Author: Jim Bowman

Jim Bowman covered religion 1968-78 for the Chicago Daily News, since then has written books, articles, etc., mostly on corporate history but also on religion (Company Man: My Jesuit Life, 1950-1968), and more recently on politics (Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters -- Lulu.com, Kindle). Longtime Oak Park, Illinois, resident, he lives now on Chicago's North Side, where four of his and Winnie's six children live close by.

Words to live by . . .

Or get along by, for my never-Trump friends:

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!”
— Benjamin Franklin
(1706-1790) US Founding Father
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Benjamin.Franklin.Quote.B4EF


“Without general elections, without unrestrained freedom of press and assembly,
without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution…
in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element.”
— Rosa Luxemburg
(1880-1919)
Source: in The Russian Revolution
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Rosa.Luxemburg.Quote.A7AB


“The short memories of the American voters
is what keeps our politicians in office.”
— Will Rogers
(1879-1935) American humorist
http://quotes.liberty-tree.ca/quote_blog/Will.Rogers.Quote.3FED

As for that contesting part, well I’d say editorially, for starters, ok?

Guess how legacy media warhorse explains Hillary defeat, tells where to find unbiased coverage. Marist High consigns 5 tweeting seniors to outer darkness

Oak Park Chronicles

Immediately following his kickoff lecture for Dominican U.’s new foreign-correspondent “initiative” — lecture series plus internships — on 14 Nov, onetime major-TV reporter Marvin Kalb was asked about the election. He put it to the audience of 200 or so, did they want a diplomatic answer or one that showed how he “really felt.”

No one wanted the former, as tempting as the offer was — what’s not to like about diplomatic answers? — so he spoke from the heart, elucidating these points among others:

HRC lost the election because she “carried baggage from the ’80s” in Arkansas that when examined added up to nothing but which “created the narrative” that dogged her to the very end.

Additionally, hers was a “blunder” to use her own email for official purposes. “Trapped, she fumbled around for six months” before admitting it.

Finally, the FBI played a “scandalous” role in all this…

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Onward and upward with the Trump presidency

Wed Journal blog . . .

Oak Park Chronicles

My Saturday morning jolt was as usual from my front step-delivered Chi Trib, with its page one (LA Times) story about how bad the Trump transition was going. More an op-ed piece or editorial than news story, the piece reflected the mainstream negativity that I don’t find in WSJ, where professionalism reigns pretty much unchallenged. (Some of its usually trustworthy columnists did go somewhat ga-ga in their revulsion to Trump in recent months, but that was then.)

In any case, I can thank the Trib for bringing me up on that mainstream stuff. In its news coverage, it is often a sure-fire register of such. This time is was about the “rocky start” to transition work — “Trump replaces Christie with Pence as head of transition team amid bumpy first steps to the White House” — three days after the election!

“Increasingly,” the Trib said, about the rocky start…

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Payton student says Marist criminalizes students

Did she talk this way at the meeting with police and others? If so, did anyone call her on it?

[Supt.] Johnson also agreed to monthly meetings with the students to discuss issues on “police brutality, systemic racism, and the criminalization of brown and black children in school,” said Eva Lewis, a senior at Walter Payton College Prep.

Give Marist your child, get back a criminal? Sure. Why not?

Funding the schools: “fair distribution,” tax-increment financing (TIF), discussed by Harmon, Lilly, and Lightford

At CLAIM meeting, Oct. 9, 2013, Julian School:

Addressing “fair distribution” of funds, Sen. Lightford put “local control” of schools at the heart of the problem, promptly adding that she supports it. . . .  She also cited the city of Chicago’s “neglect” of the nearby Austin neighborhood, as if to highlight unfairness in distribution, but maybe not. She seemed to just throw it out there for listeners to chew on.

Rep. Lilly revisited her “corporate round table” idea, avowing that she is “behind efforts” to eliminate “tax breaks for corporate America,” on the one hand, and urging that “we need to get corporate America involved,” on the other. For the first time in the evening, she found her stump style, hands moving, eyes ablaze, a cheerleader in full blast.

As if to distract her from her corporate-America plans, Harmon asked if she was “referring to TIF” (tax-increment financing), adding a prompter, “Right?” as if she had forgotten her lines. TIF cash, he added, must be used “for its intended purposes,” that is, for economic development. In distressed areas, he might have added.

“TIFs are good,” Lightford said, “but . . .  a TIF should not take too much money from schools.” Not too much, just enough.

Harmon responded reasonably enough that TIF renewals — continued diverting of money from schools and elsewhere for business expansion — are regularly approved by all involved taxing bodies, including school districts. Who presumably see advantages in this, he might have added.

From Illinois Blues: How the Ruling Party Talks to Voters —  available in paperback, epub and Amazon Kindle formats.

Lay of the post-election land. Republicans are Trumpists now.

Wed. Journal blog latest

Oak Park Chronicles

Reading Wall St. Journal: Trump’s policies are to become Republican policies. Previous policies are “all on the wane.” To achieve this radical transformation , Trump had to win, and that’s all he had to do.

Outside Washington, Republicans found themselves trying to define the new Republicanism. Post-expected-Dem victory, GOP was to be in disarray. Now GOP is in the catbird seat, prepared to press its advantage. (Let the media rage.)

“We have learned from the lessons of last night,” said a moderate Republican state senator in Ohio. Wow. He will change from a moderate Republican — RINO, in name only, to the right) to Trumpist. A former South Carolina state chairman said he has to learn how to do this.

in her farewell address, Hillary talked about the glass ceiling : it hasn’t been smashed, but “some day someone will . . .” (Is there a Margaret Thatcher in our future?)

Her…

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Dear Women: A Hillary Clinton Loss Does Nothing To Harm Your Personal Ambitions

Weep not, fair lady.

The public reaction to Trump’s victory has been an unrelenting frenzy. Two sides forecast something that’s either Utopia and Armageddon. Maybe it could be somewhere in between?

And something else is on people’s minds as well, particularly among the left: what does this mean for women?

What does Hillary’s defeat mean for women?

Nothing.

Throughout her campaign, Hillary Clinton has been no stranger to using the appeal of her gender to garner support. To many women, this was a major reason to support her. The narrative has been of aspirational transferation by the shattering of the glass ceiling.

Women and girls everywhere were supposed to finally find personal inspiration by electing the first woman president of the United States via identity politics.

And now that that opportunity has passed, many of these women and girls are heartbroken and dispirited. All I can say to these people is: don’t let the failure of one woman influence your perception of what can and can’t be achieved by women.

Keep calm and carry on.

Source: Foundation for Economic Education