Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Thursday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

1. Remembering Roy Clark.
“Country star Roy Clark, the guitar virtuoso and singer who headlined the cornpone TV show Hee Haw for nearly a quarter century and was known for such hits as ‘Yesterday When I Was Young’ and ‘Honeymoon Feeling,’ has died,” AP reports. “He was 85.”
Clark has appeared just once on the Beachwood, in The Beachwood Country All-Stars.
↓
“It’s fast cars and whiskey, long-haired girls and fun for all concerned.”


2. The Nation’s Slumlord.
“From his earliest days in office, HUD Secretary Ben Carson has repeatedly said he joined the Trump administration to fix the ‘rats, roaches, bed bugs, mold, lead and violence’ that he witnessed as a surgeon in low-income communities. Under the Trump administration, the number of HUD apartments cited for unsafe, unhealthy and physically deteriorating living conditions has been on the rise.
“An NBC News investigation has found that more than 1,000 out of HUD’s nearly 28,000 federally subsidized multifamily properties failed their most recent inspection – a failure rate that is more than 30 percent higher than in 2016, according to an analysis of HUD records.”
↓
“At the same time, Carson has proposed raising rents on poor families, requiring them to pay a higher percentage of their income for housing, and the Trump administration has pushed – so far unsuccessfully – for steep budget cuts.”
3. Armpit Of Chicago.
“For generations, minority and low-income communities have taken on disproportionate amounts of toxic waste and industrial pollution, and this is especially true in large metropolitan areas like Chicago, experts say,” the Tribune reports.

In response to political pressure from activists, state and federal officials began establishing “environmental justice” policies in the 1990s to prevent toxic threats in poor and minority neighborhoods.
But a decade after Illinois launched its program, communities like East Side – where 80 percent of the residents are Latino and 25 percent of households make less than $25,000 a year – have seen little progress.
These lasting inequalities, in Illinois and across the nation, raise a troubling question from scholars: Are environmental justice policies actually bridging the gap, or are they solely declarations of good intentions?
Public outreach, the most tangible piece of the environmental justice program, is spotty in Illinois. According to records obtained by the Tribune, over the past 3½ years, no outreach was conducted in more than half the cases in which the state Environmental Protection Agency considered a permit that could affect air, water or soil quality in an environmental justice area. No public hearings were held in nearly two years for such cases. Even when notices were sent to neighborhood groups, the letters didn’t detail how the public could become involved. Nor did they outline the period of time the public had to respond.

↓
“Every day, after Gina Ramirez returns from her 1½ hour commute from the Loop to her home on Chicago’s Southeast Side, she reaches for a mop to clean up any toxic dust that may have been tracked inside.
“Flanked by landfills, steel mills and metal scrap yards, pollution concerns have been part of life in the East Side neighborhood since Ramirez’s great-grandfather immigrated to the area from Oaxaca, Mexico, in the 1930s. Some days the odors are so pungent she’s afraid to open her window or let her 4-year-old son play outside.
“The vision for my neighborhood is just the status quo,’ Ramirez said. ‘It’s just an industrial armpit of Chicago.'”
4. Trans Substantiation.
“A Chicago pastor who asked a man dressed in drag to leave a worship service because he was dressed like a woman stands by his actions after coming under fire,” the Kansas City Star reports, for some reason.
The social politics of Chicago churches is one of the city’s undercovered stories. No one really reports on what goes on inside these places, and it isn’t always pretty.
↓
“People in the crowd cheered and said ‘Amen’ and ‘Thank you, Jesus.'”
5. The Finest Restructured Meat Product Ever.
↓
“People in the crowd cheered and said ‘Amen’ and ‘Thank you, Jesus.'”
–
New on the Beachwood today . . .
Chicagoetry: I Am Iron Man
Let us coalesce.
–
ChicagoReddit

Ice Sculptor Needed from r/chicago


–
ChicagoGram


–
ChicagoTube
Chicago Style at Santa Anita.

–
BeachBook
‘You Are All Inside Amazon’s Second Headquarters,’ Jeff Bezos Announces To Horrified Americans As Massive Dome Envelops Nation.

*
Wisconsin Company Buys Guns For Every Employee For Christmas.

*
Windy City Rollers Home Opener.

–
TweetWood
A sampling.


*


*


*


*


–
The Beachwood McRibTip Line: Slam doink.

Permalink

Posted on November 15, 2018