“Freedom to bank” is just another way of saying you already have money. Banking offices per 10,000 people in McHenry County, according to “Where Banks Aren’t,” published by the Woodstock Institute in June: 3.85. In suburban Cook County: 2.91. In Chicago: 1.69. In low-income areas, where the median family income is less than half the metropolitan average: 0.79. In Humboldt Park and Austin: 0.13.
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Getting restless out there. Writing in the February 10 National Law Journal (www.law.com), Gary Young notes that in the 50 biggest verdicts in the country, the total amount juries awarded for punitive damages was $3.2 billion in 2001 and $32.6 billion in 2002. He also compares the ratio of median punitive damages to compensatory damages (compensation for documented harm), which jumped from 2.3 to 4.5 over the same period.
Terrorists without a constituency. Surviving members of the ultraleftist late-60s Weather Underground, including Chicagoans Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers, “are proud of having been part of a worldwide revolutionary movement,” writes Pat Aufderheide, reviewing a new documentary about the group for the July 1 issue of In These Times. “But they never explain exactly how they were part of such a movement, other than in their minds.”
