News you won't hear at the Democratic National Convention

From the US Census Bureau:

* Real median household income in the United States climbed 1.3 percent between 2006 and 2007, reaching $50,233.

* The number of people without health insurance coverage declined from 47 million (15.8 percent) in 2006 to 45.7 million (15.3 percent) in 2007. The number of uninsured children declined from 8.7 million (11.7 percent) in 2006 to 8.1 million (11.0 percent) in 2007.

* Income inequality decreased between 2006 and 2007, as measured by shares of aggregate household income by quintiles and the Gini index. The share of aggregate income received by households in the top fifth of the income distribution declined, while the shares for the third and fourth quintiles increased. Meanwhile, the Gini index declined from 0.470 to 0.463, moving closer to 0, which represents perfect income equality (1 represents perfect inequality).

* In 2007, the family poverty rate and the number of families in poverty were 9.8 percent and 7.6 million, respectively, both statistically unchanged from 2006. Furthermore, the poverty rate and the number in poverty showed no statistical change between 2006 and 2007 for the different types of families. Married-couple families had a poverty rate of 4.9 percent (2.8 million), compared with 28.3 percent (4.1 million) for female-householder, no-husband-present families and 13.6 percent (696,000) for those with a male householder and no wife present.

We will be informed that these numbers don't count, because they don't reflect the recent economic "downturn." This is typically deceptive, because the statistics include a period (last year) when Democrats began hammering away at the economy, insisting that we were in a recession--although we still aren't in one.

Voters should be troubled by Obama's abortion stance

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Can we just listen to ourselves? We're debating whether some babies born alive have a right to medical attention.

How have we come to this? Can't we all agree that everyone whose heart beats, brain functions and lungs respire at birth should have a chance to live? If we're a compassionate, rational and just society, we would say, "Of course, every infant has a right to lifesaving medical attention. Even if it's not wanted."

But an unthinkable debate is raging as a part of the presidential campaign, centering on how Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama voted while he was an Illinois state senator on legislation designed to protect the lives and health of all newborns. The debate over Obama's voting record has grown so arcane that we've lost sight of why this question ever came up: Some infants that survive abortion are denied medical assistance. They are left to die.

Jill Stanek, a former nurse at Christ Hospital in Oak Lawn, described in 2001 during congressional testimony how it happens: In a "live-birth abortion," doctors "do not attempt to kill the baby in the uterus. The goal is simply to prematurely deliver a baby who dies during the birth process or soon afterward." Medication stimulates the cervix to open, allowing the baby to emerge, sometimes alive. "It is not uncommon for a live aborted baby to linger for an hour or two or even longer. At Christ Hospital, one . . . lived for almost an entire eight-hour shift." Some actually are born healthy because they are aborted to preserve the "health" of the mother, or because the pregnancy was due to rape or incest. At best, they are left in a "comfort room," complete with a camera (for pictures of the aborted baby) "baptismal supplies, gowns, and certificates, footprinting equipment and baby bracelets for mementos and a rocking chair," where they are rocked to death. "Before the comfort room was established," Stanek said, "babies were taken to the soiled utility room to die."

Yes, there ought to be a law against this, and Congress passed one unanimously. It declares that a person is defined as "every infant member of the species homo sapiens who is born alive at any stage of development." Born alive means any human being that after "expulsion or extraction" from the mother "breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord, or definite movement of voluntary muscles, regardless of whether the umbilical cord has been cut, and regardless of whether the expulsion or extraction occurs as a result of natural or induced labor, Caesarean section, or induced abortion."

Pretty simple, right?

Well, not really. Some people fear that this fundamental protection, ensuring to all the first of the rights of "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness," is in reality a sneak attack on a woman's right to choose an abortion. To prevent this "Trojan horse," they insisted, and got, in the federal law a guarantee against construing the law to "affirm, deny or contract any legal status or legal right applicable to any member of the species homo sapiens at any point prior to being 'born alive'. . ." This mumbo jumbo is supposed to mean that abortions can't be restricted.

To mollify pro-choice concerns, including Obama's, this was inserted in several versions of the Illinois legislation. But it didn't matter, because the legislation died anyway, with Obama's help. Whether or not he refused to vote for a version that contained the right-to-an-abortion provision isn't what's important here. What is important is that Obama put the supposed and vague threat to an abortion right ahead of a real and concrete threat to the most innocent of human lives.

Obama's response to all this is to sidestep any discussion about when human personhood begins, the key question in the abortion debate. Some say it begins at the moment of conception; others say it begins at birth. (Still others look for a middle ground, suggesting it begins when brain activity starts.) But by arguing against the born-alive legislation because it might in some distant and ambiguous way obstruct abortion, Obama implies that the right to an abortion trumps an infant's right to life, even after he is born.

Such logic is breathtaking. It says that even after birth, a mother's right to rid herself of the baby supersedes any right that a child, now independent of the mother's body and domain, has a right to live. Where America stands on this issue truly is a measure of its sense of justice and compassion. On this score, Obama fails.

Obama to DOJ: Block terrorist ad

The Obama campaign doesn't like what an ad says about him, so it asks the Department of Justice to investigate it. It could better spending its energies on responding to the substance of the ad instead crying to Mother Government.

The story is here. The advertiser's response is here.

Ask him how many cars he's got

In a typicallyl muddled column, New York Times windbag Paul Klugman seems happy--or is he?--that Barack Obama has dropped his knife and turned into a gunslinger in the coming showdown with John McCain. It's hard to to tell, because after Klugman intially seems glad that Obama is getting tougher on McCain, he goes limp, arguing that toughness isn't required because Republicans are so hated that McCain is bound to lose.

Klugman wrote:

The central fact of this year’s election is that voters are fed up with Republican rule. The only way Mr. McCain can win the presidential race is if it becomes a contest of personalities rather than parties — and if his campaign can instill in voters the perception that Mr. Obama is a suspicious character while Mr. McCain is a fine, upstanding gentleman.

The Obama campaign, on the other hand, doesn’t need to convince voters either that he’s the awesomest candidate ever or that Mr. McCain is a villain. All it has to do is tarnish Mr. McCain’s image enough so that voters see this as a race between a Democrat and a Republican. And that’s a race the Democrat will easily win.

So, no need to ridicule McCain for not knowing how many houses or cars he owns. Funny thing, though, the public continues to rate the Democratic-controlled C0ngress lower in job performance than the Republican president, George Bush. Perhaps voters are equally fed up with both parties, a concession that the Democratic pawn Klugman would never admit.

How sad

16-year-old boy shot by cop on city's South Side

Yes, sad that a 16-year-old lost his life. And sad that a hour after this story was posted on the Tribune website, dozens of people had commented on it based on the presumption that (a) the cops had shot an innocent kid, again, or (b) the kid had it coming.

Can't we wait for a few facts before inflicting our pre-formed opinions onto the public?

Nepotism: Illinois Democrats and the Family Jewels

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

State Rep. Robert Rita has a strange take on government employment. When news broke that Senate President Emil (I Need a Raise) Jones was trying to hand his seat over to his son, Emil III, Rita’s justification was:

“Give him a chance to prove himself.”

Astonishing. Yet, odds are that Chicago and Democratic voters, if given the chance, would elect Emil Jones III to succeed his father. Demonstrating again that they are gratified to be led by the nose by a political system that is more akin to an oligarchy than a republic. Naturally, Rita would jump to defend such a system, in that he, like so many others, is a beneficiary of the system. His father, John, is the longtime Calumet Township Democratic committeeman.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Open up Annenberg papers or return them

The University of Illinois at Chicago's explanation for not opening up the Chicago Annenberg Challenge paper collection makes a mockery of the kind of rigorous intellectual activity that is supposed to be conducted in higher education.

Here is the full and intellectually flabby response:

“The University Library supports the teaching, research, and service missions of the University by acquiring, organizing, preserving, and providing access to information. The Library is open to the public and dedicated to free inquiry. The University has not received ownership rights to the Chicago Annenberg Challenge collection. The university is aggressively pursuing an agreement with the donor, and as soon as an agreement is finalized, the collection will be made accessible to the public.”

When that will be (before the election?) no one can say.

So, if the university has no ownership rights, why is this tax-supported institution storing the papers? Is the university charging anyone (the university doesn't say who the actual donor is) for warehouse these papers? How much is it costing taxpayers? The university's failure to account for its actions here is outrageous.

A pawn for a pawn?

Here's a strategy that would really make Moscow stand up and listen

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Russian boss-man Vladimir Putin probably figured he scored a big one for his reawakening empire by barging into the pro-Western, democratic nation of Georgia.

Fine, if that's how Putin Bonaparte wants to play it, we'll take . . . hmmmm . . . Cuba. We'll roll right in, just like the Russian tanks and fleet rolled into Georgia, and say, "Hello, Fidel. Good-bye Fidel."

Why not? The conventional wisdom is that we can't do a lot about Georgia, now a Russian captive nation like Soviet days of old, because ultimately we fear a direct face-off between U.S. and Russian military forces. Thus, we are limited to diplomacy and sanctions. We've got little to offer Putin that would appease his restore-the-Russian-Empire dementia, so diplomacy amounts to nothing more than a stink in a windstorm. Sanctions? To get the UN to impose any, the Security Council would have to approve them, over Russia's veto. We could impose our own sanctions, which might be considered an act of war. Throw Russia out of the global economic powerhouse of the Group of Eight or reject its application for membership in the World Trade Organization? Maybe, but who knows?

So, we are left with a game of "you take my pawn, I'll take yours." In Cuba, we could use the same kind of baloney that Russia used to justify its invasion of Georgia: We installed a free Cuban government for "humanitarian" reasons. Who in this hemisphere has suffered more at the hands of a tyrant than the Cuban people? Who needs more protection from the tyrant Fidel Castro than people would who risk their lives crossing 90 miles of ocean in an overloaded, open boat? Who has a greater interest in securing the liberties of the Cuban people than the tens of thousands of Cubans living in America whose gifts of billions to relatives back home is what has kept Castro's pathetic communist utopia going?

Cuba and Russia are on the threshold of strengthening relations, which were weakened after the Soviet Union fell apart, thanks to America winning the arms race and the intrinsic flaws of the communist system. Ever since Castro marched out of the hills and into Havana almost 50 years ago, Russia has considered Cuba a client state, just as Putin intolerably views Georgia as an American client state. Putin wants Georgia to be his client state, because he can't tolerate freedom on the doorstep of his empire, especially if the Georgian people, in their freedom, prefer to ally themselves with Western democracies.

So, what if Putin shuts down the petroleum pipeline to Europe and the West in retaliation? Fine. Declaring a national emergency, we take oil-rich Venezuela, which, under its emerging tin-pot communist tyrant Hugo Chavez, also is tending toward becoming a Russian client state. If Putin wants to engage in an empire-building contest, maybe we should take back all the countries that we once had, however briefly, and then gave back to become democracies—the Philippines, Panama and Grenada, for example. After all, they're in our "sphere of influence," just as Putin claims Georgia is in his. Two can play the empire game, and Putin and all his oil aren't up to the competition.

By now, you must be saying that I've got to be kidding. I am, sort of. I described this global scenario because Russia's invasion of Georgia is the scariest global moment since the end of the Cold War. This Putin-inspired conflict could spiral into a replay of the Cold War in all kinds of ways, with nuclear annihilation, mutually assured destruction and tens of millions of combatants, if not hundreds of millions of civilians, dying in a World War III. That's why the presidential and congressional candidates' response to Russia's attempted enslavement of Georgia perhaps is unexpectedly the most critical issue of this election cycle.

Both presidential candidates have issued standard statements calling for "restraint" and "talks," but a clearer understanding about how to meet this newest foreign policy challenge has yet to emerge. Recognition that we might now be engaged in two conflicts—one against terrorism and the other the traditional state-to-state variety—is a good place to start; then we can move on to the details.

Democrat Barack Obama already has said he favors, in essence, a weaker military because he apparently believes that state-to-state conflicts are old hat. Will events require Obama to change his position, again?

This is Chicago. What did you expect?

Why are files housed in a publicly financed university library not being made available for examination by the public?

UIC library is refusing to make available documents that could shed light on the relationships between Barack Obama and his "guy from the neighborhood," Bill Ayers, the unapologetic terrorist.

Obama Details Raising Taxes

We keep hearing that we're supposedly in a recession. If so, why would anyone want to take more money out of the pockets of Americans?

Obama Details Raising Taxes on Gains, Dividends - WSJ.com

Daley gets an Olympic eyeful

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daley Observer

“Gulp.”

That must have been Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley’s reaction as he sat in the stands of Beijing’s Bird’s Nest stadium watching the $100-million, triumphantly staged Olympic opening ceremonies.

Daley’s vision of a 2016 Olympics in Chicago pales in comparison to China’s mind-bending pyrotechnics and its cast of ten thousands, the stupefying grandiosity of the stadium, clean-as-a-whistle new subway lines, the glittering infrastructure, the ebullient but always respective Chinese masses, the permanent new competitive venues and a list of other superlatives as long as the Great Wall.

If Daley wasn’t thinking to himself, “My God, what I have gotten us into?” he’s delusional, or worse.

Read more in The Chicago Daily Observer

If we're to fight a war effectively..

we've got to level with the taxpayers. Taxpayers for Common Sense reports that the Congressional Budget Office lowballed the estimated cost of Iraq contracts.

Andolino in Wonderland

O'Hare expansion moving forward, project leader says -- chicagotribune.com

Rosemary Andolino, the project manager of O'Hare Airport expansion, says that everything is on schedule, despite it being two years behind schedule and say they won't pay for the second, most vital phase of the expansion.

Keep the kids in school

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

That was big of Sen./Rev. James Meeks to dare someone to arrest the kids he's leading out of the city's public schools in an ill-conceived protest, when he's the guy who should be pinched.

As for the students, truant officers ought to round them up and take them back to school where they belong. Of course, no one will do any of that because they don't want to appear mean, racist or elitist. And that's exactly the point of Meeks' plan to haul Chicago students out of the first week of school to protest, at downtown offices and at Winnetka's New Trier Township High School, the "inequities" of the state education funding formula.

"I dare the business community to arrest our children and send them to jail because all they want is a quality education," Meeks said. New Trier School Supt. Linda Yonke, for one, bent to this extortion, saying she wouldn't want to "undermine" his position by "engaging in a public argument." And what would she do? Hold a forum, she suggested. Oh, joy.

The issue already has been studied, protested and demagogued to death. Illinois school funding has fostered years of debate, lawsuits, constitutional revisions and a complicated formula for allocating state aid that will make your head spin. The formula ensures a "basic" funding level for every school district and takes into account local property tax base, student population, poverty and average daily attendance.

It entitles Chicago to more than $1.1 billion in state aid in 2008. Average spending per student for all grades in Chicago is $9,282, about 11 percent higher than the statewide average, according to greatschools.net, but certainly lower than the $17,184 spent on each New Trier student. But then, nearly everyone spends less than New Trier. That's because New Trier generally is free to spend whatever additional money it wants, and so it does, in large sums.

Would Chicago public school students do any better if this "inequity" were narrowed by New Trier spending less? Of course not. What New Trier spends has nothing to do with the performance of Chicago's students.

Truth is, the biggest problem with Chicago and other major school systems is manifested in the performance of black male students. A recent study by the Schott Foundation for Public Education concludes that African-American males in Chicago's public schools are less than half as likely to graduate as their white peers. The foundation attributes the poor performance to "the resource disparities that exist in schools attended by black males and their white, non-Hispanic counterparts." John Jackson, foundation president, lamented that this is the state of affairs 50 years after the Supreme Court decision ending school segregation. Meeks chimed in: "I want to keep kids out of the 'colored' schools. I don't want kids to have to go and drink from the 'colored' water fountain. I don't want them to use the 'colored' toilet or to have to sit at the 'colored' desk."

But if resource inequities account for the poor performance, why don't their white male, Hispanic and black female counterparts do as badly? After all, they are going to the same public schools in Chicago. Or are only Chicago's African-American male students shipped off to junkier schools, where they can only use the "colored" water fountain? Is it part of the state funding formula to somehow apportion less funding to black males? Are black males forced to use 20-year-old textbooks, while everyone else gets new ones? What precisely is there about how money is spent that mainly leaves black males so dismally out of it?

Maybe a complex of factors, other than funding disparities, explains the troubling performance of black males, and thus, a large part of the schools' problems. Perhaps the same thing that accounts for the decay of neighborhoods at the hands of black male gangs, or for the absence of fathers in the unraveling African-American family. These are symptoms of a cultural climate—corrupted by loosening morals, radical individualism, materialism, Hollywood's adulation of violence and parental irresponsibility, among other strands—that converges on African-American males in particular with all the focused and destructive force of a tornado. I dare say that in this cultural climate, if Chicago were able to spend as much as New Trier spends on each student, black males still would underperform. What is needed is not so much a change in the school funding formula, but a fundamental change in attitudes about family and society.

But I'm not saying anything new, or anything that Meeks doesn't know already. All that I'm saying is that if Meeks truly has the interests of Chicago's students at heart he ought to concentrate his energies elsewhere. He can start by proving to the students why every day spent in school is precious.

The hypocrisy of affordable housing "advocates"

Not a peep was heard from them as Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley set out to bulldoze DuPage County's largest and most vibrant community of low- and moderate-income families.

Read it in the Chicago Daily Observer

No comment necessary

Ohio inmate sues in federal court arguing he's too fat for execution process to work properly -- chicagotribune.com

Democratic leaders need constitutional jolt

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Why do Illinois Democrats keep voting for those clowns of theirs?

They'd probably reply that their clowns are a cut above the Republican clowns, and they may be right. But that still leaves the question: How can Democratic voters keep electing the very people who keep assaulting health care, child welfare and other social programs so dear to the Democratic heart?

Even the most reactionary, right-wing troglodytes have not been as successfully obstructionist as Gov. Rod Blagojevich, Senate President Emil Jones and House Speaker Michael Madigan—Democrats all—whose budget stalemate is giving social service providers fits.

The Illinois Alcoholism and Drug Dependence Association warns that the budgetary inaction could throw 42,000 of their clients "out on the street." Almost $600 million in Medicaid-related cuts, which will cause the loss of federal Medicaid funds, will "artificially" hold expenditures to last year's budget levels in the Department of Children and Family Services, despite generally rising health-care costs, said Sen. Christine Radogno (R-Lemont). Other state agencies and providers have joined in the lament and demand action.

All told, Blagojevich line-item vetoed $1.4 billion out of the state's proposed $59 billion budget, with more reductions in the making. The governor made the cuts because, he said, the Illinois House, under Madigan's direction, had passed a budget without enough revenues to cover the costs. That is true enough.

(A clarification: "Cuts" is a term used too loosely by politicians and journalists. Cuts are not always reductions in year-to-year spending. In fact, a cut could leave a program with an actual funding increase over last year. That's because the cuts discussed here actually are reductions in what was originally proposed. Senate Republicans said of the $1.4 billion in Blagojevich's cuts, 70 percent are simply the elimination of proposed spending increases. For example, some politicians moaned that education funds were being cut, but schools still were in line for tens of millions of additional state subsidies.)

Anyway, the House has restored some of the governor's cuts, and the budget has now gone to the Senate, where Jones refuses to consider it until after the November election. Waiting until then is cowardly enough, but it's even worse. Jones and other lawmakers hunger for a 7.5 percent pay raise and if they wait until after the election, they don't have to vote on it to get the raise; it's automatic, thanks to an arcane system they have rigged to not get blamed for voting themselves more money. So, there'll be no vote on the budget until after the election, thank you very much.

I'm not usually the one pumping for more spending, but government support of private-sector service providers has become such a critical part of our social service financial infrastructure that it would be wrong to suddenly leave such agencies as Chicago's Haymarket Center, a refuge for the addicted and homeless, holding the bag. Of course, all this confusion and delay is part of a complex and self-destructive game designed by these top-dog Democrats to make each other look like idiots, which is about the only thing they have accomplished this year.

And now it is Jones' turn to look like the idiot, and to feel the heat. He should. His office denies that the delay of the Senate vote has anything to do with pay raises, but the excuse that is offered—that the Senate already has passed its own budget with sufficient revenues—isn't credible. If Jones were serious about his Democratic principles, he'd do the moral, responsible thing and find a way to get the budget done now. But I don't blame Jones as much as I blame the Democratic voters who keep electing these self-serving, petty people.

The Democratic leadership needs to be disciplined, if not stopped, and I am beginning to think that term limits might be the only way to pry these men out of their seats. That would require a constitutional amendment, which we know lawmakers would not approve under any circumstances. That leaves a state Constitutional Convention. Truly, I'd be glad if we didn't have to resort to opening up the entire constitution to alteration as the price of straightening out this state. But what else is there?

So, to the well-funded special interests that oppose a Con Con, as the convention is informally known, I again ask this question: What is your solution?

Dennis Byrne is a Chicago-area writer. His blog can be read at http://dennisbyrne.blogspot.com

Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune

Tens pounds of airplane in a five-pound bag

Here is an actual message sent from Orbitz to airline passengers who were delayed today while transferring flights at O'Hare Airport:

Passengers scheduled to arrive at Chicago O'Hare airport through the late evening may encounter delays averaging 45 minutes. The large number of flights scheduled to arrive at the airport exceeds the number of aircraft that can land hourly. This does not change your scheduled check-in time. Thank you for choosing Orbitz and have a good flight.

The answer, as aviation experts have said for years, isn't building new, inefficient runways at a small, 1950s style airport (O'Hare), but to build a new reliever airport in the south suburbs. If Mayor Richard M. Daley had not so jealously guarded his O'Hare jobs and contracts by using his political power to put a brick on the south suburb airport, it could already have been doing its job, easing traffic congestion at O'Hare.

Also posted on The Reckless Expansion of O'Hare

Why do Chicago newspapers end up with owners like this?

Sam Zell's Deal from Hell

As if Conrad Black's near destruction of the Chicago Sun-Times weren't enough, the Chicago Tribune now has to contend with this guy, who tried to peddle the view that he was doing everyone a favor by saddling the paper with $8 billion in new debt.

And they laughed at Reagan for this

While president, and in a discussion about the urgency of "addressing" the man-made production of greenhouse gases, Ronald Reagan suggested that the cows had something to do with it. For this, Reagan was ridiculed in all the politically correct salons and among "activists" as a fool.

Now comes this well-researched article in the Chicago Tribune: "Raising a global stink: Activists target methane gas from, um, cows." The methane from belching, farting cows, it turns out, is a much bigger source of destructive greenhouse gases than man-made carbon dioxide. Explained the article:

Methane is a big concern because it is so much more potent than carbon dioxide, the chief source of man-made pollution behind rising global temperatures. So is nitrous oxide, another byproduct of manure and fertilizer production. It has a whopping 296 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon dioxide.

Expect a new assault on red meat eaters from the ecology police.

So, who's laughing now?

What blockhead is responsible for this?

Steve Schmidt, John McCain's senior adviser, that's who.

Schmidt is turning McCain into a grumpy old man with this latest TV ad for the Republican presidential candidate. It mocks Barack Obama's "world's biggest celebrity" status and fails to tell us a lick about what John McCain would do as president. It makes it appear that Obama's celebrity is getting under McCain's skin, which makes McCain look bad.

Schmidt explained the reasoning: "We will pose the question--stipulating the fact that he is the biggest celebrity in the world--do the American people want to elect the world's biggest celebrity or do they want to elect an American hero?

Where has Schmidt been? Given that choice, the American people will take the celebrity every time.

Still waiting for the recession to begin...

while Democrats say they are waiting for it to end. The Commerce Department today reported that gross domestic product (GDP) rose at a seasonally adjusted 1.9% annual rate April through June, showing that the economy accelerated over the previous quarter. We're still waiting for the first quarterly decline in the GDP, which will be the bellwether for only the beginning of a recession. Then it will take at least two more consecutive quarters of decline before we are even in a recession. What will Barack Obama and the Democrats say now?

Just in case the world tips and...

Ald. Eddie Burke's 14th ward slips into suburban Republican territory, he might need all this money to get re-elected.

The Sun-Times reports that "Ald. Edward M. Burke has more money in his four campaign funds than the combined total of all 49 other Chicago aldermen, more even than Mayor Daley's $2.9 million."

Where does Illinois rank on Traffic Fatalities, Deficient Bridges and Congestion?

Check out Reason Foundation's annual report on the performance of America's highways.

Good luck with that

Crain's Chicago Business reports that the city of Chicago is fighting the Federal Emergency Management Agency over a nearly $6-million tab for snow removal. Said the publication:

In a complaint filed in federal court, the city claims it had a right to use a total of $5.9 million in federal disaster funds to clear snow from O’Hare International Airport and Midway Airport in 1999 and 2000. FEMA disagrees, the complaint said, and has tried for the past three years to recover the $4.79 million given to Chicago for a severe storm in January 1999 and another $1 million for a December 2000 snowstorm.

FEMA contends that airlines operating at O’Hare and Midway are responsible for paying for snow removal and that federal disaster funds should not have been spent on it, according to the suit.

FEMA obviously doesn't remember how hard it was for the Federal Aviation Administration to collect several million in fines from Chicago after Mayor Richard M. Daley one midnight bulldozed the federally subsidized, lakefront airport known as Miegs Field.

This all is in character for Daley, who wants taxpayers to cough up millions for costs the airlines at O'Hare rightfully should be covering. Except that the 1999 and 2000 snowjobs amount to but a tiny slice of the billions that the airlines should be paying for the expansion of O'Hare Airport. Instead, Daley is pushing the costs on to the taxpayer, through such things as the passenger seat tax.

Some things never change.

Here is Crain's complete story (subscription required):
FEMA wants blizzard money back | Crain's

Justice for red-light runners

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

If Chicago can raise $50 million a year using 100 cameras to catch red-light runners, I’m for the city putting in another 100. Or more. Same for the suburbs that are thinking about putting in the cameras.

Yes, we’re supposed to feel sympathy for motorists who race through red rights, as if they’re a picked-on species that is being victimized by the money-hungry Daley administration.

It’s not fair; it’s not constitutional, the ticketed public whimpers. Some lawyer, of course, has filed a class action suit, protesting—what?—a motorist’s right to speed through a red light undetected.

Read more: The Chicago Daily Observer

How many angels can dance on a plastic bag?

Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | City trashes plastic bags at farmers markets | Crain's

Has anyone actually calculated precisely how much room plastic bags take up in landfills, or how much it costs to "landfill" them? I doubt it, but what does it matter. Plastic bags now are out and "biodegradable" bags now are in.

But wait, as this Crain's Chicago Business article explains, super environmentalists aren't so sure about the "biodegradable" bags, because they might encourage littering, and are more expensive (thus, of course, "penalizing those least able to afford them").

So, one farmer will begin selling $5 cloth bags, less than it costs to make them. But wait! Has he calculated the environmental cost of cloth bags? The environmental destruction caused raising, harvesting and processing all that cotton--the fertilizers and the run-off, the carbon footprint caused by cotton processing and weaving, and so forth?

Maybe we should go back to paper bags. But wait: How many trees are killed? How many rivers polluted by paper plants?

Maybe we all should just stay in bed.

"Activists" secure a lifetime guarantee of cash

More that's wrong with the the housing "rescue" bill and how the special interests cash in:

President Bush is poised to sign the housing and Fannie Mae bailout bill, after the Senate passed it with 72 votes on the weekend. But an underreported part of this story is that Majority Leader Harry Reid refused to allow a vote on Republican Jim DeMint's amendment to bar political donations and lobbying by Fannie and its sibling, Freddie Mac.

Read more: Fannie Mae's Political Immunity - WSJ.com

A standing ovation from the press box

The late and iconic sports writer, Jerome Holzman, wrote a book, "No Cheering in the Press Box," which was a reminder that even sports reporters should remain objective.

Apparently, this admonition does not apply to journalists of color, who met this weekend at a conference for...journalists of color...and gave Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama standing ovations. The Chicago Tribune tells the Chicago Tribune:

At [the conference], organizers reminded conference participants that [Obama's]his appearance was being broadcast nationally and they should maintain 'professional decorum.' Before Obama arrived, a panel discussed the question of journalistic objectivity, including whether journalists should clap for politicians in public.

As it happened, Obama received a standing ovation from much of the audience at the start and end of his appearance.

And more, according to the Sun-Times:

Sporting a beige suit and a U.S. flag lapel pin, Obama found a receptive audience among the minority journalists and students at McCormick Place, who gave him standing ovations, 10 rounds of applause and a rush of cell phone picture-taking.

Let's hear it for what used to be a professional once called journalism. At least they didn't usher him into the conference with palm fronds.

Turning trash into cash...

for insiders.

Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley would eliminate competition in the city's commercial trash-hauling industry, leaving condominiums, businesses, office buildings and other customers at the mercy a city-designated monopoly.

Instead of shopping around for the best price and service, customers would have to use haulers designated for their neighborhoods by the city. On top of what the customers would pay to the haulers, they'd have to cough up another 5 percent to 6 percent to the city for "administrative fees."

The plan would not effect smaller residential buildings, who already have the pleasure of being under the thumb of the city's own non-competitive public trash pick-up service.

Details are in Crain's Chicago business here.

I want my money back

This is why our taxes were increased?

$24,999 for a taxpayer funded magazine to make Todd Stroger look good

There's gold for Chicago pols in new housing bill

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

It shouldn't be hard for Chicago and Illinois pols to turn the humongous housing bill that passed the U.S. House last week into a pot of gold for their cronies and themselves.

Even a naif like me could figure out how to convert to personal use Chicago and Illinois' share—yet to be determined—of the $4 billion expressed from Washington to buy and rehabilitate foreclosed homes. Someone from the Department of Rising Neighborhoods or whatever local agency administers the plan would call his cousin and say, "Hey, Jake, old buddy, I've got a great deal for you. We just bought a foreclosed home for $200,000. I'll make sure we sell it to you for $150,000. You can then turn around and sell it for $200,000, or whatever you can get, and we'll split the difference."

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) outlined this plausible scenario in detailing his opposition to the housing bill that will rescue homeowners, banks, financial institutions, brokers and others troubled by the housing bust.

At first, the bill was an effort to help homeowners in difficulty, but the bill has grown to gargantuan proportions. In addition to the $4 billion, the bill would provide $5.3 billion for more affordable housing, $4.6 billion for first-time home buyers, $729 million for home-loan insurance and $210 million for counseling for homeowners facing foreclosure. It also would provide untold billions to prop up the nation's top mortgage makers, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, in what is described as the most concerted effort to stabilize the mortgage and financial markets since the Great Depression.

That's according to the summaries handed out to reporters, who, I'm willing to bet, haven't explored every wrinkle of this monster which, by the way, will increase the national debt limit to $10.6 trillion from $9.8 trillion to help pay for all this largesse.

But Roskam has read it, and what jumped out at him was the total lack of protections against fraud and chicanery of the type that characterizes Chicago and Illinois politics. Roskam, in House floor debate, noted how the bill's proponents expressed confidence that cities—"victims" according to the bill's proponents—would spend the money judiciously and wisely. Roskam said "judicious" and "wise" were not terms he would apply to Chicago and Illinois. "Do you want Rod Blagojevich to be your landlord?" Roskam asked in a news statement. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) didn't like what she heard Roskam saying about the—shall we say—opportunities that the bill would open up, and issued a scold. Roskam, she said, obviously hadn't read the bill. Otherwise he would know that all the desired protections are in a plan that housing authorities must submit to the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Roskam quickly replied by citing the plan requirements, "on page 3, section 4 of the bill." And, no, he continued, the plan that Waters mentioned indeed has "no prohibition against self-dealing." It only requires such things as setting goals for sales and accessibility by different groups. It is not about "potentially corrupt practices."

Obviously, a plea to the national conscience to stem Chicago corruption won't do much to slow down this juggernaut. And while Roskam might be playing to his west suburban audience by, tsk, picking on Chicago, he can just as easily be painted by political opponents as favoring the throwing of people out onto the streets and the cataclysmic failure of the nation's housing and financial markets. The cost of this bill is just about anyone's guess; Congressional Budget Office estimates run to $41.7 billion. So, when you're talking about money like that, what's a few hundred thousand, or even a couple of million, skimmed off by Chicago and Illinois fixers?

But what does it mean?

Barack Obama introduced new coinage into the language when he declared in his Berlin speech that "We are a people of improbable hope." The New York Times, among others I'm sure, enshrined it in their headlines, but can someone please explain what the hell it is supposed to mean?

Here's the context, the last paragraph of the speech (available here).

People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. With an eye toward the future, with resolve in our hearts, let us remember this history, and answer our destiny, and remake the world once again.

The word improbable means "not likely to be true or to happen," and "unexpected and apparently inauthentic." It's synonyms include: doubtful, dubious, debatable, ridiculous, absurd and preposterous.

What, one can reasonably ask, what is untrue, unlikely, absurd or ridiculous about our hope? Did Obama say that we're unlikely to have hope? Or is just another nice sounding, but empty phrase that has characterized Obama's pontifications?

Don't let facts stand in the way

Why did no one in the media note the irony that Barack Obama announced his Iraq policy and then went there on a fact-finding tour?

Let him run for president of the European Union

Hundreds of thousands of adoring Europeans turned out to witness Barack Obama's appearance, as if it was some kind of miraculous apparition.

So what?

Obama and the media need to be reminded that the president is elected by American citizens, not Europeans or "citizens of the world." If anything, the European fawning will help McCain by honking off Americans who believe that who we elect president is no one's business but ours.

Obama the Flawless

I'm sitting here watching WTTW-TV's Chicago Week in Review, and the guest reporters all agree that Barack Obama's Middle East and European tour went off without a flaw. None of the guests, at least while I was tuned in, mentioned Obama's cancellation of a visit to wounded GIs in Germany as in any way problematic. I guess that wasn't a flaw.

Obama's campaign staff blames "the Pentagon" for cancellation of the scheduled visit; the Pentagon denies it. The Pentagon said that Obama could visit, but couldn't bring his campaign entourage and the media with him. And so, the wounded GIs were spared being pestered.

Well, there you have it: Obama's tour was flawless.

No Good Reason to Spike McCain's Op-Ed

By Dennis Byrne
RealClearPolitics

As an ink-strained wretch who has labored for decades for three of America's largest newspapers, I truly had hoped that liberal bias did not explain why the New York Times refused to publish an op-ed column from John McCain.

Sadly, though, the accusation is correct. By journalistic standards, the paper should have run the piece, just as Barack Obama's was run earlier. David Shipley, the Times' op-ed editor, his boss (in a later justification of the refusal) and by extension the newspaper blew this one, big, and now deserve the criticism heaped on them.

Read more at RealClearPolitics

Oh, the shame

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger accused commissioner Tony Peraica of engaging in politics by seeking to have the county's new 1 percentage-point sales tax increase repealed.

So?

Considering the wide-spread opposition to the tax increase, Peraica has it right. He ought to re-introduce the repeal every time the board meets.

Fixing Springfield

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

If the powers that be in Illinois are so all-fired determined to prevent the electorate from calling a convention to reform the state's constitution, then maybe the special interests should come up with a better way to flush the corrupt, wasteful and incompetent politics out of state government.

But they haven't. Instead, business and labor, the self-righteous and greedy, along with some pure of heart folks are spending a ton of money to get you to vote "no" when you are asked in the November election whether you want to call a state Constitutional Convention.

The response of these folks, calling themselves the Alliance to Protect the Illinois Constitution, is to throw a big wad of money, which the rest of us don't have, to the usual suspects for a public relations campaign to preserve the status quo, which we all know is, oh, so fine. To those who might suggest that some things in the constitution might be changed for the better, the alliance says: "The best way to fix Springfield is to pick new elected officials." Swell, and how? The same wonderful constitution has endowed the rat pack that runs the state with the power to hold onto its power. Personally, I'm not all that hot to open up the entire constitution to revision by whoever clutches the reins of a Con Con, as the convention is informally known. The question is: Is it worth the risk of losing what's good in the constitution to address what's wrong with the state? Well, it's beginning to look like it. Here are just a few items:

Ethics: The ethics "rules" are so laughable that they deserve to be taken out of the hands of the governor and legislature. Even the latest "reform" is so minimal that it is, at best, a cynical charade. The constitution needs a strong ethics article.

Recall: Let voters remove state, local and county officials from office.

Legislative tyranny: One reason the state is in such bad shape is the undemocratic power that Senate President Emil Jones and House Speaker Michael Madigan have to block votes on bills. End that power.

Public servant reform: Don't just free public employees from doing political work to keep their jobs, bar them from it. It wouldn't exactly be a shot between the eyes of the corrupt Chicago Democratic machine, but it would be more than a flesh wound.

Secession: Allow Cook County taxpayers to throw off the yoke of Board President Todd Stroger by making it easier for them to remove their communities from the county.

Townships: Their duties can be handled elsewhere. Get rid of them.

We're just getting started: In the area of fiscal reform, the constitution badly needs to be amended to cure the staggering sickness of the state's pension funds. The budgeting process stinks, allowing the governor and the legislature to get away with approving huge deficits. How that would be done, I don't know, but finding a way is imperative to limit the deficits and indebtedness that are creating one of the state's worse crises.

Taxes: My brother-in-law, a small businessman recently visiting from Florida, was so astonished to hear that corporations are taxed at a higher rate than individuals that I had to go back and look it up to make sure I was right. Here's what the constitution says: "[For an income] tax imposed upon corporations the rate shall not exceed the rate imposed on individuals by more than a ratio of 8 to 5." This clearly isn't a way to keep the state's economy competitive; the rates should be equal.

And more: Why do we elect comptrollers and treasurers and clerks and the secretary of state; why not professionalize the offices? How about merit selection of judges? How about cleaning up the language of the education article ("The state has the primary responsibility for financing the system of public education") to mean that the state has the primary financial responsibility for education, if that's what the people want? How about term limits? How refreshing would it be to put up no longer with Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his arrogant, anti-democratic ally, Emil Jones?

There's a lot more, but here's the challenge to the alliance: Your cooperation with the rat pack has nurtured the stink. If you are so convinced that the only way to improve Illinois government is a new cast of characters, then form an alliance to throw the bums out.

The Chicago Machine: It never left

By Dennis Byrne
The Chicago Daily Observer

It’s time to bring back the Chicago Machine. Or the Democratic Machine. Or Machine Politics.

For those of you who are thinking, “the Chicago Machine has never left, so what’s to bring back?” you’re quite right. We’ve still got the Chicago Machine. But some time ago, use of the expression “Chicago Machine” fell out of favor.

But the continued omission of references to the Machine insults reality, disserves the reading public and permits the Machine to go its happy way as if it doesn’t exist. Maintaining this pretense has national implications, allowing Democratic presidential candidate and Chicago favorite son Barack Obama to continue the fiction that he ain’t no scion of no stinking Machine.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Evanston, Precious Evanston

Bags get sacked -- chicagotribune.com

Where else other than politically correct Evanston (well, maybe Wilmette or Oak Park) would an argument erupt over whether customers at a farmer's market (its presence being one more sure sign of correctness) have to pay 25 cents for four plastic bags to haul away their purchases of organic arugula and bok choy?

Farmer Harry Brockman started charging for the bags used at his booth because he thought it would reduce the use of the bags and thereby help improve the environment. But, the charge caused OFFENSE--the greatest of all politically incorrect sins. Said the Tribune story:

Brockman got an e-mail from Chicago attorney and longtime customer Joan Ferraro: "While I admire your dedication to trying to change the environment for the better, I have to tell you I find your plastic bag policy offensive. You are in the business of selling produce. If you don't provide something for the people to take your produce home with, you are not good businesspeople." [Emphasis added]

She later told the reporter:

"I think his true motive is he wants to make it difficult to not bring your own container; he wants to penalize people if they don't," Ferraro said. "I personally don't need him or anyone else to impose penalties on me. He doesn't know that I recycle those bags. He has no idea what I do with those bags."

Others folks protested and nearly half of the respondents to an informal Tribune poll said they would not spent a quarter to buy the bags. Use of the plastic bags plunged 90 percent, demonstrating either the deep environmental sensitivity of Evanstonians, and a really cheap streak. People, it's 25 cents for crying out loud.

Is Obama tripping over his ego?

Read The audacity of ego in, of all places, the Boston Globe.

A hat tip to Newsalert

We the people of Illinois, in order to form a more perfect state, do gather in this constitutional convention

I don't think a lot of folks were all that serious about an Illinois Constitutional Convention until the established powers gathered to squelch the idea.

Here is the full list of the special interests:

AFL-CIO Illinois
American Insurance Association
Center for Tax and Budget Accountability
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
Citizen Action Illinois
Illinois Association of Convenience Stores
Illinois Association of Regional Superintendents of Schools
Illinois Association of School Administrators
Illinois Association of School Personnel Administrators
Illinois Business RoundTable
Illinois Civil Justice League
Illinois Education Association
Illinois Farm Bureau
Illinois Federation of Teachers
Illinois Manufacturers Association
Illinois Petroleum Marketers Association
Illinois Retail Merchants Association
Illinois Retired Teachers Association
Illinois State Chamber of Commerce
Illinois Teachers Retirement System
Illinois Trial Lawyers Association
League of Women Voters of Illinois
National Federation of Independent Businesses/Illinois
Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce
Service Employees International Union Illinois
State University Annuitants Association
Taxpayers? Federation of Illinois
United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, Local 881

Organized labor, do-gooders, business, educators...truly an impressive line-up. I assume that more influence-seekers will be jumping on the bandwagon.

As much as they might disagree with each other on other issues, when it comes to maintaining the status quo, they're in accord. The very creation of this alliance suggests that one reason the current state government is in such disarray is structural. If the special interests were not so interested in maintaining the status quo, big money wouldn't be pouring in to pay for a such a big PR campaign.

In one way, the campaign, which kicked off with a big press conference yesterday, has already succeeded. A lot of people now have noticed that they have an opportunity to kick the politicians and special interests in the butt, and a lot of people will be wanting to know more. If you are among them, you can start by reading a fine column by By John Bambenek in today's Chicago Daily Observer. There you'll find some good reasons to think about calling a con-con.

I'm not entirely convinced that a new con-con is a good idea, but those who are marshaling the big bucks to oppose one are lighting a fire under a disgruntled Illinois electorate. Those opposed to folks gathering in a constitutional convention call themselves the Alliance to Protect the Illinois Constitution. Perhaps what the fed-up citizens of Illinois need to do is create an Alliance to Protect Illinois Citizens from the politicians who have been empowered by the current constitution.

Aw, fugetit

The quintessential East Coast liberal establishment magazine, the New Yorker, is taking it on the chin for its cover depicting the Obama couple as...supposedly...the right wing would have everyone believe: Barack as a Muslim quisling and Michelle as, I'm not really sure, an armed terrorist.

So, New Yorker, how does it feel now to be accused of causing offense? Usually, the charges are reserved for anyone who doesn't agree with the handed down wisdom of the politically correct left.

But, wait. It's not the Obama campaign that should be offended by this cover. It is not a representation, I dare say, of what the average voter who doesn't like Obama thinks. Can those of us who disagree with some of his policies not have to suffer being labeled Baracknophobes? Can we be separated from the goofballs who, indeed, think he is a Muslim quisling? This is the real slander behind the cover, but since it's Obama's opponents who are being painted with such a broad brush, who should care?

I don't. It comes with the territory.

Here's a new blog

A new blog devoted exclusively to the problems of Mayor Richard M. Daley's extravagant and dangerous expansion of O'Hare International Airport can be found here.

Another reason to cut off Jesse Jackson

It turns out that Jackson was even feeding off (extorting?) Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE). The National Legal and Policy Center today issued a press release criticizing the financially endangered institutions for shipping a combined $250,000 to Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition and Citizenship Education Fund Annual Conference. The Chicago event, June 28 through July 2, is one of Jackson's main fund-raising vehicles.

The policy center noted:

Jesse Jackson's relationship with Freddie Mac began in 1998 when Jackson accused Freddie Mac of racial discrimination and encouraged major shareholders to sell their stock. Freddie Mac began financial support for Jackson's organizations and his criticism of Freddie Mac stopped.

That's an old story in Chicago. But it could well be new, and outrageous, to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders who have seen a huge chunk of their value wiped out in the past several days.

Another hat tip to Newsalert

Public transit riders should pay same fuel-cost increases as motorists

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

Now would be a good time to raise bus and train fares.

Why not? Everyone else is paying more to get around. Higher gasoline prices are crushing motorists. Airline passengers aren't just paying higher fares; they're also paying for their bags to fly with them. Everyone's getting hurt, except CTA train and bus, Metra commuter rail and Pace suburban bus riders. What makes them so special?

Yes, I know how holy writ dictates that each mass transit rider is one less car on the road, one less motorist adding to the demand for gasoline and making it more expensive for everyone. Or how those selfless, caring transit people, by getting out of their cars, are cutting down on pollution, saving us from global warming, preserving limited resources and providing jobs for Red Line troubadours. We should reward them, not punish them. Asking them to pay for 60 percent or 70 percent of the cost of their rides? The very idea. After all, didn't they "just" have a fare increase?

Indeed, they did, but they're still paying for only a slice of what their rides truly cost; the rest is paid by everyone who, oh yeah, just had a tax increase to give transit riders more subsidies. Chicagoans now pay the highest big-city sales tax in the country, in part for the privilege of helping the good souls who ride trains and buses.

No, I'm not against transit subsidies; public transit couldn't survive without them. And I think mass transit is a swell idea, having spent decades of my life on it, way back to when you could ride streetcars (the red and wood-paneled variety, not just the Green Hornet), catch a North Shore train in the Loop for a ride to the northern suburbs or board an open-ended elevated train car.

See here: The CTA last month said fuel costs could be $25 million more than the amount budgeted this year. That was based on May 26 costs, when the spot price for a barrel of crude was $128. More recently, it has surpassed $140, roughly a 10 percent increase in less than two months. Does anyone really think that it won't go higher?

In that time, gasoline prices, according to the federal Energy Information Administration, rose to about $4.30, from $4.17. Motorists paid all of that increase; transit riders have paid none of it. If the laws of supply and demand applied to transit, fares would be higher because (1) transit is in greater demand thanks to tapped-out motorists and (2) the cost of providing each ride has increased.

But the laws of supply and demand don't apply because politicians—who as a breed are too gutless to tell riders and voters what they need to hear—set fares. So, I'll do it for them, and take the heat.

The heat will come from the squads of urbanologists, progressives and self-ordained civic priests whose belief in the ancient formula for solving metropolitan problems is held with biblical-like certitude. They'll be threatening me with pits and pendulums unless I conform to the standard beliefs, e.g. more mass transit, no more suburban sprawl, controlled growth, comprehensive regional planning and so forth.

C'mon folks, you're talking about the same threadbare dogma that I heard more than 40 years ago when earning my master's degree in urban affairs at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Certainly you can do better than that.

Let's get to the heart of the problem: Many people clogging the highways and transit lines are moving their bodies from place to place because (1) they need to get to work, or (2) they need to acquire stuff. But what if they can do the work and obtain the goods without having to move their bodies around? This is the 21st Century; we can work and shop without our persons having to be transported from place to place by some costly, time-eating, Earth-polluting, resource-consuming mode of transportation. We've got the computer, the Internet, teleconferencing, Webcasting, telecommuting, teleworking, and on and on. If we're really serious about solving our energy and transit-funding problems we'll get really serious about increasing opportunities and incentives for tele- and computer-alternatives. Replace a few of those seminars on how to secure more mass transit funding with seminars on how to get more employers to climb on board.

Sen. Schumer single-handedly sinks a bank

When IndyMac Bank became the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history on Friday, blame was placed at the feet of Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y).

That assessment came from John Reich, director of the Office of Thrift Supervision of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which will be left holding the bag as the result of the failure, to the tune of $4 billion and $8 billion, potentially wiping out more than 10 percent of the agency's $53 billion deposit-insurance fund.

Reich, quoted in the Wall Street Journal (subscription required) noted that Schumer had sent a letter to the regulator raising concerns about the bank's insolvency. Said the Journal: "In the following 11 days, spooked depositors withdrew a total of $1.3 billion. Mr. Reich said Sen. Schumer gave the bank a 'heart attack.' 'Would the institution have failed without the deposit run?' Mr. Reich asked reporters. 'We'll never know the answer to that question.'

Not unexpectedly, Schumer found someone else to blame. His excuse, as repored by the Journal: "If OTS had done its job as regulator and not let IndyMac's poor and loose lending practices continue, we wouldn't be where we are today," Sen. Schumer said. "Instead of pointing false fingers of blame, OTS should start doing its job to prevent future IndyMacs."

There's only one problem with this blowhard's explanation. At one time, he was taking credit for making mortgages available to marginally qualified families. A tip of the hat to Newsalert for reminding us.

United Airlines wants more regulation--for someone else

2 Chicago execs hit D.C. with different views on oil issue | Crain's

Years ago, United Airlines was among the leading voices in favor of airline deregulation. Of course that was before its flawed business plan drove it into bankruptcy. Now, United, once again in financial trouble, wants to impose tougher regulation on someone else: oil speculators, whom United blames for driving up energy costs.

"Believe it or not, these are fake"--Chicago Tribune Headline

Expert: Iran `doctored' photo of missile launches -- chicagotribune.com

It's long been know that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is dangerous. But with these doctored photos, he must also be stupid to think that he could get away with this.

Dangerous and stupid. A deadly combination

Straight talk on gasoline prices

This is one of the most concise, logical and factual pieces I've seen analyzing skyrocketing energy costs. It comes from USAA, a trusted, member-owned company that provides insurance, banking and financial services. I don't claim that it explains everything, but it certainly is helpful.

The self-gelding of Jesse Jackson

By Dennis Byrne
The Chicago Daily Observer

This apology mania is getting out of hand. It’s bad enough to have to beg for forgiveness for every perceived slight or insult. Now, Jesse Jackson has taken it a step further by issuing apologies when most of us didn’t even know what he was sorry for.

Only after Jackson jumped before the cameras to issue his mea culpa did we learn that he had criticized—in front of an open mic—the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama for “talking down to black people” by supporting federally funded faith-based initiatives. For that, Jackson said he would like to cut off Obama’s testicles.

So, when I had turned on the TV, I had no clue about what Jackson was apologizing for. It didn’t help when he tried to explain the meaning of what he said: “It does not reflect any disparagement on my part for the historic event in which we are involved or my pride in Senator Barack Obama who is leading it whom I have supported by crisscrossing this nation in every level of media and audience from the beginning in absolute terms.”

Come again?


Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Huffington poster's ignorant response to my column about Obama contributors

Here is a response from some character on the Huffington Post to my column on Obama's campaign contributors. Obviously, he didn't check out the source of my figures, so I'll have to do it for him. If he has a whine about the figures regarding the "industries" that have donated to Obama, he should take it up with OpenSecrets.org, from the Center for Responsive Politics, a non-partisan Washington-based organization, recognized for its fair-handed treatment of all candidates. Look here for its explanation of the data that I cited.

Obama's cash, spin piling up

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

David Plouffe, manager of Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign, keeps sending me e-mails asking me to cough up money because the presumptive Democratic nominee's fundraising is, supposedly, as pure as the driven snow. Somehow, my name got on Obama's list of prospective suckers, and for months I've read this song and dance about how he has freed himself from the tentacles of special interests.

This is baloney.

Consider Plouffe's money pitch that followed Obama's recent decision not to accept publicly funded campaign money, which means Obama can spend way more than the $84.1 million campaign spending cap—which, by the way, is something the senator promised never to do.

Said Plouffe: "Opting out of public matching funds was an extremely difficult decision and frankly we are at a disadvantage when it comes to raising money. Unlike [ Sen.] John McCain [the presumptive Republican presidential nominee], this campaign has never accepted donations from Washington lobbyists or special-interest PACs [political action committees] . . . While McCain has built his fundraising strategy around high-dollar donors giving huge checks to the [Republican National Committee], you are creating a new model for publicly financed campaigns."

First, Plouffe is being—I'll be charitable—disingenuous when he says that "we are at a disadvantage" in the money game. "Strategists for both parties," reports Bloomberg News service, "say Obama probably will outpace McCain by more than $100 million for the presidential campaign." Obama can spend whatever he will raise; he has already raised more than $266 million, most just for the primaries. The non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics said this is the first time since the Nixon-McGovern race that the two major presidential candidates will compete on an uneven playing field.

Second, the Obama campaign is shading the truth when it implies that all the money comes from small contributions of $5, $10 or $20. The Center estimated that 55 percent of the hundreds of millions raised has come from big donors—those giving more than $200.

Third, Plouffe is flat wrong when he says this campaign has never accepted money from lobbyists or special-interest political action committees. The Center reported that Obama had raised $115,163 from "lobbyists" as of March 20. Obama now says they are "former" lobbyists, so they don't fall under his ban on lobbyist donations.

So, whom do lobbyists represent? Special interests—various industries and associations wanting something from government. Here, from the Center's OpenSecrets.org, are some of the industries that have given Obama money: lawyers, $17.8 million; securities and investments, $7.9 million; education, $7 million; real estate, business services, miscellaneous businesses, health professionals and TV/movies/music, more than $4 million each. Computers/Internet, finance, civil servants and public officials, printing and publishing, commercial banks, hospitals and nursing homes, construction services, all ranging from almost $1 million to more than $3 million.

Biggest donors? Goldman, Sachs & Co., UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, National Amusements, Lehman Brothers, Google, Sidley Austin, Skadden Arps, Time Warner, Morgan Stanley, Exelon, Latham & Watkins, Microsoft and GE are among the biggest corporate contributors.

How can this be? Didn't Obama say he doesn't accept money from lobbyists and PACs? Well, that means he still can accept money from "spouses of lobbyists, non-lobbying partners who work for lobbying firms or for law firms that do lobbying, ex-lobbyists and state lobbyists," said the Center. "Because of contribution limits, organizations that bundle together many individual contributions are often among the top donors to presidential candidates. These contributions can come from the organization's members or employees [and their families]."

Obama said he now eschews public financing because the devil (McCain and the GOP) made him do it; Obama supposedly is at a disadvantage because they are "fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special-interest PACs."

To which FactCheck.org replied: "We find that to be a large exaggeration and a lame excuse. In fact, donations from PACs and lobbyists make up less than 1.7 percent of McCain's total receipts, and they account for only about 1.1 percent of the [Republican National Committee's] receipts."

Here's a final word from FactCheck: "[T]he Democratic National Committee has historically been far more reliant on PAC and lobbyist money than the RNC. In 2004, PACs provided about 10 percent of the DNC's total fundraising and only about 1 percent of the RNC's total. Obama, after he sewed up enough delegates to win the party's nomination, sent word to the DNC to stop accepting PAC and lobbyist donations."

Tell your donors anything; it's almost like they'll believe it.

Jesse Jackson shoots, misses

Right-wing gun ruling endangers U.S.

Jesse Jackson just can't help himself when he says:

More people will die from gunshots due to the decision of five right-wing Supreme Court justices to overturn the District of Columbia law banning handguns in the district.

Right. Just like the gang shootings in the Loop that killed one and wounded three. Based on Jackson's cause-and-effect assertion the "gang of five" (Jackson's reference to the five Supreme Court justices who ruled that gun ownership was an individual right) have been arrested by Chicago police and charged with the murder.

Jackson is a first class piece of work, as he asserts:

Similarly, Chicago and other cities need limits on the kind of weapons sold. President Bush allowed the ban on assault weapons to expire, at the behest of the NRA. But assault weapons aren't necessary to defend your home. They aren't useful in hunting deer or shooting doves. They are killer guns, putting police at risk. And worse, in an age of terror, they provide the capacity to shoot down airplanes, or shoot up shopping centers.

In fact, the court decision had nothing to do with assault weapons, and, in fact, it explicitly said dangerous and unique weapons could be restricted. The court specifically said its ruling did not grant an absolute right to gun ownership.

Jackson obviously preferred to repeat liberal distortions than to read the opinion.

Citizens of Illinois, let us throw off our chains

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.—From the Declaration of Independence

Sounds like governance as practiced by “progressives,” when, in fact, it was referring to King George III. Eating out our substance was one of only a couple dozen complaints against the British crown that were cause enough for these 13 colonies to declare themselves to be “Free and Independent States.”

A multitude of offices hardly seems to be a fit enough description of what Washington D.C. and Springfield, Illinois have sent our way to eat out our substance. The only break we have received is a temporary reprieve provided by Gov. Rod Blagojevich and the Dancing Egos inhabiting Springfield because they’d rather suck each other’s blood instead of ours, at least for the time being. When they tire of clubbing each other, they’ll most assured turn to clubbing us.

Every time we turn around, there’s another “desperately needed program” being proposed to drain our creativity, initiative and life-blood, to be enforced bureaucrats and the offices they occupy. At this, the tyrant, In Rod We Trust Blagojevich, is most adept, usurping our own elected legislative body to appropriate to all himself the power of the purse and the creation of ever more “programs.”

So, on this Day of National Indpendence, let us turn to another relevant section of our nation’s birth certificate:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Can there be any clearer statement of why Illinois citizens ought to convene in a state constitutional convention to inventory and redress the many grievances they have against the established political order and to dissolve the political bands that tethered them to an oppressive and corrupt form of government?

To this purpose, in the face of the united forces of graft and corruption, and with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, let us mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

From the folks who brought you Illinois’ awful government: Millions to stop a constitutional convention

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

What describes the nature of Illinois politics better than the hiring of Democrat strategist David Axelrod’s firm by an establishment Republican to squash any possibility of a state constitutional convention?

Voting to convene a convention to revise the Illinois Constitution—which is required by that very constitution to be on the ballot this November—is hardly a subject on everyone’s (or even anyone’s) lips, but you never know when the natives might act up and demand a change in the nation’s most dysfunctional state government. No telling what it might lead to, something like, oh, government that works.

The Democratic and Republican powers that have run this state (into the ground) can’t have anything like that....

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Moderation supreme in gun decision

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

The U.S. Supreme Court's decision that gun ownership is an individual right turned Mayor Richard Daley into a fiery pillar, visible to the naked eye as far away as Rockford.

Daley declared the District of Columbia vs. Heller decision to be "frightening," "outrageous" and a "return to the days of the Wild West." You would have thought the court had ruled that free bazookas were to be handed out to gang members..

If this is the level of reflection with which he approached other major issues—such as the construction of the Chicago Children's Museum in Grant Park—then it is our turn to be frightened and outraged. Despite Daley's hysterics, Chicago, Wilmette, Morton Grove and other towns with handgun bans aren't being told they can no longer regulate the weapons. They just have to come up with regulations that make sense and pass constitutional scrutiny.

So, calm down and read the opinion, starting with the 2nd Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." That means, gun-control proponents argue, that you have a "right" to have or carry guns only if you are a member of a militia. The court said, no, it also means that individuals have gun rights for other reasons, including the protection of yourself and your family in your home. The right of self-protection is the essence of the 2nd Amendment, and you've got to have a good reason for restricting that right. By the court's standards for judging what is and isn't constitutional, no such reason exists, the majority said. "Few laws in the history of our nation," the court said, "have come close to the severe restriction of the District's handgun ban."

Read the 157-page opinion, and you'll see that there are good arguments for and against the ban—if you can get through the jargon about "prefatory clauses" and "operative clauses." But the most important part of the decision is the majority's statement that the right to bear arms, while an individual right, is not an absolute right. It's a truth that absolutists on both sides of the issue seem to forget. It's worth quoting at length: "It is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose: For example, concealed-weapons prohibitions have been upheld under the [2nd] Amendment or state analogues. The court's opinion should not be taken to cast doubt on long-standing prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms. [A previous court decision] that the sorts of weapons protected are those 'in common use at the time' finds support in the historical tradition of prohibiting the carrying of dangerous and unusual weapons . . . Thus, we do not read the 2nd Amendment to protect the right of citizens to carry arms for any sort of confrontation, just as we do not read the 1st Amendment to protect the right of citizens to speak for any purpose."

In this, the court's decision is entirely moderate. You have a right to a handgun, but that right is limited. Just as the right to speak freely is limited. Just as every right listed in the 1st Amendment is limited. Thus, the late Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' famous dictum against falsely shouting "fire" in a crowded theater.

If there is one thing I think that we should all be able to agree on it is that no right is unlimited. On second thought, there is a group of folks who still cling to the dangerous credo that rights—or at least one right—is unlimited: the absolutists who support the court decisions 35 years ago—Roe vs. Wade and Doe vs. Bolton—that proclaimed that the right to an abortion shall not be limited by anything.

Maybe D.C. vs. Heller will help open their eyes and minds to some degree of moderation. And perhaps Heller foreshadows the court acting to correct its earlier grievous error.

Words You Cannot Say About George Carlin

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

It boggles the mind how a culture can lionize the recently departed comedian George Carlin while simultaneously consigning radio guy Don Imus to the lowest precincts of hell.

They both have made a raunchy career out of “offending,” yet one—Carlin—was revered and eulogized while the other—Imus—is despised. After Carlin, 71, died of heart failure last Sunday, the praise rolled in, about his genius and brilliance, his ground-breaking comedy and social commentary, his willingness to challenge the powerful, and his advocacy for free speech. He, indeed, was all of that.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Scalia loves gang-bangers

"The ruling puts [Justice Antonin] Scalia and the four other conservative justices squarely on the side of the gang-bangers who terrorize far too many of urban American neighborhoods today."--Oak Park Village President David Pope.

I was wondering who would be the first jerk to say this. I don't know that Pope was the first, but he was the first to make it into print in these precincts. Fair-minded people can disagree on the merits of the Supreme Court decision confirming an individual's qualified right to own guns, and we all could do everyone else a service by reading the opinion before issuing absurdities like Pope's. It's as stupid as saying that if you're pro-choice, you are in favor of murdering children.

Yes, do it, Guv

Blagojevich vows $2B in cuts unless Madigan caves

And be sure, while you're at it, to cut some of your own wasteful programs.

Great Lakes oil drilling an idea to be delved

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Tribune

It's easy enough for us flatlanders to favor offshore drilling to increase oil supplies and bring down gasoline prices. But what if the "offshore" we're talking about is drilling in Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes?

Picture drilling rigs in the lake within sight of Chicago and North Shore towns. Imagine oil spills and near-dead, crude-oil-soaked birds flopping about on Oak Street Beach. Imagine the disappearance of smelt and salmon. Imagine poisoned water supplies. Imagine the end of the world.

Well, at least that's the kind of exaggerated rhetoric we'll hear from the East, West and Gulf Coasts in response to proposals by President Bush and the Republican Party's presumptive presidential nominee, John McCain, to lift the federal ban on drilling on America's outer continental shelf. Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama wants to keep the ban.

Neither proposal explicitly calls for drilling in the Great Lakes, and I'm not for raising alarms. But Congress imposed a ban on it a few years ago, and Congress can remove it. Don't think there's no interest in drilling in the Great Lakes. Michigan draws the greatest interest because it (and parts of other Midwest states) is sitting on top of the Niagaran coral reef, believed to be loaded with oil and natural gas reserves. Just under Lake Erie is a trillion cubic feet of natural gas, waiting to be tapped. Politically, the idea might seem dead right off the bat. After all, who would dare violate the health and sanctity of the world's largest body of fresh water?

Canada would. And does. Yes, politically correct Canada, that one. In addition to the Great Lakes, Canada allows offshore drilling in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. (The People's Paradise of Cuba also is eyeing offshore drilling, some of it as close as 45 miles to the Florida coast, using techniques much less environmentally sound than American companies.)

Maybe Obama, in the interests of clean water, thinks he could jawbone Canada and Cuba into giving up those oil and natural gas resources. Michigan has several active wells tapping into the reserves under the lake using "directional drilling," allowing drilling on the diagonal, as it were, reducing chances of an in-water oil spill. (Environmentalists also oppose this technique.) Those wells were grandfathered in before the Great Lakes ban was imposed.

America's outer continental shelf holds some 14 billion barrels of oil and 55 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, which according to Sen. James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican and ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is more than 25 years of Saudi Arabian imports. That's in addition to the uncounted billions of barrels in North American oil shale, which, of course, is being extracted by Canada, but not by the United States.

Is Great Lakes drilling safe? Has it brought alarming and wholesale environmental destruction? A 2002 report by the Public Interest Research Group in Michigan asserted that drilling in Lake Erie has caused 51 natural gas leaks from 1997 to 2001 and 83 oil spills from 1990 to 1995. The group's report, called "Dirty Drilling," called the leaks significant and a threat to wildlife. Canadian authorities dispute the report and call the drilling safe.

Well, not to worry. Nothing will happen. Nothing ever does.

Just a few days ago, a Republican effort to open more costal waters to exploration was defeated on a party-line vote. "We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems," pronounced House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wis.).

Good thinking. With it, Democrats will get creamed in the fall elections.

The American people are smart enough to know that opening up more domestic exploration and production won't bring down prices today or tomorrow. Just as they're smart enough to know that solar and wind power won't do it either. The American people know that the Democratic "Why bother?" reasoning eventually will leave this country in desperate shape.

These environmental die-hards are the same folks who opposed a $3.6-billion expansion of BP's northwestern Indiana oil refinery because it would add capfuls of pollutants to Lake Michigan. Called on their exaggerated claims, they reverted to the petulant argument: It doesn't matter that nothing bad will happen.

No, I'm not advocating drilling in the Great Lakes, at least not yet. There are better offshore coastal alternatives. But on our present course, what will happen is that supply won't keep up with demand, prices will continue to rise to—what?—$5, $6 or more a gallon. The American public will know where to look when figuring out who is to blame.

The Sun-Times turns Mariotti into the Teflon columnist

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

Jay Mariotti, the Sun-Times sport oracle, had left a message on my voice mail, and, ooh, was he mad.

It was, maybe, a dozen years ago when I was an editorial board member and columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times. As a White Sox fan, I had written something (I presume it must have been nice) about the team and its owner Jerry Reinsdorf. Mariotti disagreed. Furiously.

Don’t you know, Mariotti raged, that “they” are talking about “it.” By “it,” it turned out that Mariotti had written a contrary column on the same subject (I hadn’t seen or heard about it before I wrote mine) and “they” were, presumably, his sports writing colleagues who were having a chuckle that someone from the same paper would disagree with His Majesty.

Most of the rest of the irate message is lost in the fog of my memory, except for this ending: “The next time you write about it, check with me first.”

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Nothing more needs to be said

Daley defends Blagojevich

More Problems at O'Hare Airport

By Dennis Byrne
Chicago Daily Observer

If Mayor Richard M. Daley can’t get his phantasmagoric O’Hare Airport expansion plan completed in time for the 2016 Olympics, maybe he can get the Games postponed.

That’s because he has a better chance of getting the Olympics delayed than he has of realizing his airport expansion hallucination by then.

Doubt that? Then consider the Daley airport record so far: False starts, delays, broken promises, excuses. After huge cost overruns and missed timetables for just the first, northern runway (still not open) of the expansion plan’s Phase 1, the news out of City Hall is that Daley has ordered that $200 million more be spent on what only can be called the premature planning and engineering of the even more difficult Phase 2. That’s even though the financially troubled airlines that are supposed to pay for much of the entire expansion have said they are not in for phase 2.

Read more at the Chicago Daily Observer