A glorious new year from the Imps

It's 2019, a brand-new year. Some may think we should be looking forward.

And yet, I can't help but get a kick out of this musical number of old. From Hellzapoppin' 1941,  turning the ever-traditional Auld Lang Syne into a jazzy dance number.

AS FOR THOSE of you who will find Satanic imagery a bit much, I can't help but think you should lighten up a bit. It's too comical to take seriously. Particularly the cutesy dogs being chased about by Satan's little helpers (and no, I don't mean Bart Simpson's pet dog) as they exit an automobile.

So enjoy, as we enter into another new year. And here's hoping that 2019 turns out to be a far-better year than the one we had a century ago -- when 1919 saw serious race riots on the South Side AND the Chicago White Sox losing the World Series that some are determined to forevermore lambast the ballclub for.

  -30-

Who will prevail March 20, Nov. 6? How long ‘til we speculate about ’19?

We’re now in the new year, and the election cycles that seem to have been ongoing forever have actually now begun.

Will it be Rauner who fades into obscurity ...

Yet as far as who’s going to prevail come the March 20 primary, along with the general election come Nov. 6? That’s a crapshoot. I’m sure everybody amongst the occupants of political geekdom is convinced their side will prevail.

BECAUSE HOW COULD anybody with any common sense possibly side with the opposition? Are they mad!!!

... or will Pritzker wind up ultimate '18 failure

There are those who are convinced that the public’s regard for Donald Trump is so low that they will cast their ballots in ways meant to take out their hostility for the president on anybody perceived to be his ally.

Then again, the people who were inclined to support Trump back when he won the presidency in 2016 are most likely enjoying the fact that the people who oppose Trump are so infuriated by his presence. That thought may motivate them to turn out in great numbers to vote so as to ensure the Trump critics don’t make any political gains.

For the record, the Gallup Organization had Trump at a 40 percent approval rating as of Sunday – which is fairly stable for him. A solid majority of our society (or at least those who were actually contacted by Gallup) does not think much of this Age of Trump in which our society is now engaged.

Trump enjoys thought '18 will be all about him

WHICH MAY BE why Gov. Bruce Rauner is engaged in a battle royale for his own political fate – he desperately wants to distance himself from Trump’s most nonsensical acts.

Yet the fact that he won’t develop a tight bond with the president is considered one of the reasons why the conservative element of Illinois’ population is speaking out against him, and why the Republican primary campaign of Jeanne Ives isn’t being totally dismissed.

Could Rauner wind up being the equivalent of Dan Walker – that 1970’s era governor who in 1976 couldn’t even win his party’s nomination for re-election? Yes, then-Mayor Richard J. Daley despised Walker to the point where he backed -then Secretary of State Michael J. Howlett against him.

One lesson to Republican partisans who are inclined to back Ives/dump Rauner (however they choose to view it); the split amongst Democrats that year resulted in James R. Thompson winning the general election – and was the beginning of a 26-year run of Republican governors.

Will Rauner be compared to '76 Walker?

WHICH MEANS THE GOP may be wary of provoking a similar streak against themselves and may wind up holding their noses in voting for Bruce.

What actually makes me not totally disregard the chances of a second term of “Gov. Rauner” is the fact that I question the Democratic candidates. Thus far, it seems J.B, Pritzker of the incredibly-wealthy and politically-connected Pritzker family is the favorite to win the nomination come March.

But I don’t get any sense that his candidacy is beloved by anybody. It seems more a matter of people accepting the inevitability of a Pritzker win, rather than thinking he has any ideas that capture their fancy.

This could really wind up being the year that two self-funding billionaires blow their family fortunes to win election to a post that pays a salary of just over $177,000 – along with access to a mansion in Springfield that (by all accounts) is in serious need of repair.

IT MAY WIND up being that whichever candidate winds up taking the oath of office as Illinois governor come January 2019 will be taking on a massive headache, with the financial compensation hardly seeming worth the hassle.

Then again, it’s all about the ego for some people. Perhaps it is rewarding, in and of itself, to be able to walk around calling oneself “governor” and occasionally have commentaries written about speculation that you could someday become president.

Once Rauner/Pritzker is history, it'll be all about Rahm

Then again, it’s not like Trump ever went through the hassle of running for a government post to gain experience for a presidential run – and an experience that likely has three years remaining.

2018 has arrived, and about the only thing we can say for certain is that a year from now, either Pritzker or Rauner will be history. That, and we’ll be asked almost immediately whether we want Rahm Emanuel for a third term as the city’s “Man on Five.”

  -30-

Some 18 years after Y2K (remember?), let's celebrate with New Year's boogie

Remember back some 18 years ago, when all life as we know it was supposed to come crashing down because of computer glitches. Computers would be so stupid that they wouldn't recognize the coming of a new millennium (how else could a year ending in "00" come after a year ending in "99?")!

Which isn't the most absurd thought, since computers basically are dumb and easily thrown out of whack (how often does your computer crash for no apparent reason?).

BUT HERE WE are now, some 18 years after the arrival of the year 2000 was supposed to cause every device that relies on a computer to go goofy. We're still here. We're still alive. We're still thriving.

Unless you're the type of person who thinks that the presence of Donald Trump as president is evidence that our society has gone goofy.

Regardless, it's a brand new year and we're getting close to being one-fifth of the way through the 21st Century. So here's a Happy New Year, and hoping that 2018 to bring a little more joy to your life than did '17.

And to ring in the New Year, enjoy the "Auld Lang Syne Boogie" along with this dance number from Hellzapoppin. Or if that's a bit too freaky for you, how about this mid-1970s New Year bash from Chicago?

  -30-

Homicides on the decline, but the ideologues will still rant about Chicago

It seems the number of murders in Chicago will be significantly less this year than last – which actually was a year of historic significance for Chicago when it comes to violence.

Almost ready to punch out on 2017

A year ago, it was being reported how the number of slayings took a significant rise compared to recent years. Some 760 slayings in Chicago – which may be less than the days of the late 1980s when the city could have nearly 1,000 killings in a year.

BUT CONSIDERING CHICAGO had experienced a significant drop in murder during the 1990s and 2000s, it had some of us concerned that the bad ol’ days were coming back.

And also gave ammunition to those ideologically-inclined to want to use Chicago as their example of a hellhole that they could use to blame for everything!

The Chicago Tribune reported Friday that 2017 is likely to see about 100 fewer slayings in the city compared to the year before. That’s about a 15 percent drop.

Although it should be noted we won’t know the final murder tally until some time next week most likely – on account that anybody who gets shot before Sunday night but doesn’t die until after Monday morning will still be counted as part of 2017 violence, rather than 2018.

ALSO, THE NEWSPAPER noted that arrests for gun crimes were up 28 percent this year, compared to last.

This kind of nonsense will still be spewed in 2018

Perhaps we’ve just been luckier in surviving the wounds inflicted upon ourselves in various incidents scattered around Chicago. Or maybe the Chicago police are correct when they imply that changing technology is making it possible for them to keep better tabs on what is happening on the streets – making it possible for them to fight violent crime more efficiently.

Not that I believe any of this will matter one bit to the ideologues of a conservative bent. We still have Donald J. Trump as our president, and I won’t be surprised if he manages to find some reason this weekend to issue one of his Tweets from a Twit-type messages to further lambast Chicago.

We’ve become a punching bag for a man whose literary style doesn’t extend beyond the 280-character limit of Twitter – which is perfect for espousing the incredibly trivial aspects of life.

Were still busy despite apparent homicide drop

PERHAPS THIS MEANS there’s legitimate reason to think in accordance with the results of a new Morning Consult poll – one that shows many of us are pessimistic about our government officials as we enter a new year.

The poll shows some 48 percent don’t think positively about government these days, with both Democrats (54 percent) and political independents (50 percent) having negative thoughts.

It seems only 37 percent of Republicans are pessimistic about government, but then again they’re the ones going about spewing the rhetorical nonsense about the majority of us.

Perhaps going on rants such as about how violent and decrepit Chicago has become is what makes them feel better about their lot in life.

PERSONALLY, I’D FIND such a line of thought to be depressing. But perhaps we’d all be better off ignoring the nitwits of our society as they try to drag us all down to their level.

ORR: Soon to perform 'first' for final time

Not that it means I think we ought to ignore the conditions that create violence in our urban area. Just that we shouldn’t exaggerate them for personal or political gain. That’s just sick!

So here’s hoping that when we get the final death tally for Chicago some time next week, it will be the beginning of a declining trend in the city’s body count. That would be a pleasant New Year's thought!

Then, we could move on to the other official stats for Chicago – the first baby born in the new year and the first couple to be issued a marriage license. Which Cook County Clerk David Orr says will be the last “first” license he issues, since he is not seeking re-election and plans retirement when his term ends next December.

  -30-

Who really needs to be first?

My parents these days are caring for a pair of dogs, Rocco and Carmelo, who have distinct personalities. But there is one significant difference I have noticed.

The Chicago-area's first-born baby is a girl who owes her name to this ballpark. It's a good thing the building at Clark and Addison doesn't still bear its original name -- or else she'd be going through life with the name "Weeghman"

Carmelo, the younger of the two (he was born back in May, but has grown quite quickly) wants to be assured he is first in everything. Just the other day when I tried opening a back door to let Rocco go outside for a bit, Carmelo ran up, shoved Rocco aside and insisted on being the first to enjoy some fresh air.

WHICH TO ME is what all of the incidents of having to be “first” make me think of. We’re behaving like animals.

So naturally, this is NOT the ideal time of year for me to be seeing various “firsts” that are now occurring. Because we’re now in a new year, we’re going to see a lot of happenings that otherwise would go unnoticed get significant public attention just because they’re first.

As it is, we already have the “first baby” of 2017 in Chicago – whom it seems was born early Sunday to a couple in the northwestern suburbs who are Chicago Cubs fans. They named their daughter “Wrigley.”

Which as far as I’m concerned means it would serve that couple right if the daughter winds up taking no interest in baseball, or worse yet, winds up developing enough sense to be a White Sox fan!

BUT BECAUSE THIS particular year began on a Sunday and government officials need to get their New Year’s holiday day off from work, they will have to have Monday free.

No mail delivery (including a pay check I’m expecting from freelance work I do) until Tuesday. In fact, all government entities will be closed on Monday.

Which is why the Cook County government will have to hold off yet another day. We won’t get their “firsts” until at least Jan. 3.

I remember back when I was a reporter-type person for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago when we’d make a big deal out of the first party permit issued by the Forest Preserve District.

LARGELY BECAUSE IT was always issued to the same man. “Moose” Murphy always wanted to have Permit Number One issued to his group, the Antler Dancers, who would have a big, alcohol-laced, bash in the forest preserves every year for several years.

Murphy would make the point of camping out at the Cook County Building at the end of each December to ensure he’d be first in line to get that permit number one. Heaven forbid anyone had the nerve to try to cut in line or usurp that top spot.

Or if anyone just showed up in mid-summer at the forest preserve where Murphy and his buddies were gathered for their annual bash.

Of course, the fact that we news media types are so desperate for fresh news copy right after the New Year’s holiday that we highlight the story no matter how trite means the county is eager to get all the positive publicity available.

AS IT IS, the Cook County clerk’s office already informed us about how on Tuesday Clerk David Orr will be ready to celebrate whichever couple happens to be first in line to apply for a marriage license.

Orr will actually perform the marriage ceremony on the spot (he, along with a ship’s captain, gets that perk) and several companies have already pledged gifts including a hotel suite and meal at a luxury restaurant for the couple who happen to be “first” in line Tuesday morning.

No wrath is more furious than that of Carmelo (left) if Rocco tries to do something ahead of him. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

I feel sorry for them if it turns out it was a couple that merely wanted to elope in secret, but will find their life’s partnership now blasted on every television station and newspaper in Chicago – all because we need to fill space or airtime.

It also makes me wonder if the process is reduced to the level of Carmelo feeling compelled to race outside and be the “first” to do his “business” in the backyard.

  -30-

Was ‘Sweet 16’ of our century really that miserable? Or just the Cubs?

It is a running theme of much commentary these days – the year 2016, to put it mildly, sucked.

TRUMP: Ugh, is all many of us will ever think

One can cite the many celebrity deaths of the year that extend far beyond Carrie Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds passing just one day apart, or Zsa Zsa Gabor, Florence Henderson (how can 'Marcia, Marcia, Marcia's' mom be gone?), David Bowie and Prince, along with Muhammad Ali. Or actor William Christopher (of M*A*S*H fame) who died Saturday.

THOSE ARE JUST a few, as in the ones I can recall right off the top of my head as I write this. I’m sure you instantly will remember someone else who has passed and will want to dash off a quickie note to me telling me how stupid I am for forgetting so-and-so.

Those are on top of the 778 homicides that occurred in Chicago, with the likelihood that another two or three people will slip into the total before it becomes absolute. As in 2016 was the bloodiest year on Chicago streets since 1997 – and is becoming too close to the totals we used to achieve back in the late 1980s that we had hoped were absolutely in our past.

And if that isn’t enough, let’s not forget the election of garish real estate developer Donald J. Trump as our nation’s president. The ongoing partisan political nonsense between Gov. Bruce Rauner and Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, that is rearing its ugly head again now that the interim budget agreement has expired with nothing even close to a long-term agreement.

Or the fact that the Chicago Cubs managed to do something they hadn’t achieved in over a century – winning a World Series. I put those last items on the list even though I’m sure there are some people who will be grossly offended at thinking negatively at those things.

SUCH AS THE 46 percent of the electorate who actually voted for Trump and seriously believe that the nation dodged a bullet by avoiding the concept of “President Hillary R. Clinton” for the next four years.

RAUNER: Not likely to lighten up anytime soon

But I’m inclined to think of the nearly 49 percent who are now seriously disillusioned with our government process – one that could allow someone with 2.86 million fewer votes to actually proclaim himself the winner without the rest of us needing to call for the psychiatrist.

Plus the other 5 percent or so who voted either for a Libertarian or a Green or whatever other fringe name was on the ballot that they thought would make a better commander in chief than either of the major party doofuses.

That’s a lot of people who are going to forever remember this year as the one in which the nation’s electorate got goofy. They’re the ones who can’t help but think that 2017 has potential to be even more stupid because we’ll actually have the presence of a “President Trump” in place – doing his thing, whatever that may well be.

CHRISTOPHER: No longer w/ us

THOSE WHO ARE more rational are the ones who are most scared because we really don’t know what to expect – except that Trump’s idea of “reform” is likely to benefit only those few individuals like himself.

Even the masses who voted for him because they fantasize that their ballot action somehow makes them more like him than the working stiffs they truly are won’t truly get any benefit.

But they will justify their vote in future years because of how horrid they want to believe a second coming of Bill Clinton would have been for the nation.

Although the only thing that would have been horrible about it is if the partisan trash-talk that Bill endured during his two terms in office were repeated for Hillary. It is that partisan trash we as a nation need to rise above. Instead, we rewarded the people who spew it by putting them too firmly in charge.

BUT THERE WILL be differences of opinions about how good, or bad, this truly made 2016.

Which in my mind makes having to endure the Chicago Cubs’ ego trip as the worst aspect of the year – and in future years. Not that I care about denying the Cubs a victory (truthfully, it's about time). But the same Cub fan types who always wanted to talk as though 1969, 1984 and 2003 were truly Cubs championship years (if only they hadn’t been robbed) are now seriously acting as though the next four or five seasons of National League championships are already won.

To those who are Sout' Side in spirit, the scene of the year's low point

They’re buying into the hype to the point where they’re going to be insufferable for all of us to bear with – particularly if the truth turns out to be that 2016 was just a fluke year in between a series of contending St. Louis Cardinals teams and they’ll go back to thinking the whole wide world is supposed to pity them.

Of course, a part of that sentiment stretches from the realization that the only World Series that truly meant anything was the one played some 12 years ago. Now 2005, that was an incredible year!

  -30-

How will Michigan Avenue crowd respond to so visual homicide protest?

I remember a time some three decades ago when I covered a protest march in the District of Columbia – one that passed through the upscale Georgetown neighborhood.

PFLEGER: Leading 100s on 'invasion' of Mich. Ave.

To be honest, I don’t even remember what the “cause” was. But what stuck in my mind was the reaction of people who thought they were out for a good time Saturday night, only to find the sight of all these great unwashed peoples ruining their time.

I REMEMBER BECAUSE I tried to interview several people who were spectators; none of whom wanted to talk, all of whom seemed confused about the point and probably felt like their night out was spoiled.

This comes to my mind because I won’t be surprised if there’s a similar reaction to a protest march being planned for Saturday night – also known as New Year’s Eve.

For Rev. Michael Pfleger of the St. Sabina Catholic parish in the Auburn/Gresham neighborhood plans to come downtown Saturday. Although he’s not headed here in anticipation of consuming too much alcohol and doing a countdown early Sunday to the beginning of 2017.

If anything, his count will be up – and one that I’m sure he feels is going up too high. Although I suspect many of us are going to try to downplay its significance.

HIS ‘CAUSE’ RELATES to the homicide rate for Chicago during 2016. We won’t know until early next week what the final tally will be, but it would seem we’re going to have a higher rate than any year since 1997. We’re likely to have something like 760 to 770 people killed during this year due to urban violence.

Now I know in the past that I have mocked the people who are getting worked up over the homicide rate increase, primarily because I remember back some three decades ago (the late 1980s, to be exact) when the homicide rate for Chicago would fall just short of 1,000 people per year.

Although I have to concede that getting into the 700s (and having some naysayers way too eager to point out how close to 800 we are) is a problem we ought to be concerned about.

One death attributable to violence by another human being is a tragedy for the family impacted. Having so many hundreds of families having to endure these circumstances is truly embarrassing for our city.

PFLEGER PLANS TO try to illustrate the number with his protest march, which is to have people bearing two-foot-high crosses with the names of each victim – marching in a parade along Michigan Avenue. It’s going to be a visual sight – one that I’m sure will make many of the New Year’s partygoers feel a bit squeamish.

And probably will cause some to try to dismiss Pfleger in the way they usually do – just another loudmouthed troublemaker, and when is Cardinal Blasé Cupich going to get around to giving him the boot!?!

As though Pfleger is the problem because he points out what we ought to regard as the problem – but which too many of us ignore because there are large swaths of the city where urban violence isn’t a problem.

It becomes way too easy for people to think of the violence as something that doesn’t impact them, and most likely is something that only affects “those people” who just can’t learn to live like civilized human beings.

YET BEFORE ONE gets the impression that this is a diatribe, consider that many of the people who are eager to highlight the city’s homicide rate have their own political agenda – in many cases to make “those people” look bad in their own minds. Which makes it easier for them mentally to commit all kinds of impersonal actions against them.

Particularly when it comes to political activity – the oncoming era of the Trump presidency is going to be particularly harsh and the people most eager to see it happen are those of a certain racial perspective.

There are so many statistics and mathematical formulas that can make many other places appear to be more violent than Chicago – even though some will want to cite the lower tallies for New York and Los Angeles this year as some sort of be-all and end-all on the issue.

Which means the sight of all those crosses Saturday night are going to be something of a reality check – even though many of those who see them will probably try to convince themselves that it really didn’t happen. They just had too much to drink!

  -30-

2016 is here; everybody wants to be 1st

First baby: A girl named Jaylaine, born at 12:01 a.m. at Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in suburban Park Ridge.

First murder: A 24-year-old man who was shot dead at about 2 a.m. in the Bronzeville neighborhood when he was arguing with another man who happened to be armed with a pistol.

NEW YEAR’S DAY is one of the quirky days of working in the newsgathering business. We get all obsessed with documenting the “first” of all sorts of things that typically wouldn’t get much mention, if any at all.

Particularly if they had happened just hours, or even minutes, earlier. Because they would then have been amongst the final activities of 2015. The old year, ancient history. Been there, done that! Let’s move along.

Yet you’d be amazed at the number of people who get all worked up over being acknowledged as a “first.” Take the ‘first baby’ saga, which is one I had my fill of way back in 1989.

Because on Jan. 1 of that year, I was a reporter-type person for the now-defunct City News Bureau, and I was on duty that overnight shift. I wound up having to make the call between dueling hospitals (one of which may have been Lutheran General, if I remember right) that were claiming to have had babies born just as the clock was ticking off the final seconds of the old year.

I ULTIMATELY MADE the judgment call of a tie, and other news organizations followed our lead. Which resulted in a third hospital that was just moments behind claiming I had somehow cheated them out of recognition.

The concept remains the same annually

I still recall the frantic phone call City News received at about 3 a.m. on 1/1/89, as a top hospital administrator felt compelled to give me a piece of his mind that we wouldn’t recognize his claim to have a “first.”

You’d think at that hour he’d have better things to obsess about. Apparently, he didn’t.

All I know is that for the past quarter-century, I have always associated the thought of the “first baby” with neurotic hospital administrators desperately trying to get themselves some press for actions that don’t involve allegations of medical malpractice on their parts.

THAT IS WHAT I suspect the desire to be a “first” is for many officials – a chance to get mentioned in the news publications and programs for something that doesn’t involve their screw-ups.

The site of many more firsts, come Monday

Such as the fact that on Monday, somebody is going to be awarded the first marriage license in Cook County. Clerk David Orr made sure we in the news media are aware of this fact – issuing a statement telling of the $800 in prizes to be given to the soon-to-be wed couple.

The Palmer House Hilton, Lettuce Entertain You restaurants, iO Improv Comedy Clubs, LaSalle Flowers and Bryan Docter photography all are kicking in to that prize package – which I’m sure means a whole slew of free advertising to be generated for those companies by whichever couple feels compelled to be at the clerk’s office in the Loop when it opens at 8:30 a.m. Monday.

Personally, I wonder what kind of people would feel compelled to get up early and force themselves to the head of the line, just to get themselves on the Monday evening television newscasts as the first newlywed couple.

ALTHOUGH I DON’T think anybody is as extreme as Jim “Moose” Murphy, the guy who for nearly 20 years in the 1980s and 1990s used to camp out on New Year’s to ensure he was the head of the line to get the first permit issued for the year by the Forest Preserve District.

Murphy, who died in 2009, was with the Antler Dancer’s Sportsmen’s Club, which used to like to have a huge-scale party (with liquor flowing freely) each summer in the forest preserves of southwestern Cook County near suburban Palos Park. For Murphy, it was absolutely essential he had permit Number 000001.

Although Murphy’s saga always reminded me of that episode of The Simpsons in which Lisa and other Springfield residents of some intellect got a permit to hold a Renaissance-type costume event in the town gazebo – only to find that the town thugs were already gathered there and refused to leave.

I would have feared for the physical well-being of anyone who had tried to cut in front of Murphy and his crew in that line. It would have become an ugly scene.

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Has “shall” ever been such an issue? Pension reform wends way into courts

The lawsuits that were long expected against Illinois state government are now arriving.

Pension funding "reform" is going to wind up here, regardless of what route it travels in coming years

 

For the Illinois Retired Teachers Association managed to get their arguments against the pension funding reform measure the General Assembly managed to approve this year – and the teachers couldn’t even wait until the new year.

THEIR LAWSUIT IN Cook County Circuit Court got slipped into the legal process before Janet Davies could do her annual “sayonara” to 2013. Of course, there will be other groups representing various political interests who also will file lawsuits to make sure they’re represented in this political fight.

All of the groups that hate what the state Legislature did concerning pensions are going to want to claim it is their lawsuit that took down the law that is desperately needed.

All the people who are desperate to believe that the state is trying to resolve its financial problems at the expense of its retired employees aren’t going to care if their success in court winds up tossing Illinois government into an even bigger financial jam!

And all of those who just want to cause mischief for state government? They will be the big winners.

THIS IS ALL caused because of the fact that for many years going back to the 1940s, state government short-changed the amount of money it should have been putting into funds to cover the costs of providing pensions in the future to its retired employees.

Short-changing an expense works if you only do it briefly, then immediately come back and put a surplus of cash into the accounts to make up for the brief loss.

But as many people find out when they try doing the same thing to pay their own bills, the short-changed expense often does not get replenished in a timely manner. As time passes, it becomes more and more difficult to cover the cost.

In the case of state government, the debt had grown so large that it was eating up state funds that government officials would prefer to spend on other areas – such as education, health care, public safety or other programs.

THE COST-OF-living adjustments meant to account for inflation were causing the debt to grow so large. Something had to be done; something desperate and drastic.

Such as the limits on the adjustments in future years. The increases written into law won’t be as big. EXCEPT, …

The lawsuits are all going to find various ways of claiming that such a cut violates the clause in the state constitution that says public pensions are a “contractual relationship” whose benefits “shall not be diminished or impaired.”

They are taking such a literal, hard-lined interpretation that I suspect the masses of Illinois will become incredibly disgusted if they actually prevail in court.

THIS MAY BE one of those times when the fact that the courts have their own moments of being politicized may wind up giving us a benefit.



This year's issues will carry over into future

Because the perception by some political observers is that Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s influence over the courts is such that there isn’t a judge alive who would be willing to have his (or her) name on a court order that struck down the pension funding reform measure.

I’m not about to guess how this issue will eventually be resolved – other than to say that if “pension reform” does wind up getting struck down, any future attempt at reform by the Legislature will likely be even more punitive.

And we may someday see the organized labor interests that are desperately fighting against this version of pension reform wishing they had accepted it while they had the chance!

  -30-

EXTRA: A three-way tie!?!

It must have been ugly in the early hour of Friday (also the beginning of a new decade in Chicago), as hospital officials eager to give their facilities a plug were hastily making calls to reporter-types to claim that they had helped to give birth to the first new Chicagoan of 2010.

The reports now turning up on the Internet seem to be proclaiming a three-way tie for Stroger and Northwestern Memorial hospitals, along with St. Joseph Hospital.

AS IT TURNS out, the latter hospital located in the Lakeview neighborhood was the only one willing to identify the new parents, so it’s their kid who will get the fleeting seconds of attention. So welcome to the world, Miya Tanni.

It never fails to amaze me the degree to which hospital officials take this baby “designation” so seriously. It’s not like there are serious cash and prizes on hand for the parents of the (http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/01/cutesy-first-baby-stories-become-ugly.html) first newborn.

And I’m sure there will be little difference between baby Miya born at 12:00:10 a.m. and the kid who was born two minutes earlier.

But then again, it’s New Year’s Day, and there isn’t much other activity passing for “news” that can be reported. Learning that a baby boy was born 30 seconds after midnight at Northwestern Memorial Hospital is more pleasant to learn than to focus on the fact that Northwestern University’s football team got beat (http://www.chicagobreakingsports.com/2010/01/northwestern-outback-bowl-auburn.html) in overtime playing Auburn University in the Outback Bowl - or those Polar Bear types hanging out at North Avenue beach.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: For those who need to know, the “first baby” details were reported promptly by the websites (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/infants-battle-for-first-2010-baby-title.html) of our city’s (http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/1969080,first-births-of-2010-chicago-010110.article) dueling newspapers.