Bad tickets? Too bad, considering the reason for issuing them was the revenue

I remember an early-morning (as in about 1 a.m.) moment I had a couple of decades ago in the South Loop when I took a wrong turn down a one-way street, and got pulled over within a half-block by a Chicago police officer for driving in the wrong direction.

Too overactive?

I got ticketed, and actually showed up in court about a month later – only to get one of the biggest breaks I ever got in my life.

FOR IT SEEMS that the officers in question who pulled me over had issued a few tickets that night whose legitimacy was questionable.

What wound up happening was that the state’s attorney’s office had to dismiss the charges against every single person who got a ticket on that particular night.

Including myself. My wrong-way on a one-way street wound up being tossed. The court clerk in that courtroom handed me back my driver’s license and I didn’t have to pay any fine.

I still recall the look of disgust on the face of the assistant state’s attorney in that courtroom, knowing she was going to have to repeat the same drill for so many cases because of a cop screw-up.

I WONDER IF she’d feel just as appalled at the Chicago Tribune report on Wednesday that said the video cameras erected at Chicago intersections to catch traffic scofflaws had managed to screw up, and that some $2.4 million in fines were not valid.

I’m sure there’s somebody within municipal government who had already spent that money, and is now desperately trying to figure out how to make up the lost revenue.

It seems the problem lies with cameras that were still active, recording traffic activity and issuing citations, even after hours when they were supposed to be turned off.

For it seems some of those locations only had restricted traffic flow at certain times of the day. Or in other cases, signs warning people of parking or traffic restrictions were written or erected in such a confusing manner that it could be argued that motorists really didn’t know they were doing something improper.

I’M SURE THERE are some people out there who are dismissing this as a petty flaw. There probably are some people outraged that I got away with driving for half-a-block the wrong way on a one-way street.

But it really does come down to that legal principle that we hold our law enforcement officials to a higher standard and will not allow flawed cases to proceed.

These improperly-operating cameras can’t be allowed to take over and impose all these citations upon us – even though I’m very sure the big reason for having those cameras is to catch as many violations as possible as a municipal revenue source.

The fact that catching those offenses might make our streets more safe for the public is probably a secondary concern.

ALTHOUGH I HAVE to confess that reading the Tribune report about all those tickets being tossed out and the revenue lost amused me in the same way that watching television re-runs of “Hill Street Blues” does.

How many times did the officers of the Hill Street station in that Chicago-like city (even though the real-life Maxwell Street station’s outside was used in select scenes) do some minor gaffe that wound up resulting in their whole case being thrown out?

Usually with the voluptuous public defender Joyce Davenport delivering the lethal legal blow; leaving her boyfriend-turned-husband Captain Furillo as frustrated as anybody else!

Think of these flawed cameras as the 21^st Century equivalent of a police gaffe, and we have to wonder how little some things change at all.

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Great Lakes an “island” of ignorance? Or was ISIS really on Michigan Ave.?

Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Wisconsin – along with Illinois.

Were ISIS followers really here?

Those are among the 13 states across the nation that have decided to take a stand against Syria that really shows just how clueless our state government official can be.

PERSONALLY, I FIND it embarrassing that the Great Lakes region is so overwhelmingly in favor of this nitwit-ish gesture that won’t do a thing to make us any safer than we were last week.

As much as I like to think of Illinois as the one piece of the Great Lakes region that shows some common sense, it now seems that Minnesota is the piece of sanity. Heck, I have several aunts who live in the greater Minneapolis metropolitan area.

Perhaps I ought to think of moving there! It would make as much sense as anything else – even if I’d have to start thinking of Fran Tarkenton as some sort of athletic legend.

I’m finding myself discouraged by the political reaction to the attacks last week throughout Paris. We truly seem determined to give in to our fears and ignorance. Because the reality is that we don’t have much of a clue (just a few suspicions) about what actually happened last week.

OR WHAT MOTIVATED people to think that trying to cause mayhem would actually accomplish something toward swaying people toward their “cause.” Which truly isn’t clear anyways.

The idea of anyone willing to kill on behalf of their religious beliefs is something I will never be able to comprehend. And I don’t care if it’s someone whose deadly actions are on behalf of Christ and Christianity.

None of it seems to have any sense attached to it.

Why do we have to be center of nitwit-isms?

With regards to our governors thinking they can ban Syrian refugees from actually locating in our states, it seems like a futile gesture. Particularly in the case of Illinois and Chicago, where we have so many ethnic groups having settled into the city.

A PLACE LIKE Chicago is exactly where newcomers to this country ought to be located. Of course, I suspect that’s also what makes the xenophobic amongst us so fearful of our wonderful city.

We don’t get all paranoid about people who aren’t like us. Well, actually, we do. We just know how to glare at each other, as opposed to thinking we can use the letter of the law to ban people.

We laugh at buffoons like Donald Trump when he says that he’d close mosques across the nation if he becomes president. We certainly don’t turn out in force to vote for him!

What is most pathetic about these whole circumstances is that we’re giving aid and comfort, so to speak, toward those people who really do have their ideological and religious hang-ups toward western society. Our paranoia is making those people feel stronger as though we fear them and make them feel stronger about themselves.

WHICH IS WHY I refuse to give in to those news reports about the Twitter posts that tell us ISIS sympathizers are amongst us – including outside of buildings right on Michigan Avenue.

In part because the news organizations that seem determined to play them up are places like the Washington Times, which probably would enjoy the idea of Chicagoans rising up in arms to chase out anyone who looks a little too Arab for the ideologues’ preference. (Or the ones who semi-seriously say that Dearborn, Mich., ought to become the front of our effort to “fight back” against Islam).

All of this fear-mongering does little more than make us ignorant of the true threats that exist toward our society – one that is something we ought to be concerned about preserving.

And I certainly wish my own Great Lakes region weren’t so willing to be at the heart of this ignorance.

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Will Syria restrictions really do a thing to make Illinois any more safe?

I spent the past weekend visiting cousins I haven’t seen in awhile – in large part because they choose to live in Indiana (near Chesterton and Portage, to be exact).

Red Eye touts unity, governors don't

So I had an initial reaction of “What a dink!” when I learned this weekend that Hoosier Gov. Mike Pence was engaging in a knee-jerk reaction being taken by many Republican gubernatorial types – people who are citizens of Syria are being banned from resettlement efforts into Indiana.

IT SUPPOSEDLY MAKES the Hoosier State “more safe” from the type of activity that occurred on Friday (on 11/13/15, to be exact) in Paris. After all, one of the people who may have been involved in that terroristic act was a Syrian citizen.

But now that I’m back in Illinois, I learn that our very own governor – the one who claims he’s not interested in partisan politics but just cares about the good of the people – feels compelled to do the same, exact thing.

Gov. Bruce Rauner made his own statement during the morning hours, with the initial news reports going out during the noon hour on Monday.

People who might be trying to flee Syria and have hopes of going into exile in the United States are going to have certain places forbidden to them – all because some people want to gain political points for themselves by taking the knee-jerk negative reaction. Even if it might be a Syrian refugee who is trying to escape the nonsense that has overtaken his home nation.

NO MORE SYRIA. Even though I suspect many of these same ideologues wouldn’t have a clue where on the map Syria is, or anything about that Middle Eastern nation.

Rauner follows lead of Pence, ...

Excuse me for thinking that I don’t feel any more (or less) safe now than I did on Sunday, or last week or even last year.

I just happen to believe that the kind of people who coordinated the sorts of activities that took place in Paris on Friday (or in New York and suburban D.C. some 14 years ago) aren’t formal activities of any government. Thinking we can do anything based off nationality or citizenship is so short-sighted!

I’d have more respect for Bruce Rauner if he didn’t just follow his political party’s ideological line. If it appeared he put some real thought into this issue!

... while Pence follows GOP overall lead

BECAUSE I HONESTLY believe this action without any real thought behind it merely creates the camouflage that we’re somehow seriously reacting to an international incident without doing a real thing that would make us more safe.

If anything, it comes across as a more shallow gesture than all the political rhetoric that got spewed in the early 2000s when people were eager to bash about France when the perception among the ideologues of our society was that France wasn’t being tough enough to support our interests.

If I never hear the tacky “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” line, it will be too soon. What amazes me is that when that line originated in an episode of “The Simpsons,” it was meant to be so ridiculously over-the-top that no one could possibly take it seriously.

Instead, way too many people did, along with coming up with all kinds of other tacky epithets and sentiments.

IT MAKES ME wonder if any of those individuals are feeling any differently these days, particularly now that France’s military engaged in its own offensive strikes against places in Syria – chosen largely because of their ties to the ISIS group of people who think they’re promoting Islam in the same way the Ku Klux Klan claims to advance Christianity in this nation.

I don’t think many of us really understand a thing about what happened last week in Paris, or what is going on in the Middle East. We just want to rant! I don’t think we even care who we’re ranting about; so long as we can turn the volume up loud.

And while Rauner spent some time Monday morning doing a little ranting, he may have made himself feel better.

But that was a little less time spent trying to figure out how to resolve the state’s financial problems and budget status for real. Except that to many of us prefer to just rant and rage about that issue as well.

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Should we tell the modern-day students to “stifle” with their complaints?

College kids don't protest like they used to (sometimes)

I’m a generation or so away from being a college student, so it shouldn’t be shocking to learn that I’m not in line with the modern-day student.

But those students who are complaining too much about how someone is bothering their sensibilities make me want to let loose the “Archie Bunker” that exists in my personality (and that of all of us, to be honest) and say to them, “Stifle!”

THE IDEA OF students creating “safe places” where people who aren’t in agreement with them are not permitted just seems a tad bit ridiculous.

Because when I was in college some three decades ago, the idea was that this was an ugly society we lived in with people who could be hostile toward us. The knowledge we were gaining was supposedly to help us to cope with this opposition.

Gaining knowledge and wisdom would help us put those critics in their place; not teach us to hide from them.

Or, more accurately, to hide those people from us and try to pretend they don’t really exist.

THAT IS WHAT seems to be happening at too many college campuses these days. It may be the way these people wind up preparing themselves to be completely irrelevant to the reality of our society.

Although I wonder if a part of it merely means the whole social media mentality has taken forth. It is too easy for people to create “worlds” for themselves online in which nothing they disagree with ever comes forth.

And for those ideological crackpots out there who are trying to claim this is evidence of some liberal plot to take over society, let’s be honest.

I have no doubt there also are social groups on campus that isolate themselves into thinking that dissent doesn’t exist. Perhaps they even go about pretending that all those non-anglo people walking around campus and behaving as though they were students are really nothing more than an illusion.

EITHER THAT, OR just someone who gets to be on campus to play for the basketball or football teams and ISN’T REALLY one of them!

What makes any of these crackpot students with their safe haven spaces where they can hide from hostility any different than the fraternity house of old?

For my part, I must confess to attending a private university – not some public college filled with people who wouldn’t have been able to be educated otherwise if not for an in-state tuition rate.

My own mid-1980s college memories weren’t filled with tales of activism. I knew some people who were like that, but they were the exception. It was the Reagan years, and I recall the fact that I actually cast a first presidential ballot for Walter Mondale made me the exception!

MANY MORE OF my student colleagues were people who figured they were going to be part of the establishment, were totally content with that image, and liked the idea that college was part of the system that “weeded out” certain undesirables.

Which is what I’m sure many of my college classmates (many of whom I haven’t seen since that spring of ’87 when we graduated and I returned home to Chicago to start being a reporter-type person) would think of the students of today.

It all reminds me of the jokes that used to be told by the faculty back when I was in college – many of them were students of the ‘60s who had their own activist tendencies, then turned out dismayed at how many of us turned out to be the real-life incarnation of Alex Keaton (remember “Family Ties?” Check out METV for reruns).

And makes me wonder how these students will perceive society some three decades from now – when the protests of places such as Mizzou will be looked upon as yet another bit of nonsense that the “old people” insisted on doing in between campus parties!

  -30-

When will Hillary finally bust through Dem mass to make herself THE one?

Whenever I think about the possibility of Bill Clinton someday becoming the nation’s first First Gentleman, I can’t help but remember a supermarket tabloid from about two decades ago.

CLINTON: When will she become real front-runner?

Instead of the return of Elvis or a space alien impregnating some rural Idaho woman, their big story was a psychic telling us of what the future foretold for the then-first lady.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE. IT was blatantly obvious then that Hillary R. Clinton was an ambitious woman who had her own goals in life – and wanted an obituary that said she was more than just the one-time first lady of both Arkansas and the United States.

Her future presidential campaigns were foretold – but with a twist. Something would always come up that would thwart her political ambitions. With an ominous overtone, we were told that Hillary would NEVER become president.

I’m sure Clinton would like to be able to trash that psychic prediction as just pure nonsense – which it likely is.

But it does always put the thought in my own mind when it comes to Hillary about what could go wrong now?

BACK IN HER 2008 presidential campaign, she was set to be the “Borg-like” candidate on the Democratic primary side of the election cycle. Remember the Borg?

As in the Star Trek-universe entity that assimilates everything it comes into contact with into its collective. “Resistance is futile,” we are told. Hillary was meant to be president.

 

Even in Star Trek, the inevitable Borg were always thwarted

Except that we got the whole Barack Obama phenomenon that literally dragged the primary cycle all the way to its vicious end before she’d give up.

Now in 2016, it would seem that Hillary once again wants to have people think that her ascension to the White House is inevitable. As though the primary cycle we’re going through is really a waste of time.

IT’S GOING TO be Hillary, right? Who else is there to vote for!

SANDERS: Can he overcome Borg-like Hillary?

We certainly can’t vote for somebody who isn’t embarrassed by the fact he has identified himself as a socialist. Nor that Maryland nobody, or any of the other fringy candidates whom most people don’t know anything about.

Hillary is so overwhelming, supposedly, that the person who theoretically ought to be the front-runner for the Democratic nomination for president next year isn’t even running.

Or do you believe that Joe Biden will wait ‘til the absolute last second before changing his mind? Personally, I think Biden is realistic enough to know he’s redeemed his political reputation as much as possible, and trying to run for president would be a serious case of tempting fate.

BUT WHY IS it that as Hillary goes into this second presidential debate Saturday night (on the Democratic side; it’s the Republicans who are making real people in the general public sick of all their candidates), she hasn’t really wrapped this up.

For a person who wants us to think that all her challengers are just self-righteous and clueless buffoons who can’t accept the reality that nobody wants them, it makes me wonder if she misses the reality that many in our society are ABH – as in they’ll vote for Anybody But Hillary. Her best chance to win may actually be to have so many challengers that they cancel each other out to the point that the devoted few who wet their pants with glee at the thought of a different “President Clinton” will be enough to win.

Maybe SHE knows who will win in '16?

Personally, I don’t get as offended at the thought of Hillary in charge, and get a little delight at the personal disgust many ideologues will feel if Bill really is let back into the White House (“Hide the girls! Bill’s back!” is what we’ll hear).

But maybe that’s because no one among the many presidential dreamers has caught our attention enough to ensure that psychic prediction of so long ago manages to come true.

  -30-

EXTRA: We’re all flying blind. But that won’t stop us from rants and rages

How long will it be before we think of Paris in such a cutesy way again?

As I write this, I must confess to not knowing the scope of the violence that occurred Friday night in Paris.

At least 100 people who were hostages-turned-targets killed in one lone theater, while it seems there were explosions in a sports stadium and at least four or five other incidents.

THE DEATH TALLY was at about 140. But by the time you read this, it could be higher. Much higher. A part of me is cynical enough to wonder how close to 1,000 fatalities we’ll see. If we’re talking multiple incidents, it could go high – particularly if there are more incidents yet to come.

Of course, we’re all suspecting Arab terrorists – which is a phrase too many nincompoops string together too easily. I’ve heard way too much speculation about ISIS. Way too much in that I have yet to hear a fact about who might have done this, or for what motivation.

The group in the Middle East that, to my mind, puts in my memory banks that silly mid-1970s TV show about a woman who fought crime by summoning the strength of the Egyptian goddess Isis.

Perhaps we could unleash her on the people who have coordinated these attacks? Problem solved!

MY BIGGEST HOPE is that people appreciate the scope of what appears to have happened, and the significance.

A part of me already wonders if the happenings of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York and Rosslyn, Va. (never forget the Pentagon) have been surpassed in significance. Will the same ideologues who liked getting worked up with their “Proud to be an American” song lyrics and “U.S.A.” chants (which ought never to be used outside of an Olympics athletic event) realize this event was meant to take a shot at the entirety of the Western World?

Could the power of Isis defeat ISIS?

That date just over 14 years ago would have been just as bad if the target had been the Tower of London or Buckingham Palace rather than the World Trade Center or the Capitol building (which was spared because of those passengers who attacked their attackers, remember?)

Perhaps it is likely in coming hours and days we’ll learn stories of how the violence could have been much worse – but how people made their bones (and perhaps gave their lives) to save others.

THAT WOULD AT least give Friday’s events some significance.

Because as things stand now, Friday will be just a gruesome day that will get some people all worked up as they camp out in front of their televisions and argue over which station they want to “spin” the factual tidbits that are spilling out of Paris while officials try to seal off their borders.

Which I think is a petty reaction, in part because I’m already reading the anonymous reactions on assorted Internet sites from crackpots who are determined to turn Fridays happenings into some sort of anti-immigration diatribe.

Yes, there are those who are already spewing trash about how “all those Mexicans” are now going to follow up what happened in Paris, France with (perhaps) an attack on Paris, Texas.

SOME PEOPLE WILL spew ideology no matter what the circumstance.

They’re the ones we really ought to be concerned about as we try to figure out what happened in France and as we join in the international mourning scene.

From 9/11 to 11/13 – which date will be next to gain an “infamous” stain?

  -30-

‘Queen’ Dunkin trash talk not all that surprising, nor is his opposition

I’ve been trying to ignore the rants and rages that have taken place in recent days against state Rep. Ken Dunkin, D-Chicago; mainly because many of them seem to be coming from political people who are jealous that they didn’t have the initiative to grab at a piece of political power like he did.

DUNKIN: Inspiring political jealousy?

Dunkin, of course, is the representative who earlier this week refused to vote in accordance with the other Democrats in the Illinois House of Representatives on a measure that wound up giving Gov. Bruce Rauner a political victory in the ongoing spat with the Democrat-led Legislature.

IT SEEMS THERE already are two Democrats willing to publicly say they’re challenging Dunkin for his legislative post in the March primary elections.

Supposedly, one legislator took Dunkin’s nameplate on the Illinois House floor and tossed it over to the Republican side of the chamber – saying they could have him now.

I’ve lost track of the number of attacks I have read that make reference to “Queen Dunkin” serving at the beck and call of “King Rauner.” I’m sure someone thinks that making a borderline homophobic putdown of Dunkin is oh so clever.

It strikes me as being more of a lame joke. But I do comprehend the fact that Dunkin, who in the past has offended his alleged Democratic allies by deciding not to show up for certain key votes, think that he is selling them out.

BECAUSE IT IS only with their collective unity that the 71 Democrats in the 118-member Legislature have that “veto proof” majority that enables them to thumb their collective nose at the governor and his talk of “turnabout agendas” and government reforms that really are nothing more than telling labor unions to “stuff it!”

MEEKS: Can Dunkin advance this far?

Dunkin all by himself can refuse to support them, making it possible for there to be movement on an issue.

That’s a lot of power, similar to the thrill that James Meeks used to feel back during his decade in the Illinois Senate whenever he would refuse to support the party line of the Democrats who voted to send him to Springfield in the first place.

Meeks, of course, also has been a Rauner backer, and it got him a state cabinet post – Illinois State Board of Education president, to be exact.

I DON’T KNOW if Dunkin expects some sort of similar appointment in the future should one of the challenging Democrats (one of whom has ties to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle) actually manage to win the primary.

RAUNER: The short-term winner?

But I would sense that Dunkin is now the lone member of the Legislature’s black caucus whom the general public (or at least those who are political geeks who follow this sort of minutia) actually pays attention to. It must be quite an ago boost to shoot above the general anonymity level of a state legislator from Chicago.

So do I view Dunkin as a political sell-out? Or more just as a guy who’s taking advantage of a political opportunity to advance himself?

Perhaps the real question is to wonder why more legislators haven’t done the same.

AS FOR WHETHER Dunkin can be defeated, it will be tough. Too many legislators are able to benefit from knee-jerk reactions amongst voters to keep sending them back. It won’t help the cause for removal if Dunkin continues to have multiple challengers – they could wind up undercutting the effort of those people absolutely determined to “Dump Dunkin” at all costs.

Besides, let’s be honest and concede that organized labor doesn’t have the best of histories when it comes to African-American people. All too often, the unions were more interested in protecting their established interests to bother including them.

So the idea that some black voters might have a touch of respect for someone who’d be willing to tell labor unions to “stuff it?” Anything is possible.

  -30-