Letters: Reform campaign financing in Illinois

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(John Badman/The Telegraph via AP)

Follow @csteditorialsOver the last couple of years we here in Illinois have been encouraged to impose term limits on our elected officials. We have been promised a freeze on property taxes. While Illinois struggles through its second year without a budget we are deluged with petitions to put limits on a variety of things.

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes.

The one area we seem to have neglected is campaign spending. We stand by while candidates spend millions to try and convince us how much better they are than their opponent. A person has to wonder how cost effective all this spending really is.

The candidates spend millions while social services, education and a whole host of other areas continue to struggle through a lack of funding. Of course, these people can use the money others contribute to their campaign any way they choose, but I can’t help but think of Marie Antoinette, who, when apprised of the fact that the peasants had no bread, responded by saying: Let them eat cake. It would be nice to think that at some point these politicians would a find a better use for this money.

Daniel Pupo, Bellwood

Disappointment looms

Trump voters have triumphed. The nation must move on. But if anyone expects Trump’s campaign promises to come true, they shall be sadly disappointed.

No president can, with a wave of his hand, produce the jobs his supporters nostalgically wish would return. The old economy is gone. It cannot be restored any more than

anything outmoded can be revived. Globalization cannot be reversed. If America were to try to opt out, our job picture would worsen.

Meanwhile, Trump’s traits can’t be changed or ignored. Champion of white hard-hats? Trump stiffed them plenty along the way, not paying them for their labor.

You can already hear the jibes: Fraudster in Chief? His Trump Real Estate University trial for

fraud is soon to be adjudicated.

Masher in Chief? He has treated all women as fair game, sexually.

The Anti-Diplomat? He has already offended foreign governments by disparaging them out of

hand, and has threatened to trash past agreements and risk making NATO unworkable as the world has known it since the Cold War. And that doesn’t count his blatantly racist remarks that may never be forgiven, or other character flaws that make him a wrong hire for the

job at hand.

The list of concerns for thoughtful people goes on, ignored by Trump fans who have elected a potential bull in a china shop, with his party controlling both House and Senate. The legislators Trump fans say they set out to punish for doing them wrong are still in office. Go figure.

May providence see us through the next four years.

Ted Z. Manuel, Hyde Park

Not appropriate

Everywhere you go these days, two or more people together, you are addressed as “Hi, Guys!” It is not appropriate to call ladies “Guys”! However, since that is the way it is done in our world, it would be equally as appropriate to say “Hi, Girls!” Let’s all start saying “Hi, Girls!” until a better greeting is used in all businesses.

John P. Brown, Bloomington

Answer the challenge

Now that we will have a new president who said he’d stop Chicago’s violence in two weeks, why not remind him that he will now have the opportunity to do just that. Talk is cheap, let’s see how he’ll answer the challenge.

Edwina Jackson, Longwood Manor

Appropriate words

The only appropriate words now are these, from the song “Epitaph” (by King Crimson’s Robert Fripp): “The fate of all mankind, I fear, is in the hands of fools.”

David G. Whiteis, Humboldt Park

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