Category: Blithe Spirit

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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Behind that billboard a motorcycle cop?

Speed traps in Oak Park:

Ridgeland Avenue near Between Filmore [sp] & Harvard Street

A police car will sit facing north in the Washington Irving school lot, well hidden from drivers coming north because they are shielded by the dumpsters – so they’re sitting far enough back from plain sight of drivers. I’ve seen patrol cars sitting there during rush hour traffic and on weekends. They are not visible to the driver but passengers can spot them readily.
May 14, 2008

Way out of date, plus nobody commented one way or other, with these options:

1. Yes! This is a speed trap.

2. No, this is definitely NOT a speed trap.

Others, equally discussed:

Harlem Avenue near North Avenue

North Avenue near Taylor Avenue

Potential speedsters are asked, “Need A Good Traffic Attorney?”  And a list of “NMA Traffic Attorney Referrals” is offered.  NMA is National Motorists Association, whose “main premise . . . is that if motorists will join together in one organization to represent their rights and interests as drivers, they will no longer be ignored and exploited by federal, state and local governments.”

Well, everybody deserves his day in court, but in general, as matters stand in OP, I must say I root for the traffic cops in these situations.

On the other hand, “Speed traps are often used by municipalities as a method of generating revenue,” says NMA in a companion piece, “7 Ways To Shut Down A Speed Trap.”

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We won’t blow her cover

This 13–year-old fashion maven knows style.

The youngest of three sisters, Tavi has grown up on a quiet, tree-lined street in a community west of Chicago. (She asked that her suburb go unnamed so that she might remain low-profile in her hometown.)

But page one in Chi Trib is the wrong way to remain low-profile in her hometown. 

(Congratulations, Steve and Berit, on your admirable daughter!)

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On-line INDIGNATION!!!

My favorite newspaper to love and hate, Chi Trib, did me dirt this morning (a) by not being delivered as usual by the abnormally faithful Carlos, whom I have grown to love without reservation (and owe a Xmas check), and (b) by calling Kenwood “Bronzeville” in its lede on-line story about murder on 47th Street. 

Attention all copy editors at The Tower: Bronzeville stops at Pershing Road (39th Street)!

Go to CityofChicago.org at its Chicago Landmarks page — Black Metropolis-Bronzeville District — and you find a map! 

Bronzeville map

We know you people have problems, but CAN’T YOU LEARN THE CITY???

Other than that, have a happy Xmas season and an equally happy new year.

==

Later: Even-Homer-nods category: Shot outside Popeye’s at 818 E. 47th Street, south side of street, so Hyde Park, as Sun-Times (your source for neighborhood accuracy) locates the “restaurant.”  Still not Bronzeville, of course, in fact even less so.

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This pesky problem: babies under bus or not?

You can hear a king somewhere complaining to his courtiers, “Who will rid me of this [troublesome] issue?”  (See “Becket”)

In a letter to senators Wednesday, leaders of the influential U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops reiterated their opposition [to Sen. Reid’s bill], contending the Senate language “violates the long-standing federal policy against the use of federal funds for elective abortions.”

Go bishops?  Not so fast:

A lot is being said and written about why national health care legislation is becoming a reality. The simple fact, available for all to see, is that the U.S. Catholic Bishops ensured passage of the bill in the House, enabling the Senate to move forward with its version.

Huh?

Like “progressive” strategist Robert B. Creamer, the Bishops believe that health care is a right to be guaranteed by government. This position has driven the debate and has rarely been challenged by Republicans. The debate over abortion has been mostly a diversion. Perhaps it has been planned that way

Thus spake Cliff Kincaid, persuasively, I am sorry to say.

As we were the first to disclose, Creamer, an ex-con and husband of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, emphasized using “the faith community” to mobilize support for universal health care by highlighting the morality of providing medical care to people in need. His book, Stand Up Straight! How Progressives Can Win, emphasized that “We must create a national consensus that health care is a right, not a commodity; and that government must guarantee that right.”

Bishops are on same page:

“Our approach to health care is shaped by a simple but fundamental principle: ‘Every person has a right to adequate health care,'” they say. They go on, “For three quarters of a century, the Catholic bishops of the United States have called for national action to assure decent health care for all Americans. We seek to bring a moral perspective in an intensely political debate; we offer an ethical framework in an arena dominated by powerful economic interests.”

So:

At least five lobbyists for the Bishops worked with Pelosi and Stupak on the deal that is now also predictably falling apart. Clearly, the pro-life deal was a ploy designed to keep the legislation alive.

Etc.

Read it and weep, all ye Catholics and others who with Dorothy Day are not ready to look lovingly or even resignedly to Holy Mother the State for health, welfare, and who knows what else.

See also Tom Roeser’s informed and pungent report cum commentary on “tricky Reid language” in his bill and the role of a “so-called pro-lifer” in that sorry development, including Tom’s closer in context of payoffs to compliant senators by White House paymaster Rahm Emanuel:

The Nebraska-Nelson windfall

spurred lawmakers from other states to complain “hey. Why should my state have to take the mandate and Nebraska gets away with it?” One hope is that this would lead to a flurry of lawmakers trying to get their states exempted which means that in the White House, the wily old paymaster, Emanuel, may have to throw up his hands and turn them down…either that or run the cash register repeatedly to buy everybody off…spurring the old hymn to take on a new meaning:

“Come, O Come, Emanuel!”

Which reminds me, it’s Christmas Eve.  Merry Christmas, everyone!

Who regulates regulators?

“The regulators need regulating,” says Wednesday Journal of OP & RF in this week’s “Inside Report”:

More details continue to emerge about opportunities missed and thwarted by federal regulators, leading to the demise of Park National Bank. A recent Crain’s Chicago Business profile  . . . of legendary Chicago banker Harrison Steans’ return [sic] to the banking scene, notes that Cole Taylor Bank, of which he is a leading stockholder, held merger talks with Park National but federal regulators nixed the deal because they had concerns about Cole Taylor.

Steans started a foundation 20 years ago, which has made millions in loans to improve conditions in the North Lawndale neighborhood on the city’s West Side. In other words, if Park National were to be swallowed by another bank, better one led by someone like Steans than U.S. Bank, the eventual acquirer, which has no track record of local community reinvestment.

Nor of being saddled with more bad loans than it can handle.

In any case, regulators always need regulating, I commented, having in mind congressional overseers such as Rep. Barney Frank (D.-Mass.), who encouraged Fannie Mae to multiply loans to marginal borrowers and refused to call a spade a spade when its situation was getting ugly — when the Bush White House was calling for more regulation, by the way.

Park National’s Mike Kelly counted on Frank et al. to do their job and invested millions in Fannie, and this was his mistake. 

Cherchez le governmentally backed agency and its congressional guardians, especially left-wingers who know where the votes are and cater to those who cast them.

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