Enough? Enough!
When is enough “enough”? When is it time to stop? When is it time to think? Think to yourself… WOAH? Back up? And then think: This is not okay!
Have you ever encountered a situation where you honestly thought: I’ve got to do something! It’s up to me to help implement change? Now’s the time.
In the first 35 days of the year, there have been more than 65 mass shootings.
The most recent at Michigan State University has three fatalities, with five more victims in serious condition in local hospitals.
Meanwhile, our federal and state gutless, spineless, NRA-bought-and-paid-for elected officials occupy their time by mindless investigations on bugaboo side issues and partisan political palaver aimed at placating their uber-conservative fan base and raising campaign funds on the deaths of their fellow citizens.
Remember the Brady Bill, enacted after the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan? Sensible laws on gun ownership were quickly put into effect with bipartisan support and the number of mass shootings plummeted. Then, political pressure and hefty campaign contributions enabled the law to elapse and today more citizens are dying every day in a cascade of bullets.
I’ve stated before that we’re better than this. I was wrong. So wrong. We’re not better than this. “THIS” is who we are, a society that puts the power of money and the mystical allure of the gun – the bigger the better – over human life.
Of course, parents care about their children and do not want them Swiss-cheesed with holes from a gun-toting intruder in what used to be sanctuaries dedicated to the pursuit of educational excellence. The problem is the guns-at-any-cost crowd believing the Constitution gives Ken Q and Karen Q Citizen, and backed up by a befuddled right-wing Supreme Court, the unalienable right to carry any gun this side of a .50 caliber machine gun don’t have the testicular fortitude to say “ENOUGH”!
Doing nothing is not an option. if you choose that coward’s path, you are complicit.
I pledge to communicate with my senators and representatives daily about the need for sensible gun reform.
This space will not be used to tell YOU what to do. You KNOW what to do.
Do it! Call your elected officials. Write them every day. Raise hell when they show up in your community.
If this travesty leads to unwanted deaths of our children, family members, friends and neighbors, as well as countless faceless, fellow citizens, those deaths are on our collective heads.
What will you do?
Primaries less than a year away
The first presidential primaries are less than a year away. The question is: Where will the first primaries be? Iowa? New Hampshire? North Carolina?
The Democrats are dead set on overhauling the primary schedule, staking out North Carolina as No. 1 in the primary sweepstakes. The reasoning of the Democratic Party is simple: Iowa and New Hampshire are, border to border, chock full of white folks; North Carolina is more diversified, reflecting more of what the entire country looks like.
Sound reasoning, but the GOP is not buying it. Fact: The right likes white.
The Democratic National Committee has approved a presidential primary calendar that placed South Carolina as the first nominating state in 2024, pushing back New Hampshire and Iowa from their traditional spots in a party-wide effort to diversify the early calendar.
In a voice vote at the DNC’s winter meeting in Philadelphia, party members voted to place
South Carolina first, on Saturday Feb. 3, 2024, followed three days later by Nevada and New Hampshire on Feb. 6, and a week after that by Georgia on Feb. 13 and then by Michigan on Feb. 27.
“Folks, the Democratic Party looks like America, and so does this proposal,” said DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison. “We can’t go back in time to fix the mistakes of our past, but by golly, this will help allow us to put our hands on that arc of history and bend it towards justice,” said Pete Lee, the vice chairman of the Democratic Party of Oregon, during a debate ahead of the vote.
The DNC vote clashes with the Republican National Committee’s vote 10 months ago to keep the traditional nominating order for its primaries: Iowa, followed by New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.
This political brouhaha is further complicated since New Hampshire has a state law that requires both Republican and Democratic presidential primaries to be held together before any other state’s, and state officials plan to hold the line on that edict.
New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu reiterated that vow. “Joe Biden and the power brokers at the DNC in Washington think New Hampshire’s time is up, but it’s not in our DNA to take orders from Washington,” Sununu wrote on Twitter. “New Hampshire will be going first in 2024.”
From the Democratic party perspective, moving South Carolina and Nevada elevates the importance of both the Black and Latino communities in selecting candidates. Should the primaries be geared to who can compete in diverse environments or who has raised the most money from special interests?
Neither Iowa nor New Hampshire offer a slide of American demographics like South Carolina or Nevada. But that fact means little to partisan, home-grown deciders who want what when they want it.
It’s partisan fisticuffs in the hinterlands. Again.
(EDITOR’S NOTE: George Smith is a former reporter, editor and publisher at several Arkansas newspapers.)