I hate to link from cnsnews.com, because they’re so far to the right that skeptical readers will question their credibility.  But they link to and summarize a report on the sheer numbers of illegal workers using false ID.  Wow.  Here’s an excerpt: The audit discovered that the employer with the very worst record for filing no-match W-2s had filed 117,792 over the three years—an average of 39,246 no-match W-2s per year. The employer with the highest percentage of no-match W-2s had... Read more

So a friend of mine linked to this article, about illegal immigrant kids who do well in school until they realize they won’t be able to get financial aid to attend college, or until they watch this happen to their older siblings or friends, and they drop out and give up.  Now, to be sure, I’ve never quite understood whether this means that they then just join their dad in the day labor line outside the local Home Depot, or whether... Read more

So I was surfing around and came across this:  Do you know who owns Trader Joe’s? in the Freakonomics blog.  The author was shocked, just shocked to learn that Trader Joe’s was owned by Aldi, because Trader Joe’s is the best store in the universe, well worth driving 20 miles for (as attested to by commenters) and Aldi is, well, Aldi. To be sure, there are a few things Aldi doesn’t do well: most notably chocolate bars have historically been... Read more

I’m going to wade into social issues even though this is more challenging to write about. But this is something I was thinking about a while back in response to various blog posts, and thought it would be useful to try to write this out.  (I touched on this briefly in my comments on Men on Strike earlier.) Once upon a time, a girl was told, by her parents, and by society, “don’t have sex because you could get pregnant... Read more

So I’ve been blogging for a good month and a half now, and have realized that I need (well, want) to broaden my horizons a bit in terms of bloggers who are writing interesting things that I haven’t picked up on yet. Any suggestions? Read more

Well, except for this one post. The situation really worries me.  We attacked Iraq because we believed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, in violation of UN Resolutions that effectively formed the cease-fire agreement after they attacked Kuwait. We attacked Serbia to get the Serbs to withdraw from Kosovo. We bombed Libya because of some variety of humanitarian reasons. But we’re planning on attacking Syria so that Obama can save face over his “chemical weapons is a red line” comment?  And... Read more

In the spring of 2007, 17% of all households were “doubled up.”  In spring 2011, that percentage had climbed to 18.3%.  That’s according to the census data, and is occasionally cited as further evidence of economic hardship and the inability of young adults to get a good start in life. (Sometimes, the concept of being “doubled up” is also used as a definition of homelessness — if a family loses their apartment and stay with their parents temporarily, they’re “doubled up” and,... Read more

By Leigh Gallagher. Many years ago, I read a number of books on the New Urbanism.  There are a lot of good titles, most notably The Geography of Nowhere (1994) and Home From Nowhere (1998), by James Howard Kunstler, as well as the pretty picture book The New Urbanism: Toward an Architecture of Community (1993) by Peter Katz.  So when I started this book, I was prepared to settle into the same type of book, but I was disappointed.  Ultimately,... Read more

The Trib has an article about food desert’s and the mayor’s plan to combat them.  Here’s the link, but it’s behind a paywall (which I’m totally fine with but it’s inconvenient in this case). But the gist of the story is that Mayor Emmanuel pledged two years ago to increase the number of grocery stores within “food deserts” and his efforts have fallen short — and, in addition, in order to make the situation look better, he’s used an alternate... Read more

See, I’m working on the clever titles. I’ve been reading The End of the Suburbs, the latest in the New Urbanism genre; commentary on this book to follow later. But I wanted to start of with some context. My husband and I ended up in this general area due to his, and later my, first job after grad school. We didn’t know anything about the Chicago area, and picked our first apartment based on proximity to freeways and to his... Read more