Month: January 2010

A decade of decadence

Steve Sailer has nailed an important newspaper datum:

All those boring end-of-year / end-of-decade articles that journalists phone in so that they can take the last week of the year off are finally over.

Wed. Journal of OP&RF had a head for its year-ender that got my attention: it had me thinking its villager of the year was being investigated.

Publicity-shy Kelly caught in feds’ spotlight

Until I remembered this was an issue I didn’t have to read. Year-ending thumb-sucker, you know.

Chi Daily News’s Don Zochert used to call up clips and go to work isolating the important and the curious brilliantly. He’s a novelist and a stylist — and biographer of Laura Ingalls Wilder. His stuff I’d read, because it had surprises. Pleasant ones, not crash-bang accidents, horrifying but attention-getting.

Most not, however. Sailer, an expert on race relations, spots a decade-long trend that everyone missed, “a hidden key to understanding the two seminal events of the last decade—9/11 and the economic collapse.”

The factor linking the two big stories of the 2000s: George W. Bush’s sizable degree of culpability in both disasters:

Bush had Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta eradicate the airport security ethnic profiling system before 9/11. (Then he reappointed Mineta, a Democrat, for his second term!).

Bush repeatedly signaled the mortgage industry in 2002-2004 that zero down payment home purchases would be A-OK with his federal regulators.

Of course, those are by no means the only causes of the subsequent disasters. But shouldn’t we at least talk about them?

Sailer does, asking, “what links Bush’s two blunders” and answering, “George W. Bush’s Commitment to Diversity.

Here’s Governor Bush during his second debate with Al Gore on October 11, 2000:

“And secondly, there is other forms of racial profiling that goes on in America. Arab-Americans are racially profiled in what’s called secret evidence [sic]. People are stopped, and we got to do something about that. My friend, Senator Spencer Abraham of Michigan, is pushing a law to make sure that, you know, Arab-Americans are treated with respect.

Which is related closely to this:

Michael Tuohey, the U.S. Airways desk clerk who checked Atta in that morning later admitted that he said to himself: “If this guy doesn’t look like an Arab terrorist, then nothing does”. But, then “I gave myself a political correct slap”. And three thousand died. “[“I Was The One,” Interview with Oprah Winfrey, September 12, 2005]

Etc. Read the whole thing.

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Health Care Ted might turn in grave

What if the successor to Ted Kennedy were someone who did not vote for ObamaCare, leaving Dems with a 59–vote majority?

That prospect isn’t as implausible as it once seemed in that most liberal of states, as Republican Scott Brown has closed to within striking distance of Democrat Martha Coakley in the January 19 special election.

A Boston Globe survey released this weekend showed Ms. Coakley with a 15-point lead, but a survey by the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling found the race a dead heat, with Mr. Brown up 48% to 47%.

The scary prospect for Democrats is that the race is even this close on their home ideological turf, and turnout is always difficult to predict in special elections.

Oh to be in Massachusetts, now that a Republican might win.

See also at the Washington Examiner:

* Michael Barone: Wow! Republican leads in Massachusetts

. . . a statistical tie, given the margin of error. Still, this is big, big news.

and

* Hugh Hewitt: A Massachusetts Miracle?

Scott Brown is an impressive candidate — intelligent, experienced, good-humored and handsome.

Brown’s record of public service is distinguished as well. Not only is he in his third term as a state senator, he served three terms before that as a state representative. More impressive than even that, however, is his service in uniform.

As his Web site, brownforussenate.com, puts it: “Senator Brown is a proud member of the Massachusetts National Guard, where he has served for nearly three decades and currently holds the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Judge Advocate Generals (JAG) Corps.”

Hewitt finds negatives, however:

He is a die-hard red Boston Red Sox fan.

He is a die-hard New England Patriots fan.

And he’s a Republican in Mass.

Which is not a deal-breaker this year, when, per Byron York:

The race to replace the late Sen. Ted Kennedy in Massachusetts is shaping up as a referendum on health care reform.

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Jesuits for a free market

Free-market thinking seems to have got its start not with Adam Smith and his fellow Scots but with Dominicans and Jesuits at the U. of Salamanca in the 15th century.

Just price? The market decides that, etc. Such stuff does the social justice mantra in, or defines it in ways the world doth not dream of in these post-Marxist days . . .

has good material at Mises.com:

“We believe in free markets and free people,” he says, addressing a Mises Institute conference.
We stand for free trade and sound money; against confiscatory taxation and the oppression of collectivists; and for individual autonomy against dictators, bullies and even the tempers of momentary majorities.

“So does this have anything to do with the Jesuit Luis de Molina?” asked Penny Ziemer Ford in reply to my Facebook posting.

Yes indeed.  Consider this from the Acton Institute:

” . . . in Molina’s writings on economics . . . he affirms the importance of individual liberty in free-market exchanges, opposes government regulation of prices and markets, condemns the slave trade as immoral, and upholds private-property rights theory.”
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Let’s hope they mean it

Three wise men: Which three of these candidates for county board president know that reducing excessive tax rates increases tax revenue?

“I’m tired of being treated like an ATM by machine politicians,” Republican John Garrido said during the 75-minute forum at the Hotel Indigo on Northwest Highway.

He — along with Democrat Terry O’Brien, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, and the Green Party’s Tom Tresser — said during the political forum they’d immediately repeal the remaining half-cent sales tax hike passed in 2008.

“We need to stop taxing our way out of our problems, bottom line,” O’Brien said.

Other Democrats in the race — Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown and Chicago Ald. Toni Preckwinkle (4th) — have vowed to roll the sales tax back after some belt-tightening. [Italics added]

Sorry.  Time’s up.  Garrido, O’Brien, and Tresser.  Call them Friends of the Laffer Curve, which applies the law of diminishing returns to taxation.

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The jobs maven

This county board president candidate has some wizardry to perform for us:

Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown tried to hit all three opponents on how she’ll boost tax revenues by creating jobs.

“I believe in new ideas, not new taxes,” Brown said — a shot at Stroger’s penny-on-the-dollar sales tax hike. [Oh? No new taxes?]  “Unlike my opponents, I have saved taxpayer dollars, [not] costing taxpayers by either voting themselves pay raises, voting to increase taxes or making bad decisions on investing our money.” [Not voting to increase them? When? Where? At the annual meeting of court clerks?]

It’s the round table approach:

Brown . . . placed . . . emphasis on economic development and tapping new sources of revenue that would not increase taxes. “We need to create jobs for our people,” said Brown, who proposed setting up an economic development “roundtable” to find ways to do that.

[Italics all added]

She wants to avoid increasing taxes, which is nice.  Repeal the remaining half-cent Stroger increase?  Oh yeah, that too.  Later.

And she wants to create jobs!  Like the jobs she has already created.  You know the ones.  Come on, think about it.  Come on . . .

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One of our parishes is missing! Still!

Who’s in charge here?  Official archdiocesan report on the life of Fr. Bill Kelly still says St. Catherine of Siena parish is closed:

For nine years beginning in 1954, Fr. Kelly was the assistant pastor at St. Edmund Parish in Oak Park.  In 1963, he was named assistant pastor of St. Charles Borromeo Parish, on W. Roosevelt and Hoyne, where he served for five years before assuming the same duties at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Oak Park from 1968 to 1975. All of these parishes, with the exception of St. Edmund, are now closed.

Wrong-o, of course, as Chi Trib has neatly corrected itself.

An obituary for the Rev. William J. Kelly on Monday stated that the St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Parish had closed. To clarify, the church merged with another and exists today as St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Roman Catholic Parish at 38 N. Austin Blvd., Oak Park.

Thus recovering from its understandable boo-boo in trusting the gang downtown.  We should start with its Director of the Department of Communications and Public Relations, Colleen Dolan, on the job since ‘04,

responsible for the strategic direction and development of all institutional archdiocesan communications including media relations, public information, archdiocesan publications, school marketing, electronic media and communications technology, and employee communications throughout the Archdiocese.

Denying the continued existence of a parish fits into no strategy I can imagine.  Either the job is too big for Dolan, or she’s too big for it.

Later, from the archdiocese:

Both St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Oak Park and St. Lucy on Mayfield [sic] in Chicago were closed in 1974.  By canonical decree, and in accordance with Canon 121, the new, consolidated parish of St. Catherine of Siena/St. Lucy was created.

Ah.  The parish is dead, long live the parish.  If only newspaper reporters knew canon law.

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Good gummint, Testing cops, Jesse’s ghost, Green hell

The future is us: Conventions down, top salaries up at McPier and why not?  Gummint employment pays better.  Mr. McGuire recommended plastics for the Graduate, but he wouldn’t today.  He’d say one word, “Gummint,” adding, “There’s a great future in gummint. Think about it.”

Good fellas: Mayordaley II objects, citing his own (9%) pay cut and urging us to ask his wife about that.  But McPier (McCormick Place) is no dumping ground, no matter what people say:

The 54-member club of employees with six-figure salaries includes the mayor’s former special events director, the son of Daley’s former political enforcer, and the brother of a former chief-of-staff to Daley and indicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

Although eight of the highest-paid executives made state and city lists of clout hiring, Daley denied that McPier has become a political dumping ground.

This is plucky of him.

Average excellence: “Police may scrap entrance exam” to “bolster minority hiring,” etc.  This would be gummint at work for us.  Virtually no other big city does this.  But gummint has its dues to pay to voter blocs.

This would also “save millions on test preparation and avert costly legal battles that have dogged the exam process for decades, City Hall sources said Tuesday.”

This is also gummint at work.  It’s like Lake Wobegon, where all the children are above average.  There are no dumbells here.

Sympathetic response: Bears fire six offensive coaches?  By all means do so if they offend you.

Grabber headline: “Why you should care about assessor’s race” is not about whether he’s white, black, or other, though the reader could be forgiven if he thought so.

Hoosier writer?: “Can’t treat jobs as ‘lagging indicator’” is Jesse Jackson’s Sun-Times column today.  It calls for a spending $500 billion on a “significant jobs bill . . . immediately,” which is a wonderful idea if you’re an extreme socialist and have no concept of the nature of money and government and job creation. 

He’s good for something on this order once a week, regular as clockwork.  My question is, who writes these columns?  (Who reads them is another, I grant you, but probably more than read me, so I let it go.)  Rev. Jay-Jay makes up darn good dumbell pomes (they ran in Arch Ward’s Trib column “In the Wake of the News” many, many sports pages ago).  But stuff that doesn’t rhyme that reads smoothly?

A modest proposal to beat Swift*: “No more free ride home for CTA staffers” says they lose their free autos.  I say let them ride the green, blue, red, brown, and pink lines and connecting buses.  Make it a condition of employment.

[* Jonathan, not Skokie]

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O’Brien advertises, Byrne speaks, Zuma weds

Slamming with faint damns: “O’Brien ad slams Stroger,” says Sun-Times head — hard copy, not online.

[Terry] O’Brien, president of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, says “we’re running strictly a positive campaign here,” but his veiled references to Cook County Board President Todd Stroger in the ad aren’t exactly happy talk. [Cute] 

Well he can’t do that.  Won’t get away with it.  He’s acting as if Stroger’s sales-tax hike were a major issue (as if Chi Trib were counting the days from hike to primary: Geez), as if Stroger’s hiring relatives and others from his ward to big-bux jobs without apparent overriding reference to qualifications were a major issue too. 

Listen: O’Brien won’t get away with calling voters’ attention to these things, even without mentioning Stroger’s name.  We, at least the Sun-Times, are up to this dirty pool.  NOTHING DOING.  [And leave Lisa Donavan’s cute stuff alone, you S-T copy editors, wherever you are.]

Blaming and doing: Meanwhile, in Chi Trib, a shot at perfectionism:

[S]ome Americans are hopelessly naïve in their expectations of what “the system,” much less a single person, can accomplish within an institution as complex as the federal government.

They are practitioners of the Blame Someone Syndrome that requires that someone be nailed for every conceivable misfortune under the sun. It’s as useless and adolescent as the Do Something Syndrome.

When something bad happens, the calls go out: “Do something!” Doesn’t matter what it is, something’s got to be done. And when that something doesn’t work, in kicks the Blame Someone Syndrome.

Thus spake Dennis Byrne.  Yes.  It’s a neurotic crankiness, of which if you promise not to tell anyone, I partake sometimes myself, expecting copy editors to see things my (far better) way.  It’s not gonna happen, I tell myself, but then I forget.

As for doing something, “Don’t just do something; stand there” is often the best solution.

Saying “I do”: Finally, “South Africa’s Zuma takes his bride, again,” LA times and Chi Trib have.

“There are plenty of politicians who have mistresses and children that they hide so as to pretend they are monogamous. I prefer to be open. I love my wives and I am proud of my children,” Zuma has said, defending polygamy in a television interview.

I find this disturbing not because I oppose polygamy, which I do, but because by being open about it, this president makes light of the tribute to virtue offered by hypocrisy.  Is nothing sacred?

Of course, we Americans should talk.  Our president has a father he dreamed about who had three wives.  So? You have a problem with that?

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Vanished Oak Park parish, recalling Bill Kelly

Go Trib! With some boots on the ground in Oak Park!  As in obit for Fr. Bill Kelly, pastor emeritus of St. Edmund:

He [earlier] served at St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Parish, which has since closed.

This is very big news to parishioners of St. Catherine-St. Lucy, as they go to mass in the huge Gothic structure at Austin and Washington, as recently as yesterday. [See below: Trib corrects itself.]

But let’s not pick exclusively on Chi Trib.  Oak Leaves, whose “Oak” is the one in “Oak Park,” also has it:

He was assistant pastor at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Oak Park from 1968 to 1975. The parish is now closed.

Have I missed something?  The parish of my youth closed? 

I have my own memories of Fr. Kelly, the most genial of men, faithful to his calling and full of common sense.

I spent an evening for dinner in a parishioner’s house with him and his boorish St. Charles Borromeo pastor.  Bill was stuck with the guy, but never gave any sign of bitterness or complaint.

Later, as St. Edmund pastor he had an over-enthusiastic ex-priest parishioner who at a parish meeting flashed his “celebret” — written permission to say mass and hear confession in a given diocese — which had clearly expired, in a moment of 1970s church-style point-making. 

I forget what the issue was as Bill explained it, but I remember Bill’s wise unwillingness to react after the fact with more than an implied “Can you believe this guy?”

In the wars big and small that even now, though far less than in those heady days, exercise Catholics, he demonstrated an enviable aplomb.

More:  This is wild.  The horse’s mouth has the ridiculous characterization of Bill Kelly’s parishes as all closed but St. Edmund!  That would be your smart, media-savvy, heads-up Archdiocese of Chicago, recipient of millions annually from pew-sitters of every stripe, calling St. Catherine of Siena closed!

Did I say horse’s mouth, or horse’s something else, and in the plural?

This I did say — with regard to St. Catherine-St. Lucy being in the Catherine of Siena building — to the reader who alerted me:

Lucy was merged in 1974 — while Kelly was still at St. Catherine — with Cath of S., moving into its big church, the Lucy building becoming a Baptist church.  Lucy had covered Austin neighborhood and Oak Park north of Lake.  Yes, Virginia, there still is a St. C. of S., tho not in the bureaucratic minds of chancery officials, for whom tidy designations are everything.
Let it be a lesson to us all, including city rooms doing clerical obits.
 
Yet more from Chi Trib:
–An obituary for the Rev. William J. Kelly on Monday stated that the St. Catherine of Siena Roman Catholic Parish had closed. To clarify, the church merged with another and exists today as St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Roman Catholic Parish at 38 N. Austin Blvd., Oak Park.
Good.
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He clings to God

Does this sound like a guy whose family has been slaughtered by his own rampaging countrymen?

“People think God is far away from us. He’s not! Jesus is one of us, not just among us — connected to you and to me. We have a saying: ‘God is watching us through the roof.’

“When they used to build houses with grass roofs they used to leave a little hole on top of the house so God could keep watching us. They did this even before they knew Christianity.”

You think you got troubles.

He’s Father Pascal Bigirimana, administrator of Saints Peter and Paul RC Parish on Chicago’s South Side, who lost his parents and three brothers and two of his three sisters and their spouses and children in genocidal killing in Rwanda in the ‘90s.

He hid under floorboards for a week while Hutus searched for him, a Tutsi. A Hutu nun said he had fled and was probably dead, and they left.

“Eventually the bishop came with some soldiers and took me to his residence. That’s how I escaped. It was a miracle. I thought I was already dead.”

The rest is at the excellent “5 Mins. with Father” Catholic New World feature, where the talk, crisply delivered, is more often about growing up in big families and being ordained and being a pastor.  This time it’s about war and death and faith.

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