They don't make foie gras kibble, so The Hound has never had the chance to taste what many consider to be a delicacy. But after a two-year ban on the rich livers made by stuffing feed down the throat of geese and ducks, Chicagoans are free at last to dine on foie gras.
The Chicago City Council, with more than a little prodding from Mayor Richard M. Daley, voted overwhelmingly the other day to ignore the bleatings from the increasingly powerful animal rights lobby and Ald. Joe "Foie Gras" Moore (as hizzoner dubbed the alderman) to allow restaurants to once again serve the dish.
The Hound understands it just wasn't a foie gras-free zone down in the big city. Enforcement of the law was done with a wink and a nod. Like speakeasies of old, those in the know knew the passwords to tony eateries to get their lips around foie gras, French for "fat liver", at between $20 and $25 a pop for a serving about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
The Hound, who has known to chase a few Canada geese at retention ponds around area office parks, always felt If people want to eat goosey foods or they want to eat something they like, they should have the option. Whether it be a fowl's pumped up internal organ or french fries plump with trans fats, it should be the diner's choice. At least in free countries.
The Hound also understands animal rights activists who consider foie gras a cruel dish because geese and ducks are force-fed to make their livers bigger. The Hound wouldn't want to be force-fed. Who wants their livers to be bigger?
So, a Grey Goose toast to Chicago aldermen who finally saw the light and decided, if the 2016 Olympics are headed this way, that foie gras has to be on the menu. After all, the French no doubt will be sending a contingent of Olympians to the Windy City.
Sure seems those Lake County Board members who voted to increase their pay --- in the midst of tough economic times -- are a bunch of greedy Guses. They're lucky the Illinois Senate killed a provision for recall. Could you imagine recalling 13 County Board members? Yowza!
So they dodged a bullet. Sure is convenient that all but one County Board member up for re-election and having opposition come Nov. 4 voted in favor of the 15.5 percent pay hikes which soon takes their pay for a part-time job to more than $40,000 a year. Sure is suspicious, like somebody figured out the math. The vote to hike their own salaries was 13-10.
That one County Board member seeking re-election and voting for the pay hike was Republican Larry Leafblad of Grayslake. He must feel pretty good about his opponent in November to vote himself a pay raise in the current economic times. Maybe his constituents will feel different about that.
As for the two retiring members, Republican Judy Martini of Antioch and Carol Spielman of Highland Park: They certainly showed their true colors voting with their fellow payrollers and against the taxpayers.
Ah, but perhaps voters will have longer memories when it comes to the four members who voted to boost their salaries and whose terms expire in 2010. That would be Steve Carlson of Gurnee, Susan Gravenhorst of Lake Bluff, Pam Newton of Vernon Hills and Michael Talbett of Lake Zurich. Did The Hound mention they are all Republicans? So much for conservative fiscal spending the GOP once was known for. No wonder Democrats are making increasing inroads into formerly Republican Lake County.
The Hound has one message for these greedy Guses: Get on the bus, Gus and make way for public servants who don't expect to get rich off the taxpayers.
As The Hound was standing in line at the Post Office for one-cent stamps to match up with the leftover 41-cent stamps which no longer are valid, steam was coming out of those big ears. It was just last year that the U.S. Postal Service raised stamp prices to 41 cents and now the cost of mailing a first-class letter is 42 cents.
Then, The Hound remembered that this is the same USPS whose employees rang up a $13,500 tab at a five-hour feast at a Ruth's Chris Steak House in Orlando, Fla. That's when the steam started pumping like an old Baltimore & Ohio coal train.
This postal order sort of made news last month after the Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, discovered the charges made to government credit cards. As far as The Hound is concerned, the national media dropped the ball on this story.
GAO investigators called the 2006 meal "abusive" in its extravagance, according to The Associated Press. That's too kind. How about piggish.
The order included more than $3,000 in drinks, including top-shelf beverages such as Courvoisier cognac, Belvedere vodka and Johnnie Walker Gold Label scotch. Then there was the $500 in shrimp cocktails and $900 in crab cakes --- that's a lot of appetizers. But then again, Ruth's Chris is no late-night diner. It's a classy joint.
According to the GAO breakdown, the diners also had 81 steakhouse salads at $588, and 130 jumbo scallops which totaled $422. Yum, jumbo scallops! Ninety-five people attended the feast and ordered 81 entrees, which the GAO figured averaged $160 per person. That's eating high off the hog!
The USPS defends the dinner, contending it was held to land corporate clients from privately run FedEx and UPS. Taxpayer money, they say, was not involved; the feast was funded by products and services of the USPS.
Uh, aren't stamps products? And they wonder why Americans go postal when the price of stamps rise.
One mother The Hound knows got a Mother's Day gift over the weekend. It was a digital picture frame.
We're all familiar with them and if you're not, the idea is to replace all those picture frames hanging on the walls or sitting on coffee tables with a media card plugged into the digital frame. This mom noted the photos are there to view until she gets bored with looking at them. Then in goes another media card.
This got The Hound to thinking how many other mothers got digital frames on Mother's Day. Plenty, right? Which is taking a step back from this ongoing push to be green and save energy, resources and materials, isn't it. The Hound believes that if miraculously oil drops to $90 a barrel tomorrow, talk of going green will disappear quicker than a bad movie at the box office.
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, digital picture frames are just one of the 25 consumer electronics devices the average U.S. household owns. That would include televisions, radios, CD players, cell phones, printers, computers, portable and stationary DVD players, VCRs, MP3 players, videogame players, digital cameras, camcorders, GPS devices. Yikes, Americans do own a lot of stuff!
The association also notes that two billion DVDs, 30 million digital cameras and 41 million MP3 players are sold annually in the U.S. On top of that, there's about 150 million used cell phones stockpiled in U.S. households.
The Hound's Gurnee correspondents are still tittering over the latest issue of "Keeping Posted", the village's newsletter. What has them guffawing is Mayor Kristina Kovarik's monthly message .
"The winter did expose some flaws in our ability to deal with heavy snowfalls," her honor notes with a straight pen. "I'm happy to report that Village staff has taken the initiative to conduct some intense planning sessions that will correct deficiencies in our snow removal operations."
What the mayor doesn't address is why the public works director resigned suddenly and that two long-time public works employees were disciplined. Did it have to do with the poor street-clearing performance during the winter of ought seven and eight? That would be the winter when the village ran out of salt --- not that Gurnee was the only governmental agency to be caught short of sodium chloride. Or is is calcium chloride they use on Midwest roads? Or is there something more to the issues with the three public works guys?
The copy of "Keeping Posted" The Hound saw has Mayor Kovarik concluding: "We listened to the feedback received and the message was loud and clear --- pristine roads and optimal driving conditions are of the utmost importance."
Nothing gets past some public officials, eh?
Despite bad snowplowing, Gurnee does have some of the best fireworks in the county on July 4 and during Gurnee Days. Maybe bread and circuses will get the chill off village residents.
Whooee! Those North Chicago cops certainly have been busy the last few days.
The latest police presence in the city was a raid at Stack's House of Style the other day. Cops allegedly were looking for drugs, although no narcotics were found even after police trashed the beauty shop. However, a police spokesman said "evidence" was removed from the salon at 1800 Sheridan Road.
After the raid, though, city inspectors discovered 24 building code violations. On top of that, according to police, some barbers allegedly didn't have the required state licenses to cut hair.
Good to know police are concerned if barbers are licensed to give hair cuts. The Hound wasn't aware police academies touched on violations of state Department of Professional Regulation rules in the course work. Anything in police class about pedicure procedures?
Surprisingly, Police Chief Mike Newsome's dad owns a barbershop in North Chicago, Dave's Barbershop in the 2300 block of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive. No word if police checked on barber licenses in that shop.
Presidential candidate John McCain and soon-to-be-also-ran Hillary Clinton have proposed suspending the federal gas tax --- 18.4 cents a gallon --- from Memorial Day to Labor Day as a way of bringing relief to Americans at a time when folks take to the highways for summer vacation or cruisin' dates at various county locales. Presidential hopeful Barack Obama dismisses this idea, calling it a "classic Washington gimmick." He's wrong.
So we won't get that much relief at the pump and we may diminish the highway road fund. Yet, it is something government can do for the little people among us. Dismissing the gas tax holiday and siding with those economists is making the Illinois senator sound even more elitist.
The latest poll on the topic, a Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey released this week, shows 46 percent of likely voters favor a federal gas tax holiday this summer. The survey found that 42 percent are opposed and 12 percent unsure.
According to Rasmussen Reports, most voters who earn more than $75,000 a year oppose the gas tax holiday. Most who make less than $60,000 a year favor that policy change. Those making less than $60,000 a year are the ones Obama has had a hard time connecting with in the Democratic primaries and are voters he needs for victory in November.
Clinton's idea to replace the highway transportation fund, which will probably be picked up by McCain once she decides to drop out of the presidential derby, is putting an excess-profits tax on Big Oil. It's not like they don't have some profits to spare.
Tax holidays are not new. Some states even have tax holidays for school supplies and for a few years, Florida had a tax holiday for supplies purchased to be used during hurricane season, June to November in the Sunshine State.
Perhaps it's not the monetary amount, but the fact that voters see government as doing something instead of always taking or doing nothing.
The Hound wasn't aware that North Chicago Mayor Leon Rockingham had issued a shoot-to-kill order in the city. But, 40 years after Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley issued a similar edit to police, that looks like what happened the other day on North Chicago streets.
Maybe Cease Fire, the anti-violence group, needs to march around North Chicago City Hall after Aaren Gwinn, 21, was gunned downed by undercover drug dicks in the 1400 block of Jackson Street.
North Chicago police, in press releases, say Gwinn attempted to run from, or maybe over, the plainclothes officers. That's their story and they're, no doubt, sticking to it. Not surprisingly, Mayor Rockingham and Police Chief Michael Newsome have not returned calls to News-Sun reporters on the shooting, preferring to control the flow of information.
Perhaps North Chicago citizens can get information at the next City Council meeting. Then again, knowing the penchant for secrecy by North Chicago officials, they may not.
Even a spokeswoman for the NAACP pointed out: "We never get any information from City Hall."
While there are plenty of citizen witnesses, police have mainly issued press releases on the shooting.
One thing is certain: This is the first killing in North Chicago in a while where the perps can be identified, even though police will not name the officers, or their race. Gwinn is, or was, an African American.
The family of Aaren Gwinn can take some comfort in the fact North Chicago isn't New York City. Instead of two fatal gunshots, he could have been shot 50 times by police.
The Hound feels safer already since Gov. Rod "The Mod" Blagojevich has named an Illinois Seismic Safety Task Force. This from the guv who took nearly a year to iron out a mass transit package with state lawmakers.
Just goes to show, an Elvis fan will move it and shake it when the Prairie State rocks and rolls.
Since the April 18, 5.2 magnitude temblor in way downstate Wabash County, the Land of Lincoln has received 29 aftershocks measuring as high as a 4.6 magnitude. Yikes, that sounds like Cali tremors to The Hound.
While some of us were shaken from sleep at 4:37 a.m. April 18, if we were Californians, we would have slept through the quake, let alone it's aftermath. Fortunately, there isn't much in downstate Illinois besides coal mines, some cricket pumps, a few prisons and Shawnee National Forest.
Wake The Hound when there's a 5.2 quake in Lake County.
Anyway, His Hairness has directed state agencies to review and enhance the state's earthquake damage prevention strategies. It's not like state officials weren't aware of the potential for earthquakes downstate. Afterall, one of the most powerful quakes occurred downstate on the New Madrid fault back in the late 1700s. The quake was so powerful, it changed the course of the Mississippi River. Or so The Hound's relatives have said.
The governor certainly moved quickly on this earthquake panel. Perhaps that's his constituency in for his 2010 re-election bid. We can only hope.
The Hound has noticed a lot of those "recyclable" bags at area food and retail stores. But here's the question that has been bothering The Hound: Is it OK to take a Jewel bag into, say, Dominick's or a Wal-Mart bag into Target?
The Hound has heard of one Dominick's where a manager gave a customer two free bags (theirs are black) rather than seeing her use Jewel bags (dark green).
So, what is the etiquette here? Is it OK to use any bag you have because they are environmentally sound (or so we are told)? Or do your bags have to be store-specific?
Life is just full of questions, right? Next week The Hound will tackle organic foods. Then again, maybe not.
