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?