Oak Park’s Congressman: Socialists liked him

Interesting Oak Park and Danny Davis reference here from the March-April 1996 “New Ground,” published by the Chicago Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), revving up for the coming primry:

The Seventh Congressional District runs from the lakefront straight west to the Cook County border. If you’d like to get involved, contact the Davis for Congress headquarters: (312) 626-1996. Folks out in Oak Park can also call Larry Shapiro at (708) 445-0072.

Contributions can be sent to Davis for Congress, 5730 W. Division, Chicago, IL 60651. Note that Federal law requires political committees (i.e. Davis for Congress) to report the name, mailing address, occupation and name of employer for each individual whose contributions aggregate in excess of $200 in a calendar year.

Davis won in April and November, has been Illinois 7th’s man in Congress since that time.  Before he had put a foot in Congress, he had socialists’ support.  “New Ground” tells why:

Danny Davis is certainly not foreign to Chicago DSA. From the very beginning, he has always been willing to help: appearing as a speaker with Michael Harrington, serving as a Master of Ceremonies without peer at the annual Debs – Thomas – Harrington Dinner.

If there’s been dissatisfaction with him on socialists’ part since then, it has not surfaced.  At least in 2002, if not before and since, he belonged in Congress to the Progressive Caucus, with these leading-edge worthies:

Neil Abercrombie — Hawaii
Tammy Baldwin — Wisconsin
Xavier Becerra — California
David Bonior — Michigan
Corrine Brown — Florida
Sherron Brown — Ohio
Michael Capuano — Massachusetts
Julia Carson — Indiana
William “Lacy” Clay — Missouri
John Conyers — Michigan
Danny Davis — Illinois
Peter DeFazio — Oregon
Rosa DeLauro — Connecticut
Lane Evans — Illinois
Eni Faleomavaega — Am Samoa
Sam Farr — California
Chaka Fattah — Pennsylvania
Bob Filner — California
Barney Frank — Massachusetts
Luis Gutierrez — Illinois
Earl Hilliard — Alabama
Maurice Hinchey — New York
Jesse Jackson Jr. — Illinois
Sheila Jackson-Lee — Texas
Stephanie Tubbs Jones — Ohio
Marcy Kaptur — Ohio
Dennis Kucinich — Ohio
Tom Lantos — California
Barbara Lee — California
John Lewis — Georgia
Jim McDermott — Washington
James P. McGovern — Massachusetts
Cynthia McKinney — Georgia
Carrie Meek — Florida
George Miller — California
Patsy Mink — Hawaii
Jerry Nadler — New York
Eleanor Holmes Norton — D.C.
John Olver — Massachusetts
Major Owens — New York
Ed Pastor — Arizona
Donald Payne — New Jersey
Nancy Pelosi — California
Bobby Rush — Illinois
Bernie Sanders — Vermont [Socialist]
Jan Schakowsky — Illinois
Jose Serrano — New York
Hilda Solis — California
Pete Stark — California
Bennie Thompson — Mississippi
John Tierney — Massachusetts
Tom Udall — New Mexico
Nydia Velazquez — New York
Maxine Waters — California
Diane Watson — California
Mel Watt — North Carolina
Henry Waxman — California
Paul Wellstone — Minnesota
Lynn Woolsey — California

Tags: Oak+Park, Socialists, Danny+Davis

She knows life in the Bronx, anyhow

Has Sotomayor any business experience?  She knows how the world works, says Obama, but like him knows not the pressures and realities of profit and loss?  I’m alluding to his test for a good S.C. justice. 

I’d prefer a keen legal mind and a propensity to call it by the book.  Why does Obama privilege (as they say in academe and its offshoots) some kinds of experience and not others? 

We know why: he’s a leftist radical who is skilled in vote-getting.  But we few — we unhappy few — would like a majority to know it, wouldn’t we?

Here’s a case in point, demonstrating her baffling lack of common sense in the business arena.

Tags: Sonia+Sotomayor

Episcopal church and its gay bishop

A look at religion Episcopalian-style, from the pews:

A year ago, Mary Slusser was dreadfully upset about her church. The Anglican Communion was seething, as issues of sexual morality divided it. Two African churches, Nigeria and Uganda, were leading a charge, with a view to schism or expulsion of liberal churches, primarily the Episcopal Church in the United States.

Tags: Episcopal+Church+in+the+U.S.A., Bishop+Eugene+Robinson, Christ+Church,+River+Forest

It’s the market, stupid

Don Boudreaux of George Mason U. offers a neat capsule pro-market statement, quoting Pietra Rivoli’s 2005 book The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy, as in this excerpt:

A system that ignores market signals, that provides no incentives, that subsidizes losers cannot be efficient in producing goods and services. Central planners will produce the wrong goods, use the wrong inputs, set the wrong prices, hire the wrong people, and ultimately produce shoddy products, and not enough of them, anyway.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch (White House), the fixers are bound to decide they know all those things and can do it better.  They just know, that’s all. 

Tags: Don+Boudreax, Pietra+Rivoli

Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States

Here’s a little something off the top of one’s head:

America’s 46th president, Seamas McDoherty-O’Rahilly, fresh from his commencement address and honorary doctorate at Notre Dame in May, 2013, set himself to put things right with Catholic voters. He had angered them by banning Polish surnames, leaving Sitko, Czarobski, Lujack and others languishing pseudonymously in the record books. In addition, after the election, which he had won with heavy Catholic support, he had come out as a Presbyterian.

At the commencement he announced revocation of the Polish-name ban, and a week later he paraded distant Catholic cousins at a White House reception. But what really did it for him was an unexpected shift in Catholic thinking on political-economic matters.

Officially and with considerable grassroots approval, the church began to emphasize the seventh commandment (as Catholics number them), “Thou shalt not steal,” somewhat to the detriment of its longstanding emphasis on the Catholic sixth, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” and the don’t-even-think-about-it 9th, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife.”

Similarly, new emphasis was placed on the Catholic tenth, “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s goods,” rarely invoked and largely replaced with social-justice exhortations. No change was apparent in emphasis on the fifth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” as in opposition to abortion and capital punishment and in its ongoing flirtation with pacifism.

The shift to the anti-stealing seventh came gradually, as Catholic shifts always do, though far less gradually than most. It was virtual confiscation of money and property by the government from citizens and their companies, mainly by way of the money-printing spree known as the stimulus bill that got the bishops off a dime.

Then came the auto company bailouts and subsequent transfer of ownership. “It’s the Chrysler thing, stupid,” anti-Obama publicists said when they weren’t saying, “It’s the economy, stupid” and “It’s the inflation, stupid.”

Implicated in this was the car czar, an auto-industry newcomer under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for activities predating his czar appointment. Under his management, for instance, General Motors became known as UAW Motors. The Treasury department played its role. “Treasury hath given, treasury hath taken away” was the relevant campaign slogan. Major banks found themselves owned in part by the government.

It became too much for the bishops, until then vocal almost exclusively about abortion and immigration. The boldest of them counseled withholding Communion not only from abortion-enablers but also from various abrogators of property rights. Several Catholic senators switched to suburban mega churches rather than be embarrassed.

Rome finally spoke. Even when supporting a free market, Pope John Paul II had said that the market should be “appropriately controlled by the forces of society and by the State,” giving what some called a license to steal to creative officials. But the newly crowned Pope John Paul III quoted a 16th-century Jesuit named Mariana, who said, “The private goods of citizens are not at the disposal of the king.”

Times were a-changing. McDoherty-O’Rahilly climbed on this churchly bandwagon and sailed ahead toward mid-term elections with the wind at his back.

Tags: Seamas+McDoherty-O’Rahilly, Barack+Obama

Wisconsin conviction of Donald McGuire

The first McGuire conviction has been upheld.

MADISON, Wis. – An appeals court on Wednesday upheld the 2006 conviction of a once-prominent Jesuit priest on charges he abused two students during retreats in Wisconsin in the 1960s.

Donald McGuire, once a spiritual adviser to Mother Teresa and her religious order of nuns, is one of the most influential religious figures convicted in the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal.

On Wednesday, the District 2 Court of Appeals rejected his request for a new trial on charges he sexually abused two teenagers during trips to a cottage in southeastern Wisconsin in 1967 and 1968.

It may not be over yet, his lawyer says.

Robert Henak, a Milwaukee lawyer who represented McGuire during his appeal, blasted Wednesday’s decision and continued to insist the victims were not credible. He said he would consider asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to overturn the decision or pursue an appeal in federal court.

“It’s very difficult to understand how somebody can wait 36 years to bring charges like this, wait until after all of the witnesses who could rebut your story are dead, and that can still be allowed to go to court,” he said. “It just boggles the mind. To allow something like this simply in my mind is not justice.”

McGuire is serving a 25–year federal sentence [where?] and will not be returned to Wisconsin, the Wisconsin prosecutor said.

Tags: Donald+McGuire+SJ, clergy+abuse

Alinsky lives

Wall St. Journal has a story about an activist who “terrorizes” bankers who foreclose.  He uses pure Alinsky-style tactics (“If the end doesn’t justify the means, what does?”):

In the 1990s, Mr. Marks leaked details of a banker’s divorce to the press and organized a protest at the school of another banker’s child. He says he would use such tactics again. “We have to terrorize these bankers,” Mr. Marks says.

We are living in a revisited age of people’s republic guerilla tactics.  Barbarians at the gate and all that.

Tags: Neighborhood+Assistance+Corp.+of+America, Bruce+Marks