a system that monetarily rewarded people for being single parents and having more children. In the early ‘60s, only 9% of children lived in single-parent households (7% white, 25%, African American) and today 34% (24% white, 64% African American, 42% Hispanic). Of these single-family households, 30% live in poverty. Note that only 5% of married couples live in poverty (3.9% white, 5.6% African American, 10% Hispanic). By the way, the overall poverty level has been around the same.

More recently, the California governor mandated that gas cars should not be sold by 2035. Then a few weeks later he asks people not to charge electric cars, because the power grid can’t handle it. If the power grid currently can’t handle the power needs, how do they expect to power all those cars in the future?

In Illinois, our governor vetoed the first bill that would have allowed for clean-operating nuclear plants. He later signed a bill for a type of nuclear plant (small modular reactors (SMRs)) that aren’t in production right now and only produce about one-eighth of the power of a full size reactor. The technology for SMRs has not been fully tested.

If we want to fix what’s wrong with Illinois, we need to vote out the incumbents in the primary. If that isn’t successful, then bite the bullet and vote for someone who isn’t a Democrat. It’s never good when you have one party in complete control.

Bruce Bohren

Gurnee