Chicago Mayor Richard Daley this week called for an end to the “open
door” admissions policy at Chicago City Colleges, citing concerns about
the cost of remedial courses and a desire to build a quality program.
Every year, the system spends about $30 million for remedial
classes—about 6 percent of its $457.5 million budget. Daley suggested
that a better approach might be to offer programs through alternative
high schools to get students up to speed before they enter college.
Is this a sign of things to come?

Let’s pretty much give away our parking meter revenue but change one of the best aspects of community colleges for 6% of the budget. No reason why we should help limit the steps that enable secondary education so that more people have access to higher paying careers that go back into powering our economy, let’s just send them back to the places that failed them.

sexartandpolitics:

“Two young girls playing jump-rope on a hot summer night were shot Tuesday evening when two people rode up on bikes and opened fire in the Roseland neighborhood on the Far South Side. Tanaja Stokes, 8, was shot in the head and died within an hour, authorities said. Her 7-year-old cousin Ariana Jones was also shot in the head and was in critical condition at Advocate Christ Medical Center this morning. […] Keauna Wise, another relative of the girls, said she was on the porch with several other women watching nearly 10 children play in front of the home, which has been in the family for nearly 50 years. “We were sitting on the porch watching them jump rope,” Wise said. “And (they) just started shooting. It was nobody out there but women and kids.””

I was in a ‘city-off’ with a friend of mine the other day; her city Milwaukee and mine Chicago. I didn’t think it was even close but then she pointed out that a dozen people get shot in Chicago every weekend, often children and almost always on the South Side. Milwaukee isn’t very safe, people get hurt all the time but it’s white people, blacks, latinos, etc and non-fatal. She said we ‘have a black people and guns problem’. Taken in the wrong context that phrase can be a very bad thing but we do. And I had no counter-argument, I haven’t examined why this happens and I don’t think the experts, including those sent over from the White House briefly that one time, have come up with anything helpful. All I know is that it’s just fucking fucked up that this happens ALL THE TIME.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist/dick Terry Savage goes off on a few girls who gave neighbors free lemonade/snacks on the 4th of July and was proud enough of this moment to write it up as an article:

“No!” I exclaimed from the back seat. “That’s not the spirit of giving. You can only really give when you give something you own. They’re giving away their parents’ things — the lemonade, cups, candy. It’s not theirs to give.”

[libertarian logic leap]->

No wonder America is getting it all wrong when it comes to government, and taxes, and policy. We all act as if the “lemonade” or benefits we’re “giving away” is free.

If we can’t teach our kids the basics of running a lemonade stand, how can we ever teach Congress the basics of economics?

HAHAHA