Month: April 2015

The Rauner-proposed budget cuts are trashed in a Harmon-Lilly town hall: Suffering is described by many people

Oak Park Chronicles

The town hall meeting about budget cuts called by Sen. Don Harmon in Elmwood Park on April 6, had words of defense for the cuts from just one person, among scores of complaints.

About an hour into the meeting, in the main meeting room of the public library just off Grand Avenue a half-mile west of Harlem, a man asked about “the elephant in the room,” meaning the state’s fiscal crisis. “Don’t blame it all on [Gov.] Rauner,” he said. The stories of being harmed by the cuts are important, he continued, but so are the state’s financial problems.

When the man finished, after a slight pause Harmon announced the availability of water bottles “up here, which some might like, since it’s rather warm in here.” Then he gave the floor to Rep. Camille Lilly, who stood next to him in front of 100 or so people packed into the…

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‘Leave It to Beaver’ vs. ‘Modern Family’ | The Britany Elizabeth Blo g

Try this on for size:

Even though I am considered an “English” teacher, I would rather call myself a “thinking” teacher. In my opinion, it is more important to teach kids how to think than it is to teach them what a synechedoche or polysyndeton is

You hear it a lot among school people. She can teach about synecdoche, including how to spell it, but is seduced by the impossible dream of teaching “how to think.”

Part 1: FDR warned in 1935 that Social Welfare Programs could become narcotic-like

Nancy J. Thorner

Not much attention has been given to a Cato report published on April 17, 2012 about Welfare and the War on Poverty by William A. Niskanen.  Although my print out of the article amounted to seventeen pages of material, it is worth taking the time and the resources needed to download and read in its entirety

Most telling is a statement made by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during his 1935 State of the Union message.  When speaking about his proposed social welfare program, Roosevelt added this ominous message (The Social Security Act was signed on August 14, 1935 as part of Roosevelt’s “New Deal”.).   
 
“The lessons of history, confirmed by evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence on relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber.  To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. …

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Jim Bowman: Cardinal George led from his head and his heart

A sendoff of sorts for a good man:

The Cardinal George image I can’t shake is an amazing shot of him with Leo Catholic High School boys, during a visit to the school in 2012. He’s in the middle of them, one with his arm over his shoulder. He’s beaming, and so are they.

A close second is the sound bite at the news conference held jointly with his newly named successor, Archbishop Blase Cupich. George was telling reporters how much he had learned from them and singled out one of his long-time interrogators, CBS-Channel 2′s Jay Levine: “What I remember most, Jay, is your asking me always how I felt about this or that, never what I thought about it.”

More more more, set for Sunday’s Sun-Times hard copy.

Cruel governor, irresponsible Democrats

Two views of autism program budget cuts:

To Democrats, it was the “Good Friday Massacre;” a double-cross by the Republican governor after securing their votes on emergency budget bills. They voted for those bills at Rauner’s behest because, they believed, they contained assurances that programs like The Autism Project would be protected.

To Republicans, it was a painful yet necessary act by an administration that, for the first time in 12 years, will not play numbers games or push this year’s expenses into next year. It was the Democrats’ fault for passing a budget last year knowing that it did not have enough money to get the state through the year. Filling the $1.6 billion hole they created meant hard choices.

The second makes more sense. That phony budget of last year, very bad. Why do they do us like they do, do, do?

Sun-Times takes “every 28 hours” as gospel

It ain’t.

Thank stringer Ruth Fuller and the Sun-Times desk for not bothering to look this up:

Tio Hardiman, former executive director of the group CeaseFire, also spoke at the gathering Saturday in Zion [to protest killing of 17-year-old by a policeman].

“Every 28 hours, an African American is shot or killed by a police officer in America,” Hardiman said. “Select — not all — police believe they are above the law.”

They could have done so easily, googling “every 28 hours” and finding something viral and false about this claim:

The figure “every 28 hours” comes from an April 2013 report titled “Operation Ghetto Storm” by the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement. The report analyzed officer-involved killings of African-American victims in 2012. The report “is a window offering a cold, hard, and fact-based view into the thinking and practice of a government and a society that will spare no cost to control the lives of Black people,” according to the preface.

However:

It’s not hard to debunk the claims using basic findings and methodologies from the report. (Twitter user @FeministaJones did it in a series of tweets using Storify.)

As for the rest of the debunking, you can look it up. As could Tio Hardiman, Ruth Fuller, and the entire Sun-Times organization, on whom and which, fie!