Und eat --
Und drink --
Happy New Year Everybody!!
Friday, December 31, 2010
A Happy Chicago Lampoon New Year's Eve (Schlager-Style)
Now is the time on Chicago Lampoon ven ve dance ---
Und eat --
Und drink --
Happy New Year Everybody!!
Und eat --
Und drink --
Happy New Year Everybody!!
Wednesday, December 29, 2010
The Wit and Wisdom of M. Stanton Evans
M. Stanton Evans was one of the wittiest conservative leaders and writers that I ever had the pleasure of meeting.
Once some friends were with him at a fancy restaurant and when the pompous waiter was taking desert orders, he told the fellow, "I think I'll have some RED Jello."
I was with him and the great, then young, conservative satirist, R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. When Evans was showing us around his new offices, he pointed out its balcony which overlooked the street and he commented: "It's perfect for addressing the adoring throngs who will gather below my window in the street."
He was also quite capable of pulling off a dirty trick or two. One summer I helped organize his National Journalism Center office softball team. He told us that we were going to have a game out in the Virginia countryside and after driving for an hour or so, we arrived at a farmhouse. He then told us that we would first help his girlfriend move her furniture from the house into a moving van and then play ball in the field. By the time we were finished with the back-breaking labor, we all were, of course, too exhausted to play ball.
Here is a sample of Stan's witticisms from across the years:
* "Tax cuts are like sex; when they are good, they are very, very good. And when they are bad, they are still pretty good."
* Evans’ Law: “Whenever ‘one of our people’ reaches a position of power where he can do us some good, he ceases to be ‘one of our people.’”
* Evans’ law of inadequate paranoia: “[N]o matter how bad you think something is, when you look into it, it's always worse."
* "Liberals don't care what you do as long as it's compulsory."
* "I've always felt that anyone who has his head screwed on right should be conservative when he is young and, as he gets older, become more and more conservative."
* "One of the things that happens to you when you get old, really two bad things, one of them is that you lose your hearing, and I forget what the other one is."
* "We have two parties here, and only two. One is the evil party, and the other is the stupid party. I'm very proud to be a member of the stupid party. Occasionally, the two parties get together to do something that's both evil and stupid. That's called bipartisanship."
* "We all know that Mrs. Clinton has complained about the vast right-wing conspiracy, and of course, she is correct about that, and we are all part of it, but when I was starting out, it was only half vast."
* "The National Council of Churches adopted a resolution condemning the Reverend Jerry Falwell for mixing religion and politics. It's a mistake that the National Council itself does not make, of course: It has nothing to do with religion."
* "It was really hard for us young conservatives to recover from the Goldwater defeat; it was all the worse because in those days we had no grief counselors."
* "I never liked Nixon until Watergate."
* “I didn’t much care for Joseph McCarthy’s ends, but I always admired his methods.”
Dan Proft: The Chicago Personification of "Evan's Law"
M. Stanton Evans was the youngest editor ever of the Indianapolis News He was an early backer of Barry Goldwater for President. He was a founding member of the American Conservative Union, for which I was press secretary in the 1980s.
I played softball with Stan Evans, but was much better than he was. I was, after all, 20 years younger and the descendant of a Hall of Fame Chicago White Sox pitcher.
But Stan, who was an early editor of the National Review, was ever ready with a good quip.
Among his best was his expostulation of what he called, "Evans Law."
Evans Law went as follows: "Our people remain our people -- until they get into a position whereby they can do us some good. Then they cease to be our people."
Dan Proft is the Illinois personification of Evans Law.
He was a terribly promising young guy at Northwestern University. There he almost singlehandedly held up the alternative conservative Northwestern Chronicle newspaper and the campus conservative movement overall.
But then something went awry.
Proft got the scent of power and cash.
First he ran off to manage the campaign of pro-abortionist, feminist, Elizabeth Coulter.
When asked to rectify this with his ostensible Right-to-Life views, he said that no one North of North Avenue could be elected unless they took a pro-abortion stance.
Yet these days on WLS radio he scoffs at his partner, Bruce Wolf, who recommends the very same thing.
Then Proft went off to milk the taxpayers of the corrupt Republican controlled berg of Cicero (Alphonse Capone's former stomping grounds) with contracts for "PR services" all over the place.
Yea, that passes the smell test.
Proft, when he was engaged in his ill-fated, backbench campaign for Governor, avoided the immigration issue like the plague -- pretty much mirroring RINO Mark Kirk on that score.
Even today he blabs about the need for Republicans to have "a conversation" with the illegal alien lobby.
And what might that mean?
And Proft asserts the knee-jerk Chicago School of Economics defense of so-called "free trade."
"We all live like kings because of the cheap products we can buy from China," Proft says.
"And we gain all of the financial benefits because we create the proprietary rights to the software intrinsic thereto," Proft says.
But Dan Proft lives in the posh Lake Point Tower, 505 North Lake Shore Drive.
There, at that exclusive retreat, where even the tawdriest units sell in the high 6 figures, one is marvelously insulated from the real Chicago.
There, one doesn't meet the 40-something black guys who grew up in the stable homes of steelworkers from the now long-gone South side Chicago steel mills. On North Lake Shore Drive, one doesn't see these guys who are now cadging quarters to subsidize their daily intake of malt liquor and sleeping under bushes in the park at night.
They don't allow riff-raff like that in Proft's rarified domain.
One reasonably questions whether those lost Chicagoans will be able to grab those great opportunities in the software development field that Proft so glibly recommends.
And, by the way, the Atlantic in its recent assessment of the Chinese hi-tech industry recommended that the Chinese industrial combine was now insisting that they take over those higher profit technological functions and were beginning to do so.
And when Proft's good ole buddy, the Reverend Meeks, suggested that the racial spoils system should only apply to blacks -- and not to Latinos, Asians or women -- Proft did not recommend that affirmative action should be summarily tossed onto the ash heap of history -- as any sensible conservative would -- but rather said that his pal, Meeks had "misspoke."
YIKES!!!
As my old pal M. Stanton Evans postulated: "Our people are only our people -- until they get into a position where they can do us some good. Then they cease to be our people"
Just call that "Evan's Law."
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Evanston's Megabucks Unionized Teachers
(Editor's Note: The list of names and salaries was updated on 10/23/12 to reflect the latest available 2011 salary data. Readers of the article with the 2010 list will note that they all got hefty little pay hikes, despite the bad economy.)
Evanston, Illinois is one of the most wildly liberal "progressive" municipalities on the face of the American landscape. It voted overwhelmingly for Barack Obama. It has no Republican presence to speak of.
It has a political context that is dominated by the teachers' unions and other public employees unions.
It is culturally a hotbed of oddball organic food enthusiasts and wealthy trust-fund lefties who live in inherited multi-million dollar homes.
It has a sizeable black population, which has gained such a level of Obamaite political clout that it has compelled its School board to jettison "honors programs" in English, Humanities and Science, because not enough Blacks and Hispanics could make the cut from the nationally standardized tests.
Only Whites and Asians were making the grade.
It has 114 unionized teachers hauling down $100,000 a year or more -- up from 85 last year. If this is an era of national economic austerity, you'd never know it if you were a unionized Evanston teacher. And 2 of them are gaming the system for more than $200,000 a year.
These teachers are more than 95% Democrat liberal in voting behavior. They sneer at the mere peasants who toil to pay their gold-plated salaries.
Upon retirement they will pull down 80 to 85% of their last paycheck -- with full medical benefits -- for as long as they live.
They are the new elite. The new aristocrats. Or in the parlance of their Soviet philosophic blood-brothers -- the new privileged apparatchicks.
But Evanston is going broke.
Its School districts are going broke.
Its mayor, an aging, 60s-era leftist Democrat feminist by the name of Elizabeth B. Tisdahl recently had to concede, "I feel bad when telling these new police and fire recruits that we will be able to pay them these promised benefits, because we probably will not."
Here are the latest available salaries of the Evanston Township unionized teachers (these are the ones who are always lamenting "we need more money for education.")
Funny, if 2 of them should marry, they would meet Jan Schakowsky's, Nancy Pelosi's and Barack Hussein Obama's criteria for being amongst "the most wealthy Americans," who should be taxed to the hilt.
Here are the Evanston High School Teachers' salaries, just updated on 3/1/11 to reflect 2010 salaries. Fatcats pulling down $100k + are in bold, the ultra-elite $200k + are in bold and italics. ---
These figures are culled from the IL State Teachers Retirement Fund annual reports, by way of the Family Taxpayers Foundation which was compelled to file suit so that this information would be made transparent for the taxpaying public to see.
Judge for yourself:
SALARIES AS REPORTED BY STATE OF ILLINOIS FOR LAST PENSION REPORTING PERIOD.
Teacher Salary Database - (click on the individual's name for more data)
This concludes the complete report of 2011 teachers salaries paid in Evanston Township High School District 202.
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