“Soon after I started liking it here, …I began adopting the habits of a native Chicagoan,” writes native Philadelphian Dennis Rodkin in New City (August 1), “such as spitting in the empty el seat next to me so I could get some privacy…. Once I’d begun to feel that Chicago really was my home, I engaged in various local rituals, including the joyous Festival of New York/LA Horror Stories and the Daily Gathering to Ridicule Bob Greene. ‘Thiiiis iiiiis my kind of town,’ I sang lustily one February while having four frostbitten toes removed.” Pretty close–but true Chicagoans don’t waste their ridicule on Bob Greene. They remember that there once was a columnist named Royko who would take on an imperial mayor when no one else would.
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“It would be irresponsible to put so many eggs in such a volatile basket as the aviation industry,” concludes University of Chicago public-policy student Jonathan Silverstein in his thorough study of the economics of a Lake Calumet airport (now being circulated by the Heartland Institute). Unlike other analysts, Silverstein takes into account that economic “multiplier effects” apply to airport costs as well as to airport benefits. (For instance, just as the purchases made by airport workers go on the plus side, so the loss of purchases by displaced factory workers goes on the minus side.) He concludes that only with the most optimistic estimates for enplanements, interest rates, and multipliers will the Lake Calumet airport be worth building. “This is not to suggest that the airport will not have positive economic value. It will. However, even if the project stays within budget, that value may well be less than the opportunity cost. That means there is a better than even chance that even more jobs would be created if the money were left to the private sector.”
“Far more crimes have been committed in the name of God than Satan,” writes Debbie Nathan in the Chicago-based weekly In These Times (July 24-August 6), reporting the views of FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit agent Kenneth Lanning. “Some Italian mafiosi wear crucifix jewelry, some priests molest children and the ‘Jonestown’ mass suicide was instigated by a Protestant preacher. ‘But we don’t call their crimes “Christian” crimes,’ Lanning points out.”
