The real extremist? You be the judge

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The problem with trying to paint a political opponent as an extremist and yourself as a moderate is that you create possibilities that the labeling could snap back and bite you in the gluts.

Especially if you have already established a voting record in the office you're seeking.

That brings us to Melissa Bean, a first-term incumbent Democrat seeking re-election in the northwest suburban 8th Congressional District. Bean brought this up herself because, running in a traditionally conservative district, she needs to portray herself as "in the mainstream."

Thus, her TV ad proclaims that she's the moderate and her Republican opponent, David McSweeney, is the extremist. To prove it, she unleashed that lame old hunting dog, "choice." There's some disagreement about whether she quoted McSweeney accurately to prove her point, but that's not the point here. McSweeney is undoubtedly conservative, perhaps even very conservative (although I don't know where one crosses the line between conservative and very conservative), in the mode of former Sen. Peter Fitzgerald.

But what about Bean? True, she has supported small business and the Central America Free Trade Agreement, winning her some business support. Indeed, on some issues the two aren't that far apart.

But come to the hot-button issue of abortion, which she raised and ... wow. She voted against the Child Interstate Abortion Notification Act, which prohibits taking a minor across state lines to obtain an abortion without the consent of a parent or legal guardian. It protects children from exploitation by boyfriends and others who would pressure girls into having an abortion. It protects the right of parents to guide, protect and safeguard their children. It supports the time-honored concept, which left-wing extremists would unravel, of family cohesion and support.

Yes, yes, I know the tiresome response: You can't legislate love or good parenting. You can't bring back Ozzie and Harriet. You can't leave the decision in the hands of an abusive parent. You can't criminalize doctors who perform abortions.

Except: Doctors who treat your children without your knowledge or consent deserve to be treated like criminals. Even so, the legislation provides exceptions and judicial bypass for abused children. That's because we must prevent abusive parents from using this law against the best interests of their child. But most children's best interests are served when their parents are loving, informed and involved. What are such parents to do when their pregnant girl is further victimized by getting pressured to travel elsewhere in secret for an abortion she may not want? By male predators hoping that they can eliminate obvious evidence of their crimes? Who does Melissa Bean think is protecting them? Maybe that's why she doesn't mention abortion on her Web site.

You can't get more "extreme" than this. There is no political position to the left of it. Polls typically show that 70 or so percent of Americans surveyed support some form of parental notification. That's roughly the same percentage that wants at least some restrictions on abortion on demand, positions held by extreme pro-choice groups, such as Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America.

Maybe this is why NARAL endorsed Bean, or she voted the way Planned Parenthood wanted 100 percent of the time, according to Project Vote Smart. Bean's not just a one-issue liberal. She supported the National Education Association on 100 percent of its issues, the liberal Americans for Democratic Action 80 percent, liberal American Association of University Women 100 percent, the liberal National Committee for an Effective Congress 80 percent and the Secular Coalition for America 90 percent, according to Vote Smart. On the other end of the spectrum, she voted with Citizens Against Government Waste only 29 percent of the time, the American Conservative Union 12 percent and Gun Owners of America never.

Of course, as a snapshot of who she is, that leaves an incomplete picture. But when you present a picture of yourself to the electorate, at least it should be in focus.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

On the road to MAD with the North Korean madman

By Dennis Byrne

Welcome back to the 1950s.

With the United Nations, specifically its Security Council, demonstrating anew that it won't or can't do much about the North Korean nuclear threat, it's back to when deterrence was the only weapon left to us:

Mutually assured destruction. Or Mini-MAD, if you prefer.

That's where we are, thanks to the Security Council, which bypassed a meaningful arms embargo proposal from the Bush administration in favor of toothless resolution 1718, which tries to gum North Korean madman Kim Jong-il into submission.

Among it serious loopholes is a provision that "asks" nations to cooperate in the inspection of North Korean vessels for illicit arms, based, I suppose, on the premise that it never hurts to ask. The U.S. had proposed a tougher provision, but China, asserting that such inspections would violate international law, successfully stymied the American proposal.

Then, after the resolution passed, China said it would not inspect cargo entering or leaving North Korea, for fear of raising tensions in the region. Given the Chinese mindset, the bigger problem is its own 880-mile border with North Korea, which we can't guarantee will be any less as porous than our own border with Mexico.

Continue reading at RealClearPolitics.com

`Throwing away your vote' is a trashy notion

By Dennis Byrne

Election Day cometh ...

Asked by a talk-show host if she would be willing to vote for Tony Peraica, the Republican candidate for Cook County Board president, a newspaper reporter suggested that she'd be throwing away her vote.

Her presumption is one shared by many voters--a vote for a potential loser is a wasted vote. I guess people who believe this think a vote is like money: If you spend your dollar, you should get something in return. Otherwise, you're just giving it away.

Of course, it's nonsense. But how sad to find that kind of thinking by a journalist who is supposed to know something about public affairs. Thankfully, the reporter was quickly challenged by the host of WTTW-Ch. 11's "Chicago Tonight: Week in Review," Joel Weisman, who pointedly asked, "Why would you be throwing away your vote?" By then, the conversation had moved on, and an answer never came.

"Throwing away your vote" ranks right up there in the stupid department with another Election Day cliche: "I'd love to vote for someone for a change, instead of having to vote against someone." Considering the two major candidates running for Illinois governor, I can understand the sentiment. But let me ask:

What's wrong with voting against someone?

Where is it written that you must vote for someone? Why is it wrong, when so many candidates are unsuited for office, and prove it after they are elected? Why does voting against a blockhead somehow demean democratic ideals?

I've voted against people for decades, because they're the worse of two. It's not my fault that political parties stock the ballot with fish. Our job is to cull the real stinkers.

Speaking of voting against someone, I hope voters inclined to vote for Todd Stroger for Cook County Board president realize something. The Democratic Party selected Stroger in a most undemocratic way. Actually, it wasn't even the party, but a crew of ... ? Come to think of it, we don't even know what or who. As if the Kremlinlike secrecy surrounding the health of Stroger's father, John, wasn't enough, Cook County will be run by a camarilla. We won't really know who's in it until the contracts and jobs start getting handed out.

Speaking of undemocrats, some believe that we shouldn't be able to vote at all, especially when there's a chance they might lose. Thus, the misnamed Fair Illinois coalition fought against an advisory referendum on the November ballot asking if the Illinois General Assembly should consider a state constitutional amendment saying that a marriage between a man and a woman is the only legal union that shall be valid or recognized in Illinois.

Never mind that approval wouldn't create the amendment; the referendum only asked if the General Assembly should submit the amendment to the voters in a referendum. In other words, it was a referendum suggesting that the legislature think about conducting another referendum.

More than 400,000 citizens petitioned to have the advisory (first) referendum placed on the ballot, but the undemocrats, including the American Civil Liberties Union, found enough flaws in a small sample of the signatures to meet a legal requirement to have the referendum thrown off the ballot.

Fair Illinois' justification for challenging the advisory referendum in the first place ultimately comes down to this: Citizens don't have the right to vote away the "rights" of gays. Point taken.

But I guess that means citizens can't even express their views on the matter.

Jesse Smart, chairman of the Illinois State Board of Elections, was mystified when the technical question came before the body: "Personally, I can't understand why anyone would object to allowing the people to give their opinions. ... People in America have the right to make some choices."

Wrong, this is Illinois.



Trouble ahead

A return to last week's topic, as required by the soaring irresponsibility that Rep. George Scully (D-Flossmoor), House Utility Oversight Committee chairman, revealed in his reaction to ComEd's warnings that it might go bankrupt if the General Assembly extended a rate freeze for three years. He said he wouldn't mind a judge overseeing the utility.

Two words for Scully: Chicago Skyway. For years, the highway linking Chicago and northwest Indiana kept tolls artificially low, in response to political pressure. The skyway came under the oversight of a federal judge, who approved a 15 percent toll increase.

If you think ComEd's rates are high now, wait until a federal bankruptcy judge, who answers to no one but the law, gets his hands on them.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Hastert's Illinois Approach to Politics

By Dennis Byrne

Pundits glued to their Potomac seats, applying their usual Beltway explanations for everything that happens in America, would have it that House Speaker Dennis Hastert bollixed up the House page scandal because he is an unredeemed Republican partisan. Or that he doesn't care enough about congressmen hounding boys. Or that his conservatism made him do it.

Blind partisanship, moral failings, hypocrisy, gay bashing or any of those other explanations that don't come close to the reality that Hastert was simply doing politics as it is practiced here, in Illinois.

Hastert knows no other way, having been bred, born and raised in the tradition. Even finding himself elevated to the nation's third highest office hasn't cleansed him. His handling of the Mark Foley transgressions is how he and pols in Illinois handle everything.

How to explain to Time, NPR, Washington Post, New York Times, network news, the McLaughlin Group and others whose elucidations have missed the mark?

First, in Illinois...

Continue reading at RealClearPolitics

Playing politics with electricity rates

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Nothing says more about the pandering, spineless nature of our current knot of politicians than their call for a special session of the Illinois General Assembly to zap one of the best deals that electricity consumers in Illinois have ever had.

The deal was made 10 years ago when ComEd, consumer groups, businesses and the politicians agreed to roll back electric rates more than 20 percent and freeze them there. ComEd customers have saved billions.

Now, those artificially low rates are scheduled to thaw, to reflect electricity's real price. Even so, those unfrozen rates--although they will be 20 percent higher--still will be lower than 1997's. Can you name anything else that's cheaper now, especially anything related to energy?

But Illinois politicians are banking on voters seeing only the 20 percent increase, not the bigger picture. Now the politicians are calling for a special session--right before the Nov. 7 elections and billable to taxpayers, of course--to continue the freeze for another three years, during which time they'll concoct a supposedly better way to set electrical rates.

What better way? Return to the former system of a ComEd monopoly? No one is really saying, but the pols want us to trust them.

Oh, sure.

Let's review: For years and years, ComEd was bashed for its "among-the-highest-in-the nation" rates, rates that nonetheless had been set by the state's utility regulator, the Illinois Commerce Commission. Few were satisfied with the regulated system, so the hunt for a better way began.

After some years of trying, everyone, including the consumer watchdog Citizens Utility Board, at last came up with a solution--the present system. Former Gov. Jim Edgar said when he signed the bill that it was one of the most complicated pieces of legislation he had ever seen. But compli-cated is what you get in a democracy, when you balance all interests.

The new law's central idea was the deregulation of the electric companies, much the way that the phone and airline industries have been deregulated. For you, that means more choices of service and prices.

Those now seeking another three-year rate freeze argue that those choices haven't materialized for residential customers. Another three years, they insist, would allow "real competition" to develop or give lawmakers time to find a different solution.

True, I can find more selection and competition when shopping for, say, cell-phone service. But the reason I can't find similar competition for electrical service is precisely because the rates were so artificially low for the past decade. What businessperson in his right mind wants to compete by providing service that has rates lower than rates that already were artificially low?

Naively, some consumer "advocates" who want the three-year extension argue that if competition hasn't developed in the last 10 years, it won't develop now. But if these folks thought it would have been such a swell idea to compete against such artificially low rates, perhaps they should have done it themselves.

Now that rates are floating to their natural, competitive level, more companies will be willing to set up shop in Illinois and beat the unregulated price that ComEd will be charging. If they don't go into business, it'll be a sign that they can't beat the rates already offered. But if the freeze is extended, the rates will continue to be artificially low and the competition will continue to be frozen out of the market. The cycle would go on forever if it were left to the politicians.

In the meantime, ComEd's ability to deliver reliable service would be imperiled. Its business plans, based on the 1997 agreement, would be for naught, investors would be scared away by the new uncertainty and funds for capital improvements and maintenance would be unavailable.

What Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Republican gubernatorial candidate Judy Baar Topinka, House Speaker Michael Madigan and the other opportunists who are seeking the three-year extension into the unknown want is not lower rates and a system that works. What they want is political cover. What they'd give us is uncertainty, more conflict and a bankrupt utility with 5 million customers.

If this system is so bad, they had 10 years to change it. They didn't. They waited until just before the election to raise their alarms. What better time to create fear, to strike a populist pose because doing the right thing is too dangerous politically? To ignore facts they surely know for their own political gain?

Even for Illinois, where political pandering is a high art, this tops all.


Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

There's No Defending GOP in Foley Crisis

By Dennis Byrne
Human Events contributing columnist

As often as Rush Limbaugh gets it right, he is breathtakingly wrong on the House page scandal.

Of course, Limbaugh doesn’t defend Mark Foley, the Republican congressman who resigned last week for being, shall we say, overly friendly with minor male pages. But Limbaugh’s part in turning it into another partisan war reveals what’s wrong with too many Republicans today. Limbaugh focuses on how the Foley story became so big, blaming Democrats for planting and hyping the story for their own advantage in the mid-term elections.

No dittos on this one, Rush.

Most people don’t give a damn about how the story got out. Correctly, they’re outraged that here’s another attack on children, providing yet more evidence of how our culture has become soft on improper, even destructive, behavior.

Continue reading at Human Events

Terror-report fight misses big picture

National Intelligence Estimate also hints at ways to beat jihadists, promote democracy

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

So, just how do they know how many jihadists are out there?

Are they asked to raise their hands? Do they go somewhere to register? Are they listed in the Yellow Pages? Can you Google them?

I'm just asking, because another ugly, "divisive" fight has broken out, now over how the war on terror is going, as measured by the number of terrorists. The estimate was made in a National Intelligence Estimate, "Trends in Global Terrorism," which claimed to know that the number of terrorists worldwide has increased, in good part because of the Iraq war.

The three-page "key judgments" summary of the estimate admits that "we cannot measure the extent of the spread [of the jihadist movement] with precision," but adds that, based on reporting from all intelligence sources, the movement is increasing "both in number and geographic dispersion."

I'm not saying that's right or mistaken. I just have a question: Are "all the intelligence sources" as certain of that as they were in 2002 when, in another national intelligence estimate, they said Saddam Hussein was arming Iraq with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons?

Both political sides have cherry-picked the key judgments to find assertions that support their respective sides--that we've made progress on the war on terror, or that we've seriously blundered by creating more terrorists. One wonders if they're reading the same document. Frankly, there are as many possible readings of the document as there are of the Bible and, I dare say, the Koran. Intellectual honesty requires a more modest conclusion; as in any war, things are going both well and badly.

But if for a moment we can leave the bickering over who is to blame for what happened in the past, we'll find that the document does provide sound perspective on the most important question: Where do we go from here?

It says: "Greater pluralism and more responsive political systems in Muslim majority nations would alleviate some of the grievances jihadists exploit. Over time, such progress, together with sustained, multifaceted programs targeting the vulnerabilities of the jihadist movements and continued pressure on Al Qaeda could erode support for the jihadists."

What jihadist vulnerabilities? The assessment names some, starting with the greatest: The ultraconservative interpretation of Sharia-based government, which would impose a "religious and political straitjacket" that is "unpopular with the vast majority of Muslims." Another jihadist vulnerability is the recent increase of condemnations by important Muslim clerics of violence and extremist religious interpretations, thereby offering a constructive alternative: peaceful political activism. "In this way, the Muslim mainstream emerges as the most powerful weapon in the war on terror," the assessment said.

"If democratic reform efforts in Muslim-majority nations progress over the next five years, political participation probably would drive a wedge between intransigent extremists and groups willing to use the political process to achieve their local objectives," the assessment said.

Sure, the report suggested, such change would provoke jihadists in the short run, but the most important question is: Over the long run, what strategy would create the conditions for democratic reform?

Perhaps Muslim-majority nations will discover and implement democratic principles on their own, even though it took the Western democracies a millennium to do so. Can we afford to wait that long, while our ships, embassies, infrastructure and people are attacked? Will those nations get there by themselves, or do they need assistance to overthrow centuries of despotic rule?

Washing our hands of the entire mess certainly is politically expedient, but I don't think it's the moral choice, especially when the assessment says the "slow pace of real and sustained economic, social and political reforms in many Muslim majority nations" feeds the jihadist movement.

But, the report says, our continued involvement in Muslim-majority nations is a double-edged sword: It also feeds fears of "Western domination" and anti-Americanism, which give the jihadists easily exploitable issues. So, do we keep our presence there and work toward the long-term reforms that are the clear path to victory, or do we flee, denying opponents of political and social reform the ammunition they want while leaving those opponents in charge?

I say the moral, just and right decision is to stay, to take this opportunity to bring reason, justice and freedom to a part of the world that's truly in need of it, not just because it's good for that part of the world, but ours too. But that's just the neocon in me talking.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

County needs fixing, not another Stroger

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Concerned about the impoverished, alienated and Godforsaken among the 5 million residents of Cook County? Then pay particular attention to who gets elected in November to be president of the Cook County Board.

That's because perhaps no single person or institution directly touches so many of the dispossessed, especially when it comes to health care. Too poor to afford even the most basic medical services, they rely on the county's three hospitals and its 25 outpatient ambulatory and community health network facilities for emergency, primary, acute, outpatient, rehabilitative, long-term and preventive care.

Coordinated care for expectant mothers, clinics and health education in elementary and high schools, family-planning services, CT scans and other diagnostic services, lead-poisoning prevention, treatment of childhood diseases, the nation's first free-standing, specialized outpatient health-care facility serving the needs of people with HIV/AIDS, more than 150,000 health service visits in suburban Cook County ... the list goes on and on.

The county also touches those caught up in the criminal justice system by providing legal counsel for the indigent. The county's public guardian protects abused children, and its court system is in the front lines defending those held captive in dangerous neighborhoods. It is a conservator of open space and the environment.

This is the progressive agenda, one deserving of support. The best way to do so is to make sure the apparatus that delivers these services is efficient and productive. It isn't.

A felon was hired to oversee finances. Too many lazy, incompetent and no-show employees staff the health-care and other facilities. Workers are hired for their political connections, not for their competence. Just last week, the feds raided the offices of the Cook County Human Resources Department and carried away boxes of personnel records. It's the county version of Chicago's political spoils system. Progressives now face a choice for Cook County Board president. They can ill serve the poor by fundamentally continuing the system under the direction of Democrat Todd Stroger, the Chicago alderman who is himself a progeny of the system. Or they can better serve the most needy by supporting suburban Republican Tony Peraica.

If you don't believe these are the choices, go to the Chicago Tribune's videotaped endorsement interview with the two candidates at chicagotribune.com/county.

In this valuable, unvarnished setting, if you can't tell which candidate has the moxie, creativity, experience and leadership to pull off reform, then you're hopeless. What's clear is that Stroger is caught in the bind of having to defend or reject the work of his own father, former President John Stroger. Not to his credit, Todd Stroger wants it both ways: He insisted that he understands county government, having been immersed in it since his father was elected Cook County commissioner in 1970.

Yet he strains credibility by trying to act as the reformer who would undo the very political system his father built.

Peraica called such a system "criminal" when it makes emergency room patients wait up to two days to see a doctor, two weeks to get a prescription filled and six months to get an MRI. Stroger did not dispute those figures.

Here it is, just over two months before the election, and all that Stroger could offer were platitudes and promise more studies. Peraica, who demonstrated substantially greater understanding of county government, offered specifics. Stroger made a lame--to the point of embarrassment--attempt to appeal to his base by bringing up such hot social issues as abortion and gun control. Peraica successfully parried by pointing out that the County Board could do little on either score and clarifying his own position as a sensible moderate.

Stroger's political strategy is to take progressives for granted, to assume that, witless and sheeplike, they'll fall in line with the party bosses who crowned him the candidate. Stroger's strategy leaves voters with no answer to the question of how the 5 million county residents best fulfill their moral obligation to assist the most needy. Stroger's strategy is to assume that progressives will find voting for a Republican too distasteful to contemplate. That progressives will buy the stereotype that Republicans are coldhearted ogres who don't care about the poor.

Perhaps few progressives will have read this far, but in their hearts, they know what is best for the disadvantaged. A government run efficiently to serve its people, not a clanking, obsolete machine dedicated to serving its builders.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Rosie's rant won't work in Wheaton

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Don't search for entertainer Rosie O'Donnell on the faculty of Wheaton College, a distinctively Christian school in the western suburbs. Especially after O'Donnell made headlines last week by asserting that "radical Christianity" is "just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have separation of church and state."

Hey, Rosie, let me introduce you to the Taliban, who don't much appreciate women. Unlike these radical Muslims, I don't see any Christians, radical or otherwise, burying you up to your neck in the middle of a stadium full of religious fanatics cheering in anticipation of your stoning. Especially when Christ, Himself, turned back a mob that was about to stone a sinful woman.

A stoning is a bit different than getting 10 "Our Fathers" and five "Hail Marys" for your penance. It's a difference that O'Donnell missed last week when she made her controversial comparison as the new co-host of the TV show "The View." Maybe in future shows she'll begin listing those Christian denominations that threaten "infidels" with violence or death.

Or maybe she'll explain how a country, founded mostly by Christians, crafted a Constitution that prohibits the kind of theocratic tyranny that's a model for radical Islam.

O'Donnell already has been worked over nationally for her recklessness, but the folks in Illinois' 6th Congressional District--home to Wheaton College--might not be so quick to forget. Turns out that O'Donnell is one of the Hollywood types that is heartily meddling in the race, contributing the maximum to Tammy Duckworth, the carpetbagging Democratic candidate for Congress.

According to a couple of campaign contribution databases, O'Donnell has given the legal maximum, $2,100, to Duckworth. O'Donnell also has contributed the maximum to Melissa Bean, the so-called moderate Democrat running against Republican David McSweeney in the north and northwest suburban 8th Congressional District.

Considering O'Donnell's beneficiaries, one might conclude that she's hardly interested in backing "moderate" candidates.

According to newsmeat.com, which closely monitors federally reported campaign contributions, O'Donnell has contributed $74,000 to Democrats, $1,000 to Republicans and $27,800 to assorted left-leaning special interests, such as the Human Rights Campaign political action committee. Among the candidates she is supporting is Ned Lamont, the far-left, anti-war candidate who beat incumbent Sen. Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut Democratic primary.

Peter Roskam, Duckworth's GOP opponent, notes (based on Federal Election Commission reports) that a breathtaking 97 percent, or about $1 million, of Duckworth's individual campaign contributions are raised outside of the district. Only 34 of her more than 1,000 individual donors can even vote for her. Emily's List, a radical pro-choice political action committee, has given her $161,000. Let's not leave out the most liberal of libs, Barbra Streisand, who gave Duckworth $1,000 for the primary and $1,000 for the general election. Streisand also gave $1,000 to Bean for her primary, in which she had no opposition. Christie Hefner, Playboy chairman and feminist (I still don't get why the two aren't contradictory) also chimed in with a grand for each candidate. Nor should we leave off Al Franken hosting a fundraiser for Duckworth.

Roskam suggested Duckworth return O'Donnell's campaign contribution to repudiate such anti-Christian remarks. "Rosie O'Donnell's intolerance equating Christianity to Islamic terrorism is as far out of touch with the values and beliefs of voters of the 6th District as it gets, and these are the types of supporters that Duckworth's campaign attracts," Roskam's campaign manager Ryan McLaughlin said.

Duckworth and Bean are running in traditionally Republican and conservative districts, Bean having won two years ago by having the good fortune of opposing indolent incumbent Phil Crane. But this time she's facing McSweeney, a candidate who is no slouch. Despite voters' aggravating habit of re-electing incumbents, Bean is in a real fight.

Duckworth is a project of Rahm Emanuel, the Democratic congressman from the neighboring Chicago-based 5th District and the chief honcho of campaign funds for Democratic congressional candidates. Duckworth has no political experience, was handpicked by Emanuel, doesn't live in the district and has adopted the Democratic party line wholesale. Independent she'll not be.

With Emanuel's money and political minions, Duckworth beat a more deserving opponent in the Democratic primary. Her defeat would be a huge setback to Emanuel's prestige among his congressional colleagues, fellow Democrats and, mostly, political contributors. If Emanuel has to round up and put the squeeze on every B-movie actor and extra, he'll do it.

Not because it's good for the 6th District, but for himself.


Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Saying goodbye to home--the place of our lives

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The girls made me put the hammock back up.

After all, swinging in the hammock was one of their most favorite things to do at grandma's and grandpa's house, and they didn't really understand that I had taken it down to pack for the move.

"Hammock, Grandpa," Lisa, 5, and Leia, 3-going-on-4, said, simultaneously pointing to where it was drying on the patio table after I had absentmindedly left it out in the rain. "I think it's still wet," I said, hoping that I wouldn't have to put it back up and go through the painful process of later taking it back down.

Taking it down was one of the harder things I've faced in the weeks before our move today from the house that my wife, Barb, and I had occupied--lived in--for the last 22 years. Like leaving my garden, where I work on my laptop on beautiful summer days, as I am now. From this shady spot I can admire my roses, phlox and lilies, tired from their summer-long combat with beetles and powdery mildew, but still bravely blooming.

I figured that I'd garden right up to the end, but a couple of weeks ago, I was out in the heat, pruning some bushes, and I thought, "Why?" Still, I couldn't resist; until the last, I'd pluck an infringing weed, prune a rogue crabapple sucker and give it all a final renewing fertilizing.

"What are you doing?" Barb would ask.

"Saying goodbye to my plants," I'd say. On my evening rounds, I'd think: This is the last time I'll see this hydrangea, or check the undersides of the burning bush leaves for aphids, or examine the progress of a seemingly suicidal hosta. At least I was around for the first yucca blossoms and the long-delayed coming of age of that red- and green-leafed ground cover of the forgotten name that's finally covering some ground. Each plant, shrub and tree is a friend who gets a final goodbye.

So does every ding, drip and blemish that I'll leave unrepaired inside the house. Maybe if I had just a few more days ...

The memories, though, I can take with. The holidays, the every days. The quarrels and making-ups. The happy surprises and disappointing discoveries. The joyful arrivals and sad departures. The prayers of thanks and seekings of forgiveness. The presence of kids' things; the absence of kids' things.

Here Kati and Don navigated the storms of adolescence, then left us empty when they set off for college--then returned, then left again. Here we celebrated two marriages and four granddaughters' births. Here Barb anguished that I--in the hospital's hands--wouldn't make it through the night. And I obsessed on how much I would hate this place without Barb, if she had lost her own fight.

This house, any house, is more than a physical presence where things happen. A life has to happen somewhere, and you might think that this anyplace would do just as well as any other place. But this is the place of our lives. That makes this a sanctified place, because some of what has happened here becomes, in some way, a part of this place. Something of it was left behind by the family that was here before us, and something will be left by the young family that follows. Different lives, same walls; new hopes, same windows through which young eyes will peer.

For now, for Lisa, Leia and Ava, their 2-year-old cousin, this house is grandma and grandpa. For them, it will always be a bridge to the past and loved ones gone. We've told them we're moving and showed them the new place. They can feed the ducks right outside the back door; there's a swimming pool nearby. There they'll create new memories, with their new 5-month-old cousin, Julia. Still, they seemed a little sad.

There are no trees at our new place spaced just right, like the two silver maples at the old place, for that handmade Guatemalan hammock, a loving gift to grandpa from their Uncle Don. So, after the girls asked, I put the hammock back up here for a final time, and I know that I'll have to take it down, again, for one last tearful time.

Leia's playing in it now, within my reach, and here comes Ava, just up from her nap, happily padding toward the hammock. "Grandpa!" squeals Leia. "Higher, Grandpa, higher!"

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Clinton's Artless Equivocation on 'The Path to 9/11'

By Dennis Byrne

If the worst criticism of President Bush is that he lied to us about Iraq, then we just got a whopping reminder of Bill Clinton's extraordinary talents for deception.

In a letter to ABC's chief Bob Iger, Clinton's attorney, Bruce Lindsey, alleges that the network's program, The Path to 9/11 is "factually and incontrovertibly" inaccurate in suggesting that the Clinton administration let Osama Bin Laden slip through its fingers. Clinton's defenders, from their high horses, arrogantly have demand that the program be edited to their satisfaction, or be pulled entirely.

Bristling at evidence that Clinton and his administration were wavering and indecisive, the letter asserted that the president aggressively tried to "take a shot at Bin Laden." It cites the 9/11 Commission Report for supposedly giving credit to Clinton for approving "every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against Bin Laden and al-Qaeda.

This is close enough to the truth to make the "I-didn't-inhale" and "I-didn't-have-sex-with-that-woman" Clinton think he can get away with it. But it is far enough away from the truth to be classified as, if not a bold lie, an artless equivocation.

As usual, Clinton figures that the rest of us are too stupid or lazy to look it up for ourselves. And having read the complete report when it came out more than two years ago, I think it is an inescapable fact that a vacillating, equivocating administration had more than one opportunity to take out terrorist mastermind Bin Laden, but blew it.

A good place to look is the report's "Chapter 4: Responses to Al Qaeda's initial assaults," Section 4.5, "Searching for Fresh Options." There you have details of how Bin Laden was ready to be plucked, but someone in the administration either ignored or nixed it. Or put it on an endless "you-decide, not-me" merry-go-round.

Read more at RealClear Politics

He can run but can't hide

Daley's record needs airing out for voters

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Quote of the day: "They thought I've lost my mind." --Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley

Having brought it up himself, does the mayor wish to make his mental health an issue if he decides to seek re-election? The debate should be vigorous.

Daley obviously doesn't think (nor do I) that he has lost his mind. He was only raising the issue last week as another part of his tiresome cat-and-mouse game of pretending he hasn't decided to seek re-election. He was explaining how his political advisers told him that he was bonkers if he tried to reform the abysmal Chicago public school system and the Chicago Housing Authority.

At least, that's what Daley said they told him. Attempts to reform the awful schools and projects were certain political losers. So, Daley would have us believe, it was an act of political valor of the first order, a leadership challenge that he had to accept, damn the political consequences, and so forth. Obviously, his "profile in courage" will be the centerpiece of his campaign.

Frankly, I think it all was a calculated act of political genius. Consider the political consequences if he had said those problems weren't his job. Technically, he might have been right, just as running the Chicago Park District and the CTA theoretically is not his job. But nobody falls for the charade that they're not. It would have been a political disaster if he had let the high-profile problems of the schools and public housing projects fester, costing Daley corporate, civic and plenty of other support. So give him credit for taking it on himself, instead of appointing a "blue ribbon" committee, as his father, Mayor Richard J., would have done.

But, has Daley actually solved the problems? When it came to actual school governance, his masterstroke was putting Paul Vallas in charge of the schools. Vallas re-energized the system, but then Daley dumped him because--why? Vallas was getting too big for his britches? All we know is that Daley now claims the glory as his.

Despite Daley's self-acclamation and the "evidence" of student test scores (the abomination of today's education system), I don't know that anyone can really say just how much better or worse the schools are under Daley. But here's one reliable test: How many suburban parents say, "Oh, gee, Chicago's schools are so great, I'm going to move back into the city because I want my kids to get a good education"? If Chicago parents had real choices, such as school vouchers, tens of thousands would abandon the city's public schools. Here's a second test: How many businesses are fighting each other to hire the products of the city's school system?

As for public housing problems? He made them disappear, literally. The miles of high-rise projects by consensus had become so cancerous, and the need to tear them down became so obvious, that to pretend that they could be made safe and livable would have been politically disastrous. Presto, away they went, leaving behind the lingering questions: Where did everyone go, and are the lives of the former residents any better?

So, despite what Daley would have everyone believe, he has not taken the schools and public housing out of play in the upcoming mayoral campaign. He has made them a legitimate campaign issue, and one that might not rebound to his benefit.

But these are only two issues that can challenge Daley. Population and jobs still flow to the suburbs, a larger social trend that can't be blamed on any one big-city mayor. At least not entirely. Here, you have to wonder just how many people want to have nothing to do with Chicago because they understand that the Daley administration begets corruption, and corruption begets higher taxes and higher taxes beget people and businesses getting fed up with it all and moving out? Just how much better could Chicago be without all the corruption?

The challenge is to find legitimate candidates who can credibly challenge Daley on these and other significant issues. Dorothy Brown, Cook County Circuit Court clerk, missed a chance to establish her own credibility when she announced her candidacy last week. Asked if she supported the controversial "big box" minimum wage ordinance, she bobbed and weaved. To be credible, you first must have a position. Not a good start.

© 2006, Chicago Tribune

More Language Glop From the Left

By Dennis Byrne

Spitting in reality’s eye, some journalists still are referring to Elvira Arellano and other illegal aliens as an “undocumented worker.”

Arellano, who has become the darling of the abolish-all-immigration-laws crowd, is holed up in a Chicago storefront church, claiming a non-existent sanctuary right against being deported for crossing the Mexican border, for the third time, illegally.

Of course, we’re no longer allowed to call her an alien because to do so hurts feelings. Even though the dictionary simply defines alien as a foreigner, especially someone who isn’t a naturalized citizen. I suppose we could call her an illegal foreigner, but foreigner, too, soon may be the next standard English word to be deposited in the trash by the political correctors.

Despite the precise meaning of illegal alien, we instead get language glop.

Continue Reading at Human Events

Plan B's Junk Science

By Dennis Byrne

Repeatedly we are told that "science" has concluded that the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception pills is safe for 15-year-old and younger girls because it does not increase their risky sexual behavior.

This is bunk. This assertion is based on research that says no such thing. Not even close.

Yet, the public is remorselessly fed this line, especially after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration decided last week to allow pharmacies to sell Plan B tablets without prescriptions to women 18 and over. The FDA sensibly declined to allow their sale without a prescription to young adolescents because the manufacturer had not provided enough evidence that they would use the drug safely and effectively without supervision.

Will the drug lead to more risky sexual behavior, such as increased unprotected intercourse and sex with multiple partners? Will it allow older men to pressure 14-year-olds into sex--protected or unprotected--because this magical pill will "take care of everything"? Common sense alone suggestions these are among the risks.

But Plan B advocates, reproductive rights ideologues, manufacturers and marketers firmly deny the existence of any such risks, because "science" tells us so, as if that shuts the door on any further discussion. But, in fact, "science" tell us nothing; the "telling" is done by people who do science.

And the "scientific claims" about the impact of Plan B on the sexual behavior of younger teens are dubious at best or, worse, outright distortions--distortions that have been picked up and endlessly repeated by the media. Without examining the "science" of the claims.

So, let's do so.

Read more at RealClearPolitics.

9/11 conspiracies are a crying shame

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The fifth anniversary of Sept. 11, 2001, is two weeks away, but the screeching from the conspiracy monkey house already is upon us.

The "9-11 truth squads" are planning a three-day gala in New York City to inform the world that Sept. 11 was a "catalyst" designed to set in motion a "global domination project" by overthrowing the American government, says NY911Truth.org. Which would be true, if you were talking about a plot by Islamic fascists. But they say it was by President Bush himself, "as a pretext for the current Middle East aggression."

The organizers of the conspiracy jamboree urge "all movements for transformational progress" to converge on Gotham thusly: "If we want to put an end to war, use our treasury for productive purposes domestically, restore our Constitution, have a law-abiding government, create cooperative rather than antagonistic relationships with the rest of the world, heal our environment and be the creators of our own destiny, understanding 9/11 is required," say these "truth" activists.

The blogosphere is buzzing with the things they want us to understand.

Start at 911research.wtc7.net and follow the links into paranoia hell.

Among other things, airliners didn't crash into the Pentagon (it was an American missile) or the World Trade Center, and even if they did, they didn't cause the towers to collapse--it was the result of "controlled demolition charges" placed by Bush agents in the buildings before they were struck. That the named hijackers were not the hijackers, if, that is, the planes actually were hijacked or even existed.

Most incredibly, this intricate plot was pulled off by the world's most stupid head of state, George W. Bush.

Such theories require extensive fabrications to back them up, such as the assertion that the towers collapsed at free-fall speed (false), and that one floor falling on top of another couldn't possibly "pancake" the buildings (actually it was scores of floors collapsing on each floor).

The conspiracy nimrods, of course, won't be there alone. Mainstream media nimrods also will attend in great numbers. TV anchors will solemnly speak of "disturbing new questions" about Sept. 11 and break to interviews with charla-tans, incompetents, nut cases and the gullible, all united as fools.

And they'll all be playing to the many Americans who take it seriously. More than a third suspect that federal officials either took part in or knowingly took no action to stop the Sept. 11 attacks, according to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll. The poll also found that 16 percent of Americans believe the bit about how secretly planted explosives collapsed the twin towers.

Conspiracy documents are a hot read on college campuses and in Europe.

Loonies come in all shapes, from the conservative Paul Craig Roberts (Ronald Reagan's supply-side guy) to, well, so many on the left. That's because the conspiracy theory resonates with their psychotic hatred of Bush, whom they can easily believe would engineer a deadly attack on Americans.

Of course, by this theory, W. also engineered the attacks on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the U.S. Embassies in Africa and the Navy warship, the USS Cole. All while he was a slobbering drunk.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair also is alleged to be a part of the plot against America, just as he, the U.S., Israel and Rupert Murdoch's media empire have now supposedly cooked up the plot to blow up American-bound airliners.

The self-described "9-11 truth community" will try to appear reasonable by calling for an "independent" investigation"--which means that the committees still sniffing out the conspirators in the JFK assassination will have to clear out of the hearing room for the next four decades.

No expert investigation, such as one by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, will be "independent" enough to suit them. Not that the professional engineering groups shouldn't be more forceful in rebuttal. I suppose they fear that speaking out would give the wackos credibility.

But it is silence that gives them credibility.

Failing a unified debunking by professionals, Popular Mechanics magazine took up the challenge. Popular Mechanics doesn't have the proper cache, so the theorists will ridicule or ignore its work, even though it's the most extensive rebuttal I've yet seen. Judge for yourself at popularmechanics.com/science/defense/1227842.html.

Unless you believe that the magazine, too, is in cahoots with Bush.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Immigration issue indeed one of morality

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

It has been a long time, but Slim Coleman finally has his mug back on television and in the papers.

It took Elvira Arellano--the picked-upon illegal immigrant who as of this writing is holed up in Coleman's tiny Humboldt Park church--to do it, but us scribblers have got to stand in admiration. The publicity-seeking Uptown "activist" Coleman managed not just to yank himself out of decades of local obscurity, but instantly land himself on national TV.

Wow.

I imagine (or hope) by the time this appears, the media will have gotten around to detailing Coleman's background, which may have been obscured by the fact he is now going by his given name, Walter. It was in 1985 that columnist Mike Royko pulled back the covers on Coleman, who was bounding around Uptown, City Hall and wherever he could attract a camera, posing as a hillbilly activist. He gave himself the name Slim to better appear to be one of the many Appalachian good old boys and their kin residing up yonder around Wilson and Broadway.

In fact, he was a son of well-to-do Texas parents and a Harvard University philosophy student, according to Royko. While in his Snuffy Smith mode, he made the news by such stunts as trying to attack former Chicago Ald. Eddie Vrdolyak in the City Council. Since then, few of us realized that he had been laboring for the salvation of souls in the local vineyards, until he was mentioned at the bottom of a story a couple of years ago as being among the "religious leaders" who "decried" U.S. "torture" of war detainees.

Slim continues in the same vein with the Arellano stunt, with the same results: a PR disaster. Yes, conventional wisdom says that claiming church sanctuary is masterful PR, putting immigration officials in the Hobson's choice of dragging a woman and her young son out of a church, or letting her flout the law. But already it has hardened feelings against illegal immigrants and created some doubts among their supporters. Clearly, it didn't prove the need for "legalization" of illegal immigrants, as provided in a Senate-passed bill. (For utopians who think the Arellano affair demonstrates the need for the Senate's "reforms," do you think that she and millions of others would, as the bill requires, show up to pay a $2,000 fine and back taxes, then wait five years to apply for citizenship, contingent on a criminal background check, steady employment and no criminal conduct--other than sneaking into America?)

But, come, let us not doubt Coleman's purity of purpose. Let's concede that Arellano, Coleman and their supporters truly believe their assertion that deporting her would be "immoral." She is defying an "immoral" law, just as civil rights pioneers asserted when they defied civil authorities to protest clearly immoral Jim Crow laws. Moral, they say, trumps legal. I agree.

But just how are restrictions on legal immigration immoral? Just saying it doesn't make it so. A few do make a stab at explaining it: For some, it is immoral to "deny opportunities" to lawbreakers. Others say "social justice" requires that the laws not be enforced. For some, simply being "mean-spirited" or "insensitive" is immoral.

Is it moral for a nation to create a ready supply of easily exploitable and underpaid peons? Is a cash-only system of tax evasion, shifting more of the tax burden onto taxpayers, moral?

Is it moral to regard human beings as primarily a unit of labor important to our nation's financial health? Is it moral to depress the wages of those who are here legally? Is human smuggling moral?

Yes, the moral imperative to care for everyone applies equally to Arellano. And if moral choices simply applied to individuals, Arellano would stay. But morality is more complex, involving such concepts as the "common good" and doing what's right for an entire community, even if that entire community is as big as a sovereign nation.

Thus, immigration officials, in seeking to expel Arellano, are acting not only legally, but also morally. Because without such moral actions, our country would be a mess.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

New Flying Rules Are Actually a Godsend

Rather than ruining flying, the new no-liquids-on-board rule is a godsend

By Dennis Byrne

Think about the two most annoying experiences about flying today: The long wait to get your carry-on baggage searched and the longer wait while obese fliers clog the cabin aisle while struggling with their equally obese carry-on bags.

Carry-on baggage in hands of inexperienced or self-absorbed passengers is a curse. How many times have you been stuck behind someone trying to squeeze, pound and implant their over-stuff suitcase into the overhead bin? How long does it take you to get off the plane while some fool—always at the front of the cabin ahead of you and scores of other passengers—struggles to extricate the same suitcase from the bin’s confines?

While outwardly the rest of us patiently cool our heels, I’d love to know how many are secretly wishing that the offending passengers themselves would get stuffed into the bins.

What is it with these people? Their precious things can’t be out of their sight for even an hour or two? Their conceit that their time is so much more important than ours that they can’t wait for checked luggage?

Read more at Human Events

Widening the racial divide

Opportunists distort boy's tragic shooting

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Residents of the Near North Side Cabrini-Green low-income housing project may have a lot to complain about, but not the shooting of a 14-year-old boy who menaced police officers with a gun.

It doesn't matter that the boy was wielding "only" a BB gun that happened to look like the real thing. When you show police officers any kind of weapon, fake or otherwise, you shouldn't be outraged when cops defend themselves. Even if the weapon can "only" fire a projectile at 400 feet a second.

As Mayor Richard Daley said, it was a tragedy that the boy was shot, and we hope for his recovery.

But, it is no reason to storm City Hall and the police station, peacefully or otherwise, with complaints about everything from inadequate housing to police brutality.

But that's what the usual band of opportunists are doing, taking to the streets and media, attempting to drive another wedge between the races. In their protests and warnings, they too easily equate an apparently justified defensive response by police to years of outrageous police torture. A complaint about a single event becomes elevated into blanket statements of condemnation and disgust.

Talk about "disproportionate" responses.

Talk about demagoguery.

For some, the temptation to elevate an individual event into universal statements about white or black people and law enforcement is irresistible.

It's more than intellectually dishonest or ignorant; it jeopardizes the workings of our civil society. It drives the community and police further apart, and makes law enforcement, especially in the neighborhoods that need it most, all the more difficult.

As are the attempts to turn this into another "blame-the-victim" episode.

The boy, we are tutored, is a victim of poverty and racism, of an environment of police brutality, and of a gentry plot to force residents out of Cabrini.

Therefore, we're further tutored, you can ignore his displaying a BB gun that looks identical to a 9mm handgun to police who were investigating an attempted arm robbery just minutes before.

The cycle of poverty and ignorance will never end as long as this dodge is deployed for every upsetting or tragic event.

Funny, while I was researching this latest cause celebre among the racial dividers, I came across something else, something positive, that has received virtually no attention. Responding to community concerns, police in early August announced that they had shut down two open-air drug markets and charged 21 people in separate undercover investigations on the West Side. For the racial dividers, this good news has no substance.

But maybe we can learn something from the racial dividers, when it comes to Salomeja Januska.

They had nothing to say about the 94-year-old woman who was mugged in her old Marquette Park neighborhood she had dared to revisit to purchase some Lithuanian groceries. Outside an old favorite deli, a 30- to 35-year-old man "came out of nowhere," grabbed her purse and then pushed her to the ground, shattering her right arm. She's expected to recover after undergoing surgery at Holy Cross Hospital.

Ironically, the mugger escaped by running down the gangway of her former home, which she had moved from three years ago to escape the growing number of muggings and sexual assaults.

Januska is white. The police said the attacker is black, a fact that didn't make it into many, if any, stories.

Now, if the racial dividers were white, they'd be turning this attack into a universal statement. About how it proves that crime goes up with the appearance of blacks in the neighborhood. About how young black men are preying on old white women. About how blacks are ruining the city. And so forth.

You might hear this in bars and rec rooms. But you didn't hear much, if any, of this in the media, because saying such things is inexcusably racist. Even though these are empirical questions, which may or may not be true.

The point here is an old one: You can openly march on City Hall making the most outrageous claims about how an individual event involving a black "victim" proves the most racist hypotheses. And the press will dutifully report those claims, often sympathetically.

But stretching an individual event, such as a black man's attack on an old white woman, into sweeping generalizations about race is intolerable, never to be publicly uttered.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune

Illinois Races Draw National Attention

By Dennis Byrne
Human Events

Voters in Chicago’s west suburban sixth congressional district, long represented by venerable and retiring Henry Hyde, are caught in the crossfire from the adjacent districts of two of the most powerful House members in both parties.

The cannon to the right of them, as Tennyson might write, are those of dug-in House Speaker Dennis Hastert. The cannon commanding the heights to the left of them are those of the doggedly aspiring Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

For more than a year now, voters there have been pounded by some of the heaviest artillery that both sides can muster—massive amounts of out-of-district campaign contributions and campaign stops by the likes of Vice President Dick Cheney. Hastert and Emanuel each would dearly love to sweep down through the valley and claim it as its own, giving the victor a huge symbolic and strategic triumph. The spoils of victory could well be control of the House.

The GOP has reason to fear an epic loss. It’s not for nothing that this race has drawn national attention. No less important, but less visible because the district isn’t flanked by two high-profile politicians, is the nearby battle in the traditionally Republican 8th district, where the “moderate” Democrat Melissa Bean, who ousted the former Rep. Phil Crane, holds the incumbent’s advantage over Republican challenger, David McSweeney.

Continue at Human Events, the national conservative weekly, where I am a newly added contributor.

Key to energy reform: Let our oil prices soar

It will take tough love and market realism to spur alternatives to America's dependency on petroleum

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

I'm rootin' for higher gas and oil prices.

And honest environmentalists would admit that they are too.

Am I insane? No more insane than folks who would wait until the oil gauge is on empty and gasoline is at $80 a gallon. Having higher oil prices now is the only way to brake oil consumption and develop other ways to fuel America. No amount of government decrees will do it. No recycling or conservation. No appeals to give up Humvees and other rolling tanks. Money being the biggest economic motivator, $5- to $10-a-gallon gasoline would be crippling now to a world economy built on oil. But it would be the only way to set off an energy revolution of the sort that changed American in the mid-1800s when we began our oil dependency.

This time, revolution will be harder. Changing the energy-consuming habits of nearly 300 million Americans producing a gross domestic product of $12 trillion will be significantly harder than it was to get 31 million Americans and their $74 billion economy to shift from horses to petroleum.

But if we wait until the oil gauge hits zero, it's not unreasonable to predict a worldwide economic meltdown and a return to an agrarian society.

Cities with horse-drawn carriages and streetcars. Suburban wastelands, with the wind blowing through abandoned big-box stores; weeds on the interstates and massive deforestation as millions of people chop wood for heat.

The project by Tribune correspondent Paul Salopek on "The Twilight of the Oil Age" in the July 30 Chicago Tribune lays it out in fearful detail.

So, better to get the economic shock over with well before then. That will happen only if we start to pay the real cost of energy. Salopek quotes one economist who believes that the true cost is $8 a gallon, and runs as high as $11 when the cost of war to protect our Middle East oil sources are thrown in. At that price, Americans might finally get serious about making fundamental changes.

Only when American consumers demand energy alternatives will the business world start providing economical and workable alternatives. The current level of demand for hybrid cars won't come close to doing it. Neither will higher government-imposed mileage standards. Clearly, $3 a gallon hasn't done it.

So, how can Americans be billed the full amount? For one, we can take the politics out of pricing. Here's a great example: Michigan's Democratic Gov. Jennifer Granholm is running for re-election on a platform of keeping gasoline prices "low," whatever low is.

She'd cap "outrageous profits" and issue the usual "call on Washington to do something, because it hasn't done enough," whatever enough is. Such gasoline populism, with its fake promises, only worsens the calamity when the tank runs empty.

In other words, politicians should stop feeding public expectations that lower prices are normal, and can be achieved by a political process. They need to restrain themselves when they're tempted to blame conspiracies for shortages and higher prices, such as those created by Hurricane Katrina.

Environmentalists and others who crab about the scourge of the suburbs should openly support higher prices. How better to end suburban creep across the countryside and encourage the resettlement of the city neighborhoods and inner suburbs? (Of course, that would increase the demand and force up prices, thereby reducing the supply of affordable housing--something that affordable housing advocates shouldn't overlook.)

This pre-1950s Utopian vision of the metropolis is, of course, naive. It doesn't take into account the computer and telecommunications revolution, which reduces the need for physical proximity and face-to-face communications in our daily affairs. Thus reducing the need for travel.

Some people, who still require close contact in their social and business lives, would gravitate back to the city, but I believe we've entered an increasingly footloose society.

Instead of the suburban blob slowly spreading and inundating the countryside, I see a different future: more Americans settling in more livable, human-scale satellite towns, spotted throughout the countryside.

Of course, while we wait for settlement patterns that more realistically reflect our technologically advancing society and as we shift toward more efficient means of energy production (yes, it has to include nuclear), pain--a lot of it--will be felt. Government's job, to the limits it can, will need to create policies that ease that pain.

"Market forces" aren't always the best way to magically eliminate what economists call "dislocations." But continued pretending that prices won't or shouldn't go still higher will bring us all to ruin.

Copyright © 2006, Chicago Tribune