Mayor Lightfoot’s modus operandi seems to be secretly implementing dumb ideas, but her latest one — signing a three-year deal for downtown NASCAR racing — veers into self-parody.
Adding to the local councilman’s concern about encouraging amateur drag racing, these races would lead our city in exactly the wrong direction environmentally.
Much has been written about the obscene amount of pollution caused by this type of auto racing: by some estimates, inefficient engines burning high-octane gasoline emit as much CO2 in one weekend of NASCAR events as that generated by several homes in one year.
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This adds up to the particulates that lodge deep in our lungs, plus the environmental burdens of manufacturing the thousands of specialized tires that racers chew through, and so on.
Perhaps if the mayor had followed through on her promise to reinstate the city’s Department of the Environment, residents and voters might have had the benefit of informed debate before crossing the finish line.
Andrew S. Mina, Rogers Park
Dome would make Soldier Field worse
Putting a dome on Soldier Field would be like getting bad plastic surgery and then trying to cover it up with more bad plastic surgery.
Richard Keslinke, Algonquin
Gun defenders have sold their souls
To the gun lobby and all politicians past and present beholden to your policy that allowed the federal ban on assault weapons to expire, the carnage in Highland Park could not have happened without you. The same goes for the shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.
Thanks to you, the hits keep coming. His efforts to ensure that anyone of legal age in the US can purchase an assault-style rifle, regardless of how angry or prone to violence they may be, have made mass shootings with these weapons of war commonplace.
What passionate American can’t find a use for assault weapons? Whenever I go squirrel hunting, I always grab my trusty AR-15, because I know it won’t jam at crucial moments.
So go ahead and pat yourself on the back for selling your souls under the delusional belief that you are the true defenders of our democratic republic. As Don McLean sang, I heard Satan laughing with delight.
Peter Lucas, Highland Park
There is no credible reason to have an assault rifle
There is no credible reason why anyone in Illinois or this country needs to own an assault rifle. Our founders had muskets and no police force when they wrote the Second Amendment: the notion that every American is entitled to a high-capacity killing machine is ludicrous.
I don’t think we should wait another day to pass an assault weapons ban in the state of Illinois. Governor JB Pritzker can call a special session of the Illinois General Assembly and get it passed.
Federal appeals courts have repeatedly upheld Cook County’s assault weapons ban, which means they’re likely to uphold this one as well. Now is the time to act in the face of the next tragedy.
Let’s do this, Illinois. There are lives at stake.
Alexander Dean, Lincoln Park