Who’s REALLY going to wait ‘til turning 21 before taking a ‘toke’ of pot?

Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed off Tuesday on the measure making Illinois the 11^th state allowing people to get themselves high on marijuana – if they so choose.

Will people take a toke for Gov. Pritzker … 

Under the new law, people ages 21 and over will be able to walk into properly-licensed dispensaries and buy small amounts of marijuana or marijuana-laced products for their own personal use.

THEY WON’T EVEN have to put up the pretense of having glaucoma or some other medical condition that would make marijuana use have a medicinal value.

Not that it means there won’t still be issues involved with marijuana use. Those people who want to view it as inherently a criminal act will still be able to get all bent out-of-shape.

Because the part of this new law that has always attracted my attention has been the provision of a minimum age. That’s 21! Which is a concept that I find ever-so-incredibly laughable.

Personally, I recall people being around 11 when they first insisted on taking a toke. Those inclined to want to be heavy users of marijuana usually were regularly (or at least as often as they could afford it) consuming it by about 14 or 15.

DOES ANYONE REALLY believe that people inclined to want to use the stuff really are going to wait until they turn 21?

Somehow, I suspect the age restriction is going to become one of the most-ignored laws we’ll have on the books. Just like the laws that say people aren’t supposed to have their first legal alcoholic drink until turning 21.

Will people start regarding their 21^st birthday as an excuse to not only have their first “official” beer, but also their first smoke? Unless they find quirks in the law – such as I did with regards to alcohol.

… when the clock strikes midnight on New Year's?

For my first legal beer came three days before I turned 21 – because I happened to be in the District of Columbia at the time, and the drinking age there then was 18. So they regarded me as having been legal for years, rather than waiting another three days before selling me that beer.

WHICH ACTUALLY TURNED out to be a rather anticlimactic moment, to tell the truth.

That could turn out to be a positive for marijuana use, to be truthful. Legalizing the product would take away the stigma that would make many people think they just HAVE to give it a try.

Or maybe we’ve just increased the desire of 12-year-olds to want to take a smoke to show how grown-up they are – even if all they’re really going to provide is that they’re as ridiculous as those pre-teen girls who wear too much makeup, or youthful boys who drown themselves in cheap cologne.

But then again, the old laws (which still technically apply until Dec. 31) added to the stigma of drug use to make many would-be adults behave like teenaged halfwits at the very thought of getting high. Probably thinking they’re as entertaining while impaired as Cheech and Chong at their 1970s peak.

PERSONALLY, I’M NOT going to be inclined to rush out and get a legal stash, largely because I find the habit of smoking anything to be grubby and stinky, if not outright repulsive.

We're not all funny like Cheech & Chong

But I also don’t doubt that offending the political sensibilities of people who wanted marijuana use criminalized because they liked the idea of certain types of people being harassed to be a worthwhile concept, in-and-of itself.

So for all I know, New Year’s Day may very well come about this year with many people feeling the urge to light up and get “stoned” right at the moment the countdown reaches zero and “Happy New Year.” Just don’t bother to invite me. I can’t think of anything more deadly dull than a pot party, with people drugged into a nonsensical stupor.

Besides, it would still be illegal because it’s unlikely the pot purchase would have been made from a licensed dispensary. And in the end, Illinois did all of this because it wants the tax money!

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Trump’s immigration “bill of love” too laughable to be taken seriously

President Donald J. Trump’s talk of a “bill of love” being part of the solution toward arriving at a sensible federal immigration policy is just another bit in the line of nonsense that often gets spewed whenever trying to figure out how to properly integrate non-U.S.-born residents into our society.

TRUMP: Still delusional on immigration

It amounts to more cheap rhetoric about the issue, particularly when it relates to people who were brought as children by their parents to this country without all the valid papers being lined up.

WHAT WE HAVE is many thousands of people living in this country who, for all practical purposes, are assimilated into our society. But the paperwork glitch makes it impossible for them to fully enjoy the benefits of living in this country.

Former President Barack Obama tried to address this issue with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals – a program by which those young people registered with the government and were given permits allowing them to work, while also being spared the threat of deportation. Some 700,000 young people took advantage.

It was a step in the right direction (allowing them to work toward naturalization and gain citizenship would complete the process). But of course, to the mindset of people in this Age of Trump we’re now in, it has to be undone. Just as everything Obama became involved with now has to be eradicated from our society.

Trump abolished DACA last year, but said he’d give Congress until March to come up with a long-range solution to the larger problem. Although U.S. District Judge William Alsup late Tuesday ruled against Trump's March deadline -- creating the possibility the issue could drag on longer.

WHICH IS VERY likely, considering that we're talking about the same Congress that has been so inept throughout the years that it can’t come close to finding a solution to eliminating the bureaucratic glitches that exist in our national immigration policy.

So the idea that anything would happen was always laughable – particularly since many of those people most pleased by Trump’s presence in the White House are of a belief that the only real solution is mass deportations. Eliminating all those damn foreigners is what they mean by the insipidness of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

Trump on Tuesday met with members of Congress, of both major political persuasions, supposedly to try to come up with a solution to nudge Congress off their collective derriere to do something.

That’s where he came up with his “bill of love” rhetoric, which he says would be a two-phase plan for immigration reform, albeit one that strikes me as being more inaction than anything else.

TRUMP’S FIRST PHASE involves taking action to move forward on the president’s long-desired talk of a full-scale wall along the U.S./Mexico border. He’s determined to have something built along those 1,900 miles in the southwestern U.S. – regardless of how impractical, stupid or irrelevant such a barricade would prove to be in deterring entry into this country by people considered less-than-desirable by racially-motivated ideologues.

The second phase would then give Congress the “green light,” so to speak, to try to figure out a comprehensive immigration reform plan that would resolve the problem, once and for all.

But like I wrote earlier, Congress has tried for decades to come up with real reform – only to be thwarted by the element that likes the bureaucratic mess we have now because it complicates conditions for people wishing to come to this country.

Basically, Trump’s talk on Tuesday amounted to “gimme da wall,” then do nothing more. Which doesn’t fix a thing.

I FOUND IT particularly laughable to learn that Trump talked of restoring “earmarks” to the budget process so as to encourage members of Congress to act. Earmarks are the process by which Congressmen can get federal funds for pet projects in their home districts.

Meaning we use federal funds to buy off the Congress, with no guarantee they’d follow through with immigration reform.

It may actually be more evidence that Trump is a rank amateur when it comes to politics – spewing out such nonsensical talk in hopes that he can get that pointless wall built.

Although considering Trump was a real estate guy who has had several structures bearing his name built all over the world, I’d insist that if this wall ever does get erected, it too should carry his identity. “Trump, the Border Wall!” is all about his warped sensibilities, rather than anything representing American ideals.

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Gone before they ever had a chance

30 people shot, 3 fatally, in 18 hours in Chicago

10-year-old boy killed in Southeast Side shooting

 -0-

Which of these headlines (both of which appeared Sunday on the website of one of our city’s major newspapers) bothers you most?

Struggling to cope with situation

For what it’s worth, the Chicago Tribune gave prominent play to the former; making it the lede story for those viewing the one-time World’s Greatest Newspaper on the Internet, and giving the impression that the time period from Saturday evening and spilling into the early hours of Sunday was some sort of historically-grotesque moment in Chicago history.

YET I’M ACTUALLY creeped out by the latter story more, and not just because the victim was someone who barely was into an age with two digits in it.

Even the Tribune itself acknowledged that this particular death was the fourth child to die in a shooting incident in Chicago this year, with another eight suffering from gunfire but managing to survive their wounds.

Those “30 people shot, 3 fatally” were in separate incidents occurring in various parts of the city. If not for the time element, no one would bother thinking of them as being related in any way.

And there is a part of me that wonders about playing up the story of the “body count” every weekend where there happen to be casualty totals in multiple figures does nothing more than satisfy the ghoulish mental desires of the kind of people who are determined to view our city as some sort of hell-hole – the kind of place where the real Hell might actually be a step up in improved living conditions.

IN SHORT, LIKE every time President Donald J. Trump spews out one of his oft-erroneous tidbits because it satisfies the politically partisan desires of the kind of people who actually voted for him?

EMANUEL: Not only mayor coping w/ violence

I’m not exactly saying a “30 people shot, 3 fatally” type of story is ho-hum and makes my shoulders shrug. But there have been bloodier moments in our city’s history. Both single incidents where more people suffered and combinations that gave us far greater tallies amongst the dead and wounded.

Whereas in the case of “10-year-old boy,” it brings to mind the potential story of lost potential. What could have been? What would have occurred if that child had gone on to live a full life?

I’m sure there are some smart-alecks who are viewing the fact that this particular kid was from the city’s South Chicago neighborhood and suffered his wounds in the adjacent East Side neighborhood is evidence that he was going nowhere.

THEN AGAIN, PART of why this story caught my attention is that I come out of that southeastern corner of Chicago. Born in South Chicago and lived for a short time in the East Side before my own parents moved along further.

Or is someone out there going to be warped enough to think that nothing can come out of that part of Chicago, and that such violence is supposed to be limited to certain parts of the city. Which may be what makes such stories as “30 people shot, 3 fatally” all the more pathetic.

Because they inevitably include the line within the copy that all the incidents were limited to select neighborhoods on the South and West sides of the city. As though the fact that they didn’t occur in the neighborhoods with certain select economic and racial demographics somehow makes them acceptable!

TRUMP: Nothing he says will make things better

They only add to the warping of the young people who happen to live in those neighborhoods into believing that somehow, this kind of conduct is acceptable.

THERE IS ANOTHER factor; one brought up recently when in Gary, Ind., there were multiple children shot in separate incidents in the same neighborhood of that Hoosier city.

One government official said he was particularly bothered by the fact that there were now children who, when they return to school in September, were going to have to write as their “What I did this Summer” assignment an essay that began with the words, “I got shot this summer.”

As much as the loss of a life with potential hurts, the fact that all those surviving around them will have to have such thoughts may well be worse.

Because until we can snap people out of thinking that such violence is a part of life, we’re going to keep reading such body count stories – and there’s nothing our current president would say or do that could resolve the problem.

  -30-

Dueling pair of children being used to fight for attention of Chicago, world

Why does it feel like we’re in a fight between the images of two boys – both now deceased – to try to determine what is the appropriate image of what Chicago stands for.

By mid-day, Tyshawn had taken over

That’s literally what it felt like Friday as I read the latest accounts of how Laquan McDonald and Tyshawn Lee were being mentioned as people tried to show how violent they want us to believe Chicago has become.

YET THE TRUTH is that the people touting McDonald and those touting Lee are not the same individuals. In fact, I suspect there are those who view the opposing child as some sort of enemy kid who threatens to steal attention away from their pet cause.

McDonald being the teenager who was shot to death by police officer, and whose backers are trying to promote the idea that we have a whole department of “killer cops” in the Second City. They’re the ones who have already convicted the officer in their own minds, and aren’t going to settle for anything less than a natural life prison term.

But then, there’s Lee. He’s the 9-year-old who got shot to death by gang members, with officials saying the boy’s father was a rival gang member. As in a child who didn’t even make it to teenage-hood got caught up in the urban violence.

There have been some reports that the rival gang killed off the boy because he was signaling his father’s gang in some way, trying to warn them about an imposing threat.

THE BOTTOM LINE is that both Laquan and Tyshawn got cheated out of life – they didn’t make it to adulthood. Both of them are going to be nothing more than speculation and tales of “What could have been?” and “If only they’d had the chance” at a full life.

McDONALD: Blame the police!

But they are rival tales, and I couldn’t help but notice that for the Chicago Sun-Times on their website on Friday, Tyshawn’s tale had overtaken Laquan’s as the “big story” coming from Chicago.

Whereas the Chicago Tribune stuck with Laquan – largely because his backers were trying to force their way into the public’s eye by blocking off the big shopping district on Michigan Avenue that day.

Although it seems the public reaction to those people was largely bemusement. Some people even feeling the need to take out their telephones with cameras to get pictures of all those crazy people on the loose in Chicago. Just think of what the folks back home will say!

LEE: Blame the street gangs!

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN the two is that with Laquan, we’re forced to confront the degree to which our police officers and other public safety officials are not trusted by certain segments of our society (particularly those with a darker pigmentation hue) to offer up protection.

Whereas with Tyshawn, the tale being told is how those crazy people are killing each other off. It makes me wonder if some people will think it’s no wonder the police take such a hard line and assume the worst of a Laquan McDonald.

Personally, what I’m inclined to think of the whole McDonald affair is that of all the cops who arrived at that scene, it was only one of them who allegedly fired all those multiple shots. Others held their control.

Although it only takes one person and one well-aimed shot to kill another human being.

What some would like to prioritize!

WHILE WITH TYSHAWN, it seems no one is truly safe if they happen to live in the portions of Chicago that our society seems to think are worthy of such violent behavior.

We can say to ourselves what a tragedy his death is, but I doubt that people would be getting so worked up if not for the fact they want to detract attention from the story that truly makes them uncomfortable – the one that makes the police look bad.

Because that one brings into question many of the premises upon which we view our society – particularly those who think the REAL story for the day is the Chicago Bears victory Thursday night over Green Bay!

Although the way in which our society ultimately is going to get its act together with regards to such actions is when we’re forced to confront our beliefs and realize that – just perhaps – some of the things we’ve been thinking have been a bit too selfish and clueless to stand up to truth.

  -30-

What should we think about Tyshawn? Is this really a 'family-based'' crime?

Even by the standards of urban violence where logic is lacking and randomness is all too common, the death last week of Tyshawn Lee reeks of stupidity.

Tyshawn is the 9-year-old whose shooting death on Nov. 2 in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood (also the home base of Michael Pfleger, the priest some people want to dismiss as just a loudmouth, even though he has a tendency to speak the ugly truth) has gained national attention because police believe it is a gang-related killing.

NOT THAT TYSHAWN is regarded as a gang member or someone being used by the gangs to do their illegal bidding. But it seems that Tyshawn’s father IS considered to be a gang member who had managed to offend the sensibilities of another gang.

So to gain their sense of retribution against dear ol’ dad, the rival gang took it out on the kid.

Various news reports say Tyshawn was lured into an alley near Damen Avenue at 80^th Street, then was viciously gunned down.

This isn’t the usual case of a kid being killed in gang activity because he (or she) happened to get caught up in the crossfire, or got hit by a stray bullet. Instead, he was targeted.

THE OLD SENSIBILITY that somehow, some people on the periphery of gang activity are safe from its violence has gone out the window. Then again, that same sensibility died with regards to organized crime so long ago.

Why should these circumstances be any different?

Although what catches my attention is the idea that people aren’t all that offended by a child’s death.

In fact, there are those who seem determined to want to use this incident as a way of blaming inner-city residents for their own conditions. As though somehow they bring it upon themselves just by being themselves. Which I want to dismiss as nonsense.

THERE ARE THOSE people who seem to want to play ideological games with the Chicago homicide rate – perhaps so they can avoid having to think about coming up with ways to reduce all the bloodshed that we are seeing in Chicago.

I have read many anonymous Internet rants along the line of how the locals don’t care that a kid was killed. They aren’t doing much to help the police, we’re being told.

There also is a sense of the “don’t snitch” mentality that runs through certain neighborhoods where the local police presence is perceived as interfering with the protection of the general public.

So the fact that some people aren’t eager to “rat out” which local gang members may have actually done this particular shooting isn’t shocking. Maybe there are some who think the appropriate sense of justice is for the “dad” to take the law into his own hands.

NOT THAT I’M touting the vigilante mentality. If anything, that is too much like the dreamy vision that those conservative ideologues would tout – the “wild West” where everybody packs a pistol and “deals” with their own problems.

We have a mess in segments of our society when there are people who have no faith in our institutions to offer them protection. Instead of blaming the people for having no faith, perhaps we ought to try to figure out how we can encourage those people to think that society at-large cares about them in the least.

Then, perhaps we’d get people willing to rise up in anger and take legitimate action to deal with those people who think a 9-year-old vicious shooting is somehow justified retaliation against a father.

Who in all likelihood was not anybody whose actions toward his son were ever going to win him a “Father of the Year” award!

  -30-

Little League World Series won’t give us same thrills this year, regardless

Even without the stink that lingers over the Jackie Robinson West youth baseball league, there wouldn’t have been as much interest in the Little League World Series that begins later this week.

Back when it was a sports story, and NOT a court story

For there won’t be any kind of local angle to the event this year. For 2015, the best team from Illinois was one from the Little League program in Olney – an out-of-the-way community in the far southeastern portion of the state.

AS IT TURNS out, the Olney team managed to get knocked out during the qualifying rounds. They won’t even be close to Williamsport, Pa., when the 10-day tourney begins Thursday.

There won’t be anyone local for us to cheer for.

The champs from the Roseland/Morgan Park neighborhoods who also had players from scattered south suburban communities definitely won’t be anywhere to be seen.

Not even in any way to be remembered as the defending U.S. champions (who could have been “world” champs if they could have beat that ball club from Seoul, South Korea in the final game).

FOR LET’S NOT forget that 2014 is going to be the tourney that goes into the books with re-written history – less concerned with what actually took place on the ball field. Which makes it go against the very nature of sports – where on-field activity is usually all that matters.

There will be that team from the Las Vegas, Nev., area that couldn’t beat the boys of the Far South Side on the field, but will be regarded as the U.S. champions regardless.

Even though anyone who actually watched last year’s Little League World Series remembers that the big stories were the outstanding play of the boys from the Far South Side and surrounding suburbs and that girl who pitched outstandingly for the team from the suburbs of Philadelphia.
 

Another story not likely to be matched this year

In fact, a whole chain of teams that didn’t win, but are now regarded as “winners” because of the efforts to pretend that what wasn’t really was.

NOW I KNOW some people are determined to think that a major deceit took place last year. There have been recent reports indicating that only six of the dozen ballplayers on that Jackie Robinson West team that represented the Great Lakes region were legitimately from the neighborhoods that the league covers.

Although I also remember that no one ever tried to cover up the fact that many of the kids were from nearby suburbs – in many cases with one parent living in the suburb and another living within the Chicago neighborhood.

Or in some cases where they had moved to a new neighborhood, but preferred to stay in the Jackie Robinson West program that has been an elite amongst city-based youth baseball leagues.

I suspect that the Little League programs in those suburbs are jealous that they couldn’t attract those kids to want to play ball in their new home communities. That jealousy has enough of a stink that I have a hard time getting too worked up over the Jackie Robinson West program.

THERE WAS TALK of having the Jackie Robinson West program break away from Little League proper; perhaps joining the Cal Ripken Baseball program or some other league that would accept them on the terms they operate under.

A part of me does wonder if what really bothers some people is that the public attention last year went to Mo’ne Davis (the pre-teen pitcher) and the Jackie Robinson West kids – who happened to be the few African-American ballplayers in what was largely a lily-white tourney.

I’m sure some think the fact that some praised those kids was somehow detracting attention from other kids they would have preferred to get the publicity. As far as I can tell, this year’s Little League World Series might well be closer to their liking.

Which might also make it less worthwhile to watch!

  -30-

Baseball ‘kids’ don’t live in Chicago? Why did complaints take so long?

For those people who are spewing accusations that the Jackie Robinson West baseball team that nearly won the Little League World Series this year is tainted because its players don’t all live strictly within the league’s boundaries, I’d have to respond by saying that no one ever tried to keep it a secret.

There were so many people who back in August were eager to let it be known that some of the kids had ties to suburbs such as Dolton, Homewood, Lansing, Lynwood and South Holland (instead of neighborhoods such as Roseland and Morgan Park where the league is based).

SO TO NOW hear complaints from officials with the Evergreen Park Athletic Association that the Jackie Robinson West team that represented the Great Lakes Region at the Little League World Series comes across as little more than whining.

It was a relief to learn that Little League International this week issued a statement saying the league’s team that advanced in the Little League World Series to be U.S. champions (before losing to a team from South Korea) was legitimate when it comes to residency issues.

I don’t doubt that the ball playing kids received so much hype that the reality can’t live up.

But this amounts to petty jealousy from a suburban Little League program that happens to border to Jackie Robinson West program on the city’s Far South Side that was created back in the early 1970s to spur interest in youth baseball in a community whose racial composition had changed radically.

UNTIL RECENTLY, I had a “day job” of sorts in writing stories for one of the daily newspapers in the suburbs that covered the communities where some of these kids lived and went to school.

Which local school and government officials were more than eager to reveal. I personally remember one suburban mayor saying he wanted some credit for the player who lived in his community, saying, “We’re not going to let Rahm Emanuel steal everything.”

Although I personally think Gov. Pat Quinn and the Cook County Board did more to latch their names onto the Jackie Robinson kids for his own self-promotion than Emanuel ever did.

But back to the residency issue. It was known that the kids didn’t strictly live within the city neighborhoods. But the fact that there were split residency facts merely reflect our modern-day reality in society.

I remember specifically one ballplayer had a father who lived in Dolton, but a mother who lived in the Morgan Park neighborhood. Does anybody think that means the kid is supposed to never stay with his father just because he plays baseball?

THAT WOULD BE stupid.

In other cases, there were players whose families used to live in Chicago proper, but in recent years had moved to the nearby south suburbs. It appears that Little League rules permit such players to continue to play in their old home communities if they wish, rather than being forced to shift to Little League programs in their new homes.

The reality is that many of those suburban Little League programs are run by people who are interested in protecting their own little fiefdoms and aren’t exactly accepting of newcomers.

So the idea that these kids would prefer to keep playing ball in the Jackie Robinson West league – which is unique in the fact that it is composed entirely of African-American people – seems to be an obvious choice.

PERHAPS THE SOUTH suburban Little League programs ought to be giving more thought to how to make themselves more welcoming, rather than being among the forces trying (but failing) to keep the population in their home communities the same as it was four decades ago.

Reading the Chicago Sun-Times, I see that the head of the Evergreen Park program is complaining about people who are calling him an “idiot” and are saying he is a bigot.

I’m willing to give his racial attitudes a break and say what really bothers him is the fact that when a team from his Little League program played a Jackie Robinson West team this year, the end result was a 42-3 loss.

That still has to smart, something fierce!

  -30-

Davis vs. Jones could be the sporting matchup of the year for Chicago fans

It has become the matchup I’m hoping becomes reality in coming days – pitcher Mo’Ne Davis going up against slugger Pierce Jones.

He of the three home runs and a triple who led the Jackie Robinson West team from the Roseland neighborhood to a victory to kick off the Little League World Series. She of the Philadelphia-area team that also is playing in Williamsport, Pa., who pitched a complete-game shutout and only gave up a couple of hits.

BIG SLUGGER AGAINST top pitcher – a key matchup that will occur if the Little League tourney plays out in such a fashion that the Chicago and Philadelphia ball clubs wind up facing off against each other.

Much has been made of the fact that Davis is a 12-year-old girl. Although all it really proves is that girls can be athletic, and most likely many of the boys she is facing have yet to go through that teenage growth spurt that turns them into adults and will erase whatever physical advantage she now possesses.

Although as one who enjoys watching baseball and often hears of the decline in the number of African-American ballplayers in the professional ranks (largely because of the upshot in recent years of ballplayers from Latin American and Asian nations coming to the United States to play ball), I would find this story to be a bit encouraging.

For Davis is black. As is Jones, and his entire Chicago-area ball club. That’s what happens when a Little League program representing an African-American portion of Chicago winds up getting good and winning the qualifying tournaments to represent the Great Lakes states in the Little League World Series – which has eight U.S. ball clubs and eight international teams.

YES, I’M FOLLOWING the activity of the team from Nuevo Leon, a northernmost Mexican state along the U.S./Mexico border – which kicked off its play by beating Canada 4-3, then losing Sunday 9-5 against a team from Japan.

But the big games that caught attention early on were that 12-2 victory by the Sout’ Side club against a team from Lynnwood, Wash. (I'm going out of my way to erase Sunday's 13-2 defeat from my memory); along with Davis’ shutout against a team from South Nashville, Tenn.

It was unique to see black ballplayers being such a dominant presence on the ball field. Not that I mean that in any bad way.

The degree to which some people with racial hang-ups were probably getting annoyed at the sight (or thought) of such activity was pleasing to me.

IT WAS ENCOURAGING to see some of the nonsense-talk that some people spew get rejected while watching these particular kids excel at something that some people would want to think they’re not supposed to have any interest in.

Plus, there’s the fact that they were kids – not quite at the stage in life yet where such an experience would lead them jaded.

I don’t know if any of these kids is destined for professional athletics in any form. It may well be that these few days in Pennsylvania will be a highlight moment that they will carry with them for the rest of their lives.

I’m also not convinced this is some seminal moment that will help shift black people back to an interest in baseball away from certain other sports. It would take several consecutive years of this – along with a certain shift in the baseball mentality itself – for that to happen.

BUT WATCHING THESE kids does create some intriguing moments on the ball field.

Particularly the thought of a Jones/Davis matchup.

Will Jones and his Jackie Robinson West teammates be the ones who can handle Davis and smack her pitches around the ballpark as easily as they did the kids from Lynnwood, Wash., last week?

Or will Mo’Ne be the one who schools Jones and company – giving them a lesson in humility that our city’s professional ball clubs give Chicago fans every time they lose another game on the field?

  -30-

Skeptical of the smoking stats!

5,500 and 6,400. The two new statistics that I’m not quite sure I believe.

Or, even if they are true, if they really mean all that much.

THOSE ARE THE numbers that aides to Mayor Rahm Emanuel were using on Tuesday to try to justify the proposal to raise the tax on a package of cigarettes by 75 cents.

City Health Department officials admit that this new tax would result in cigarettes costing more in Chicago than anywhere else in the United States. Which they say is a good thing.

Because it would persuade some 5,500 adults to quit smoking (because they can’t afford it anymore) and some 6,400 teenagers to never start smoking in the first place.

It’s my own gut instinct that says people who are determined to smoke are going to, regardless of the official price of a pack of cigarettes. Although even if those number of people do wind up not smoking because it becomes too expensive, is it really worth that much.

BECAUSE WE’RE TALKING about some not-quite 12,000 people out of a population of 2.7 million in the city, or some more than 8 million in the Chicago metro area.

The 11,900 that city officials are saying will not smoke? That’s a pretty insignificant number.

Personally, I’d respect city government more if they’d just come out and admit they want to gouge the people who are so addicted to tobacco that they can’t get by without their two-pack-a-day fix!

At least that would be honest.

NO MATTER HOW much they want to talk about saving $235 million in long-term health costs from problems caused by smoking, they really want the added tax revenue.

There are many areas to which the money – about $10 million per year, city officials say – could be put to use.

Including the child health care programs that city officials say they want to support. A noble goal.

But I wonder at what point do we start seeing people taking extreme measures to avoid buying cigarettes in Chicago? Will it turn out to be like gasoline – where anybody who can possibly avoid using a gas pump in the city limits does so?

WILL WE GET those places selling “cheap smokes” just across the city limits/state line in Hammond, Ind., and surrounding Hoosier communities seeing a sudden surge in business.

Or what of the places within the city – usually in the seedier neighborhoods that most need help but don’t’ get it – where locals know which stores will sell them “loosies.”

As in cigarettes sold individually.

It’s most definitely an illegal act. But there are those people who think they’re Al Capone reincarnated and that they’re “providing a service” to people who merely want to indulge their taste for tobacco.

AND WHEN IT comes to wanting something easily accessible and cheap, some people are more than willing to overlook the legalities of any issue.

As for me, I don’t smoke. It is just one habit I never picked up on. I wish it were practical to think of tax increases like this as a way to seriously decline the number of people who feel compelled to smoke cigarettes. I’m just realistic enough to know that life isn’t quite so easy.

If only the addition of another tax were the way to do it.

Instead, we’re going to get these taxes going higher and higher and some people will pay it. But many others will manage to find their alternatives.

WHICH WILL RESULT in no one getting paid a tax. Because avoiding the tax will be the whole point of the purchase.

The healthcare issues and other problems related to smoking will remain. But the increased tax revenues just won’t be there to back up a solution.

Isn’t that a pleasant thought for the day!

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Conspiracy theory, or element of truth?

DAVIS: Clueless? Or Blunt-spoken?

Throughout the decades that Monique Davis has represented portions of the Beverly and Morgan Park neighborhoods in the Illinois House of Representatives, she has made many comments that have been interpreted by some as absurd, if not downright loopy!

But I have always tried to keep in mind the fact that we in this society are not all alike. We don’t look alike. We certainly don’t think alike. The people who voted her into office probably have no problem with her.

SO WHILE MANY people these days are jumping down Davis’ throat for her latest theory (telling a Detroit radio station that many people in her community think the police might have something to do with all the urban violence taking place against young people these days), I’m wondering if she’s on to something.

Davis gave her interview to WCHB-AM in Detroit on Tuesday when she said: “I’m going to tell you what some suspicions have been, and people have whispered to me; they’re not sure that black people are shooting all of these children. There’s some suspicion – and I don’t want to spread this, but I’m just going to tell you what I’ve been hearing – they suspect maybe the police are killing some of these kids.”

WBBM-AM found out about this, and tracked Davis down, reporting Friday her admission that she doesn’t know who is doing the killings, but not exactly denying that she thinks the police could be responsible in some way. On Friday, Davis held a press conference to say that some police officers are among her friends, and reiterated the thought that she doesn't know who killed anyone.

They also gave the Chicago Police Department a chance to respond – finding a spokesman who came up with a comment that technically is a “no comment,” but also makes it clear that the police resent any implication that they’re anything other than heroic in their behavior.

WHAT THIS ISSUE really comes down to is a matter of just how much faith one has in the concept of law enforcement in general – Protectors of the Public? Or Municipal Muscle, meant to keep in line those people whom officials want to pipe down?

Those who believe the former are going to be amongst Davis’ biggest detractors. They’re not going to want to hear any kind of talk that implies police are a problem.

The most hard core of those individuals are the ones who still try to defend one-time Pullman Area police Commander Jon Burge – claiming that the criminal element he was dealing with required the hard-fisted approach that he took toward defendants who later were found to be innocent victims.

I’m sure that particular element is a minority of the overall population. The general trust of police is a larger element.

BUT WE SHOULDN’T discount the fact that there is a sizable number of people who are skeptical of law enforcement authority. Some of them may well have theories that the police are, if not killing young black people, sitting back and doing nothing to try to control the high-crime rates in urban areas.

As for those who may well think there are police going around killing black people, put them at the far opposite end of the ideological train of thought that thinks Jon Burge some sort of victim, and a miscarriage of justice.

Personally, I have never bought into the idea of police as particularly heroic. I’m more inclined to think that the overwhelming majority of police are just human beings – no smarter or dumber than you or I.

Except that they do a particularly difficult job where, if something goes wrong, people can die.

SO IF WE view Davis’ thoughts of a reflection of what is being expressed by the community (or at least a segment of it), perhaps we’d see a lesson in all of this.

Perhaps the police reaction would be to realize they have a perception problem, rather than getting all huffy and hostile toward anyone who doesn’t worship their presence.

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Are Boy Scouts making themselves irrelevant to modern-day youth?

My brother, Christopher, and I both did the Cub Scout thing some four decades ago. Speaking for myself, my memories are largely pleasant.


Where the Boy Scouts met

It was because my “den mother” was my youthful best friend’s mother (and also one of my mother’s best friends) and I didn’t have people trying to put any ideas in my head – or shove them down my throat!

HECK, I’VE EVEN come to remember as humorous the pain I suffered following a 13-mile hike we took (yes, we got lost along the way) through the woods.

So I have some problems reconciling the nonsense-talk I’m hearing from Boy Scout types (maybe there’s something about a 12-year-old wearing a parody of a military uniform that makes them all behave that way) when it comes to the issue of gay people.

The Boy Scouts, of course, showed this week that they were as capable of being as lame as former President Bill Clinton was when he came up with the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy to deal with gay people in the U.S. military.

Let’s hope that the Boy Scouts can put to rest their new nonsense policy more quickly than the military can come to its senses with regards to dealing with gay people.

FOR THOSE WHO went out of their way to not pay attention, the Boy Scouts said it will now accept gay boys into the scouting ranks. But they’re not about to put up with any gay men as scout leaders.

I stumbled across one person who tried to explain this decision by saying it was a gradual step toward overall acceptance, since it would mean the gay boys who were scouts would grow up with sympathetic memories of the experience and someday would be ready to be proper Scoutmasters when they were adults.

The way it looks in the news box

That’s wishful thinking, if ever I heard it.

I can’t help but think that somebody thinks if they get the gay boys into the scouts, that perhaps they can smack it out of them. I’m not literally implying physical abuse. But maybe someone is delusional enough to think that a group camp experience or two will somehow make someone less likely to be gay.

IT SOUNDS LIKE somebody envisions the Boy Scouts as the equivalent of a religious camp where they convert gay people back into normal ones.

Which is such a nonsense statement on its very premise that I had a hard time keeping a straight face while writing that last sentence.

The subdued approach to story play

Besides, I suspect what this policy really means is that some uptight scoutmaster will now go singling out the boys who don’t fit his vision of “manly” – regardless of whether homosexuality is an issue. And in many cases, it probably won’t be.

What this week’s Boy Scout actions show is a group that is desperately eager to avoid a social change! Even though, by all evidence, it is one that most people in our society have no problem accepting.

MAYBE THESE PEOPLE like the idea of being isolated from the masses. Although I find that isolated groups usually wind up so cut off that they wither away and die.

Which makes me view this latest action as something akin to suicide. It’s totally self-inflicted.

Not sufficient

I know for a fact that I have two nephews who never did the scouting thing, in large part because their grandmother (my step-mother) came to see it as too cut off from any type of persons she wanted her grandsons to be.

But they were involved in other types of activities growing up, and seem to be turning into human beings with great potential. My older nephew, Caylon, is going to be a Leatherneck (no, he didn’t enlist, he’s headed for Western Illinois University in Macomb) come autumn.

WHILE MY YOUNGER nephew, Tyler, seems to have serious potential both academically and in terms of music talent as he gets ready to attend high school. I don’t think either one feels deprived in life about never having worn any kind of scout uniform.

I’m sure the assorted ribbons and trophies they have won for activities in their youthful lives that their grandfather has on display at his house mean as much to them as the other trophy he set up aside them – from the year I won the Pinewood Derby!

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