Another one of those taxes we’d like to think we won’t be collecting much of

State Sen. Toi Hutchinson, D-Olympia Fields, has assured herself she will get loads of attention this spring.

Red Eye gave it the cover, while ...

For the south suburban native has come up with a bill that satisfies our sense of moralistic outrage, combined with pure titillation. She wants a new tax that would be charged any time anyone visits a strip club/girlie joint/titty bar/whatever goofy name you call it.

IT GOT HUTCHINSON in the Chicago Tribune, and is being picked up by the wire services that will ensure that anyone paying attention to newscasts across Illinois will know all about this.

A $5 fee, in addition to whatever cover charge the alleged “gentlemen’s clubs” are already charging – just to walk into the door. That goes along with whatever drink minimums they charge – and the money that one winds up giving to the ladies themselves for putting on the sexually-charged shows that they do.

Hutchinson says she would want the money from the $5 fee to go toward a special fund that would pay for counseling for women who get raped. Which is a noble goal, although it strikes me as being similar to the logic always tossed up when the fees on a package of cigarettes are increased.

Making it cost more to smoke tobacco products might actually reduce the number of people who smoke, which might improve their health.

... the Tribune gave it the corner

DOES IT REALLY fall into line that making it cost more to look at nude women (although every such club I have ever been in was required to have their girls keep their pubic areas covered) would make guys less likely to go to such clubs – which would make them less likely to get all aroused and feel the need to take their lustful urges out on the “real” women they encounter outside of the clubs.

I don’t know if I buy it.

But heck, if it helps raise a few bucks for a noble effort, then perhaps it will be worthwhile.

Although I will be anxious to see how this particular bill plays out.

WILL THE CONSERVATIVE ideologues get all worked up over the thought of local businesses being hit with another “tax” that might make some of their customers have to reduce the number of trips they make to their local “establishment” to catch a glimpse of nipple?

For the real hard-core ideologue types, particularly those who like to think of themselves as Tea Party-types, that is NOT any kind of ridiculous stance. It would be their natural reaction.

Or will their sense of outrage and the need to meddle in other peoples’ business kick in and make them think it is a good thing to do to discourage people from hanging out in establishments with names like Déjà Vu (which actually is the strip club in Springfield where many legislators of recent years have been known to spend off-hours)?

I couldn’t help but notice that the strip club owners themselves are taking the attitude that they’re enterprising business owners who are being taxed out of business (the owner of Chicago’s Admiral Theatre is taking to calling this new $5 fee a “pole” tax, a pun on the poll taxes of old that is offensive on so many levels).

PERHAPS I’M SO mocking of this issue because I personally have never truly understood the appeal of such clubs. I’ve been in them on occasion, but honestly could care less if I never set foot in one again.

And only part of that reason is because I’m cheap when it comes to finances.

The whole notion of “look, but don’t touch” that exists in these clubs just strikes me as un-erotic. What is the point if there isn’t some physical contact? And there are some people I wouldn’t want to have physical contact with, for fear of what I’d contract.

It actually reminds of me of a gag I once heard from someone questioning why prison inmates would look at pornographic pictures of women, comparing it to looking at pictures of a Thanksgiving holiday dinner to try to satisfy one’s hunger.

IN SHORT, I’D wonder if the experience would be worth an extra $5 per visit. But if some people want to look so bad that they will cough up the cash, then that is their prerogative.

Whether she realizes it or not, Hutchinson has stirred up what may well be one of the most intriguing moments of this year’s Illinois General Assembly session. With the election cycle coming up, it’s not like any political person is going to want to take serious action on any issue of real significance.

Which means they’ll want to get all worked up over something like this, so as to justify the salaries and per diem payments they will receive for their work in 2012.

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Crime gets stupid in Chicago metro area

The Naked City, with its eight million stories, may have been a reference to New York City and its variety of violence and garishness.

Yet when one considers that the greater Chicago metropolitan area (I’m counting all those suburbs in the collar counties) has in excess of eight million people as well, I can’t help but wonder if our very own Second City has become the Midwestern counterpart that could provide the same kind of tackiness required to provide for weekly doses of tawdriness.

PERHAPS I’M OVER-REACTING, but it is my reaction after scouring the Chicago papers (or their websites) on Wednesday, and finding all kinds of stupid crime stories that are less bothersome for what was done to someone, but instead are creepy because we have people in our society who were stupid enough to think they could get away with it.

One of them involves a former football player at Glenbard West High School who on Wednesday had bond set at $50,000 on charges that he and a teammate raped a teenage girl in the backseat of a car.

The rape occurred just over a year ago, yet officials were distracted by the fact that the two teenage football players were in an automobile accident the same night as the rape – in fact, about one hour later.

The teammate was killed, which means the focus was on the fact that a teenage life was lost. But amidst the wreckage from that car accident, police were able to recover the physical evidence that ultimately was used to justify the charges that were filed against the 18-year-old, who was arrested by police in Glen Ellyn while he was on his way to school.

HE GOES FROM being the football hero who survived a deadly crash, to being a suspected rapist. Perhaps we should just be thankful that the accident didn’t totally crowd out consideration of what happened to the teenage girl – who was able to identify one of her attackers.

Not to diminish the seriousness of sexual assault, but this wasn’t even the most pathetic crime story from high school I read on Wednesday.

That “honor” would have to go to the account of the Evanston Township High School student who brought brownies to school and shared them with his fellow students – sending four of them to area hospitals.

This 17-year-old genius (heavy sarcasm intended here) laced his brownies with a large dose of marijuana. Yet before you start getting all critical of the kid for slipping something into an edible, consider that everybody who ate the brownies knew what they were laced with.

NEWSPAPER ACCOUNTS INDICATE that while expulsion is possible (on the grounds that it violates school rules to dispense mood-altering substances on school property), it also is possible that he will get something resembling a couple of weeks suspension.

Yet I can’t help but wonder about the people who knowingly ate those brownies. Somehow, they just don’t come across as victims to me.

Somebody probably got all giggly before taking a bite of brownie, thinking they were going to go trippin’ big time. Instead, all they got was the trip to the nurse’s office, followed up by the trip to the area hospital – where they had to confess to medical personnel just how lame-brained they were in their choice of dessert consumption.

School officials say that those who are involved in school sports, clubs or other activities may find themselves removed as a form of discipline, which just seems too mild to me.

THEN, THERE WAS the story that truly was a “blast from the past,” so to speak. A young man who was shooting video with a Fuji-brand digital camera for a class project had it snatched by some thugs while riding on a CTA “el” train.

He got the camera back because of the intervention of a man with the Guardian Angel patrols, although the three “Angels” apparently engaged in a fistfight with the would-be camera robbers in order to get it back, and to subdue two of them until police arrived to make the arrest.

The end result was that two men are now charged with robbery and misdemeanor battery, and bond was set for the two on Wednesday at $75,000 and $50,000.

While it was nice to see that someone didn’t get away with petty crime on the “el,” what is more shocking to me was the presence of the Guardian Angels, whom I didn’t realize were still in operation in Chicago. I recall their heyday back in the 1970s when they tried to create the image of taking back the streets of New York, and kind of assumed they went the way of polyester leisure suits since I can't recall the last time I saw them on the streets of Chicago.

SO PERHAPS IT is appropriate that we end with this New York offshoot trying to bring sense to the streets of Chicago. For to paraphrase the famed closing narration from the hit television show of the late 1950s:

There are eight million stories in the Naked City. These have been three of them.

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