Does the Right Wing of the SD State Legislature REALLY care about children?

I care about children, but only the unborn with genetic disorders that are either a male or female and come from the hand of God, not a monkey. After they are born, they are on their own.

Every year, Pierre changes it’s name to ‘Guns & Abortion, SD’ for about 40 days, and our legislature wastes time on guns and abortion legislation. Their reasons? They care about children. Really?

Well this year, as in the past, they had a chance to tell us just how much they do care about kids, you know, the ones that are born and living already. Some of them failed.

You would think after watching this year after year a group that large couldn’t be that ignorant. I must clarify, some Republicans get it, I am talking about the extreme right that think the earth is 6,000 years old and evolution isn’t based on science.

So let’s look at their failures;

• Supporting anti-science, secular education while censoring evolution science. The right wingers think they are doing the children of the state a favor by teaching them anti-science supported creationism, while instilling theological ideas into the public schools ignoring separation of church and state. This is a civics and science lesson gone awry. It goes against everything the 1^st Amendment is about, and is more harmful to children then helpful.

• Legislating and teaching Hate. This one speaks for itself, making it legal to discriminate against a person based on their sexual orientation. This one thankfully failed, but that it even came up as legislation is pretty scary.

• Full Medicare expansion. This isn’t rocket science. Not only would it help a lot of children and keeping their working parents healthy it would put $200 million into the state economy. Of course some of legislators, like Isaac Latterell believe that the Federal Government is broke and a day of reckoning is coming where we won’t be getting money from the Feds anymore. Yup, Isaac, Ronald Reagan was using that talking point before you were born. As one of the legislators said in the last coffee, “If you have concerns as a constituent of how the Federal government is spending Federal funds, you need to bring it up with your Washington delegation, not state representatives.”

• Removing the sales tax on food. Democratic representative Marc Feinstein has been trying to remove the tax for years, unsuccessfully. For obvious reasons, removing this tax would help children. I have suggested instead of raising the taxes on other things – three adjustments could be made. 1) Remove the tax from raw, preparable and fresh foods only 2) Tax all products at the same rate-4% 3) Tax advertising.

• Denying counties a share of state sales tax revenue while voting against more lenient enforcement of non-violent offenders, like marijuana users. Why is the county getting further and further behind? Crime and the clogged court system. This also has to do with the safety of our children. When we simply just fine non-violent offenders instead of incarcerating them, we free up law enforcement and the courts to handle the more violent and serious crimes. This makes our community safer, and ultimately children safer.

So while the Right Wingers are busy talking about abortion and guns to keep our children safe and healthy, the work that actually that should be done is going straight over their heads . . . as usual. Some things never change in Guns & Abortion, SD.