Quinn determined to have one last political power play while in office

There was some intense politicking taking place Monday in San Diego, where Baseball Hall of Fame officials ultimately decided that none of four former Chicago White Sox ballplayers – Dick Allen, Jim Kaat, Minnie Miñoso and Billy Pierce – were worthy of recognition.

Yet that might not have been as intense as the hard-ball that was played Monday at U.S. Cellular Field, where the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority met and decided to hire a new executive director.

WHICH ISN’T A big deal, except for the fact that the authority’s board is controlled now by people chosen by the Illinois governor, which means it is Pat Quinn who got to decide who got the executive director’s post.

Not Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who also has appointees on the authority’s board. And most certainly not Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner, who would have got his chance to get involved with the agency that runs the White Sox’ ballpark and which paid for the renovation of Soldier Field for the Chicago Bears.

It would seem that Quinn, who wasn’t able to get the General Assembly to approve a measure providing for a statewide increase in the minimum wage so he could have a “last hurrah” of sorts signing it into law, will have to claim this appointment as one of his final acts of significance.

As it turns out, he gave the executive director’s post to Lou Bertuca, who was the campaign manager who led Quinn to his 50-46 percent defeat in the November general election for governor.

SO AT LEAST Lou is taken care of, from Quinn’s perspective. He has a job for the next two years, even though Rauner on Monday spewed a bit of cheap rhetoric about how he’d like to undo the appointment.

It’s not going to be a pleasant job, however. For I expect Rauner will replace all of the gubernatorial nominees on the authority’s governing board with people loyal to him.

I also expect that Emanuel’s people on the authority will not look too kindly to their new director. Bertuca could easily wind up having to deal with a governing board openly hostile toward anything he wants to do – along with a pair of chief executives who likely will dig for any dirt they can find for use as grounds to try to remove him!

I don’t know that I’d want to take a job under those circumstances – even if it does pay just over $175,000 per year.

OF COURSE, THIS isn’t the first time Quinn has had controversy related to the executive director’s post of the sports authority.

Bertuca replaces Kelly Kraft, the former television news broadcaster who got Quinn’s appointment in 2012 despite the belief of many authority board members that she wasn’t qualified.

That was when Quinn orchestrated the appointment by removing one of his appointees on the board who was opposed to Kelly, and replaced him with someone who would vote exactly the way the governor wanted.

It had a backlash, of course. For the person who got removed was Manny Sanchez, a high-profile attorney who wound up signing on early to the Rauner gubernatorial campaign and being one of the “prominent” Democrats who did what he could to undermine Quinn’s chances of re-election.

WHICH MAKES ME perceive this move as being more a gesture of hostility toward the political establishment that is preparing to cast him off in coming weeks.

It might not be as hostile as the one when former-Gov. Rod Blagojevich went out of his way to name Roland Burris to the U.S. Senate despite the desires of many others that he butt out of the matter. But it definitely comes across as a final cry for attention.

It’s not like there’s any activity coming before the sports authority in the near future that an executive director appointment couldn’t wait a couple of months. But it does entertain the political geeks amongst us who always enjoy the mechanizations behind political maneuvers.

Just as much as White Sox fans will spend the next few months complaining about how the Hall of Fame could be so stupid as to exclude (once again) such stars as one-time MVP Allen and the “Cuban Comet” himself in Miñoso.

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EXTRA: Imagine it was just a dream

The death of John Lennon on this date 34 years ago still has a touch of unreality in my mind, emphasized by the fact that when it happened, my initial reaction was to think it was all just a dream.

I recall being back in high school at the time that Lennon died at age 40 by a deranged fan, of sorts, who shot him outside the luxury apartment in New York City where he lived with wife Yoko Ono.

WHAT I RECALL was getting home from school that day feeling particularly sluggish, to the point where I laid down on the bed and wound up drifting off to sleep.

Later in the evening, I woke up briefly and saw a television set turned to the news, where the announcer told that Lennon had been shot just an hour earlier.

I was feeling so groggy that I quickly drifted off to sleep again – this time for the night. I woke up again the next morning. In my mind, I thought I had dreamed that the news was reporting Lennon’s death.

So when I started telling other people about my “dream,” they quickly corrected me to let me know that at least part of my night was reality.

WHICH MAKES ME wonder at times what kind of “career” Lennon would have had if he had lived through the ‘80s and beyond?

His “Double Fantasy” album sold well, but we have to admit that most of the people who bought it only did so because of his death – he was shot three weeks after it was released.

Would he have come up with anything on his own that would top his 1971 hit “Imagine?” We can only imagine what would have come about from the man who gave us such songs as a Beatle as “I’m A Loser” and “Nowhere Man.”

It’s just too bad that I can’t wake up from my “dream” of several decades and find out that it wasn’t reality at all. At the very least, maybe it would have spared us "Wham" or "Oingo Boingo."

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Freedom of expression? Or should Derrick Rose keep his trap shut?!?

A t-shirt is going to show us just how much Chicago sports fans “love” Bulls point guard Derrick Rose.

Bulls fans have become critical of the fact that Rose has suffered so many injuries during his professional athletic career and gives the impression that he’s in no hurry to recover from his various maladies.

THE DEBATE OVER Rose is whether he’s merely being careful and taking care of himself; or if he’s got a lazy streak within him.

But now, we’re going to have another issue – following the Saturday night incident where Rose publicly wore a t-shirt with the slogan “I can’t breathe” printed on its front.

That slogan refers to what were among the “last words” spoken by Eric Garner in New York while being held in a choke hold by police. Garner later died, and his words are being used by protesters angry that the officer in the incident evaded criminal indictment for his actions that caused the death.

Rose became merely the latest professional athlete to show sympathy toward someone who died recently because of a police officer’s actions.

LET’S NOT FORGET the St. Louis Rams football players who last month took the field prior to a game against the Oakland Raiders with their hands held in the air, symbolically letting police know that just because they were black men, they weren’t about to commit any violent acts.

As though the assumption was that black people are naturally violent and pose a threat that law enforcement should react harshly towards.

The St. Louis Police Officers Association led a verbal attack on the football players, saying it was disrespectful for them to side with the people who believe the death of Michael Brown in suburban Ferguson, Mo., was caused by police and who are angry that an officer there also managed to avoid being indicted for his actions.

Now, we’re going to see how the sports world comes out against Rose, although it should be noted that the Chicago Tribune reported most of Rose’s Bulls teammates are supportive of his right to express his views.

THEN AGAIN, ROSE is the supposed star of the Bulls team and is the man whose fitness is key to whether the Bulls have a chance to be in the NBA playoffs come spring.

If he does play well this season, he “buys” himself the right to say what he thinks.

Those Rams football players (Stedman Bailey, Tavon Austin, Jared Cook, Chris Gevans and Kenny Britt) are not NFL stars. In fact, there’s a good chance that when they die, their obituaries will lede with the fact that they were the guys who protested Brown’s death – instead of anything they did during a game.

As for Rose’s gesture of protest, I think it is rather mild. If you weren’t paying attention during pre-game warm-ups, you didn’t see it. It’s not like he’s going around elaborating on his attitude these days.

SO I THINK anybody who gets too upset about Rose taking such a stance is probably saying more about themselves than anything Rose (or Garner) said or did!

It reminds me of the book “Ball Four,” in which former pitcher Jim Bouton addressed the attitude of baseball people toward those of their colleagues who expressed views on social issues.

Ballplayers could say anything they want if they expressed a socially conservative viewpoint because they were “right.” But if they said something construed as not supportive of the conservative establishment, then they were criticized for being “wrong.”

Unless the player in question was a big-enough star, in which case they’d get a simmering silence directed toward them. Is that bound to be Rose’s fate for daring to wear a t-shirt Saturday night?

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The more we change, the more we stay the same. And that is pretty sad!

Protesters gathered both Thursday and Friday at prominent points in downtown Chicago to express their outrage with the fact that a New York police officer managed to avoid indictment, despite being caught on video putting a choke hold on a black man who later died as a result.

In a legal context, the death of Eric Garner is a perfect example of the difference between “homicide” and “murder.” The former is a medical term for any death caused by another human being’s action.

YET PROSECUTORS THIS week in New York determined that the shouting and screaming and other hostilities that occurred between Garner and police Officer Daniel Pantaleo caused the incident to rise to the level by which use of force was justified.

Therefore, no criminal charges!

That is what has activists upset all across the country, including in Chicago. Thursday night saw four people get arrested for misdemeanor charges when the protest they participated in caused traffic on Lake Shore Drive to close.

On Friday, they were to gather on State Street (“that great street”) for another rally. Who’s to say how long they will continue to do so?

THE GARNER INCIDENT may wither away into the past. But at the rate we’re going, it will be a very short period of time before there’s another “male black” (to use police jargon) who winds up getting killed because of a police officer’s actions.

It was just last week that the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and the refusal of grand jury to indict the police officer on any charges caused activists in Chicago to camp out at City Hall – literally spending a night outside the mayor’s Fifth Floor office to express their disgust.

We haven’t had violent outbursts in Chicago yet. But just envision if one of these upcoming acts takes place here. When one considers that a person asking a police officer why they’re being questioned can, under certain circumstances, be construed as resistance, it’s just a matter of time before there’s another police-related death in Chicago.

The sad part of all this is that it isn’t the least bit new. In fact, Thursday was the 45^th anniversary of when the Chicago police raided the West Side house where the Black Panther Party was located locally.

WHICH MEANS THAT 45 years ago today, we had people outraged over the blatant actions of Chicago police that resulted in the death of Panther party leader Fred Hampton and others with the group.

There were others more than willing to believe the rhetoric that the group was a subversive organization, and would cite the armed conflicts that had burst out between the group and police across the country in the late 1960s.

Then again, there are those who argue the Panthers’ desire to arm black people for “self” protection was because the police themselves were not doing anything to protect those individuals – and may well have been the problem.

Some people might well think that nothing has changed – police still viewing black faces as the problem, and being more willing to use potentially-deadly force.

I HAVE ENOUGH sense to see that in the 21^st Century, we’re in a more subtle situation.

Nothing that has happened in recent months is as blatant as the Panther raid, where the FBI provided intelligence they gathered about the Panther headquarters and turned it over to Chicago police – which then carried out the raid that resulted in criminal indictments against 13 law enforcement officials, including of then-State’s Attorney Edward Hanrahan.

All of them were ultimately acquitted, although Hanrahan’s desires to someday become mayor withered away and died. In his mind, that may well have been the ultimate punishment!

Although others still feel an injustice was done – a level of discontent felt by some in our society these days who wonder if attitudes will ever change significantly.

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Immigration appeals to the nation’s hearts and minds in coming months

The fight over revamping our nation’s immigration policies into something that makes sense is going to become a battle for the hearts and minds of our society, and Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., is likely to become a visible part of it.

The Washington Post reported this week how Democrats are trying to plot a strategy by which they will present an image to sway people over to backing the desire of President Barack Obama to revamp immigration policies in ways to prevent families from being split by deportation.

IT’S GOING TO be a bi-lingual approach. There will be many appeals to people to whom Spanish is a significant language in their lives.

It likely will be along those lines that Gutierrez, who long has urged the need for serious reform and was upset at how long it took Obama to act, and other members of Congress will be explaining just how detrimental it really is to our society to let the conservative ideologues have their desires of a policy that stresses deportation over all other changes.

The point being that conservatives who are counting on a new Republican majority over all of Congress to tout their nativist desires are going to be throwing out their own share of rhetoric about the evils of Obama using his executive order powers to implement some changes without Congressional approval.

Admittedly, it would be better if Congress would act on a comprehensive plan to fix the flaws in immigration laws that turn it into a bureaucratic nightmare for those who have to endure it.

BUT THE REPEATED failure of Republicans in Congress in recent years to even consider the issue gave Obama the moral high ground to take some action – one that various polls show a majority of people can support.

The ideologues, however, will want to believe their minority viewpoint is the one that represents the thoughts of all people. If Obama isn’t careful, too many people will come to view their twisted line of logic as fact – just as there are those who ought to know better when it comes to health care reform.

That was an issue where backers of making health insurance more readily available were not aggressive enough, and wound up letting the opposition dominate the debate with their trash talk.

Gutierrez & Company are meant to prevent the same from happening with immigration reform. There also will be the case that Spanish debate will wind up being dominated by the Obama backers – unless Republicans can start finding Latinos capable of badmouthing immigration reform with a straight face.

THAT’S SOMETHING NOT likely to happen!

The trash talk has already started. On Thursday, the GOP-run House of Representatives gave its support to a measure expressing its opposition to Obama on immigration reform. It is a measure that the (for another month) Democrat-led Senate will ignore.

At least it isn’t any of the nonsense talk about defunding the federal government to cause a shutdown of services to the public.

Although the Washington Post reported how there is talk of acting early in 2015 to cut off funding to the Department of Homeland Security for programs that relate to immigration law.

IT SEEMS THE ideologues are hoping they can get people all worked up against Obama so that if there is a future government shutdown, people might be inclined to blame Obama for it.

Even though history shows that whenever Republicans try to shut down government services for ideological reasons, the public sees through the tactic and winds up blaming the Party of Reagan (who himself is probably rolling over in his California grave at the short-mindedness of his alleged ideological colleagues).

How else to explain the nonsense lawsuit that got filed earlier this week in the U.S. District Court in Brownsville, Texas that seeks to have a federal judge strike down Obama’s executive order? Sixteen other states, including the knuckleheaded Hoosiers and Cheeseheads to the east and north of Illinois, joined in that lawsuit.

I just can’t see any federal judge attuned to the realities of life in south Texas – where it is the Mexican-Americans who are the majority of people and where it is blatantly obvious that the U.S./Mexico border used to be significantly to the north of the Rio Grande – having the nerve to go along with such xenophobic tripe.

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Can Rahm opponents unite to stop Emanuel from getting vote majority?

A lot of people are watching the mayoral campaign, speculating on the chances that Mayor Rahm Emanuel can be forced into a run-off election come April – thinking that a one-on-one campaign would allow all those Rahm bashers to unite against him.

At this point, however, I’m skeptical that the people of Chicago will be able to unite behind a single candidate. Let’s be honest; various polls show enough undecided people that all Emanuel has to do is swing over a slight share of them to his camp, and he wins!

NOW I’M NOT going so far as to predict an Emanuel victory in the Feb. 27 elections. I’m just saying I’m not going to view it as the largest surprise in the world if Rahm, with the benefits of incumbency and that huge campaign cash stash, winds up prevailing.

Anybody who thinks Emanuel is doomed to defeat is being ridiculously premature.

I don’t doubt there are people who are determined to dump Rahm from office – there always have been hard-core, outspoken critics of Emanuel every time he has put his name on a ballot. Those critics and their opposition has always been overcome.

In this particular election cycle, there seems to be two (of nine overall) mayoral challengers who are getting attention paid to them by voters – 2^nd Ward Alderman Robert Fioretti and Cook County Board commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, D-Chicago.

GARCIA IS IN the news these days because he got a pledge of a $250,000 campaign contribution from the Service Employees International Union’s political committee.

Yet before the money that would more than double the size of his campaign fund ($477,000, according to the Chicago Tribune) could even get into his bank account to be spent, there already are challengers.

There are those people within the union who are claiming that union has no business providing financial help, or support of any kind, to any candidate.

There probably are people within the SEIU who want to dump Emanuel from office as much as the Chicago Teachers Union officials who have been particularly outspoken (and who kicked in some cash to Garcia’s campaign as well).

BUT IT WON’T shock me to learn that Fioretti has his backers there, and probably some people who aren’t about to back Garcia. Which is why various polls usually show those two men with about 17 percent support each, to about 35 percent for Emanuel.

I was particularly entranced with the results of a poll by San Francisco-based pollster David Binder that put Emanuel’s support level at 44 percent (compared to 16 percent for Garcia and 15 percent for Fioretti).

When asked how people would vote if it was narrowed down to Emanuel and Garcia (who’s going to try to portray himself as the Latino take on Harold Washington), it becomes 49 percent for the mayor to 37 percent for Garcia – with another.

That leaves 14 percent who can’t commit to either. Why do I suspect that Emanuel, with his nearly $10 million (and growing) campaign fund, is capable of finding “2 percent” of those people  who would refuse to accept Garcia and would wind up holding their noses, so to speak, while casting ballots for Rahm.

THE FACT IS that Chicagoans upset with the idea of “four more years!” of Emanuel haven’t united behind an opposition candidate. Considering how malcontent in nature many Chicagoans can be, I won’t be surprised if they never do.

Personally, I’d be as intrigued by the concept of “Mayor Chuy” at the head of Chicago city government as many of his hardest-core supporters. I’m just not convinced yet that there are enough of us out there.

Unless there can be some sense of unity amongst the opposition, there’s a chance that the people who are already looking past Feb. 27 to an April 7 run-off will wind up disappointed that there’s nobody to vote for and only the Chicago Cubs’ Opening Day defeat to the St. Louis Cardinals two days earlier to ponder over.

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Not unheard of for Chicago to have its own legal standard on many measures

It’s not at all unusual for there to be different standards in the law between Chicago or Cook County and the rest of Illinois. Anyone reading state statutes carefully will find many references to laws that apply only to communities of “3 million or more people.”

The Legislatures’ intent in passing such measures was to have them apply only to Chicago, and to specifically not have them apply to rural parts of Illinois.

NOW I KNOW there’s going to be at least one smart aleck who’s going to feel compelled to point out that Chicago’s population has declined to the point where even that “3 million” standard doesn’t make a difference.

But the point is that there are Chicago-only standards written into state law.

That is why I can’t get all worked up by those individuals who are upset that the City Council on Tuesday approved a plan to boost the minimum wage within Chicago ultimately to a higher rate than state officials want to go to.

There are business-oriented people (who if they were to get their wish, Illinois would reduce its minimum wage rate from the current $8.25 per hour to the federal $7.25 standard) who are now saying there will be chaos and calamity caused by the idea of companies operating in Chicago having to pay their unskilled workers more than they do in other parts of Illinois.

I SAY COMPANIES that truly have their act together will be able to adjust. Companies that can’t were probably being hit with harsher problems than just the compensation levels they were paying their employees – who are, after all, the people who do the work that produce the products or services that enable a company to claim anything in the way of profits.

Of course, Gov.-elect Bruce Rauner has made it clear he’s still in line with those business executives who wish to bolster their bottom line at the expense of their employees.

He said on Tuesday that he still doesn’t want any political action on a minimum wage measure until after he becomes governor in January, and he wants it tied to a series of measures meant to benefit those who fantasize about Illinois someday becoming a “right to work” state.

The Legislature seems willing to hold off – officials there who back a statewide minimum wage boost say they likely don’t have enough political support to approve anything.

BUT MAYOR RAHM Emanuel got the City Council on Tuesday to back the boost in Chicago; because he wants to be able to have the accomplishment in his campaign literature. How long will it be until we get campaign ads on television touting Emanuel’s action toward paying working class people more money for their labor?

All so he can have a chance at getting our vote come Election Day!

So now, we have a state with an $8.25/hour minimum wage that might, or might not, go up to about $11 per hour.

While in Chicago, we have a rate that will soon shoot up to $10/hour and keep going up in increments to $13/hour by 2019.

DON’T BE SURPRISED if a phenomenon that has long existed along the Illinois/Indiana border (where the Hoosier state uses the federal rate for its minimum wage) will arise – people from other places who find it practical to commute will be eager to get a job in Chicago.

The city’s businesses will be the ones that can get more choosy about the quality of people they hire. I know some will want to claim that businesses themselves will eagerly flip across the city limits into suburbs, if they can; which could wind up making those who remain all the more attractive.

And it has me wondering how long it will take for the rest of Illinois to get with the program and figure out that a lot of these allegedly “pro-business” measures the conservative ideologues tout are actually nothing more than measures that make our companies less desirable to work for.

How does that make Illinois, as a whole, any more attractive?

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