There is some exciting news for those of us that love our guns. The Supreme Court is going to take up a challenge to Chicago’s hand gun ban, and depending on the decision this could open up challenges from other major cities with similar bans. The case (McDonald v. Chicago, 08-1521) will be decided upon early 2010, and there are couple of things that are interesting to me about this.

First, perhaps the recent beating that resulted in a young honor students death in Chicago may be the reason this has come up. I believe in the adage “An armed society is a polite society”, and perhaps it is becoming apparent to some (especially on the left) that banning handguns does nothing to stop violence. If that kid would have had a handgun, he could have picked off his attackers one by one and would still be alive today.

Second, because of the success that gun rights advocates have had recently, its looking like this might go in the same direction. “Last year, the justices struck down a prohibition on handguns in the District of Columbia, a city with unique federal status, as a violation of the Second Amendment.The court has previously said that most, but not all, rights laid out in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights serve as checks on state as well as federal restrictions. Separately, 44 state constitutionsalready enshrine gun rights.”(AP) It will be interesting to see if Chicago’s murder rate goes down if the Supreme Court rules the ban on handguns unconstitutional.

Lastly, I’m curious as to how much affect this will have on the Olympic committees decision whether or not to choose Chicago as the location for the Olympics. More “progressive” European countries might not like the idea, but who knows whether it will have an impact or not. Perhaps the committee will see this as a positive reaction to the beating death earlier this week. Everyone keep you eyes and ears open, this might become very interesting.

I have had Donald Sjoerdsma, Editor in Chief of the IUN Phoenix (the campus newspaper) on my show several times, and he asked me recently to write about my opinion of Porter County’s decision to pull out of the RDA. I’ve pretty much stayed out of that discussion, because I’m personally torn. Both sides make a lot of good points, and both sides make a lot of sense on this issue. Below is my over all analysis that was run in IUN’s paper today, issue 15, v.35, September 30th. I have the papers website linked on my own, check it out if you are interested. Also, Don had done some editing to my original piece that improved it greatly, unfortunately I’ve deleted that email on accident, so if you want to check out the improvements pick up a copy of the paper.

A Little Further Down the Rail…

By Travis Gearhart of www.mattersofopinion.net

                There has been a lot of controversy surrounding Porter Counties decision to pull out of the RDA, and anybody that has opened a local newspaper can attest to this. Me, personally, don’t know much about the legality (or supposed illegality) of the decision, and am pretty much on the fence (as I imagine many Porter County residents are as well) about whether or not it was a good idea in the first place. The summarization of both arguments reflects a lot of ideological reasoning, with opponents (many conservative) arguing about “huge” tax increases and proponents (surprisingly many also conservatives) saying that it is a “growth” versus “no growth” argument. Quite frankly, I’m just not sure. There have been many opinion pieces both in local newspapers and online (most notable Northwest Indiana Politics, the link is found on my site) saying that the RDA would be good for the county, and the arguments are very compelling. For example, the RDA would create jobs while also helping the needy and those that don’t want to pay high energy prices with public transportation. The rebuttal boils down to the government not becoming involved with such tasks and people in Porter County paying for other people’s transportation. The best way to fairly asses this decision is to check the ideology at the door, and look at straight facts. The estimated tax increase is .25%. Now, I’m a conservative, a Fair tax supporter, and think we are generally an overtaxed society. HOWEVER if a .25% tax increase is able to pay the RDA budget, and give back its worth or more to the community, then I don’t have a problem with such a paltry tax. The problem is that many opponents bring up a good point by saying that it STARTS with a .25% tax, but government always undercuts budgets to make them more palatable, and so we should be weary of higher tax increases down the line. Excellent point as well, and there are historically a LOT of government programs that started out exactly this way that ballooned into monster budgets that eat into our (already) horrible tradition of deficit spending. So, I took some time, looked up some information, and thought about what I would do. This is my proposal: For a couple of years now Porter County has been sitting on roughly 168 million dollars, with a lot of that obtained from the sale of the county hospital to Community. Why not try a little experiment and make both sides put their money where their mouths are? Take the projections that say how much the RDA will cost over a three year period, fund it with some of the extra cash on hand, and at the end of the three year experiment, find out how much was lost/gained, and this great debate will become moot.

                The only problem that I have with this RDA debate is the assumption that because some people in Porter County oppose the RDA that they are automatically bigoted, racist hillbillies who don’t want “those people” (not my words, but the words that the Post Tribunes Rich James used) coming into the county. Basically, there are people (like Rich James) who think that the RDA debate is racial and is only a debate because people from Porter County don’t want black families coming into Porter County. This infuriates me and is preposterous in every sense. The debate is NOT racial in the least bit, and the problem isn’t whether or not minorities will enter lily white Porter County. The people that I know that are opposed to the RDA are not opposed because of racial intolerance, but because of ideological beliefs, plain and simple. The fact that this turned into a witch hunt of racists make me, an undecided Porter County resident, turn away from the pro RDA argument, as I’m sure many other PC residents have as well. If the RDA is truly what it’s cracked up to be, use my proposal and prove it. Proponents will not win the undecided over by calling them bigots.

After much deliberation, President Obama is on his way to Copenhagen to petition the International Olympic Commission (IOC) to pick his hometown of Chicago, IL as the host city of the 2016 Olympic Games. As you might have guessed, not everybody is happy about it. As you might have also guessed, a lot of the conservative talking heads on television and radio are behind the rhetoric… again.

Here’s what I don’t understand.

1. If President Bush could vacation for weeks at a time, why can’t President Obama? Seriously, he’s the President of the United States of America and he can make snap military and security policy and defend this country just as easily on his trip to Europe as he can in the White House.

2. The longer he’s out of the country, the less time the President will have to spend pushing his atrocious socialized healthcare policy. Don’t we want him out of the country?

3. In the local debate (there are actually small factions opposed to the Olympics in Chicago), Mayor Daley of Chicago, Michael Jordan, and many others have put their reputations on the line to bring the Games to our backyard. Would they really be pushing for this if it was an economic or social death sentence to not only the city that they love, but also themselves?

4. I wasn’t around at the turn of the 20th Century, but I have to wonder how many people opposed the “Century of Progress” World’s Fair of 1933 in Chicago. For those of you not familiar with the event, many of Chicago’s signature landmarks, especially on the lakefront, have their roots in this epic event. The World’s Fair not only helped Chicagoans ease the pains of the Great Depression, but also shaped the city for the century to come. The 2016 Olympics have the potential to reinvent Chicago for the 21st Century and leave a legacy worthy of the “Century of Progress” event in 1933.

Yeah, traffic will be a mess for a few weeks and hotel rooms will be darn near impossible to get if you happen to live in the Chicago area and your mother-in-law wants to come visit you. Aside from the few weeks of hassle, however, the long term benefits are almost undeniable unless you have a vendetta against the President of the United States because of his domestic politics (an easy trap to fall into) or Mayor Daley (who you either love or hate). Besides, odds are that parking will be much, MUCH more pleasant after the Olympics are over if Chicago wins it’s bid.

Here in Northwest Indiana, many opponents of the Regional Development Authority (RDA) should be able to look at the 2016 bid as another excuse to stop or delay the implementation of the organization. If Chicago wins its 2016 Olympic bid, the Federal Government is going to flood tax dollars into transportation and infrastructure improvements the RDA would be established to provide. Granted, that’s hardly the most economically conservative argument against the RDA or for the Olympics, but it would prevent the establishment of a permanent regional governmental entity that the voters would have little, if any, control over.

What irritates me the most about this situation is that the conservatives who are now bashing the 2016 Olympic Bid and Obama’s involvement in the bid won’t blink an eye before criticizing the President if the IOC decides to go with Rio, Madrid, or Tokyo instead of Chicago – saying that it serves as proof that the President lacks any international authority and that the United States is weak under his leadership. If Chicago wins the bid, however, those same opponents will criticize him for being careless with the upfront investment it will cost (no mention of possible returns on the investments, of course) and that the President is a “celebrity” who our mortal European enemies love so much.

Indeed, if only political rhetoric was an Olympic sport.

Personally, I wish President Obama the best and wish him, and the rest of the Chicago delegation, a safe and successful journey to Copenhagen.

A bit of a side story, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin speaks several languages fluently, but in public, he only speaks Russian. He insists that as a leader in Russia, it is imperative that he speaks Russian as the representative of the Russian people, and it’s an enormously popular (domestically) trait of Putin’s. Well in 2007, during the bidding process for the 2014 Winter Olympics, take a look at what then-President of the Russian Federation did.

That’s not Russian he’s speaking. It’s English and French. And it was a HUGE deal. What President Obama is doing is hardly pandering compared to what Putin did two years ago. And unless you want to argue that Putin is a softer, more pacifist, and less nationalistic ruler than President Obama (which we can all agree is not the case), then there really isn’t any point beyond simple domestic politics for the criticism that’s coming from our side of the political divide.

I’ll be using this temporary theme for the next few months. KTracy.com is going to be missing some of the bells and whistles I’ve become accustomed to offering, but I have two of the most intelligent political minds I’ve had the pleasure of meeting writing here and all three of us were going to be without an outlet unless I put up a temporary theme. To give credit where credit is due, this is a theme designed by “iwak” around the new Windows Operating System that’s coming out. I had to make a few modifications (I couldn’t help myself), but the vast majority of the work that went into this theme was done by “iwak.”

With that out of the way, KTracy.com is open for business once again. The 2010 Theme should be done towards the beginning of 2010.

Hey all, we’ve been having some technical difficulties, courtesy of enemies of the 1st Amendment.  Unfortunately, the database that stores this website’s archives has been deleted, which means we’ll be starting from scratch with a few exceptions for random bits of data that were backed up and salvaged.