Chicago City Wire

When is double-dipping not double-dipping? When the person double-dipping is a machine Democrat.

When is anti-semitism not anti-semitism? When the anti-semite is a machine Democrat.

When is slander against members of a police force not slander? When the slanderer is a machine Democrat.

Double standard? You bet. And retiring State Rep. Monique Davis has benefited from it for the last 29 years.

Take the double-dipping, for instance. Even then-Governor Rod Blagojevich called her on it in 2008, accusing her of drawing salaries both from the city of Chicago as a teacher-administrator and from the state of Illinois as a member of the legislature.

Blagojevich was no paragon of ethical practice, so Davis' abuse had to be brazen to get his attention. Nevertheless, she denied the accusation, and that was that.

In 1996, Davis used what she apparently thought was a witty anti-semitic slur to disparage a witness testifying before the legislature on behalf of a proposal to establish a merit pay program for Chicago teachers – a system that might have greatly improved our school system, had it been enacted, and weeded out incompetents like her.

She twice referred to Dr. Arnold Weber, president of the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago and former president of Northwestern University, as “Dr. Bagel.”

(She also complained at the time that the city was paying over 51 percent of the cost of educating Chicago students, without bothering to explain why taxpayers outside of Chicago should shoulder any part of that burden and glossing over the fact that the budget was bloated by parasitical personnel like herself.)

Just three years ago, Davis got herself in hot water again with her comments on the high murder rate among blacks in the city. "Some people in my community believe the police may be involved in some of these murders," she commented on a Detroit radio show.

An embarrassment for three decades, Monique Davis is finally gone, and we won't miss her.