Gobbling gobblers is OK, according to Greenkeeping (November/ December): “Of all the meat and poultry choices, turkey is among those that are most free from pesticide residues…not totally pure but much less contaminated than fatty foods such as beef steak and hot dogs.”
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The biggest gentrifying area in the city during the 1980s–where property values rose by 150 percent or more, $40,000 or more in absolute terms–is “a broad belt on the North Side from Lake Street to Lawrence, filling virtually every [census] tract between the already affluent lakefront neighborhoods and Western Avenue,” reports Ed Zotti in Chicago Enterprise (December). “The rapidly appreciating district comprised more than 14,000 owner-occupied homes and had a population of 137,000. There were no signs of the displacement that supposedly accompanies gentrification; on the contrary, during the decade, the number of whites dropped, from 68 to 62 percent, while the number of blacks, Asians and Hispanics rose.”
Recent history in capsule form, from U. of C. economist Michael L. Mussa in the University of Chicago Record (November 21): “When the University of Chicago was founded a century ago, government budgets in the most advanced countries amounted to roughly 10 percent of national product, with the United States at the low end of the spectrum. Today, in the advanced industrial democracies, government budgets generally constitute about 40 percent of national product, again with the United States at the lower end of the spectrum. Arguably, economic performance might be enhanced if the scope of government activity were somewhat reduced. However, given the spectacular record of postwar economic growth in the advanced industrial democracies, and given the consistent electoral support for substantial-size government, it would be unscientific, churlish, and perhaps even fattening to suggest that a return to minimal government would pass the ‘market test’ of free and fair elections….At the other extreme, the case for maximal state involvement in economic affairs has suffered catastrophic damage….The fundamental tenets of statist economics are as dead as the Russian monk Rasputin–whom you may recall was poisoned, strangled, stabbed, shot, cut into pieces, burned to ashes, and fired through a cannon.”
