Sears Tower no longer has name, nor any height designations of significance

The one-time Sears Tower, which clings to that name in the mindset of many Chicagoans, is truly a piece of the Second City’s past.

One-time Sears Tower still towers over rest of Chicago

It has been some 23 years since the building was the “world’s tallest” structure, and five years since it could claim to be the tallest towering hulk of architecture on the North American continent.

NOW, IT CAN’T even claim to have the highest ceiling.

For it seems that New York, which had its One World Trade Center knock the former Sears from the continent’s tallest building now has another new skyscraper that will knock former Sears down another peg.

For it seems the new Central Park Tower will have a ceiling at 1,550 feet – compared to the 1,451-foot ceiling of the building officially known as the Willis Tower.

But which many of us still cling to the old name, and also like to pretend that somehow, on some sort of level, it’s still really the tallest something or other in the world.

FOR THAT WAS the designation it held from its opening in 1973 until 23 years later, the Middle Eastern countries in desperate need of something of significance elected to build taller structures for office space.

Trump Tower looms over da Loop

And then the World Trade Center got replaced with a towering structure in 2014 that technically is only bigger than former Sears because of the spiraling tower that puts its peak at 1,776 feet high. As in a political statement – even though the top 400 or so feet don’t actually add any space of use to people.

Of course, there is one plus – former Sears is still the tallest in Chicago. It didn’t get topped by the Trump Tower with its roof at 1,171 feet high and a spiral peaking at 1,388 feet.

Don’t forget that Trump originally envisioned his tower in Chicago to be a new “world’s tallest” structure – only to have activity that destroyed the original World Trade Center cause him to scale back his vision.

WHICH ALWAYS MADE me thankful that Trump himself didn’t try to erect a statue of himself atop the spiral’s point. It would be just like The Donald himself to want his image sky-high and looking down upon the rest of us.

Making it susceptible to the next tornado that inevitably touches down within the downtown city limits – something that hasn’t happened in some 200-plus years.

Just envision Trump’s image being ripped from the roof and sent flying through the skies – perhaps out into Lake Michigan where it gradually sinks to the lake’s deepest point of 922 feet.

However apropos that would be.

  -30-

EXTRA: Happy 182nd!

Once again, Chicago celebrates the anniversary of its incorporation.

It literally has been 182 years since the date that officials officially declared Chicago to be a full-fledged city. One that the state's big-wigs in Southern Illinois (the kind of people who thought Cairo would be a significant city at 20,000 people, instead of shrinking to its current level of barely 2,000) never thought would amount to much. After all, it's so far from the Mississippi River and from what was supposed to be the dominant regional city -- St. Louis.

BUT WE GREW, oh so much. Recovered from the Great Fire of 1871 to the point there was once a time when some people thought Chicago would become the Number One city in the nation, sprouting out even larger than New York.

But that never happened, and in fact we now face a situation where we'll probably shrink to even smaller than Houston some time in the next decade. By the time we reach our city Bicentennial, the Second City will be Number Four in size.

But not in spirit. For I don't care what anyone else says; a part of me will always regard Chicago as the greatest place to live on Planet Earth. And as for anybody who'd leave Chicago for petty partisan political reasons? Well, they deserve to live in a place like Indianapolis (and I don't mean the boulevard)!

So here's some video snippets about our wonderful city; from the Burnham Plan that set our city's image to the river/great lake combination that are the reason our city is where it is, down to a National Geographic take on our city. And even a bit of phony Chicago history that far too many people take as serious scholarship. Enjoy!

  -30-

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-

Chicago trying to figure how to attract as much retail opportunity as possible

Where does Chicago go shopping?

Leaving the South Side

There’s time when it appears we don’t have much of a clue. As much of it may well depend upon which demographic we happen to have been born into – and whether retailers are all that anxious to have our business.

A PAIR OF stories in the news of late would impact the ability of us to purchase the goods that enable us to get through our lives.

For some of us, that has now become something we do on the Internet from our homes, with items shipped to our homes (or what other address they happen to find most convenient).

While others of us still prefer the concept of a physical store to shop at. Which is why interest is being paid to municipal government trying to figure out how to get Target to back of off its intensions to close two of its stores in South Side neighborhoods.

Specifically in the Morgan Park and Chatham neighborhoods, both of which are majority African-American populations. Which has some people convinced that Target is dumping those locations because they’re not interested in selling goods to black people.

AFTER ALL, IT’S not a cutback by the retailer whose fanatics like to mockingly think of it as a French-like outlet. Because Target has plans to open new stores in the Rogers Park and Logan Square neighborhoods. Along with various other locations throughout the suburbs.

But none of those are majority non-Anglo like the locations of the two stores that are to be closed.

Target supporters try to argue that the retailer will still have South Side locations. Although you have to admit, the Hyde Park neighborhood is noted most for being so unlike the rest of the South Side in so many ways – including in its racial composition.

Putting Chicago off to the side

I won’t be surprised if Target decides to merely ride it out, and figure they don’t have to do anything to change their stance on store locations.

SO IT MIGHT be in vain the city’s efforts to offer millions of dollars in tax increment finance benefits – which allow the property taxes the company pays to be put into a special fund by which they could get it back to pay for future improvements.

It might not be enough to sway Target officials, who likely will tolerate the racial rhetoric of the next few months that claims the retailer is deliberately snubbing people based on race.

Even though I’m sure they’ll claim it’s mere demographics – even though I often wonder if such talk is merely a way of covering up a desire to be more selective about how they do business with.

Not that Target is the only retail issue that has city officials concerned. There also are concerns over the second corporate headquarters that Amazon.com wants to have beyond Seattle, Wash.

THE REPORTER RUMOR mill of recent weeks says that Amazon is about to choose a site – and it ain’t Chicago.

Supposedly, Amazon is interested in the Virginia-based suburbs of Washington, D.C., and the borough of Queens in New York. Which some will try to say means they want to be in D.C. and Noo Yawk. Although it’s really more like they want to be on the fringes of those two major cities where they can escape the grittier aspects of urban life.

Which might well include people of the same types of economic demographics that Target is trying to avoid by pulling their stores out of Morgan Park and Gresham.

The key to comprehending businesses and where they choose to locate is that they usually pick locations where their self-interest is fulfilled, with the underlying idea being that the day will eventually come when their self-interests are better served elsewhere. Meaning even if Amazon.com were to pick Chicago, it’s likely the day would come when they’d decide to move elsewhere.

  -30-

Is Sept. 11 a date to unify us all, or a date for critics to ‘shut their pieholes’

It has been 17 years since that date when nut cases acting in an irrational way to show their Islamic religious faith staged their attack on the secular western world by inflicting damage upon the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

This became fish wrap in the coming days

That’s the way I recall the events of Sept. 11, 2001 – even though others are inclined to want to think in different ways to justify their own irrational hang-ups along religious and ethnic lines.

IN SHORT, THE bigoted amongst us in society want to remember the happenings of all those years ago as evidence that their warped way of thought is somehow correct; and that those of us who view life in a more rational manner somehow ought to pipe down and keep our crazy thoughts to ourselves

Yes, I remember the happenings of that day and the national mood that followed as a scary time, largely because it bolstered the level of absurdity that already existed in our society.

There were those people who claimed then (and still try to claim now) that our nation was unified – people put aside their partisan leanings and saw ourselves as one.

What actually happened is that the right-wing elements of our society (including many of those who have admiration for this Age of Trump we’re now in) became more outspoken in their thought process – and the rest of us felt a sense of intimidation.

IT’S AS THOUGH many people felt too scared to have thoughts of opposition and felt they needed, as actor Carroll O’Connor’s “Archie Bunker” character would often tell wife Edith, to “stifle” themselves.

The fact that many of us haven’t permanently silenced ourselves may be the ultimate evidence that the “terrorists” of Sept. 11 didn’t prevail. If they had, we probably would have become a nation of people where the majority of us currently agree with whatever irrational thoughts get spewed out via the current president’s Twitter account.

So when I think of all the happenings that will occur on Tuesday (most timed to coincide with 8:48 a.m. and 9:29 a.m. – the moments that day when the World Trade Center towers were struck by hijacked jet planes), to me the focus ought to be less on all the pseudo-military ritual that will take place.

Yes, there will be those who will gather at many a City Hall across the nation to watch uniformed police officers salute and national anthems be played out of some sense that we’re showing we weren’t beaten down by those people who wanted to show contempt for our society because it is a multi-cultural place.

BUT I’D BE inclined to argue that we’re really showing our survival as a society by supporting those of us who differ from the “norm,” or what certain people would like to think ought to be the norm for all of us to follow.

Yes, Sept. 11, 2001 was a date of confusion – many of us didn’t have a clue what was really happening. Our lives seemed thrown all out of kilter.

Yet from the perspective of a Chicagoan, what I recall was that many downtown businesses shut down for the day as the area evacuated. For the most part, life returned to as close to normal as people of certain ideological leanings tried to use the chaos to impose their own thoughts upon all of us.

Perhaps the last thing we ought to be doing is getting obsessed with minute details of pseudo-patriotism. Personally, I think the people who get all upset that someone didn’t show the proper degree of respect for singing a national anthem or reciting a Pledge of Allegiance are the ones who are a real threat to the freedoms upon which our society is supposed to be based.

NOT THAT I’M going to be offended by those of you who feel compelled to attend one of the many ceremonies being held Tuesday to remember what happened 17 years ago. If it makes you feel comfortable, the better for you.

Although you thinking that Tuesday is an excuse to force your thought processes on others – if you think about it, that’s a downright un-American concept to have.

  -30-

Times change; so should our customs

A CLARIFICATION: My aunt, Christine, insists that her mother (also my grandmother) was actually 15 years old at the time of her marriage in 1935. Not that the difference in fact changes the larger point I was trying to make.

  -0-

I couldn’t help but reflect upon New York state altering its laws that relate to the age of consent for marriage.
 

My grandmother was a 14-year-old bride

Assuming that Gov. Andrew Cuomo doesn’t change his mind and decide to use his “veto” pen, the “Empire State” will soon require that people be at least 17 if they wish to get married.

THAT COMPARES TO the current status, where Noo Yawkers could get married as young as 14 if they had proper parental consent.

It sounds primitive. It sounds backward. It brings to mind the images of people who value a woman’s place so little that they figure her only worth is as a wife – so why wait?!? Marry her at 14, she can have the first of many babies by the time she’s 16, and if it turns out she can cook, then she’s the perfect mate for some guy.

I have read assorted comments on the Internet from people who are astounded that such a practice was ever permitted, and others who are merely astonished that such thoughts continued to exist in the 21^st Century – even if just on paper.

Yet I also have to confess that my maternal grandmother, Socorro Salas, was just such a bride. She was 14 on that day nearly nine decades ago that she was wed to Miguel Vargas – my maternal grandfather who himself arrived in this country from Mexico in 1926 when he was 17 and a few years later was a young man working in the steel mills that used to exist on Chicago’s South Side.

AS IF THE age wasn’t an old-world-enough factor, consider too that it technically was an arranged marriage. It was felt that my grandfather had become established enough in life to think about taking a wife and having a family.

Even though my grandmother was the one of my four grandparents to actually be born in this country (her parents were the immigrants from Mexico at the end of the 19^th Century), there was enough of the ethnic sentiment to have her settle down with a respectable Mexican man so they could have their life together.

Which they did, living for many years in the South Chicago neighborhood until they eventually moved up economically, first to the South Shore neighborhood, then to the suburbs of Calumet City, then Lansing, where they lived at the time of my grandfather’s death in 1978 (I was not quite 13 back then).

My grandparents on the occasion of the birth 73 years ago Friday of twin siblings, including my mother, Jenny -- who were children number four and five out of eight

In short, they lived “til death did they part.”

THEY HAD A lasting marriage of nearly 50 years – a partnership that resulted in eight children (including my mother, Jenny, who was one of the twins born 73 years ago Friday).

They fought. They quarreled. They bickered. Yet they were a couple with mutual respect, and I remember my grandmother never did get over my grandfather’s death – mourning until her own demise three years later.

In short, married at 14 wasn’t a disaster for her. Even though they didn’t encourage it for their own children (they actually thought my mother’s marriage to my father at age 20 was too young).

Yet I’m also realistic enough to know that none of the young couples who took advantage of New York’s permissive age requirements are anything like my grandparents.

IN ALL LIKELIHOOD, anybody considering getting married that young today is likely only doing so because of a pregnancy and some desire on their part to put up the appearance of a “happy family.” Meaning it’s likely they’ll never evolve into such circumstances.

And at that age, they likely never will become anything like the appearance of respectability that they’re trying to put forth.

Of course, this would be theoretical in Illinois – where the age now for marriage is 18, or as low as 16 if for some reason the parents do offer their consent.

So call it a step in the right direction that New York got with the program – although to tell you the truth, even a 17-year-old is a tad young to be married off. Somehow, I suspect even my grandparents would agree if they were still amongst us today.

  -30-

Some of us don't have the sense to see Chicago's wonders; we're losing people

It seems not everybody shares the love I have for this magical land built along the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan – the Census Bureau reported this week the Chicago metropolitan area is nearly 20,000 residents smaller than it was a year ago.

Long-standing cultural institutions not enough to bring people to Chicago, ...

That would be the equivalent of an entire suburban community being suddenly obliterated from the map – although I’m sure urban development types would tell me it is people fleeing the city proper to go live in those suburbs.

FOR THE RECORD, the Census Bureau estimates that the Chicago-area population (including the portions that spill over the state lines into Indiana and Wisconsin) is 9.513 million.

Officially, the last Census count in 2010 showed the Chicago area at 9.461 million people. So we’re still bigger than we were a few years ago.

But the reality is that the estimated population count for this year is a 19,570 person drop compared to last year, which was an 11,324 person drop from the year before that.

It seems that when compared to other cities across the Great Lakes region and Midwest, we’re typical. Technically, the word out of Detroit, Cleveland and St. Louis is worse.

BUT WE IN Chicago have always thought of ourselves as worthy of being held to a higher standard. Hence, we notice that places like New York and Los Angeles experienced population hikes of 2-3 percent.

... nor are the newer novelties such as 'Cloud Gate'

Not huge, but not insignificant either.

Now I’m not about to claim that the Midwest is somehow dragging Chicago down, making the city that blue dot on a red sea as way too many politically-motivated maps depict these days. If anything, I always thought Chicago was the spiritual capital of this vast region that thinks the Atlantic and Pacific oceans have nothing on that great body of water known as the Great Lakes, and that one-time Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick sort of had the right idea that “Chicagoland” was truly unique – even if his reasons why were a little half-cocked (or maybe were ahead of his time in predicting much of the region's political support for Donald J. Trump).

Corncobs along the Chicago River ...

I did notice the one demographer who told Crain’s Chicago Business that the Chicago area population is “flatlining,” as in we’ve dropped about as low as we can get and this is the bottom.

ALTHOUGH ANYBODY WITH sense knows we don’t bottom out until we literally become a ghost town – a place of long-abandoned structures just waiting for Mother Nature to whack the one-time site of the Second City with a massive tornado that causes everything to come tumbling down.

... and a gaudier structure located upstream

Now I’m sure some people are going to want to claim the politically partisan bickering that has occurred the past few years is somehow scaring people away.

I doubt it.

Largely because I think many people have enough sense to disregard the blowhard tendencies of the government officials they elect. Besides, most of the people who want to make that line of attack are more interested in blaming the “other side” for the population loss.

This shoreline of Lake Calumet is firmly located within the city limits

THEY WANT TO lambast somebody, rather than try to figure out the solution to our problems; which, admittedly, do include the fact that a significant number of people are willing to up and leave what I will always regard as the most wonderful city on Planet Earth.

Where else will you find streets named for Goethe?

Even if there are some people, particularly of African-American persuasion, who’d rather move back South to the lands their grandparents fled. Segregation isn’t what it once was down there, and our land of opportunity has fallen off as well.

Or there may be all those other individuals who push themselves out further and further away from Chicago’s downtown core to the point where they don’t want to think of themselves as being part of the metropolitan area.

Although I’m always inclined to think those people ultimately will be “punished” for their lack of faith by finding themselves so far out in the middle of “nowhere” that they’ll wind up longing for the days when they were a part of that wondrous urban area that gave us deep dish pizza, electrified blues music and a century’s worth of mediocre-to-bad baseball – both South and North sides!

  -30-

What difference does party label make when describing political candidate?

The other day, I was in a place with several government-minded people, most of whom still haven’t gotten over the election of Donald Trump as president.

TRUMP: Does the "D" or "R" really matter?

Although one of them (an elected official herself) tried ending the conversation by remembering that Trump was once registered to vote as a Democrat and, in fact, has offered financial help to Dem candidates in the past.

“LET’S HOPE HE reverts back to his Democratic ideals,” she said.

I must confess, I had to restrain a laugh at the very thought. I have always believed there is a reality about the way in which people identify with political parties that makes their use as political shorthand to describe one’s beliefs a potentially-distorting factor.

People who get involved with government usually identify with the political party that is predominant in their community.

I have no doubt there are many Chicago residents who could easily consider themselves Republicans IF NOT for the fact that the Chicago Republican Party is such a weak, non-existent entity that there’s no practical point to identifying with them.

ONE WOULD GAIN nothing in the way of having allied government officials on their side to get things done. Perhaps it is true that the government task people most care about is something as simple as being issued a new trash can when the old one wears out.

All the rest is politically partisan nonsense.

Keep in mind that I’m not saying there’s anything unique about Chicago. I suspect many of those people who live across the rest of Illinois could easily side with the Democrats IF ONLY there was anything resembling a credible Democratic Party organization in their communities.

PFANNKUCHE: A 'real' Republican?

We vote for candidates we think can do something for us in our daily lives. Only the hard-core ideologues amongst us get into the notion of voting for someone – just think of how irrelevant Jill  Stein of the Green Party turned out to be in the recently-completed presidential election cycle.

IN FACT, IN some cases people wind up getting forced into taking the dominant political party all seriously, largely because the primary elections wind up becoming the ones that determine who actually wind up winning.

The primary winners ultimately wind up running unopposed come general election time, or against fringe candidates who are nothing more than ballot-filler (think of Cook County state’s attorney-elect Kim Foxx’ victory over Republican challenger Christopher E.K. Pfannkuche).

In the case of Donald Trump, it’s no surprise that he wound up having to identify with Democratic government officials regardless of his actual ideological beliefs. He was a Noo Yawker, and one with business interests that required him to make his peace with government officials he may have found personally to be repulsive human beings.

If anything, I always felt his shift to the Republican Party for purposes of this election cycle was a matter of accepting who he really was.

HE RAN A campaign based on attracting the vote of people who were run out of the Democratic Party generations ago. If he had tried to run as a Democrat on the grounds he was going to restore them to the place they once had, they would have laughed themselves silly before winding up voting for someone goofy like Ted Cruz.

So the idea that Donald Trump ever had “Democratic ideals” he could now turn back to? I don’t think so.

If anything, I suspect the real Donald Trump is that wealthy businessman whose financial interests were being restrained by government officials of all persuasions. A part of me wonders if his real interests for ever getting into the election process is that he wanted those officials off his back.

Although I’m sure he’d probably try to phrase it more gently by talking about the need for business-friendly people serving in government (which really means those more than willing to mess with organized labor and working people to bolster some corporate entity’s financial bottom line).

AS FOR WHETHER Trump is really the scary ideologue he portrayed during his campaign, he may not be. Although the fact is that he so eagerly sought out those types of people for political support that he’s now going to have to wear that political label.

Will Trump miss his personalized jet?

Particularly since if he tries to deviate too far from the political trash talk he spewed during the campaign, he’ll find out just how quickly the “far right” will turn on him and make his four-year presidential term an agonizing experience – and not just because he’ll have to live in Washington and fly around on Air Force One rather than a private jet with his own name painted on its fuselage.

One last thought – Trump strikes me as the kind of guy who doesn’t want to be president, but wants to be the guy with money who gets to tell the president what he ought to be doing. The “D” or the “R” after his name doesn’t mean a thing!

  -30-

How vociferously will Trump resist the influence, allure of the presidency?

I see where President-elect Donald Trump is saying he doesn’t really want to live in the White House – he envisions being able to govern the nation from his high-rise luxury apartment in Manhattan, with trips to his Mar-A-Lago mansion in Florida and an occasional visit to that ugly tower along the Chicago River.
 

Will this replace the White House?

As though he can keep conducting himself as though he’s running his usual business interests. Does Trump secretly envision that the nation will be renamed from the "United States of America" to "Trump – the country?"

OF COURSE, THE sensible thing for us to do with such egotistical pronouncements is to chuckle at the naivete being expressed. I don’t doubt that the security concerns involved in protecting a chief executive of the nation will require Trump to accept residence in the presidential mansion in the District of Columbia.

Even though I’m sure Trump probably thinks the nation’s mansion is downright drab compared to the tacky level of gaudiness that exists at so many of his other properties, and may think Harry Truman had a point when he referred to the White House as the "crown jewel of the federal penal system."

Trump kind of reminds me of the statements that Barack Obama made in the early days of his presidency – when he insisted he and the family were going to be making regular trips to Chicago so as to revitalize themselves. They would need their Chicago fix.

Not that the man has never set foot in Chicago since becoming president. But practicality has made them into District of Columbia residents to the point where they openly admit they’re not returning to the city once his term ends in January.

THERE WON’T BE that final flight for Obama and family on board Air Force One to the Second City on Inauguration Day – which is what tradition would call for.

 

Presidential vacation home?

Although I suspect that the Trump-type of voters are probably snickering to themselves and saying Obama doesn’t deserve the perk – we ought to let him hitch-hike, then have him arrested for vagrancy on the walk home!

In short, there’s a lot of nonsense we’re going to hear in coming weeks as Trump tries to wrap his mind around the reality that he’s now going to be legally responsible for the fate of this country. He will be blamed for everything that goes wrong in coming years.

 

For when he deigns to visit Chicago

His legacy now is not going to be some garish buildings and being the “best sex” Marla Maples ever had (if you believe the New York Post). He’s going to have to start behaving like a serious human being – instead of an egotistical blowhard.

IT IS WITH that in mind that people are watching his appointments.

Some may be relieved he didn’t put New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (himself a blowhard) in charge of anything. Others are repulsed that Steve Bannon will have anything to do with our government – he has edited conservative websites and often gets the labels of “racist” and “anti-semitic” attached to his name.

But the one that intrigues me is that of Reince Priebus – the head of the Republican National Committee who took his share of abuse during the campaign from Trump for being amongst those GOPers who resisted the charms of The Donald as president.

A quick look through Google finds headlines from earlier this year reading Reince Priebus, other Republicans, denounce Trump’s indefensible comments about women and Reince Priebus condemns Trump on Muslim ban, amongst others.

 

Will he be first fired by 'President' Trump?

YET NOW, TRUMP is using the political operative to be his chief of staff – the guy who’s going to be in charge of the presidential staff and will be largely responsible for whether or not the Trump presidency succeeds at accomplishing anything.

Is Priebus feeling the “call of the White House” and can’t resist a chance to “serve his country?” Or does he just need a job that badly.

And as for Trump, is this a sign that he’s adapting to the political realities of being president? That he may try to conduct himself like a responsible human being?

Or is the reality that the instant Priebus does something to offend the president, he’ll become the first individual to get a “You’re Fired!” from the Trump administration?

  -30-

We in Illinois out-voted New York but did anybody really notice turnout?

An interesting point has been brought up on various politically-oriented websites – some 2.6 million people turned out to polling places this week in the New York primaries.

Much is being made of the fact that locals Hillary Clinton (once the state’s U.S. senator) and  Donald Trump (for many years, the state’s garish rube who generates so much copy with his life's gaudiness) got such large vote margins that the Empire State has practically ensured it will be a Clinton/Trump brawl for president come the November general elections.

YET IN ILLINOIS’ primary back in March, some 3.45 million people took the time to vote. Both Clinton and Trump had more people from Illinois cast ballots for them than there were New Yorkers who supported them.

Did anybody get all worked up, excited or bent out of shape over the notion that Illinois had somehow put the two candidates over the top, or clinched their ultimate victories?

Heck no.

Probably because it would have been ridiculous to make such a claim.

STILL, FOR ALL the claim that New Yorkers will try to give you these days that they’re somehow politically savvy and that it will be their New York “values” that somehow sets the tone of the 2016 general election for president, I have to wonder if it is Illinois – with its overtones of good ol’ Chicago politicking – that ought to be considered dominant?

It is kind of odd that New York’s population of 19.7 million people got voter out-turned by Illinois’ 12.7 million.

Particularly since the common perception in Illinois was that our turnout wasn’t all that spectacular. Not record-setting low, but certainly not as intriguing as back in 2008 when Barack Obama’s ballot presence inspired people to turn out in large numbers.

Yet more of our residents felt inspired to cast ballots this time around than the New Yorkers did.

OF COURSE, IT probably wasn’t any real interest in the president that inspired people from Illinois to want to cast ballots. It may well have been our overly-local sense of what is politically important that drove our turnout.

You know, the old sense of “up and out” that federal government is less important than the local crackpots who hang out at City Hall.

We had a state’s attorney election in Cook County where the Democratic primary amounted to the real thing – nobody really thinks Republican Christopher E.K. Pfannkuche is going to win come November.

We had that intriguing primary for Senate where Tammy Duckworth had to battle a bit to win the Democratic nomination to take on Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., come November.

THERE ALSO WERE assorted electoral posts that took on overtones of expressing one’s displeasure either with Mayor Rahm Emanuel or Gov. Bruce Rauner (and the fact that Emanuel prevailed more than Rauner doesn’t really mean we like him all that much).

In New York, people may have been motivated by the desire to pick a presidential candidate right now. In Illinois, we had higher priorities. I wonder how many people figured their presidential pick was an afterthought.

Then again, I also wonder how many New Yorkers are eager to have an all-New York presidential fight – since the potential for one actually existed back in 2008, but fell short.

Remember that could have been the Democrat Hillary versus Republican Rudy Giuliani election, with the potential of Michael Bloomberg running a third-party independent bid for election.

A NEW YORK trio – all of which got washed away by the Chicago influence that swept Obama into the White House for the past eight years.

Which I’ll admit as a political writer will be something I will miss – the idea that White House activity has a Chicago tinge to it.

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Are we headed for brawl with Houston?

The Reuters newswire service felt compelled Monday to report a story that has been hinted at by many entities for years – Houston will someday have more people living there than Chicago.

Chicago will always have edge over Houston

The one-time Second City (only to New York) will someday have to settle for Number Four – and most likely sometime during our lifetimes.

REUTERS REPORTED THAT by the year 2025, Chicago’s population (currently about 2.7 million) will be 2.5 million. Whereas Houston (which in 2010 had 2.1 million people) will be about 2.54 million people.

It will go New York City, Los Angeles, Houston THEN Chicago. Which on a certain level makes me want to wretch.

Not that it really makes any difference. I wouldn’t want to live in any Texas city, and certainly wouldn’t think of Houston as being superior to Chicago on any level. Just as I don’t really think of Los Angeles as superior to Chicago just because back when I was in college it managed to surpass Chicago in population.

Although I can already hear the Texas-type boasts (that always come across as insecurity at its worst) about how wonderful this makes Houston – except for those people from Dallas, who will probably be more appalled by this news than anyone from Chicago will be.

OF COURSE, THERE is a factor in all of this growth that explains how a southwestern city could possibly be larger than Chicago, or any Midwestern U.S. city.

Space!

A bi-state region with that big huge lake ...

Houston has space surrounding it. Room for it to grow that can be incorporated into the city proper. Evidence that it is located in a region that could accurately be described as the middle of nowhere (just like Las Vegas, Nev.).

Whereas Chicago has been hemmed in on all sides by Lake Michigan to the east (an asset that I’m sure Houston would kill to have) and suburban communities in all directions.

THERE’S NO SPACE for Chicago proper to grow. There is room on the outskirts for the suburban area to continue to grow. In fact, metropolitan Chicago is getting larger even though the city proper is shrinking.

... will always be superior to city in the desert

The Census Bureau indicates that back in 2010, Houston and its suburbs have some 5.95 million people. By comparison to Chicago, which the Census Bureau offered an estimate of having some 9.73 million people in 2011.

I don’t doubt that Houston’s suburbs will get larger and the gap will close.

But it’s very likely that come 2025, Houston’s city population will be slightly larger while Chicago’s metro area population will remain significantly larger. I can already hear the arguments that will arise, particularly from Texas-types who will resent the idea that anybody challenges their claim to being Number Three when you could argue they remain Number Four!

WHICH WILL MEAN that Chicago will have to settle for being the largest city in the Midwest or Great Lakes regions – because it’s not like St. Louis, Milwaukee, Detroit or Minneapolis/St. Paul are on the verge of surpassing Chicago anytime soon (if ever).

Now I don’t want to come across as mocking Reuters. Although I’m not sure why this is news now. Estimates that Houston will someday have more people have been spreading around for years now.

Just as it was long expected that Los Angeles would surpass Chicago by the time it actually happened in 1984 (New York is so much bigger than anything else that nothing is likely to surpass it anytime soon).

These population shifts don’t change the true character of either city, or the fact that in a Chicago vs. Houston brawl, our city will be able to claim a World Series advantage – our White Sox did sweep the Houston Astros four straight games back in ’05. Nothing changes that!

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Real terror occurred two decades (and a day) ago in Oklahoma City

Perhaps it was the sight of the former World Trade Towers collapsing into rubble after being hit square-on by two aircraft that elevated the 14-year-old attack to its level of prominence over what happened at the one-time Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.

But I still have to say that what happened two decades ago in Oklahoma City strikes me as being so much worse than what occurred in New York – perhaps because the perpetrator is someone who on the surface appeared to be the “ideal” American.


IT WAS TWENTY years ago Sunday that a truck loaded with explosive substances was detonated; taking down the federal government building in Oklahoma City and killing some 168 people.

By pure dumb luck, the man believed to be the ringleader of the plot to strike at the U.S. government was arrested that very day – and law enforcement authorities were able to connect the dots quickly enough before Timothy McVeigh was able to post bond for the offense of driving a vehicle without a valid license plate and possession of a loaded firearm.

That resulted in the criminal proceedings that ultimately wound up with McVeigh’s execution at the federal prison near Terre Haute, Ind., and accomplice Terry McNichols remaining in prison to this day.

I can recall the paranoia in the early moments following word of the explosion spreading. Way too many people were convinced that this had to be some sort of Arab thing. Some foreign plot to strike at the heart of our nation.

IT WAS A plot to undermine our society. But it came from within, and from an individual who on the surface would have had many of the credentials that would have caused the conservative ideologues of our society to think he was an upstanding citizen.

McVeigh wasn’t a genius. After finishing high school, he went the military route.

He was a combat veteran – having been among the U.S. troops sent to Kuwait to support the efforts to drive Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein out of that country. He failed in his efforts to become a part of Army Special Forces, but he did receive a Bronze Star, a National Defense Service Medal, a Southwest Asia Service Medal, an Army Service Ribbon and the Kuwaiti Liberation Medal before being honorably discharged near the end of 1991.

I can think of a lot of people with those same credentials who would be regarded as promising young men and women, and whom some would be willing to claim deserve some sort of privilege in our society.

I’M SURE EVEN McVeigh felt the same say about himself, probably thinking he and people like him were the only “true” Americans. But as we now know, he had his own contempt for the ideals upon which our society was based.

Even his military record included a reprimand for having purchased a “White Power” t-shirt that he considered a response to black soldiers who chose to wear “Black Power” shirts around the army base.

Perhaps that was a clue that should have received more attention. For McVeigh went on to become one of the people who became grossly offended when an FBI siege at a cult compound resulted in an explosion and fire that killed all the occupants inside.

I recall that incident near Waco, Texas as being one where religious radicals chose death at their own hand rather than surrender to FBI agents who were concerned about the level of firepower those people were packing. Twisted logic on their part!

HECK, EVEN ACTOR Chuck Norris (never known as liberal) had some agreement – I recently stumbled across the “Walker, Texas Ranger” episode in reruns where his character had to take down a David Koresh-like character who believed himself to be Messiah-like.

Instead, McVeigh plotted an attack on the U.S. government that occurred two years to the day after Waco – and some 220 years to the day after the start of the American Revolution.

It took a serious amount of delusion to think of oneself as a revolutionary for driving a Ryder rental truck loaded with explosives, then triggering them off as a truck-sized bomb.

Even though McVeigh himself is gone, what can be scary is the idea that his ideals were not solitary – there are others amongst us delusional enough to think him a martyr. Making him more terrifying than any Middle Eastern buffoon who thinks Allah would reward their own violent actions.

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