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| Michael Arrington announces gift as leftist Mayor Tisdahl lurks in the wings |
The children of the late, legendary Republican statehouse leader, W. Russell Arrington announced that they are donating half a million dollars to the bankrupt, leftist City of Evanston.
In return for this they will get their old pappy's name on a lagoon.
Just imagine the caretakers of Ronald Reagan's legacy pouring in funds to bail out an economically mismanaged, socialist Berkeley, California and you get the picture.
Arrington, who was elected from Evanston to the state legislature from 1945 to 1972 -- back when it was a conservative bastion -- was known as Mr. North Shore Republican.
The powerful leader of the Illinois State Senate he was fiscally and socially conservative to the core. An ardent devotee of the staunch anti-communist, Richard M. Nixon, he was tough on crime, tough on drugs, and tough on Democrat machine voter fraud.
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| Senator W. Russell Arrington |
Now his heirs are shelling out a lot of cash to get a lagoon named after him in Evanston.
Evanston is today the Illinois paradigm for leftist social nincompoopery.
It voted 87.14% for Obama in '08. The Evanston Township High School recently jettisoned its advanced honors programs because hardly any blacks and Latinos could qualify. Its City Council is seriously considering banning plastic shopping bags to save the earth. It thwarts business development at every turn. Its government actually has a full time, paid "sustainability director."
And it is going broke.
Evanston's current mayor, an aging feminist Earth Mother named Elizabeth Tisdahl, in a rare moment of candor, actually told the Pioneer Press as much.
"I feel bad having to tell these new city hires about our employee benefits packages, because I know we won't be able to pay for them down the road," she confessed.
Enter the feeble minded offspring of Senator Arrington.
At the end of June, the paunchy diminutive heirs, Michael Arrington and Pat Smythe announced a $500,000 gift to the City of Evanston for improvements to a city-run lakeshore lagoon. It will be named for their father.
Surrounded by Tisdahl and a gaggle of fawning, local lefty pols at the Dawes Park site, the two heirs announced that they had "collectively made the decision."
I always thought that a "collective" consisted of more than 2 parties, but in new-age Evanston, who knows?
So here you have half a million dollars from a foundation named in honor of a prominent, fiercely partisan Republican conservative going to patch leaks in the foundering hull of the state's premier socialist municipality.
Ardent budget-balancer, W. Russell Arrington is surely turning over in his grave.
My oh my. I feel sorry for the guy, for the foolishness and silliness of his heirs, and he's been dead for years! He probably cared less about Evanston and more about principles, and doing something to maintain those instead of a city would likely have pleased him more.
ReplyDeleteDid they not stop to think that if Evanston really loved the guy, they'd have done something in his honor already, and his kids wouldn't have to hand over half a million just to get a lagoon named after him?
I thought about that too.
ReplyDeleteBut the left is always putting up monuments to their own sleazy pols, free of charge. Just look at the Niles Township Government Building which is named the "Edward Warman Administrative Center." Eddie Warman was a 2-bit Democrat hack pol who became a 3rd rate ambulance chaser lawyer.
It is funny that lefty Evanston is the only town I've ever been in to have a major street named after General George Custer -- the great Indian killer.
I'm sure that some PC type has proposed changing the name, but the liberal pols found they couldn't stand on principle when they found out it would cost a lot of money to change all the street signs.