Ohio’s most powerful elected politicians are morally and ethically bankrupt – Ohio Capital Journal

We aren’t residing within the Ohio that most Ohioans need. We are residing within the Ohio that corrupt politicians obsessed solely with sustaining and maximizing their energy, and enriching themselves and their donor pals, need us to stay in.

This week, the gerrymander-rigged Ohio General Assembly quick-tracked laws to place extra weapons in Ohio public faculties by permitting lecturers to hold firearms.

Teachers are not looking for this. Students are not looking for this. The police foyer doesn’t need this. Those attempting to guard communities from extra gun violence are not looking for this.

In reality, over the course of 4 hours of testimony Tuesday, whereas dozens of individuals instructed lawmakers they are not looking for this, solely two stated they did, and a kind of two is the CEO of a tactical training business owned by the chairman of the Ohio Senate committee that pushed the bill forward, state Sen. Frank Hoagland.

In a 2019 national survey of 2,926 teachers, greater than 95% indicated they don’t imagine lecturers ought to carry a gun within the classroom. Even among the many 16% of respondents who had been gun homeowners, solely 11.5% of them stated being armed whereas educating must be part of instructor’s duties.

The gun invoice is being rammed via the legislature so carelessly and thoughtlessly that there’s significant confusion over what the minimal requirements will be for individuals who want to carry loaded weapons round little children in faculties. The invoice doesn’t bother to mention any storage requirements for the weapons.

A December 2021 report from the Giffords Law Center found nearly 100 cases of mishandled firearms in American schools over the previous five years, together with a “teacher’s loaded gun falling from his waistband during a cartwheel.”

Such an odd, dystopian society we stay in, the place our elected “leaders” will get all lathered into pleasure over the concept of Rambo Ms. Frizzle in bandoliers unloading her Glock in a college constructing after a number of hours of in poor health-outlined coaching, however they received’t go universal background checks ore mental health restrictions that 80-90% of people want.

Instead, Ohio politicians have relentlessly loosened gun laws for 20 years, and gun violence in Ohio has kept going up.

In 2020, firearms became the leading cause of death for American children and teenagers. Guns are now the primary reason for traumatic demise within the United States, exceeding the 38,824 visitors fatalities in 2020 by 16%.

The National Bureau of Economic Researchers discovered states experienced about a 14% higher rate of violent crime after adopting a new concealed carry permitting system much like Ohio’s present one which goes into impact in a number of weeks.

So why are Ohio politicians ignoring the need of the folks and pushing via excessive legal guidelines they’re being warned in opposition to by each police and lecturers?

Maybe it has one thing to do with the $580,000 the gun lobby in Ohio has given to these politicians since 2010.

What it positively has one thing to do with is gerrymandering.

Rigged Statehouse districts that rip away energy from impartial and normal election voters so solely partisan primaries matter have radicalized politicians and political discourse in America.

As every new gerrymandered Ohio General Assembly takes workplace, they’ve professional-gun, anti-abortion, tradition conflict guarantees to extremist teams to satisfy, and the one approach to fulfill these guarantees is to create legal guidelines extra excessive than the already excessive legal guidelines handed by the earlier General Assembly.

Late Wednesday night, the Ohio House amended a trans sports activities ban into one other invoice and handed it. Only one transgender highschool athlete is at the moment registered in Ohio with the state highschool athletic affiliation. The affiliation already has a coverage in place and opposed the invoice as pointless.

Nevertheless, one transgender highschool athlete in Ohio — one individual out of roughly 400,000 younger athletes — is being focused and bullied out of highschool sports activities by the Ohio General Assembly. The state legislature bullied one baby on the primary day of Pride month.

This is how gerrymandering radicalizes politics, incentivizes corruption, kills compromise, and disintegrates democracy.

But two federal judges have now given the green light for Ohio Republican politicians to force voters to participate in elections for Statehouse districts that have twice been declared invalid unconstitutional gerrymanders by a bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court.

This was the fruits of an apparent, crude, and cynical energy seize carried out by Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman, Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose to bypass anti-gerrymandering redistricting reform handed by greater than 70% of Ohio voters.

What a tragic, insane place they are placing all Ohioans in: The solely method to make use of the instruments of what’s left of our democratic republic is to not simply take part, however take part robustly, by voting — however having to take action figuring out the districts have been unconstitutionally rigged by partisan gerrymandering.

This is what the world classifies as a failing democracy — and near failed.

As a lot as this can be a authorized drawback, it’s an issue of character. It’s an issue of ethics. It’s an issue revolving across the startling undeniable fact that the most powerful elected politicians in Ohio are morally bankrupt. They are prepared to interrupt their guarantees to the voters and their oaths to the Ohio Constitution for nothing greater than their very own political self-curiosity.

For the sake of their very own in poor health-gotten, unearned, outsized energy, they’ve spit within the face of voters, disgraced themselves, debased the Ohio Constitution and the rule of legislation, mocked the authority of the state’s highest courtroom, and made a farce out of Ohio’s elections.

This is the insidious politics of nihilism that grows widespread as societies develop decadent.

Their creed is an outdated and ugly one: “The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must.”

In order to behave in such an amoral method, particularly whereas doing the folks’s enterprise, one should turn into expert at mendacity to oneself.

It places me in thoughts of an essential remark from Dostoyevsky:

“A man who lies to himself and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and yields to his impulses.”