Will we get a ‘do-over’ to try to bring that Amazon campus to Chicago?

There are many aspects of life where we wish we could have ‘do-overs,’ as in the ability to ignore some negative outcome and try to do it again in a more positive manner.

EMANUEL: Would do-over revive his legacy?

It would seem public policy is becoming one of those areas; what with the issue of Amazon.com citing a new corporate headquarters to supplement the existing campus in Seattle, Wash. All part of Amazon’s desire to make itself a company whose presence is all-dominant and powerful.

IT WAS A big deal last year when Amazon.com stirred up an application process that got municipalities all across the country eager to beg and plead with the Internet retailer of just about all kinds of goods to locate within their municipal boundaries.

Heck, even Gary, Ind., felt compelled to genuflect before the almighty-Amazon corporate image – hoping they could gain the facility.

It wasn’t surprising to many that when Amazon finally chose sites for their new proposed facility, they went with Washington, D.C. (the national capital) and New York (the largest city).

Specifically, they picked a New York proposal to locate within the borough of Queens. Only for it now to turn out that many of the locals are expressing objections to their city offering up much of anything in the way of incentives to attract Amazon.com to “the Big Apple.”

THAT IS WHERE the do-over comes into play. For Chicago officials on Friday made sure that Amazon.com officials were aware that the Second City is still willing to put forth the same offer (which would let the company pick from about five sites scattered around the city) that they did before.

Will Rahm succeed in resurrecting brawl w/ New York for Amazon.com?

In short, if New York doesn’t want ‘em, then Chicago is more than willing to take ‘em.

If New York can’t get local officials and activists to go along with the $2.8 billion in incentives that were offered up, Chicago is willing to resurrect its own plan for incentives.

With Mayor Rahm Emanuel indicating he’s more than willing to take the Chicago equivalents of those people who object to corporate tax breaks and other incentives being offered get with the program.

RAUNER: Will he get blame for initial loss?

AS IN HE’LL be prepared to use his political muscle to get those critics to “stifle themselves!” so that Chicago can draw a business entity that would definitely become one of the most prominent to call the Second City its home.

It’s not surprising to learn that Emanuel is willing to use his final couple of months in office to try to win over Amazon.com with a political do-over.

If he could actually manage to snatch this project away from New York City, it would be a significant move for his legacy. If anything, he could erase the failure he felt for being unable to get the project in the first place.

People ultimately will remember where Amazon.com chooses to locate. If Emanuel and other political people (including Gov. J.B. Pritzker and possible future Mayor Toni Preckwinkle) succeed, no one will remember that they initially failed.

IF ANYTHING, THEY may well try to shift blame to former Gov. Bruce Rauner – whose own support for the project was apathetic, at best, and in fact included some support for St. Louis. Indicating he seemed not to care where it actually wound up.

We’ll have to see just how important a New York City address is to Amazon.com officials. It may well turn out that it matters too much, and that Amazon officials are merely trying to sway New Yorkers into going along with the deal they originally agreed to.

So will a do-over for Amazon.com manage to succeed? It will be intriguing to watch the coming weeks to see whether Chicago’s level of clout is anywhere as strong and intense as our political people always fantasize it is.

Although I also suspect that when it comes to the average Chicagoan, there’s another issue where we’d rather have a do-over – as in that NFL playoff game the Chicago Bears managed to lose to Philadelphia. We’d love to have Cody Parkey try again at kicking that field goal, whose miss wound up bringing the Bears’ Super Bowl aspirations this year to a crashing end.

  -30-

Happy Holidays; now Log Off!!!

This being Christmas, it’s time for my annual holiday diatribe for you to log off your computer, laptop or whatever other device you might be using to read this.

A city-wide holiday greeting. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

For it being Christmas, there really are better things you could be doing with your time on this Tuesday, rather than reading through the Internet. All this rubbish will still be here Wednesday. You can catch up on it then.

Do you believe this scene occurred? Or did someone shop at Macy's?

SERIOUSLY, I’M INCLINED to believe that this holiday is one that we ought to be spending together, enjoying whatever semblance of family or friends you may have. There really are more significant things than looking up cutesy pictures of pets who were dressed up by their masters in elf costumes.

Chicago's official holiday tree for 2018

If anything, that would be evidence of animal cruelty, not cutesiness.

So come back here later this week, in search of significant commentary and analysis of the happenings in our world. I’m going to give myself the day off. Or before you log off, check out this old video snippet that many of us originally saw back in the days of Garfield Goose or Ray Rayner and Friends on Channel 9.

Although I won’t be amongst those making the trek up to the Music Box Theatre – where for one day only Tuesday, the classic cinematic production up for viewing is none other than “Fiddler on the Roof.” Does that mean viewers will then be encouraged to have dinner at a Chinese restaurant, while humming the tune "Matchmaker?"

  -30-

DNAinfo.com ‘death’ in Chgo, NY shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone

As a reporter-type person who has experienced unemployment on several occasions, I sympathize with the DNAInfo.com website in Chicago and the individuals who earlier this week abruptly learned they were out of work.

RICKETTS: Owned Cubs/media pair less than Tribune Co.

Although there’s nothing at all surprising about the fact that the company operating websites in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington – along with Chicago – decided to suddenly ‘pack it in’ after eight years of trying to cover news in those cities.

JOE RICKETTS, THE head of the wealthy family that owns the no-longer-defending World Champion Chicago Cubs and also was a significant financial backer of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential bid (the family nearly got a member appointed to a Cabinet post), let it be known he was giving up because the business end was failing.

The company wasn’t generating enough revenue to cover the expenses of actually having people on the payroll to cover the news – which is an essential expense if one is going to cover the news properly.

Various reports have pointed out the fact that the employees connected to the websites in New York voted last week to organize themselves as a labor union. Some would have us believe that Ricketts’ decision to shut down was purely a response to not wanting to deal with organized labor.

Which may be true. But the idea that management would rather not have their employees sticking together to negotiate benefits for all is nothing new. The idea of an owner hating organized labor shouldn’t come as a shock to anybody!

Two local websites that are now ...

SO I’M NOT about to join the parade of Ricketts bashers, some of whom are even insisting that we boycott Chicago Cubs games in response to his anti-labor actions. I would never expect him to be sympathetic, and I personally certainly don’t need this as a reason to ignore the Cubs – a ballclub I have never much cared for.

What I take personally from the DNAInfo.com closings is evidence of how costly it can be to professionally report the news. And how those people who are eager to see newspapers and their centuries of experience in doing so (the Chicago Sun-Times is a baby, tracing its origins back to the days just before Pearl Harbor) wither away are truly ridiculous in their attitudes.

There are those people deluded enough to believe there is no loss to society from fewer newspapers because the Internet and websites are capable of replacing them.

... a part of Chicago's media history

Yet most websites I have seen that are news-oriented are way too reliant on having newspapers to generate stories and content in general that they can appropriate for their own use.

A SITE LIKE DNAInfo.com, which actually had reporters looking for stories in the neighborhoods of Chicago (some neighborhoods were covered more thoroughly than others) that was generating its own content is running into the same problems as those who historically were disseminating their content on printed pages of pulp.

Which means most of these sites wind up becoming the medium of choice for benefactors with the finances to not care about their financial bottom line.

Even then, there comes a point when many of them have to cut off the funding and shut down. Remember the ProgressIllinois.com website, which had reporter-type people out-and-about covering stories – with the bills being paid by the Service Employees International Union?

Even they had to give in – with the website remaining in place, but un-updated since that final date. AP: Donald Trump Wins Presidential Election (UPDATED) is the final headline, as though determined to perpetually remind us all of the annoyance our society brought upon itself just over a year ago.

Sun-Times still reporting news, despite death predictions.

THERE IS ONE significant difference between the two closings – DNAInfo.com and its sister websites suddenly found all their content erased from the Internet. A letter from Ricketts explaining his decision to suddenly shut down (and make the four months of vacation pay and severance his reporters will receive seem overly generous) is all that remains of the sites.

There is some speculation Ricketts may try to archive some of the content – for those who care to see what once was of this particular attempt at covering the news.

Although as anyone who follows the “news” is fully aware, yesterday’s stories are ancient history. It’s the ongoing developments that provide for an overall report that has relevance to people’s lives.

And without it, we as a society may have to get used to a condition in which our attempts at public “education” may wind up being fulfilled with cutesy pictures of kitty cats, quirky pictures of people doing something stupid, and all the porn, porn, porn we could ever desire.

  -30-

Will Chgo mystery bid entice Amazon?

It was with much fanfare, combined with secrecy, that Chicago city officials this week officially submitted their bid to Amazon.com, offering up a proposal by which the company would build its second corporate headquarters somewhere in the Second City.

What kind of bid concocted at City Hall ...

I emphasize “somewhere,” because city officials weren’t eager to share any details of what it is they’re offering to the Internet retail giant to entice them to want to come here, rather than to Atlanta, St. Louis or any other city that plans to get involved in the bidding process.

OF COURSE, CITY officials were eager to make grandiose statements about how Chicago has the “talent, transportation and technology” to be a worthy site for the new corporate offices that Amazon wants to build to supplement their existing Seattle-based facility.

But for anyone expecting a definitive answer as to whether Chicago is offering up the old Post Office downtown, the former Michael Reese Hospital site on the South Side or a site somewhere along the north branch of the Chicago River, forget it.

That’s a secret. City officials fear that somehow letting it be known publicly what they’re offering up will somehow hurt the city. Almost as though they think some other city will magically be able to duplicate what Chicago offers up as part of their own bid.

Which is highly unlikely, to tell the truth.

PERSONALLY, I WONDER about the possible re-use of the hospital or post office facilities. It would be nice to see such one-time prominent locations in Chicago be put to use – recycled, of sorts, in ways that will continue to keep them relevant for years to come.

Somehow, I suspect that Amazon types will want to think new and shiny, and if they’re contemplating Chicago at all would most likely be swayed by the artistic architectural drawings that could be created for any new site along the river.

... would attract Amazon.com ...

I suspect they’ll be scared away from thinking in the least about Chicago’s South Side – and probably would be equally terrified of those people who talk up the idea of Gary, Ind., as an Amazon site that would be very close to Chicago without actually having to endure the so-called drawbacks of city living.

Although I also think people who want to criticize urban life most likely are missing the whole point of why Amazon wants to build a new facility in the first place.

I MUST CONFESS to finding some of the speculation from other cities intriguing. Such as the Georgia municipality near Atlanta that is willing to approve the de-annexation of more than 300 acres of land for an Amazon site.

That would literally allow for creation of a new community that could be called Amazon, Ga. – they could be their very own city and govern themselves. They wouldn’t have to listen to any government officials. They could become, in a sense, the ultimate corporate town.

Would Amazon.com truly like to be the masters of their own domain, so to speak? Or is that just an old “Seinfeld” gag that the younger-minded of Amazon.com executives (it is a 25-year-old gag) wouldn’t appreciate?

Or could it be that the last thing Amazon.com officials would want to do is have to manage their own local government? Having to worry about one’s own trash pickup or street maintenance? Easier to have someone else worry about such tasks while they focus on the business of making goods available for sale at competitive prices.

BECAUSE OF THE city secrecy, I can’t even begin to speculate as to how Chicago’s bid competes with the inevitable collection of tax breaks that municipalities will offer up – seeing how much they can sacrifice short-term to Amazon.com in hopes that the company’s financial benefits will help them long-term.

... to want to come to the land of the Picasso?

That 50,000-jobs total is going to be tossed out repeatedly in coming years, even though the reality is that it would take many years for the number of local employees working at a new Amazon.com facility to equal the tally.

Maybe we’ll learn more once the application process is complete by Thursday – although just when Amazon.com officials plan to make their decision remains to be seen.

Ultimately, Chicago and the other cities interested in becoming the home address for the Amazon.com facility are at the corporation’s whim, and they’ll tell us what they’re going to do whenever they feel like it – not exactly a comfortable spot for Chicago to occupy.

  -30-

Technology wasted on the young; or, Hey you punk kids, get offa my lawn!!!

There’s one aspect of the incident that has Facebook users going bonkers these days – the one in which four young black people (two male, two female, most barely qualifying to be considered adults) beat up a white boy while taunting him because of President-elect Donald J. Trump.

The beating of a young white man by four young black people for apparent racial motives goes beyond the legal issues that will be addressed at the Criminal Courts building in coming months.

Some are bothered because it is a white person being harassed by those scary black punks. Others that the level of anger we in our society feel due to the results of our most recent presidential election could be so intense.

BUT FOR ME, it is the fact that I am capable of watching this incident occur because the young people (three of them are 18, which means just a year ago it would have been a case for Juvenile Court) felt compelled to shoot video, then post it on Facebook for the world to see.

These particular half-wits, three of whom are from Chicago proper and the other from the suburbs, have been arrested, and are likely to have their first appearance at the Criminal Courts Building on Friday.

Meaning that they will have a pseudo-celebrity status while being held in Cook County Jail (although that could mean they’d be exposed to extra harassment). But it also means the court system ultimately will deal with them – particularly with the “hate crime” charges that are being sought that could ensure they wind up doing real prison time.

Yet on a certain level, they took pictures of themselves in action as they beat up on a white boy, whom I’m told suffers from a degree of mental retardation and may not have had a clue as to why he was singled out for such abuse.

ALL OF THE horrid actions are preserved on video. These four young people wanted it known (at least within their circles) that they smacked about some white punk as payback for the ugly mood that caused so many people to actually cast their ballots for Trump to be president.

They probably just never envisioned that anybody outside of their friends would actually watch the video – which as it turns out became one of those items of stupidity that catches public attention because it is so stupid.

The sad thing is that whenever I watch young people use computers or video or other technology and actually pay attention to what it is they are doing, it strikes me that this technology is totally wasted on the young.

Cops wish all people video'd selves when they misbehave

If that makes me the equivalent of that cranky old guy yelling at snotty punks to get off my lawn and particularly thinks people who let their pets poop on other peoples’ property deserve a flogging, then so be it!

THESE YOUNG PEOPLE on a certain level want to be thought of as “heroes” who stood up to the levels of bigotry that they and many other black people are forced to endure in their lives. Which I’m sure that so many white people are now paying attention will not occur.

We’ll probably hear a lot of trash talk about this being “reverse racism” turning white people into victims. Although that term of “reverse” racist always strikes me as being merely a 21^st Century equivalent of when black people who asserted themselves were dismissed as “uppity.”

For anybody who wants to think of this particular incident as a new trend or an outrage has probably forgotten about the upsurge of incidents against non-white people back in 2008 right after Barack Obama was elected president. From beatings to cross-burnings, there were many incidents in those months committed by white people whose racial hang-ups were put out on display. For what it's worth, Obama himself said Thursday that the latest attacks are "terrible" and "despicable."

My point being that we have people of many differing racial or ethnic origins who are capable of behaving stupidly. I’m not about to think of these four young people (whose names I don’t want to get into because I don’t want to dignify them any further) as being anything special.

EXCEPT THAT THEY’RE like many other stupid kids who think that putting their trivialities onto the Internet in some form somehow legitimizes them.

Seriously, you’d be amazed at how many video snippets you can find by a search of “teenagers fighting” (some 13.1 million, according to Bing.com). What is the point, to show how “manly” one was in ganging up on some person?

Or was it meant more to shame the person who got attacked? All in all, it seems like an incredible waste of time, and makes me question the intelligence level of the people who care enough to look this stuff up.

I can’t help but think this most recent incident is purely stupid – and likely wouldn’t be known about at all if not for the fact that someone felt compelled to record their moment of idiocy!

  -30-

Happy holidaze! Now get your behind away from the Internet, have a real life!

We’re in a pretty intense holiday weekend; not only is it Christmas Eve and Day, it’s also the beginning of the Eight Days of Hanukkah and we’ll soon be in Kwanzaa.

Best wishes to you if you happened to have chance to pass this holiday decoration on your way out of town for the weekend. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

A holiday for just about any faith or occasion one would want to celebrate. And boy, do we need it.

FOR WE WENT through a hellish campaign cycle that particularly dragged out the ugliest of tensions that separate us in our society. We definitely need something all around to alleviate such hostile feelings – particularly for those who saw the final election results come out this week and still can’t get over the fact that Hillary Clinton could clean Donald Trump’s clock by some 2.9 million votes.

And still lose!!!

So it is with even stronger-than-usual feelings that I say anybody actually reading this commentary on Saturday or Sunday needs to get a life. Log off the computer or whatever device you happen to be using to access the Internet and go do something in the real world. Celebrate. Be merry, jolly or downright joyful.

There is nothing that will be in the blogosphere during this holiday weekend of any great significance that you can’t wait until Monday to read all about it.

ALTHOUGH FOR THOSE of you who just need to see something visual before logging off for the day, I’m digging out a couple of audio/video links on off-beat Christmas-themed songs.

It's also the beginning of Hanukkah on Saturday. Or does mentioning that fact constitute "war" on X-mas (whose spelling that way is the truly offensive act).

I always get a kick out of hearing Chuck Berry’s take on “Merry Christmas, Baby.” I always find Celia Cruz’ Spanish-language version of “Jingle Bells” (“Soy Feliz en la Navidad,” when translated en Español) to be cheerful.

Then there’s always that old cartoon take of “Hardrock, Coco and Joe” that many of us Chicago natives remember seeing as kids while watching “Ray Rayner and Friends” on television just before the holidays.

I pick it because it was always a particular favorite of my brother Christopher, whose lack of presence in my life the past year continues to leave a sore spot for me emotionally.

  -30-

EXTRA: How can anybody consider corn flakes to be “un-American?”

About the time you read this on Thursday, there’s a good chance that I will have had my standard start to the day – a cup of coffee and cereal. Corn flakes is actually a favorite, with a banana chopped up into it.

Political protest? Or just breakfast? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Now under typical standards, I would think you could care less just what my breakfast routine is. In fact, I’d like to think that the majority of you will think I’ve gone goofy for sharing this tidbit with you.

BUT I GUESS I’m trying to get the attention of the other tiny percentage – those of you who are motivated by the Brietbart News Network and its claims that Kellogg’s is somehow “un-American.”

A concept I find so utterly ridiculous that I have to say the only people who are misfits to this country’s ideals are the ones who could somehow think that Tony the Tiger (the symbol of sister cereal Frosted Flakes) is un-American. Then again, they’re probably the same people who a generation ago claimed Tinky-Winky was gay – and that Teletubbies were a subversive plot to undermine our society by toying with the youthful mindset.

What has Brietbart, a socially-conservative leaning website that I must confess I pay little attention to (I also haven’t looked at the Drudge Report in years, and can’t say there was ever anything about it that was appealing to me), all up with its knickers in a bunch?

Yes, I’ve been watching too much BBC programming lately. But Brietbart is doing an attack because there are corporate entities that are reluctant to spend their advertising dollars to support the site because it is so over-the-top in its rhetoric in favor of Donald Trump.

SOME GO SO far as to claim the site is egging on those with racial and ethnic hang-ups (and are trying to justify them as legitimate with that “alt-right” label). In the case of Kellogg, they say the copy published these days by the Brietbart site, “aren’t aligned with our values.”

Which Brietbart wants to believe is Kellogg trying to “blacklist” their efforts. Which is such an exaggeration of the truth.

For it seems that Brietbart is peddling a rather subversive concept that says everybody is obligated to support their rhetorical nonsense. When in reality, any publishing entity has to realize that anything they publish has the potential to p-o anyone else – and sometimes those people will react accordingly.

If Brietbart really wants to stand their guns and refuse to alter their editorial policies, that’s their right. But it’s also the right of the public to support who they want. And if it turns out that Brietbart ticks off so many people that they wind up getting hurt financially, well that’s the reality of capitalism.

AND BECAUSE I’M offended by the concept of the schoolyard bully getting upset when everybody else fights back, I’m inclined to want to resist.

So if Brietbart is really going to call for a #DumpKellogs (yes, I know it’s spelled wrong) campaign on Twitter, I’m going to feel compelled to resist. I’m not about to urge people to eat more cold cereal – that’s their own business to decide.

But it will be with a touch of pride that I’ll make my political statement (as lame a gesture as it truly is) in eating up my corn flakes with vim and vigor.

Although it means I’m probably lucky, because I bought the above-purchased box when I went to the local supermarket Wednesday night. What kind of political statement would I have made if I – which I nearly did – bought a box of Corn Chex instead?

  -30-

Bye, bye bridge. Are we truly more enlightened about our surroundings?

I have my own personal pet peeve when it comes to news judgment and the types of happenings that are proclaimed to be “news” by various reporting organizations making their money in the “news business.”

I can’t stand anything that is a story only because it was captured on video. Something that wouldn’t have been acknowledged at all if not for the fact that someone felt compelled to play with their video camera at a certain moment in time.

IF THAT MEANS I expect there to be some significance to the happenings that become news, then so be it. My own hang-ups about broadcast operations is that they’re more interested in showing moving pictures than they are presenting any information of significance.

And now that many newspapers are thinking in terms of their websites and wanting to capture video snippets, they are falling for the same level of triviality in terms of what they report.

Hence, I bring up my own personal non-news story for Thursday – the demolition of the Torrence Avenue bridge at Chicago’s farthest south border.

I only know of the bridge because I am by birth a 10^th Warder who was raised in Calumet City. Meaning that particular stretch of Torrence Avenue is one I have driven along so many times in my life I’ve lost count.

IT WAS THE connection between myself and the other parts of the family that remained living in Chicago proper – and not the poofy parts of the city, but in places like Hegewisch and the East Side (I don’t want to hear from some poofy downtown resident claiming Streeterville is the real East Side – it ain’t).

But that bridge over the Grand Calumet River (which is the city limits (to the north is industrial area of Chicago and to the south is Burnham – a community Al Capone and his cronies once used as a way of dodging law enforcement in Chicago) is now no more.

It seems the bridge had become so decrepit that Illinois Department of Transportation officials ordered it blocked off a year ago.

On Thursday, officials finally got around to setting up the explosives that knocked out the support beams that were holding the structure up. Now, the rubble can be cleared away and a new bridge eventually will have to be built at Chicago’s southernmost tip.

SUPPOSEDLY, THAT BRIDGE will be complete by next year. Until then, people will have to continue using the Bishop Ford Freeway (which, in all honesty, I still think of as the Calumet Expressway) as the way to get into and out of the city proper.

I first saw a video snippet posted by 10^th Ward Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza, who also published notices on her own Facebook account to let local residents know of what was happening – just in case they happened to be driving around the area Thursday morning.

But I also noticed how many television stations, web sites and newspapers felt compelled to make a story out of this – because they now have video of a bridge being blown to bits.

Not particularly good video – all the images are grainy. It’s also not like anybody did anything with their stories to try to report how this change would impact the lives of people who actually live in the area (in all honesty, it has been a few decades since I have lived there).

IT WAS JUST moving pictures of a bridge being taken down, with large puffs of smoke emanating from the structure before it collapsed into a large pile of metallic trash. Somehow, I doubt the opening of a new bridge providing access to Chicago will get anywhere near the attention of this explosion.

Watching it all made me feel like I ought to be giggling that stupid laugh of Beavis (or was it Butt Head). “Heh, heh, heh, heh, blowing stuff up is cool,” is what they’d think, before flipping the TV to some headbanger music video.

Which seems to be the tone of too much news coverage these days.

  -30-

Hope you have (or had) a happy holiday

This year, more than ever, I feel compelled to take my annual holiday advice and ditch this stinkin’ computer of mine to go enjoy the world out beyond the Internet.

In fact, I worry about anybody who’s actually reading this notice on Friday (and if, by chance, you’re stumbling onto it a couple of years from now, you didn’t miss a thing).

FOR THIS OUGHT to be a day in which we log off any electronic devices that we have made too prominent a place in our lives for. Go out into the real world and do something on this glorious Christmas Day. You aren’t missing a thing if you decide that anything on the Internet you’d be reading today can easily wait until Saturday (or next week, or month, most likely).

An analog world had its share of beauties, and we ought to try to enjoy them more often. Or for those of you who are Jewish, that you enjoyed them a couple of weeks ago during Hanukkah – a holiday that has its own charms and not at all like Jon Lovitz' "Hanukkah Harry" character on Saturday Night Live.

As for enjoyment, this is a particularly unusual holiday season – the first holiday season I have had in 46 years without my younger brother. Although my loss there has had the effect of bringing me closer to my father – and its most likely the two of us will wind up spending time together on Friday.

So before you log off your computer or whatever device you’re using to read this, let me be Venus Flytrap playing a sweet little holiday ditty to all the Jennifer Marlowes of the world. And yes, you get bonus points from me if you have a clue what it is I’m referring to.

  -30-

Hiding police violence out in the open

It seems that law enforcement has learned a lesson from computer geeks and conspiracy theorists the world over – if you really want to hide something, do it out in the open.

Literally put all the raw data concerning your biggest secret onto a website so poorly designed and unpromoted that most people don’t even realize it exists – or perhaps don’t realize its significance if they happen to stumble into the site.

AND IF BY chance people do happen to find out what is going on, you can claim to have been fully honest about your information the whole time!

You’d be amazed at some of the stuff you find if you scour the Internet’s depths (and not just using Google to search for “naked cheerleaders” or stuff like that).

That same attitude seems to prevail with law enforcement and their attitude toward technology meant to record their activity – which theoretically is supposed to show that our police officers behave in completely professional manners at all times.

Those recordings are supposed to show how guilty those perpetrators truly are; and those are the videos we get to see freely.

BUT THE CHICAGO Tribune reported this week how there are many other instances of videos that aren’t quite so easy to find, and those are the ones where there are questions.

And in many cases, what turns up in those videos really isn’t so clear-cut. Or maybe there’s no audio to go along with the video. So what you really get is an out-of-context mess of fact that no one truly understands.

Yet the police will claim that the video cameras mean everything is being done on the up-and-up. Even though I have stumbled across reports of how the reason there is so little audio to go with video is because of police officers who, on their own initiative, wound up losing the microphones that would have recorded what was actually being said.

We’ll get the official pronouncements from law enforcement officials claiming that it is a crime to knowingly tamper with the recordings. Yet I’m sure proving criminal intent becomes difficult to do.

JUST LIKE PROVING that a law enforcement officer’s use of physical force (sometimes deadly) elevates to the level of criminal – considering that we give police the legal power to hurt people at times.

So all those people who want to file lawsuits against Chicago and the police department thinking that there’s a video in existence that will prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what happened are fooling themselves.

What they’re more likely to find out is that the video is vague and open to interpretation.

Even that now-internationally renowned video of the death of Laquan McDonald is much more vague than was originally thought – the only sight of a police officer is the one who kicked the knife out of Laquan’s cold, dead hand and the shots fired into his body come from off-screen.

WHICH IS WHY I still wonder how solid the criminal case is against the police officer who now faces multiple murder counts for McDonald’s death. And think the ultimate tragedy would be if people (including Rahm Emanuel) were to suffer politically while officer Jason Van Dyke were to be acquitted!

That might be the result that would cause rioting in Chicago – an outcome that our city has managed to avoid thus far, unlike places like Baltimore and Ferguson, Mo., to name a few.

And all those police videos?

For all we know, they’ll wind up taking up space on YouTube someday – going largely unwatched except by people who are looking for something stupid to view after watching video of kids on skateboards deliberately crashing their bodies into inanimate objects.

  -30-

Is idea of shifting public notices off newspapers all about keeping secrets?

It is a concept I have heard so many times that I don’t know whom to attribute the idea to – If you want to keep something secret, you ought to just post it somewhere on the Internet.

SANGUINETTI: What else will she do?

Because there’s so much gobbledygook and garbage out there accumulated on assorted website that here’s a good chance no one will ever read your particular notice.

AFTER ALL, THERE’S so much other stuff to occupy the public attention. Probably stuff that’s so much more titillating than the boring, dry information that might have public significance, but just doesn’t compare to that piece about “80’s teen stars and what they look like now” some three decades later.

So excuse me if I don’t think much of the suggestion that Illinois law do away with the requirements that governments be required to publish public notices about upcoming activity in their local newspapers.

These people claim it would be so much more efficient to put notices on their own government websites. They also try to claim that the only people who have objections are the publishers of some of the dinkier newspapers in the state – for whom the revenue they get for publishing such ads can be a significant part of their income.

Which they wrongly try to portray as the state being forced to subsidize the press. A whole lot of hooey, if you ask me.

NOW I’LL BE the first to admit that while I try to read as many newspapers as possible and have been known to read some rather obscure parts of the paper, I rarely pay much attention to those legal notices that get published.

I doubt I’m alone. Requiring that the notices be published in the local papers probably isn’t the most efficient way to spread the word about what actions are upcoming at the local levels of government.

But that’s mostly because of the laziness of the public, many of whom wouldn’t pay close attention to their local happenings if the notices were right on Page One.
 

Would you rather read a legal notice, or see Demi's bikini shot

Those people, of course, will then complain that it’s the laziness of the press in not keeping them informed about the actions they didn’t known enough to ask about.

WHICH ALSO IS a drawback to finding out information on the Internet. Many people use search functions to try to find relevant copy to the issues that intrigue their curiosity.

But those search functions are so crude in the way they view things. They are ultimate evidence that computers are dumb – only as smart as the people who use them.

I can envision many instances where a government would post something in an obscure portion of their website and no one would ever notice it. Which is probably the real goal of this particular measure that was recommended by Lt Gov. Evelyn Sanguinetti’s task force on government consolidation.

That, and perhaps she’s envisioning some sort of payback to the newspaper industry as a whole for all the smart-aleck reporter-types who think she’s a political and intellectual lightweight.

I REALLY THINK it would be too easy for governments to use their websites to hide information in part because of my own experiences as a reporter-type in using government websites to gain some of the bare information they offer now.

Government units like to use their websites to promote the summer festivals or announcements about changes in trash pickup. The idea of using them to let people know when public hearings are to be held or when contracts are up for consideration is something they would rather not bother with.

Heck, I know some governments that claim to post their City Council or Village Board agendas, but are as much as a year behind. Others can’t even be bothered to keep up pretenses. So say what you want about the idea of nobody reading legal notices in the newspaper – at least it’s an outside entity.

Do you really trust your local government to have that much say over telling you what they’re up to?

  -30-

Resolving problems by creating even more; what's wrong w/ a snow day?

There are times when I think the technologically-advanced amongst our society ought to be told to “stifle” themselves, what with the way they think a computer device is the solution to everything they could possibly think of.

Is she really learning a thing?

Maybe it’s just the “Archie Bunker” within me, or the realization that the copy I generate now isn’t any more literate than the copy I produced three decades ago when I was banging it out on assorted varieties of battered typewriters

BUT SOMEHOW I am repulsed by the idea of a bill now pending before Gov. Bruce Rauner – one that purports to offer the “solution” to the problem of students missing so much school during the winter months due to inclement weather.

The dreaded snow days that cause school to be closed, and more days having to be tacked on to the end of the academic year at a time when the summer weather can make a hot-and-humid school building a very unpleasant place to have to be.

The bill in question calls for a pilot program to be operated in up to three school districts during the 2017-18 academic year in which teachers would provide class assignments via computer for those days in which the snow is so heavy or the temperatures so cold that kids can’t come to class.

In short, there won’t be any need for school to not be in session. Perhaps a “virtual” classroom is the wave of the future.

THE IDEA BEING that this pilot program would be a one-year experiment that could – if it works out – someday be expanded to the nearly 1,000 school districts located across Illinois.

Personally, I hate the idea, because it pushes us in the direction of thinking that kids are somehow better off parked in front of a computer screen in their own homes rather than having to get off their duffs and interact with real human beings.

Which as far as I’m concerned is the whole purpose of education – it’s not like much of the facts and figures we were taught remain all that relevant. So much of it is now obsolete.

RAUNER: Give that man a veto pen!!!

What we really learned was how to learn, and keep learning and updating our collection of information so that we can get through our lives.

THAT EVEN EXTENDS to the idea of use of computers within the modern-day classroom. We’re teaching kids about technology that won’t matter anymore by the time they’re adults. It’s not the computer they should be learning – it’s the things they do with a computer that matter.

I’m also realistic enough to know that trying to teach class by computer is not the least bit realistic – in part because there are parts of Illinois where Internet access is weak even if one has the money to spare.

In other situations, there are people for whom paying for a decent Internet connection at home means adding to the utility bills that already are too high. And I can already hear the conservative ideologue types complain about the idea of having to provide an Internet connection to those people who can’t afford it.

This is an idea concocted by someone who thinks it’s the computer itself that matters most in life. An idea I find absolutely abhorrent – even though I own a laptop computer and am fortunate enough to have an Internet connection at home and several other places nearby for those occasions when my own connection dies out due to technological glitches.

ALTHOUGH I’M SURE there are those who disagree. I have been in classrooms as a reporter-type person where I see too many kids think of their smart-boards (kind of like a chalk-board, only hooked up to the computer so the teacher can post things from the Internet on it) as being some sort of super-cool video game.

I doubt they learned a thing.  Somehow, I’m skeptical they would learn anything lasting on a cold-and-snowy day in January when they weren’t able to go to school. Somehow, I suspect the television set would get paid more attention than the laptop.

Maybe the solution is to bring back a 21^st Century take of Miss Frances, the 1950’s television host who gave us “Ding Ding School” – “the nursery school of the air.”

What would a 21st Century Miss Frances be like?

Then again, maybe that’s where this latest screwy idea came from. Let’s only hope that Rauner winds up showing some sense and vetoing this particular bill.

  -30-

Will Facebook outlive us all?

I woke up Thursday morning to the sight and sound of a CNN-like news anchor type saying she thought it was bizarre that Facebook would feel the need to create an option by which people can easily turn over control of their pages after they are deceased.

I might have been inclined to agree; personally I don’t see a need to care about what becomes of the odd smatterings that appear on my own Facebook page once I am gone. But I have the experience of my aunt Charlene – who managed to figure out a way to do what Facebook says it will now allow many others to do.

IN THE CASE of mi tia loca (she would have laughed at my sarcastic description), she died about a year-and-a-half ago. But her brother also had access to her account, which means he has taken to making postings on her behalf.

I literally recall the day she died because I learned about it on Facebook. I happened to stumble on her page on a Sunday morning, only to see that a posting was made an hour earlier that read simply, “I’m in Heaven.”

Her brother later that day posted some details about her passing, all written in a first-person voice as though it were my aunt writing. Later, some video shot during her wake was posted on the page.

Since then, her brother has taken to posting various old photographs of my aunt, along with notices about the project that had become the focus of my aunt’s life in her retiring years (she had a career teaching in the Chicago Public Schools) – her “traveling Mexican museum” as she called it.

IT REALLY WAS a collection of the various artifacts and knickknacks she had compiled during her life’s various trips to Mexico; which she would periodically put on public display.

As a tribute to my aunt, her brother has kept the collection and occasionally sets it up (the one time I saw it, it took an entire banquet hall in Chicago to contain it) – using Facebook to let people know when those occasions will occur.

It sounds more bizarre than it is. It actually comes across as an interesting way of remembering my aunt – particularly when my own Facebook page gets an update from her page and I can have a quick, but pleasant, memory of her.

Somehow, I doubt my aunt is alone in having something interesting to say even after they’re gone. Let’s only hope that the people who get picked to carry on someone’s Facebook legacy have enough tact not to try to settle old grudges with someone once they’re no longer capable of defending themselves.

CONSIDERING HOW MUCH the rest of Facebook and the Internet is capable of being taken over by people with no sense of personal decorum, it is always a very serious threat.

Reading trashy updates about the dead is about as boorish of behavior that one could engage in. Let’s hope that this trend of Facebook pages outliving the people whose lives they were a part of is not something that has to be stifled because of those of us who can’t control the worst tendencies of our natures!

It should be said that I have no intention of delegating anybody to carry on my own Facebook page (which consists largely of posts from this weblog to expand the number of people who are capable of reading it). I don’t plan to try to figure out a way of filing copy from the great beyond.

As far as my own page is concerned, I’m inclined to agree with the musings of a few reporter-type people I know who said (on Facebook, if you must know) that a final posting of a simple “-30-” (the old typesetting symbol for ‘end of story’) is the best way to go.

  -30-