“When you add it all up, what you get is a picture of [a future] Chicago with no poor people between 67th St. and Evanston, and between Interstate 90 and 94 on the west and the lakefront on the east,” says Adolph Reed, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, in Chicago Ink (August). “You know the statue down on South State St. in Bronzeville, of the black migrant with his suitcase in his hand and the big, wide-brimmed hat? I wouldn’t be surprised to see the Mayor go turn it around, and face it the other way.”
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Speak softly, but don’t forget to carry a big stick. According to a recent press release, two U. of I. economists, Madhu Khanna and Lisa Damon, have found that the EPA’s voluntary “33/50” program worked pretty well. Initiated in 1991 to encourage chemical companies to reduce their pollutant emissions by 33 percent by 1992 and 50 percent by 1995, the program resulted in a reduction of 41 percent by 1993. The economists found that companies weren’t motivated only by civic-mindedness, but also by the threat of Superfund penalties. “Voluntary initiatives alone are unlikely by themselves to generate the desired changes in corporate behavior…[and] should be regarded as complements to rather than substitutes for mandatory environmental regulation.”
Newt Gingrich sent out El Cinco de Mayo greetings to Mexicans and Mexican-Americans in the U.S., writes Juan Andrade Jr. of the Chicago-based U.S. Hispanic Leadership Institute in a recent issue of the institute’s newsletter, “USHLI Quarterly Update.” Gingrich’s staff identified him “as ‘El Hablador de la casa’! The word ‘hablador’ can be translated to mean anything from ‘loudmouth’ to ‘liar’ and, being perfectly honest, I wish I could tell you which translation the Speaker’s office had in mind!”
