Chicago Daily Observer

Topic: Chicago’s Paul Revere on Tax Increment Financing

Tuesday, February 19, 2008 at 6:30 PM

TIME: 6:30 – 7:30 pm – Networking
7:30 pm – Program starts

LOCATION: The Lincoln Restaurant, 4008 N Lincoln Ave (773) 248–1820

Speaker: Ben Joravsky columnist for the Chicago Reader who specializes in TIFs or Tax Increment Finance districts. He began working as a freelance writer for the Chicago Reader in 1985 after specializing in investigative work for The Chicago Reporter, a monthly newspaper devoted to covering racial issues. Throughout his career, Joravsky has worked to uncover information that isn?t readily available to the public so he could shine light on issues affecting the life of Chicagoans. Tax Increment Financing affects way more than you might know. Come see how it affects you.

In recent years, Americans have been forced to deal with a rash of senseless, inexplicable school shootings such as that which occurred at Northern Illinois University last week leaving five innocents dead.

Part of the unhappy search for explanations in the wake of these gruesome events has invariably included inane pronouncements from the media.

After Virginia Tech, Lisa Ling used her platform on the Oprah Winfrey Show to openly worry about a backlash against “anyone who looked Asian”. Of course, this did not happen. Ling, you see, was unable to wrap her mind around the concept that the rest of America did, which is that it was a single, deranged person who happened to be South Korean who was responsible for the carnage, not the Asian community.

Group responsibility is no responsibility. Thank goodness regular Americans have the common sense that seems to regularly evade so many of our media ... Read More...

Should the number of hospitals in Illinois be based upon patient needs, or should hospitals be built based upon political payoffs to government officials?

In 2008, we have already seen a vigorous debate over different ways to expand the government’s role when it comes to our personal health-care options. Many of these debates involve hypothetical forecasts into the future. Here in Illinois, however, we need no such forecasts. We already have evidence of what happens when the government makes decisions over health care, providing us with interesting — and frightening — insight into how an expansion of the government’s role may impact us all.

Above the mantle there is a mural: a golden American eagle centered prominently atop a collection of flags arranged with the United States, France and Great Britain featured prominently. The other flags are partially obscured. I was able to recognize the colors of Greece and Japan (the now abandoned Rising Sun flag). I pondered it for a moment and asked a question of another person seated at my table. My guess was correct: the flags represented the allied powers from until the 1940s was called the Great War. That made perfect sense as the Evanston post received its individual charter in 1919.The congress had authorized the national charter of American Legion that same year.

Elsewhere in the hall were framed banners commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of World War II and a similar one for the Korean war (call it a “police action” to be technical). The World War II banner ... Read More...

Federal investigators have requested city records on four West Side zoning changes pushed by Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th), amid questions about Carothers’ relationship with a Chicago developer who made secret recordings as an FBI mole.

Last year, Carothers’ New 29th Ward Campaign Committee got $11,000 in contributions from Morgan Properties Inc., which lists FBI mole John Thomas as “manager.”

Two Great Lakes states have balked at an agreement that would keep outsiders from siphoning off the lakes’ water, raising fears that the long-sought water plan could be in danger.

Proponents tried Monday to regain momentum for the water-use agreement, the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact.