Month: September 2006

Tangled Web woven

“The business of knitting and crocheting seems headed into a downward cycle,” says Tangled Web Fibers owner Elin Thorgren, who’s closing up on OP Ave. across from St. Edmund Church, adding, “And you know, there are some things going on in Oak Park, development-wise, that make it untenable to try to ride out the storm.”  Of course.  A biggie is coming across the street and down the block that will utterly transform the OP-South Blvd. corner. 

Davis tripped by inadequate info?

Congr. Davis repeats to the Wed. Journal that he did not know Tamil (terrorist) Tigers funded his recent trip to Sri Lanka. 
Davis . . . said neither he nor anyone on his staff were aware that any money from a terrorist organization was used to pay for his trip until the story broke in the Chicago Tribune. [He] said he first learned of the charges when a Tribune reporter called his West Side office before the paper’s Aug. 24 story. The Tribune followed up with another story four days later on Aug. 28. On Aug. 25, the paper wrote a scathing editorial concerning the trip and politicians, such as Davis, who take “junkets,” or trips taken by government officials and paid for with public funds.
 
Davis said the trip was public and that “there was nothing secretive about the trip.”
 
He said some of his Sri Lankan constituents urged him to visit the country. As reported by the Chicago Tribune, the U.S. Census shows 44 people in the 7th Congressional District who identify themselves as Sri Lankan or part Sri Lankan.

D97 hurt by other taxers?

Here’s someone who may be viewing a TIF as hurting the schools.  Compare with my most recent column in which I pick up briefly on Trustee Milstein’s cooperation model as calling first of all for giving TIF $ back to schools.  This 9/12 opinion piece, by Joel Ostrow, does not quite say that, however.  In fact, it’s mainly a (cogent) defense of Dist. 97 as responsible spender, except for teacher contracts, a big “except,” and argument for its deserving an ok on its coming referendum — which could not come at a worse time, with all the complaints about higher taxes. 
 
Another view-giver, Rex Burdett, does not agree.  He opposes a Dist. 97 referendum, accusing it of over-spending, nailing the League of Women Voters, whose
proposed solution (greater state funding of education) fails to quantify inevitable massive individual state income tax and, worse, ignores the root cause of the current dilemma-namely out-of-control local school expenditures due to salary increases far in excess of inflation and staffing increases disproportional to enrollment trends.
It’s certainly true that schools-supporters have a mantra here, which he attacks, namely that it’s the state’s fault.  Maybe so, but this alternative view is in order.

Peraica has a hot issue

He’s demanding investigation of beating of 77-year old man by County Security Guards across the street from Stroger Hospital.  He cites Fox news report, wants:
 
The identification of the security guard, his suspension pending independent investigation, dismissal of charges pending against the beaten man also pending independent investigation, return of cell phone of county employee who videotaped the incident on her phone subsequently confiscated by police,
 
According to a Fox report [nowhere linked], the man was approached by the guard, who asked “if he was a Mexican” and if he “was legal” and was then removed from his car and beaten as he reached for his wallet.
 
He is hospitalized at Stroger hospital with chest pains and puncture wounds.

Fw: Show them you won’t stand for it

Something big there is that may have been reported (highlighted) already: Mayordaley II has the unions mad at him!  Once upon a time, they organized, now they do street theater.  Email from CFL, in part:
 
 
…………..Subject: Show them you won’t stand for it
 

Dear — , 

 

Today three separate groups held three events, and tomorrow features a whole day of activity by different groups.  Join Living Wage supporters for any or all of these as we keep the energy high all day long!  

5am – Sunrise Prayer Service outside City Hall 

8am – Rally at City Hall, 2nd Floor 

10am – City Council Meeting Starts 

11:30am – Lunchtime Rally, 2nd Floor City Hall 

***Press Conference immediately after the override vote*** 

4:30 pm – After work action at the Thompson Center plaza across from City Hall 

 

Mayor Daley and a few flip-floppers are going to try and steal our living wage tomorrow, but they’re going to have a hard time explaining themselves in the February elections. Let’s keep the energy high all day so they know we aren’t going to take it!

  

 

Move to the suburbs, live longer . . .

. . . is the web site head, but hard-copy afficionados find “Does where you live affect how long you live?”   Either way, the story has a lot to live down for the half-way alert reader.  The lede is no help: Jim Ritter has “Harvard researchers . . . reporting huge and growing gaps in life expectancies throughout the United States.  “Asian-American females in Bergen County, N.J.” and “Native American males in six South Dakota counties” are the long and short of it.  Are we supposed to think that all things being equal, Bergen County  is more salubrious than S. Dakota’s Six?
 
Counties “start the best” and “just keep getting better,” says one of the Harvard-ites.  What is a county anyway?  Have you ever met one?  Ah, but in the 6th graf, we find males and females — you’ve met them, I’m sure — average 72 in expectancy in Cook County (males), which once was considered pretty good, even by some of us who by that measure are on borrowed time.  Heck, it’s been borrowed since Day One: This night do they require thy soul of thee, said God in Luke, calling the man a fool who didn’t know that, and if God thinks he’s a fool, so do I. 
 
But 72 and a few months is lowest in Chi area, DuPage County females are tops at 81.5.  Move that sick guy to DuPage and give him an operation: it will add years.  How can we not do that?  Finally, in the 8th graf (of 13), we get to some sort of honest to God cause and effect:
Life expectancy gaps are due in large part to varying death rates [ah-hah] in young and middle-age adults from cancer and chronic diseases of the heart, lungs and liver, [researcher] Murray said.
 
The disparities are due in part to inequitable health care. For example, 47 million people in the United States — nearly 16 percent — don’t have health insurance.  [Moving to DuPage or Bergen won’t get you more, I don’t think.  You have to buy it.]
 
But the main reasons for the gaps are related to risk factors for premature death. In order of importance, these risk factors are smoking, alcohol abuse, obesity, high blood pressure, cholesterol, low fruit and vegetable consumption and physical inactivity, Murray said.
Wait a minute.  If I live in Cook but don’t smoke or drink or get fat or have high b.p and cholesterol and eat lots of fruit and vegetables and exercise a lot, I might live as long as the woman of whatever ethnicity in Wheaton or the Asian woman in Bergen?  Very good.  I feel better already.
 
As for Native Americans, it’s not South Dakota that’s the problem, but “diabetes and alcohol-related deaths from traffic accidents and cirrhosis of the liver [that] account for much of the low life expectancies” among them.  This is good news for Native American men in the Six Counties who do not have to move to increase their expectancies.
 
O.K., enough already.  You get my sarcastic point.  Won’t matter anyhow, because the story had to be sold, and to announce as news that if you live right, you live longer would merit no headline at all, because it wouldn’t be news at all, which may be news to Harvard researchers plugging away at their task but should not be to S-T editors and headline writers.  Did I say it’s on page three, by the way, or that “Move to the suburbs, live longer” is a page one reefer head?  I didn’t?  Well now I did.

Case of the shocked mugger

S-T ran an AP story the other day about a 57-year-old wheelchair-rider in Harlem who nailed the aggressor.  Wondering how often handgun ownership leads to such an admirable conclusion, vs. the times we read more about when guns shoot people by accident, I found a blog that keeps track of self-defending use, “Civilian Gun Self-Defense Blog: Where Clayton Cramer and Pete Drum keep track of civilians using guns in self-defense.”  In it I found another version of the Harlem self-defense story from Newsday that has the woman on a “motorized scooter” and offers considerably more detail than S-T/AP had:
Margaret Johnson, a 57-year-old licensed gun owner, was looking to fire her weapon, but it was supposed to be at a firing range, police said.

She left her home with plans to go to the range. Instead, she was confronted from behind by Deron Johnson, no relation, police said.

 
……………………..
 
The suspect [perp?] has nine previous arrests, police said. State records show he served eight years in prison for a drug conviction and was released in February 2003.
One of life’s losers ran athwart one of its winners.

Barzun to Bagehot to Butler

“It is absolutely the whole business of a moral agent to conform” oneself to “conscience,” i.e., to act in accordance with “the constitution of man,” says 18th-century Christianity defender Bishop Joseph Butler, per Walter Bagehot in one of his many magazine reviews in mid-19th century, contained in his Collected Works.  Bagehot (say “badge-it”) has been a wonderful find for me, for which I’m indebted to the also-wonderful French-American scholar Jacques Barzun, who held forth at Columbia U. for many years and wrote From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present, published in 2000.  Barzun is still alive and receiving awards at 98!  He once observed, “He who wants to understand America better learn baseball.”  Understanding the White Sox is another matter.