The Evanston Everyman 4/23/09

If good looks was a minute/ You know that you could've been an hour- Smokey Robinson, 'The Way You Do The Things You Do'

The inspector general for the TARP program announced Tuesday that more than $2 trillion of  the $3 trillion dollars handed over to the financial industry lacks proper accounting. If you use the FBI figure that 10% of all federal money given to the private market gets lost to fraud, you have $30 billion dollars. Over the first three months of the year companies like GM, AIG, Citigroup, and others spent $9.2 million to lobby the government for more funds. GM received an extra $5 billion dollars last week, and Chrysler received $500 million in temporary loans to stem the tide until their restructuring deadline. Yet The Post reported that Chrsyler Financial turned down financial aid because their executives did not want to accept mandated compensation limits. Meanwhile, the rest of us struggle to make our bills and hold up our heads. Don’t let the Man ever fool you. He’ll always get his.

- The Supreme Court heard a case this week regarding the strip search of an Arizona girl at her school after she gave another student an ibuprofen. An Advil, for chrissakes. God save the ignorant administrator who make the decision to strip search my child. What kind of training does an education official or security officer have to conduct a strip search? I knew we allowed torture of foreigners without even a shrug, but strip searches of our children is too far, yo. Too far.

- Heard the Fridge, always Bears 72 in our hearts if not our media guides, is in serious condition. Keep the big-hearted guy in your thoughts and prayers.

- Our ex-gov, Rod left court Tuesday after having his request to appear in a NBC reality show based in Costa Rica was denied to greet the disenfranchised outside the Payless Shoe Store kitty corner from the federal plaza. Rod told reporters an admirer gave him a Tiffany candlestick before he entered court. No photograph of Professor Plum exists to know if he was the considerate stranger.

- The major problem I have with the talk surrounding torture investigations is how everyone says they want to depoliticize. Come on, that’s bull! Torture progressed in the first place because the Bushies were scared shitless that another terrorist attack would dislodge them from power. Of course, that turned out to be true. It was just they were the terrorists. Anything involving politicians is always politicized. That is why it should be a truth committee set up with policy wonks and old hands with no ambition of higher office. Give them a nice sized budget and staff. Let them name names and state deeds. State bar associations can handle the rest.

- Maggie Daley left Northwestern Hospital yesterday after receiving treatment for a bone lesion. Mrs. Daley has lived with the effects of breast cancer for the last seven years. It is a terrible disease. In these hard times, less women will undergo mammograms. Those who do sign up for them may find a long wait in their location because there are not enough radiologists in the system. Black women especially need to be careful, as the latest research indicates that they are more than three times as likely to suffer from the most drug resistant form of the illness. The numbers- 250,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer this year, over 500 a day. These are our wives, mothers, sisters.

The more you know, kids.

- Finally, I read where Evanston’s police officers now must turn off their squads when writing tickets or accomplishing their other duties. I don’t believe the fine member of Evanston’s Finest turned his engine off two days ago when, after almost clipping my bike, he U-ed to order me to the other side of the street. I wanted to ask him if he was going to be so conscientious with the motorists who fail to stop for pedestrians at crosswalks or stop at stop signs. In other news, the proposed high-rise at 1890 Maple received half-off their property tax to the city for the next twenty years. Keep this in mind, ‘Stonians, when you send that property tax check later this year.

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