proposed solution (greater state funding of education) fails to quantify inevitable massive individual state income tax and, worse, ignores the root cause of the current dilemma-namely out-of-control local school expenditures due to salary increases far in excess of inflation and staffing increases disproportional to enrollment trends.

OP’s Committee for Just Peace in Palestine speaker asked if Zionism is racism, compared Israel-Palestine today to apartheid-era South Africa — “It’s much worse,” he said.  He’s Farid Esack, a Muslim theologian and author of Qur’an, Liberation and Pluralism: An Islamic Perspective of Interreligious Solidarity Against Oppression; On Being a Muslim: Finding a Religious Path in the World Today; and An Introduction to the Qur’an.

He had spoken two days earlier at Dominican U. ($10 a head) in a “dialogue series.”  DU says he’s been active in “the Call of Islam,” which as a message is said by the Muslim American Society to include this:

The Muslim regards himself as commanded by God to call all humans to a life of submission to Him, to Islam as a present participial act (42:15). His life goal is that of bringing the whole of humankind to a life in which Islam, the religion of God, with its theology and Shari’a, its ethics and institutions, is the religion of all humans.

He’s currently at Harvard Divinity, having just done a three–year stint at Xavier U., Cincinnati (where this blogger taught briefly in the late 60s).  Coming up at Dominican is a lecture 9/21 on “theological challenges and opportunities of Muslim-Catholic dialogue,” a lecture 10/30 on “Transforming the Self [sic], Transforming Society” an open meeting 11/8 of Chicago-based “Catholic-Muslim Dialogue.”

To Esack’s credit, he does not turn up in search of the Anti-CAIR or Front Page web sites, each of which has sensitive antennae when it comes to Islamism.  He does turn up in an Amazon-posted rave review of Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, by Omid Safi, to which he contributed “an essay that takes the document ‘Progressive Islam – A Definition and Declaration’ as its point of departure.” In the essay he

is very critical of the views expressed by many liberal Muslims, whom he accuses of suffering from the same myopia as their fundamentalist adversaries: presenting themselves as ‘authentic’ interpreters of Islam and canonizing certain statements in the sacred scriptures without regard for the context. He is equally dismayed by liberal Muslims’ failure to challenge that other form of fundamentalism: that US interests represent the axis around which the earth rotates. [Italics added]

Uh-oh.

No need for “timeout” on Tax Increment Financing (TIF) as Cook County Commissioner Quigley called for, says mayors’ group.

Last week I talked about Oak Park’s Kelo problem. You may say to yourself, “I understand that Oak Park likes to restrict the ability of owners of real estate to use their property, but so what?” To my mind, … (read more)       

In a town meeting about taxes,

[Township pseudo-assessor] ElSaffar explained taxes have increased steadily due in large part to a series of successful voter approved tax referendums and residential assessment increases.

There we have it, ladies and gentlemen.  We or someone like us voted up those referendums, for good or bad reasons, depending whom you ask.  This is plain talk from ElSaffar (who is pseudo because he doesn’t assess anything but voters’ ire — worst he’s seen this time around — but explains things).

“It’s partly our own fault. We’ve never seen a referendum in Oak Park that we’ve said no to,” said one taxpayer, a UIC prof, adding ominously, “We need to look very carefully at what we’re voting for.”*

Won’t happen.  Depends how many look carefully.  Some always have, but teachers and parents have won the day every time, including this blogger working might and main for his six kids in public schools.  As long as OP is home to a school population like this, the referendums will pass.  Trust me.

This is not a retirement village, in other words.  This also spells doom for the Perennial Outs in the April village board elections.  Shockingly In last time, they have irritatingly gone against the Expansion Grain.  This time they will lose.  Trust me.
———————
* Or this, from another resident, who went to the Board of Review to appeal her taxes: “The man listened to me very politely then when I was done said ‘You people in Oak Park come crying to us every year. Stop voting yes for every referendum’.”

* At least one voter has decided to punt in November.  She will not vote either way, Stroger or Peraica, for county board presidency, she volunteered to this blogger/writer.  She can’t stand voting for Stroger and so will NOT VOTE.

Enter Edmund Burke: “All that is necessary for evil to succeed is that good men do nothing.” Good men and women, let the bad times roll!

* In a more analytic mode, here’s one man’s view a while back of the overall situation: “One thing Peraica needs to win is strong suburban turnout compared to the city. That’s a tall order since city turnout has been greater than suburban turnout in every major primary and general election for many years.”

— Rob Olmstead in Daily Herald 06-07-31

“In reality . . . from Adam Smith on (and before that), monopoly was always understood as being created by government. Indeed, The Wealth of Nations was a critique of mercantilism, the system of state-sponsored monopolies, protectionism, and monetary superstition that plagued European economies at the time (1776).” [Italics added]

This is a definition I’ve been looking for, supplied by Thomas di Lorenzo, author of How Capitalism Saved America: The Untold History of Our Country, from the Pilgrims to the Present — 330.122 DIL on the Dewey decimal chart at OP library.

It’s important for OP, which has been practicing mercantilism for some time now, picking and choosing commercial operators, generating arguments about which to pick and choose and inhibiting growth and prosperity even when picking winners, as anyone is bound to do now and then. Consider the hundred monkeys at a hundred typewriters and their (maybe superior, who knows?) version of “Hamlet.”

Rep. Danny Davis (D-IL, i.e. Chi & points west, including OP) made Chi Trib editorials today, lede item, “Davis’ marvelous adventure”, which follows on AP and Trib (also here) and other stories about his taking moola for a seven-day trip to Sri Lanka, once Ceylon, from the terroristic Tamil Tigers, who use suicide bombers and child soldiers, according to our govt.  He says he has seen no evidence that says they put up the money — for him and an “aide.”

Given . . . incriminating disclosures [involving Tom DeLay, R.-Texas] about congressional junketeering, you’d think experienced hands such as Davis, a Chicago Democrat, wouldn’t take tickets from strangers

says Trib today.  But junkets are important to Davis, who “has accepted 47 trips paid by private groups since 2000 [and] ranks 15th among the 535 members of Congress in accepting” them.  15th out of 535, wow!  He likes to travel.

Trib wants a rules change, requiring Congressmen to hit up taxpayers for such trips if such are needed.

Another question has to do with Davis’ knowing what the heck is going on, period, if he isn’t up to speed on Tigers’ doings in and out of Sri Lanka, including paying off U.S. officials, as 11 of their supporters have been recently arrested for doing.  And he was the good-govt. non-Stroger candidate for county board presidency slating!  Wow again!

(On the other hand, give Davis a hand for his work on alleviating the plight of nonviolent drug offenders, as explained here.  He’s making a push this fall for the so-called Second Chance Act, of which he is lead sponsor.  It’s considered a wedge into this matter, though it does not specify the nonviolent part.  In any case, he got favorable mention from the Drug War Chronicle, published by StoptheDrugWar.org.)

Later: Danny Davis update was supplied by Chi Trib 8/28 by John Biemer, whose account is very straightforward, and appreciated for that.  It’s a summary of what’s been done, with a nice pulling of it together.  Davis

said he went to [Sri Lanka] to see how reconstruction and aid money was being distributed after the 2004 tsunami at the behest of his constituents. But the community that prompted that weeklong trip appears to be a small one.

Forty-four people in his district, in fact, per the 2000 census.  But not they but the Tamil Tigers paid $13,150 in laundered funds, say law enforcers.  Davis said he didn’t know that, saving his thanks for a Tamil cultural organization, the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America, based in south suburban Hickory Hills. 

In yet another district, the 6th, in Glendale, FBI found information that led to 11 arrests for helping to aid the Tigers illegally.  A Davis aide claimed many Tamils in his district but named none for Chi Trib.  Most of the Chicago-area Tamils are from India anyhow, according to various sources whom Biemer names.  When Davis got back from Sri Lanka, he got a $500 donation from his Hickory Hills Tamil contact.

Looks fishy.  Davis was roaming outside his district even before he roamed all the way to Sri Lanka.  Why?