Bad craziness in the ‘burbs. Shortly after school began, 10,000 pounds of outdated canned and frozen food–some dated 1985–was discovered in a Michigan City, Indiana, high school kitchen and hauled to the local landfill, reports the daily News-Dispatch (September 15). “My concern,” said the school superintendent, “is that some of this was not noticed like it should have been.”
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The view from the bottom. “The social and economic isolation of African-Americans in the poorest neighborhoods has led to a different pattern of beliefs about what groups may have too much influence in American society,” reports University of Chicago political scientist Michael Dawson in the U. of C. Chronicle (August 19). According to Dawson’s study of Detroit, poor blacks are more likely than other blacks to support black nationalism and income redistribution, but their animus is not just against the rich. “Many African-Americans in extremely poor neighborhoods also believe that labor unions, working-class people and middle-class people all have too much influence in American society.”
“Chicago has more rapid transit than its population can support,” argues R. Bruce Dold in Chicago Enterprise (September/October). He says that shutting down the Lake Street el for two years of repairs “might have some unintended results. The city, including the South and West sides, will find that most everyone can manage quite nicely, thank you, without those trains….Lake Street L riders will have to venture barely more than a mile south to the Congress line or, if they live near Oak Park, take a short stroll to the Chicago and North Western. The CTA will run feeder buses to the train stops and express buses down Lake Street for people who live fairly close to downtown…. The Lake Street line has only 14,900 riders, according to a recent estimate, and nearly half of them board in Oak Park. The enormous cost of keeping up the line [$7.99 per ride] amounts to a hefty suburban subsidy.”
