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.

Madigan

Michael Madigan the movie.

Madigan: Power. Privilege. Politics. is an unprecedented look at the life and influence of one of Illinois’ most powerful political figures of all time.

More:

Why make a documentary about Madigan now?

llinois is facing unprecedented challenges. Illinois is home to the worst population loss in the Midwest, the worst employment recovery in the Midwest, the worst credit rating in the nation, the worst pension crisis in the nation and the highest property taxes to boot. It’s not pretty. Madigan has been the kingpin of state politics for decades, and it’s time for a peek behind the curtain of how the political machines in Illinois really work.

Source: Madigan

At CLAIM meeting, Oct. 9, 2013, Julian School: college costs, student lunch, pensions

Oak Park Chronicles

 How high the cost of college:

A panel of student-questioners were given the floor. First, the high cost of college.

Harmon said legislators are aware of the problem and are working on it.

Lightford referred to MAP (Monetary Award Program) grants, the state’s financial aid program for “neediest” students attending Illinois colleges.

Lilly offered a remarkable claim: “I passed legislation for grants for junior college,” adding an equally remarkable suggestion, “I’d like to put on the table, [we should] get parents involved. We need to bring them to this room and ask them how to do it.”

Say what?

But parents were in this room, so were their children, asking four legislators, one of them Lilly, how to solve the problem. No one asked her what she had in mind, who apparently knew her well enough to just let it go.

The oddity of “passing legislation” remains unexplained. Her only…

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Both Major Chicago Newspapers Condemn DePaul University Banning Shapiro

Chicago’s DePaul U. served Shapiro’s Daily Wire one down the middle, the Wire reports unblinking major-daily support.

It’s not just conservatives and leftists who are outraged and speaking out against DePaul University’s decision to ban Daily Wire Editor–In-Chief Ben Shapiro from speaking; the two major Chicago newspapers have now published editorials condemning the decision. The Chicago Sun-Times wrote:

Another case of a university like a ship without a sail . . . a boat without a rudder, a kite without a tail.

As a group, they seem to have lost their bearings, which is bad for the republic, to say the least.

Source: Both Major Chicago Newspapers Condemn DePaul University Banning Shapiro | Daily Wire

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?