Todd Stroger doesn’t want to be the next Mike Bilandic. Will it matter much?

It has become the Chicago political tradition,. Government officials who have any desire to get themselves re-elected react fiercely when there is even a hint of snow.

So when it became apparent earlier this week that we in the Chicago metropolitan area were going to get hit with one heck of a snowstorm on Thursday, Cook County Board President Todd Stroger wanted to make sure that his critics didn’t find a way to blame him for the event.

SOUND RIDICULOUS? IT is, but no more than a lot of the Stroger criticism, which comes from people who are miffed he won election to begin with four years ago (in short, sore losers).

But I was among those who got a statement late Wednesday detailing the extremes to which Stroger was going to have the road crews out plowing the streets that are controlled by Cook County government. A heavy snow will always cause a slowdown in the traffic patterns, and I guess Todd could imagine all the potential motorists who would be uttering his name along with some choice obscenities when they got stuck in the snow.

It also helps in that most of the county-maintained roads are suburban in nature -- which means they are in areas where the local populace is not as inclined to give Stroger a break as some inner-city residents might be.

So trying to keep the 1,500 lane miles of county-maintained roads clear was the investment of county resources to try to bolster his reputation at a time when his reputation is shot. Anyone who doubts it ought to check out the Chicago Sun-Times, which made a point of publishing a story Thursday about the session he scheduled with reporter-types from African-American oriented news outlets – only to fail to show up.

OF COURSE, STROGER allies spent that time with those reporters badgering them for ignoring his accomplishments as county board president. So the “message” got out anyway.

I don’t know how bad things will be for Stroger next month come come Election Day, although I am inclined to think he deserves a little more credit than his sore-loser critics are willing to give him. Just a smidge, however.

After all, it probably was usefull for Stroger to remind us this week where the local county Highway Department offices are located (Schaumburg, Des Plaines, LaGrange Park, Orland Park and Riverdale) in case people have complaints about the roads after Thursday’s snowfall. Although I am inclined to think that the following paragraph was just a tad too much information:

The proportion of salt to water is critical to the effectiveness of the brine. Too much or too little salt affects the freeze point depressing qualities of the brine. The proper brine mixture is 23.3% salt content by weight. This is the concentration at which salt brine has the lowest freezing point, -6°F. It is known as the eutectic point. This percentage is measured with a salometer, a specialized hydrometer. Salt is added to the water until a 88.3% measurement on the salometer is obtained. This results in the proper 23.3% salt content.

HOW MANY WOULD-be chemists does Stroger think are reading his government-issued statements? How many people think that Stroger himself would understand those sentences that were issued this week in his name?

But this is the extreme to which our political people go ever since Mike Bilandic came along.

We all remember how a heavy snowstorm hit Chicago in those winter months leading up to the mayoral election that saw Jane Byrne beat Bilandic. The perception was that B ilandic focused limited resources on keeping certain neighborhoods clean, and Byrne was able to stir up resentment among voters – along with the perpetual image of herself being the woman who dug us out of the snow (even though that would be a gross exaggeration).

At the very least, Stroger doesn’t want to get buried in the mess that hit our metro area and likely will continue into Friday.

I JUST CAN’T help but think that the true legacy of that 1979 mayoral campaign is to cause government officials to pretend they are weather experts who can pretend to give us the proper chemical composition of salt while ensuring that the city streets remain clean.

All most people truly care about is that their own side street is plowed, and that usually is the last thing that gets done this time of the year.

And even if Stroger does keep those suburban county-run roads perfectly clear, I would guess that many people will be determined to be miserable and still find a reason to gripe about “the Toddler.”

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EDITOR’S NOTES: When weather people analyze political campaigns (http://www.weathernotebook.org/transcripts/1999/03/02.html), the language can become intriguing. When would-be comedians analyze the weather/politics combo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m9wlVL40BJs), it can become humorous.

Who gets mass transit perks?

It’s not much of a secret that mass transit on the city’s South Side is set up a little more awkwardly than it is up north.

There are those North Side neighborhood residents who can get by just fine without an automobile who think it is a sign of their urban “sophistication” that they can figure out how to get around “the city” on the elevated train systemThese are the Indiana commuter trains that could, but can't, pick up South Side residents. Photograph provided by State of Illinois.

I’D ARGUE THAT if they were true urban sophisticates, they’d live a stint on the South Side, and try to figure out how to navigate around the city in the section where commuter train service isn’t as expansive.

There are those to whom mass transit is “the bus’ and all those transfers that make truly lengthy trips across the city seriously inconvenient. It also creates people who reside in certain neighborhoods into those who rarely leave the neighborhood because going anywhere is such a pain in the butt.

It probably isn’t an accident that many of those most isolated neighborhoods are African-American in population. Not that I need to come out and say there is some sort of racial motive at work. I don’t have to because there are plenty of other people who will do so.

Just this week alone, the Chicago Tribune reported about a lawsuit being filed in U.S. District Court that contends the Regional Transportation Authority’s methods for splitting up state funding for mass transit programs is biased in favor of the suburban-dominant Metra commuter trains and against the Chicago Transit Authority that handles the buses and “el” trains in the city.

THE NEWSPAPER ALSO reported about a new activist group that wants increased transit service on the South Side, and is hoping to use the South Shore Railroad commuter trains to their benefit.

Those trains are the ones that connect South Bend, Ind., to Hammond, then have their trains pass through the South Side en route to their final destination – the Randolph Street station at Michigan Avenue.

Those trains, by agreement of the transit authorities in both states, don’t make stops at stations in the city neighborhoods, even though they share tracks and pass by stations used by the Metra Electric commuter train system that connnects southern Cook County to downtown Chicago.

In short, there are those who want more commuter train service through the South Side, because there are limitations as to how effective bus service can be – particularly since they’re making stops every couple of blocks or so and have too much of a knack of getting backed up during peak traffic times.

SO I CAN understand the reason that these activists are upset and why some people feel compelled to file lawsuits claiming that Metra is getting too much money.

The problem, however, is going to be to convince political people that there is any truth to that concept.

I can recall being a reporter-type person covering political debates that devolved into arguments about mass transit – usually because there were those who believed that it was the Chicago Transit Authority that got “too much” money and that it was the suburban services that ought to be receiving more.

Admittedly, the political partisan atmosphere has changed since those days to favor the city’s interests. But there are still going to be a significant number of government officials who will blatantly resist any attempt to make changes in favor of the South Side activists.

THE BIG FACTOR is just the cultural difference in the way mass transit is viewed between urban and suburban residents.

The latter account for about two-thirds of the people of the Chicago metropolitan area. But it is the CTA that gets nearly 90 percent of all the funding provided by the state for mass transit programs, with the bulk of the remainder going to the Metra commuter trains that connect various suburbs to downtown Chicago.

The actual amount that goes to Pace, the suburban bus entity, is so miniscule that that is the sole reason while suburban bus lines run so infrequently and are non-existent in certain parts of the Chicago area.

Those percentages are justified by officials on the grounds that it is city residents who make up the bulk of mass transit users. Yet it also is those same city residents who are using a system that in portions is more than a century old.

STATE SEN. KWAME Raoul, D-Chicago, (whose home neighborhood of Hyde Park has no CTA “el” trains running through it, but has some Metra Electric line trains that pass by) is sponsoring a bill in Springfield that, while it has little chance of passing, may persuade transportation officials to discuss the issue seriously to avoid having some sort of government intervention on the issue.

I have no doubt that the activists are absolutely correct when they argue that the mass transit service in their respective neighborhoods is in need of a serious upgrade. Yet this might very well turn into one of those issues where everybody agrees there is a problem, but no one is willing to do much about it because of the cost. For as much as the CTA needs a cash influx to improve (cost-cutting only means a reduction in service, which exacerbates the problems rather than resolving them), I have no doubt that Metra trains also need more finances in order to be maintained.

Reading about the federal court lawsuit, I got my chuckle when I read that Metra trains were “mass transit luxury.” I don’t remember anything particularly luxurious about a Metra train the last time I rode one (I occasionally use the Rock Island line Metra trains that run from Joliet to the Southwest Side, then to downtown).

In fact, I can think of CTA “el” trains that were cleaner. Then again, I probably was using a Red Line train to get to some North Side destination at the time.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The federal courts in Chicago and the Statehouse in Springfield are being asked (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/01/minorities-cheated-on-public-transit-funding-suit-says.html) to ponder (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-metra-southshorejan04,0,2377858.story) whether the problem of lesser quality mass transit service on the South Side is a coincidence, or some sort of legal catastrophe.

Emanuel for mayor? I doubt it

Nobody expects Rahm Emanuel to remain as chief of staff to President Barack Obama for all four (much less eight) years of the administration. So it isn’t out of the realm of possibility to speculate on what will become of the man.

That is what has led to conspiracy theories about how he is trying to rig the political future so he can return someday to Congress (he used to talk about how he’d like to be House speaker someday – which would be a first from Chicago).

THERE ALSO HAVE been those who think the north suburban native who turned himself into a North Sider to serve in Congress would envision himself as governor of Illinois someday.

But now, those Emanuel conspiracy theories appear to have reached into yet another branch of government. Sally Quinn, the one-time society writer for the Washington Post who continues to write occasional columns for the newspaper, published a piece of commentary Tuesday that hints Rahm thinks of himself as a future mayor of Chicago.

It would seem that the people with little better to do than guess what political fantasies Emanuel might have for himself are putting him all over the place. Could it be a series of trial balloons, whereby he runs for whichever office people are the least repulsed by.

If that’s the case, he won’t be running for anything at City Hall – particularly if Richard M. Daley decides to seek another term (at this point, I believe he will) in the 2011 municipal elections. Nobody will have the nerve to challenge Daley, no matter how much his naysayers want to think that thinks like parking meters or the Olympics debacle will "take him down."

BECAUSE I REMEMBER the revulsion level that Emanuel created in his congressional district when he first ran for the House of Representatives’ post from the Northwest Side. That, combined with the certain level of mistrust of any Washington official that people in other parts of the city will feel make me think that Rahm would be beatable if he were delusional to actually run for mayor in 2011.

The fact is that our local people who run for offices in Washington are considered to have run “up and out,” meaning they may be moving on to something that technically outranks City Hall but is part of another system altogether.

Meaning the local powers-that-be are more than willing to indulge Emanuel’s ego, so long as he applies it elsewhere. Let the District of Columbia deal with him, they think.

If he tries to come back to Chicago and exert such an attitude, there will be any number of politicos willing to dredge up the dirt.

IT WAS THE reason why I always thought it ridiculous that people used to say that Obama himself would someday run for Illinois governor if he had lost to Hillary R. Clinton in the 2008 primary. He too was another “up and outer” who left the Chicago delegation of the Statehouse Scene in order to be a part of Capitol Hill.

Am I saying that Washington and the federal government is another world? Yes. Am I also saying that the people who go there often are cutting themselves off from the local affairs? Yes.

Some might cite Roman Pucinski as a case of a member of Congress who became a local official. He gave up his House seat (a portion of his district was later represented by Emanuel) to be a City Council member.

But the fact that he is one of the few and that that took place decades ago shows just how unlikely it is that someone so engrained in the ways of the White House and Congress (let’s not forget Emanuel’s years of service under former President Bill Clinton that were so tight that Rahm was one of the last Democrats from Illinois to publicly side with Obama during the ’08 primary) could make the switch back to the fifth floor of City Hall.

THE VERY FACT that Quinn threw her Emanuel “nugget” into the middle of a lengthy diatribe about another issue (Desiree Rogers should be fired for letting those dingbats sneak into the state dinner for India) shows that it is not a fully-developed idea.

While I’m not trying to bad-mouth Quinn (who has been an observer of the federal government scene for several decades), I don’t expect her to be a master of the ways of City Hall. So I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt that she doesn’t fully appreciate how ridiculous an idea it is that Emanuel could ever return to Chicago on the local level.

You might as well say that Obama himself is going to come back to Chicago after he’s done being president to run for mayor. About the only local post I could envision Obama holding someday would be University of Chicago chancellor.

That is, if he doesn’t start thinking of Chicago as a place from which he came, rather than the place for which he is intended to return. USA Today earlier this week reported on many local business officials who wish Obama would take a closer interest in the city to help bolster their economic interests.

THAT IS WHY I always had the easiest time envisioning Emanuel thinking of himself as a future House speaker. I realize the man has (even by government official standards) a bloated ego. He’s going to want something for his own right someday.

And dreaming of the day in which he could be the guy that a president has to turn to in order to get things approved by Congress likely would satisfy him. Unless he dreams of the day that a Republican is president and he can be the House speaker who thwarts that official’s ideological desires.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Sally Quinn is dribbling political daydreams in her attempt to get Desiree Rogers to (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/04/AR2010010402722.html?sub=AR) take the blame for lax White House security procedures.

The White House on Tuesday officially said that Rahm Emanuel (http://blogs.suntimes.com/sweet/2010/01/washington_post_columnist_says.html) isn’t going anywhere.

Would Barack Obama’s physical presence in Chicago really give that much of a jolt (http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2010/01/05/Chicago-businesses-hoping-for-Obama-fix/UPI-21771262706601/) to the city’s economy?

Will TV be O’Brien’s equalizer?

It has been nearly one month since the Chicago Tribune came out with the poll that showed Terrance O’Brien’s campaign for Cook County Board president was so low that even beleagured incumbent Todd Stroger ranks above him.

Yet O’Brien, whose political resume relies heavily on his term as head of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, has the chance to make up significant ground. Who’s to say that the next round of polls won’t show him running close to the lead.

WHAT GIVES O’BRIEN a boost is the fact that his campaign became the first of the four Democrats wishing to run Cook County government to purchase that all-valuable airtime on local television. We’re soon going to start seeing some heavy rotation of spots promoting O’Brien, including one where he claims to have used his current post to clean up Chicago-area pollution and says he’ll do the same thing with the county.

All the other candidates challenging Stroger in the Democratic primary next month say they will soon be on television as well, although they won’t say how soon, for how long or with what content.

For their campaign’s sake, they had better not wait too long.

Because while O’Brien literally was the fourth place candidate in that Tribune poll whose results were published last month, there was significant evidence that it was all a matter of name recognition. Seriously, who pays attention to the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District?

IF O’BRIEN’S CAMPAIGN advertisements manage to catch the public eye, he could very easily become the best known of the four Democratic candidates.. Then, we may have to go back to wondering if O’Brien will be the white guy who gets a significant vote while all the other African-American candidates wind up splittting the city’s black vote.

In a four-way race, it probably only takes about 26-30 percent of the primary vote to win – and that Tribune poll had 26 percent of would-be Democratic Party primary voters undecided (nobody asked me, but I’d be among the undecided too).

The simple fact is that there are few people who take the time to seriously learn about a candidate’s positions on issues. His “platform” might as well be irrelevant.

Too many base their views of the candidates way too heavily on these television spots and the impression they can give. O’Brien could give himself a serious boost of credibility in the minds of people who are only now starting to remotely think about who they want to vote for – and whose priority on Election Day may very well be the U.S. Senate campaign.

I WOULD GUESS that the few would-be voters who are making the county board presidency a priority are the ones who are determined to vote against Stroger. Not that they have a clue who they really want. For them, it’s all about ABT.

Voting for “Anybody But Todd” could mean they merely have been bitter for the past four years that Stroger won the ’06 general election, or they really want to blame someone for sales taxes and can’t figure out a way to blame the state government (which receives the largest share of money collected from the sales tax).

I’ll repeat myself from past commentaries published here – Todd Stroger probably is being blamed irrationally for the things that have “gone wrong,” but he’s still getting the blame. His only chance of success on Feb. 2 is if none of the other three candidates can get a strong grasp of the bulk of the remaining vote.

These new campaign spots are O’Brien’s attempt to make that grasp of what will probably be (my guess) the 20 percent of the electorate that will vote for Stroger.

SO IT WILL be cute to see those spots on television that try to put the O’Brien brand in the voter mindset prior to the primary election. Will would-be voters think it cute, or silly, that O’Brien straightens out a “Cook County” sign that is hanging crooked – symbolic of what he claims he will do if he is elected to what is one of the most significant political posts in local government.

Even with the expense of the Chicago television market, his expenditure of several hundred thousands of dollars with of advertising time means that O’Brien is going to be a player for Election Day. It will definitely be more significant than his appearance greeting people Monday at the Metra commuter train station in Franklin Park.

I only hope that Alderman Toni Preckwinkle and circuit court Clerk Dorothy Brown don’t wait too long to join in the overpriced television “fun,” or else they’re going to find that their campaigns will become the political “afterthoughts” whose niche some people were eager to assign to O’Brien last month.

It also means that the next round of polls for this particular campaign will be interesting to see just how much movement up or down there will be by each of the campaigns. Anybody who says they “know” for sure who will win the Democratic primary for county board president on Feb. 2 is being foolish.

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Posturing galore on Wednesday

I’m dreading Wednesday.

That is going to be a day for all the gasbags to come crawling out of the woodwork and express their “outrage” over the great injustices that will be committed that day.

WHAT MAKES IT worse is that there isn’t even just one issue that will cause the rhetorical pontification that will spout up that day. Politics and sports – take your pick. There are going to be ticked off people.

Wednesday is the day that an Illinois government commission will meet both in Chicago and at the Statehouse in Springpatch to discuss the “fate” of the Thomson Correctional Center. That also will be the day that the Baseball Hall of Fame will inform us which ballplayers – if any – wind up gaining admission this year.

The big, fat balls of gas will come out on both issues, and we’re going to hear so much pompous rhetoric – particularly if onetime Montreal Expo Andre Dawson (who played a few years with the Chicago Cubs) doesn’t get it, while the other side of town will give us some people seriously outraged at the concept that former Chicago White Sox outfielder Harold Baines never gains more respect from Hall of Fame voters.

The scary thing is that their rhetoric will be just as intense as the cheap talk coming from the political people at the Thompson Center and at the Statehouse.

FOR IT WILL be on Wednesday that the Illinois Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability will use modern technology to meet without gathering in the same room to express their thoughts about the fact that the federal government wants to purchase the unused maximum-security state prison from Illinois government – so as to provide a place to locate some of the people alleged to have committed acts of terrorism against the United States who now are being held at a U.S. Navy base in Cuba.

State officials even go so far to say that they may reach a decision on what to do with this issue when they meet on Wednesday.

Hah!

I will be the first to concede this is a serious issue. It is legitimate. It ought not to be ridiculed by anyone.

BUT THE IDEA that anything that will happen on /Wednesday will resolve this issue is a laughable concept. For the bottom line is that this is a federal issue. It is going to be the Congress and the president who ultimately settle this score.

All that is going to happen on Wednesday is that a lot of state officials, some of whom have Election /Day interests at stake come Feb. 2, will make pompous statements meant to make themselves look firm and authoritative to the people of their home districts who foolishly elected them once and likely will send them back to Springfield to continue to do “the people’s business.”

The state at some point will have to take some sort of vote approving the sale of the prison that was meant to be opened in the early 2000s as a way of giving the state a modern maximum-security facility – but never was properly opened because the state’s financial problems made it impossible for them to afford to operate it.

In short, Thomson was the fancy new house that we never could afford, and now someone is willing to take it off our hands at something resembling a fair price.

BUT WE’RE GOING to hear the politicking from Republican officials who will parrott the partisan rhetoric of their federal government counterparts – bringing inmates from Guantanamo Bay to Thomson somehow makes us Illinoisans (and Chicagoans in particular) a target for terrorist plots.

Ignoring the fact that the city’s size and amenities already do that, Wednesday will be another case for political people to manage to say something stupid, all in the name of trying to get themselves re-elected. I wish I didn’t have to hear it.

But we’re going to have to listen to more of this trash talk at our local level, on top of the identical arguments that are made at the federal level. At least there, there is legitimate procedures that need to take place. There are Republicans who can hold up the actual purchase of the prison if they are that determined to try to make President Barack Obama look bad.

Of course, all they will really do is make themselves look inane. But that has never stopped political people before. I’d like to think that I could somehow escape the political trash talk by simply looking elsewhere.

BUT THEN, I’M going to encounter all those Baseball Hall of Fame types who already are polluting the Internet with their tyrades. Bert Blyleven in the Hall of Fame? I hardly think so, although here in Chicago we’re going to get our focus of people either feeling self-righteous indignation that Dawson had to wait nearly a decade before being accepted, or more disgust if he (probably rightfully so) gets overlooked again.

When combined with the complaints about Baines (who despite his quality statistics is now paying for being such a quiet, mild-mannered personality when he was an active ballplayer), it is going to be hard for me to figure out whether the sporting-type or the political-type people are being more ridiculous.

Chicago sports fans might have to settle for cheering the election of Roberto Alomar, the one-time star second baseman who played some non-descript ball with the White Sox toward the end of his career.

In short, Wednesday might turn out to be one of those days I lock myself away in my apartment and hide under the covers while the kooks complain. Somebody wake me up when its Thursday.

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Chicago vs. Midwest hurts all

If the Asian Carp makes it to the Great Lakes, this is their eventual point of entry. Image provided by http://www.chicagopostcardmuseum.org/

When Barack Obama won the presidential election, it was done in part with a uniting of the Midwestern states that comprise our region. It was evidence that perhaps Chicago and its immediate neighbors weren’t so radically different from each other.

But anyone who thinks the squabbles that have occurred in the past are a thing of the past ought to think again. Or at least that’s the impression I’m getting from watching the legal brawl that is rising from the Asian Carp situation.

FOR THOSE OF you who can’t bring yourselves to follow too closely anything involving Carp (a truly unglorious type of fish), it appears that the species with the potential to wipe out the ecosystem of the Great Lakes is on the verge of reaching that shore.

Some naysayers will claim they may already be there, but the closest confirmed sightings of the Carp have been within eight miles of Lake Michigan.

Specifically, they rode up the Illinois River and into the Chicago & Sanitary Ship Canal, where they have the potential to work their way up to the Chicago River and into the Great Lakes right at the heart of Chicago’s lakefront.

To listen to some people speak it these days, it’s all Chicago’s fault. Or, it’s all Illinois’ fault, and Illinois these days is overrun with all those Chicago political types.

MICHIGAN STATE GOVERNMENT is suing Illinois and the Army Corps of Engineers, claiming both are at fault for letting the Asian Carp get so close to the Great Lakes. Just this week, Indiana state government officials indicated they’re going to latch on to the Michigan lawsuit.

I think it will be just a matter of time before Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ohio (if not also Pennsylvania and New York) also join the lawsuit.

Heck, this is one instance where I suspect if downstate Illinois could break away, they’d also file suit – having the entire Midwestern region take on Chicago, which at times can come off as a pompous bully when dealing with its regional neighbors.

Of course, we could keep in mind that the Asian Carp problem began in the South when Mississippi (the state, not the river) fish “farmers” screwed up and let the species into the Mississippi (the river, not the state).

IT WAS THEN that the Carp have worked their way upward until reaching St. Louis, at which point some of them decided to cut across Illinois and head for Chicago. Should we be blaming our downstate Illinois brethren for letting the Carp come so close to Lockport, Ill.?

It strikes me as small-minded that since this truly is a national screwup cutting across our country to think that we now ought to be blaming Chicago-area officials for this. That is what these lawsuits threaten to do.

Michigan’s lawsuit seeks to have the Chicago locks that allow Lake Michigan to have a connection to the Mississippi River to be permanently closed.

Some critics also say that one of Chicago’s great engineering feats – the reversal of the flow of the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan – ought to be undone, and Mother Nature should be allowed to reign supreme with river water flowing into the lakes.

THIS IS ALL just absurd, and at times reeks just a bit much of Michigan people who for years have complained about “F-I-P’s” (Illinois people, with a profanity placed in front) now seeing a chance to dump back on the region’s dominant city.

Keep in mind that I fully appreciate the problem presented by the Asian Carp and the need to come up with a solution as quickly as possible.

But some of the rhetoric being spewed these days in legal briefs has the potential to become incredibly ignorant oral arguments made someday in various federal courtrooms. We’re all just one quirky, short-minded judge away from some serious long-term harm being caused to the region.

Realize that the reasons the Chicago River’s flow was reversed was to avoid pollution being dumped into the river from flowing into the Great Lakes. It also was the result of a cholera outbreak in the late 19th Century that motivated the expensive engineering project that reversed the flow.

DO WE REALLY think that restoring things to the old ways is the right way to go? Let’s not forget that the Chicago River in my lifetime was once classified as a “toxic” body of water. It is now merely regarded as “polluted.”

Do we want to ban the Asian Carp from the Great Lakes at the expense of dumping Midwestern pollution into them? How much would Michigan and Indiana be complaining if that were to be the outcome?

We need a serious solution to this problem, and it probably is one where all the Great Lakes states ought to be working together to try to find it rather than go to court to fight against each other in an effort to assess blame.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The Chicago-area may stretch into Indiana, but there are many people on both sides who view State Line Road (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/article_31366ea3-f606-577e-ab46-38ed782e3f41.html?mode=story) as some sort of impenetrable barrier. Too bad it can't keep the Carp out of Lake Michigan.

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.

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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.