How does Quinn deserve to be bashed?

It seems to be the political flavor of the week. Bash Pat Quinn for the sleazy, borderline crooked, deal he worked out with the labor union that represents many state government workers.

Nobody from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees will get laid off during the next two years. It doesn’t matter whether Quinn is governor, or whether he gets replaced after the Nov. 2 elections.

IT WAS AROUND the same time that the deal was completed that the labor union decided that it believes Quinn to be best qualified for governor. They gave him their endorsement. Considering that they also decided to snub Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, by ignoring endorsements for the legislative seats needed to maintain Madigan’s control, it has the appearance of something flawed.

Quinn is getting bashed about, most vocally by the people who want state Sen. William Brady, R-Bloomington, to be the next governor of Illinois.

Brady is the guy who talks in vague terms about how he’s going to cut costs within state government in order to close the deficit that has confounded officials for years. He won’t offer specifics, because he knows that if he does he will turn off so many potential voters that Quinn will be a shoo-in for election to his own gubernatorial term.

Layoffs likely would have occurred if we got a “Gov. Brady.” Now, Quinn has taken that option away from him. Which is why Brady is engaging in the rhetoric about “pay to play,” the government-speak term for “bribe” that is used when one has no evidence that anything illegal actually occurred.

CONSIDERING THAT THE state’s financial problems are of the level of severity that only a fool would think we can cut our way back to solvency, perhaps it is a good thing that this option has been taken off the table. Now we won’t have to endure any nonsense rhetoric that the budget would be balanced – if only we didn’t have those greedy state workers and their corrupt labor unions.

If we get a “Gov. Brady,” he’s going to have to address the issue a little more seriously, instead of engaging in the nonsense rhetoric that the conservative ideologues want to hear – but is totally unrealistic.

Personally, my hope is that with the election cycle past, the Illinois General Assembly will be in a mood next spring to start dealing with the state’s finances in a serious manner – instead of the way they have been handling the issue.

A desire to dump all over anything that might make former Gov. Rod Blagojevich look good, combined with political cowardice, is what has caused all the short-term measures that have done nothing but pushed the problem into the future, while also increasing the size of the debt.

I KNOW THAT some political observers are mocking the provisions of Quinn’s agreement with the labor union that call for spending cuts. They claim it is way too insignificant to matter.

Yet when one considers that this is a problem that is going to take years to resolve (why not, it took years to develop), I say every little financial bit helps. Anytime one can get a labor union to concede anything, it is an accomplishment – because technically, they’re not obligated to give back anything.

The fact that they were willing to make some concessions means they probably should get something in return. That’s what’s called negotiation. Imposing one’s will on someone else isn’t acceptable.

For the record, Crain’s Chicago Business reported this week that the labor union is going to have to come up with some legitimate cuts of at least $50 million, and up to $100 million. Those cuts could be less overtime, more unpaid furlough days and possibly a delay in pay raises the workers were supposed to be receiving come Jan. 1.

I CAN UNDERSTAND Brady being upset. He got one-upped. Of course, after a campaign season where Quinn has been dinged over and over, perhaps it was overdue for Quinn to get a blow in.

But I can’t help but think that the only people who are truly going to be upset are the ones who think government officials ought to be doing everything within their power to mess with organized labor. Any official who regards them as a part of government that is best cooperated with to avoid hassles is thinking too logically for the ideologues to accept.

So what do I think about this endorsement? It doesn’t seem too unreasonable. It is not shocking.

I always expected that AFSCME was going to endorse Quinn, which means that the labor union leaders will use their influence to get the rank-and-file of state workers to think that re-electing Quinn is in their best interests. What a surprise! The Chicago Tribune is favoring Republican William Brady when it comes to the latest "issue" in the gubernatorial campaign.

THEN AGAIN, AFSCME usually backs Democratic Party candidates for state government posts. The shock would have been if they had given Brady any serious consideration.

Brady, after all, is the candidate who has talked about lowering Illinois’ minimum wage, and has even used rhetoric that implies he wishes Illinois were a “right to work” state (meaning people cannot be required to join a labor union as part of their employment).

I would think that keeping Brady away from the Executive Mansion is the real motivation for AFSCME officials to endorse Quinn.

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Green Party doesn’t have any …

Green, as in cash. Which helps pay for all the equipment needed to hold campaign rallies, and cover the cost of all those posters to promote oneself, and also to buy the airtime on television across Illinois – all to generate enough attention for one’s campaign so as to get voters to go out and cast ballots come Election Day.

The Green Party doesn’t have much in the way of finances, and it is showing in the fact that they’re lagging. In a year where the political pundits want to believe that voters are eager for change, any change, no matter how reckless, nobody is seriously looking to the Green Party candidates to provide that change.

HECK, IN ILLINOIS’ gubernatorial election, Scott Lee Cohen with all his personal baggage gets taken more seriously than does the Green Party nominee.

That fact is what caused Rich Whitney (who doesn’t seem to accept the fact that the only reason anyone voted for him for governor in the 2006 election cycle was a political fluke that is not about to repeat itself) to send out e-mails in recent weeks to the Green supporters asking for whatever donations they can make.

He needs the money to buy the airtime to draw attention to himself, or else he and the other Greens are going to be exposed on Nov. 2 for the irrelevant political movement that they have become in the Land of Lincoln.

Of course, that won’t stop the Green Party candidates in this state from shouting and screaming to try to force people to pay attention them. Already, the Green candidate for U.S. Senate is getting pushy with NBC news.

FOR ONE OF the events that is passing for a debate in that campaign is a live Sunday morning broadcast on NBC News. Alexi Giannoulias and Mark Kirk are appearing together on “Meet The Press.” Nobody invited candidate LeAlan Jones.

The official reason is that he’s too insignificant. He’s not drawing enough in the polls to show that he deserves to be included. Neither is Cohen. But he’s not whining about it. He’s just planning another expenditure to buy attention. Perhaps he could buy commercial airtime during the “Meet The Press” broadcast on WMAQ-TV that day?

That just leaves Jones out as a “fourth wheel,” which is pretty much typical of his Green Party colleagues – none of whom have a serious shot at winning their statewide or regional political posts.

In fact, the big question I have when it comes to the Green Party in Illinois is if their candidates will all do so poorly that none of them will hit the 5 percent standard (Whitney got 10 percent in 2006) that is required for the Green Party to remain recognized as an official political party in Illinois.

WILL THE GREENS be relegated to the political dump heap of independent and fringe party candidates – one step above the Communist Party, but floating below the Libertarians? Which would mean their candidates would have to struggle to even get on the ballot – let alone win!

It wouldn’t be the first time that an attempt at creating a third major political party sank back into nothingness. Who else remembers the Harold Washington Party – which used to be a legitimate entity that put forth slates of candidates in our local elections.

But the party (which Washington himself had nothing to do with, he was a loyal Democrat his entire political career) eventually turned into nothing. Which is what I seriously expect to happen to the Green Party in Illinois – Born: 2006, Died 2010, R.I.P.

It is not exactly unfair. Any political party that picks as a candidate for Congress a person who has run past political campaigns as a Republican, a Libertarian, an independent and a Democrat (Rev. Anthony Williams, who is Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s, perennial opponent) comes across as the dumping ground for everyone else’s political failures and a place for the politically delusional to congregate.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T think most people in this state understand what the Green Party is about; for which I blame the Greens themselves. They haven’t done a thing to educate the public as to what they stand for, which is why they haven’t moved beyond the image of Ralph Nader to become a real political party.

There is the stereotype of the aging hippie and some naïve kids who haven’t outgrown their idealism yet. But there also have been the reports this campaign cycle of Green candidates using campaign tactics and issues meant to appeal to the more conservative voters. I’m probably not the only person in Illinois who is confused about what the party has become.

I may be one of the few who cares enough to try to find out. Most people, I would suspect, merely write them off as a hopeless case, and move on to other candidates.

Which is the reason why nobody’s coughing up the kind of contributions needed to help fund campaigns (since the types of people who are wealthy enough to pay their own way are most likely the ones who view the Green Party faithful as everything that is wrong with our society), or willing to include them in their debates.

JUST AS JONES isn’t being given equal time with Kirk or Giannoulias, it is unlikely that Whitney will get to appear as an equal candidate with either Gov. Pat Quinn or Republican challenger William Brady. I’m sure it is just a matter of time before Whitney issues another whiny e-mail to complain.

Personally, I’ll try not to yawn with boredom too loudly at his complaint before shifting my attention span to something else.

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What makes cheerleading worthwhile?

Let me state up front that I agree with the mother of a six-year-old girl from Michigan who was offended that the cheerleading squad her daughter was a part of was doing chants that were sexually suggestive.

To hear a six-year-old chant about her sore back, tight skirt and jiggling “booty” is in poor taste. Only a complete nitwit (including the coaches of this particular squad) thinks there are any circumstances under which this is appropriate.

BUT WHILE THAT particular six-year-old has received international news attention for her plight (she got kicked off the squad when her mother complained that the chant was trashy for such little girls), a part of me can’t help but wonder what was going through that mother’s head to begin with.

To me, the whole idea of cheerleading at age 6 is just inappropriate because I do associate it with attempts to put sexual images into the atmosphere surrounding a ballgame. So why should we be surprised that this particular squad was doing the same thing that many other cheerleading squads across the country are doing?

Admittedly, there is a difference between a six-year-old and a 16-year-old saying such things – although one could argue that even a 16-year-old (who legally is considered to be underage for sexual purposes) shouldn’t be chanting such things.

But I can comprehend why someone running this particular youth cheerleading program might be misguided enough to think they’re standing up for the rights of the majority – who probably got into cheerleading because they want to do the same things as the older girls.

WHAT REINFORCED THIS idea in my head was an experience I had Sunday while waiting to get my hair cut. It was a unisex salon, which means that among the women and men ahead of me in line was a 16-year-old high school cheerleader whose mother was also there to watch to ensure that her daughter didn’t try to get her hair cut in any style that might be considered trashy.

It was during that point that I heard her talk about the chants her daughter does. She wasn’t complaining about taste as much as the fact that the cheerleaders often didn’t seem to have a clue what was actually happening on the playing field.

As she put it, one of her daughter’s squad’s cheers involved saying that the other team was “playing like shit,” then giving pelvic thrusts to emphasize the dirty word. The only problem was that the squad’s team was getting its own butt whipped at the time.

That IS the attitude of modern-day cheerleading – crude taunts, combined with those short-skirted uniforms that often feature plenty of bare midriff. Teenage girls doing these things under any other context would create a situation for the police to have to deal with - particularly for the men in the stands who happen to be watching.

IT IS A sexual display. I honestly believe that if people tried to alter cheerleading to de-sex it, we’d head much more in the way of grumbling and moaning. In fact, that’s what we’re hearing from the squad involved in the Michigan incident, which justifies kicking a six-year-old off the squad on the grounds that they defending “what everybody wants” as opposed to “what one person wants.”

Which is why I wonder how naïve the mother in this particular instance was if she thought that having her six-year-old become a cheerleader was somehow protecting her from such lascivious images. I would think that it amounts to deliberately exposing the kid to such an atmosphere, which I think is wrong.

Now I know I’m going to hear from some mother-types who are going to tell me that I’m being a dirty old man for thinking that cheerleading is inherently about sexual decoration for the gym or the football field during the game. They’re going to claim that it is about the athletic movement and the stunts.

The flips and leaps and splits in mid-air.

IN SHORT, THEY’RE going to claim it is a more colorful version of gymnastics. Which I might believe if not for the fact that I have never seen any kind of serious gymnast perform in a uniform with a skirt so short that it continually rides up so we can constantly see brightly-colored panties on display.

This is the reason why so many people have a hard time keeping a straight face whenever cheerleader advocates argue that their activity is a full-fledged sport, rather than just a sexily-clad pep squad for the real sports.

That ought to be the reason we appreciate the “cheerleaders” who work for professional football and basketball teams. They’re honest. There is no pretense that anything they’re doing in those tight, tight shorts and halter tops is in any way athletic.

No amount of broadcasts on ESPN2 of the cheerleading competitions are going to cover up the fact that many of the people who are tuning in to watch are merely into ogling the girls, with a few other twisted types rooting for an accident that leaves someone injured.

PUTTING A SIX-year-old on the track to want to do this when they’re really too young to comprehend the significance of what they’re doing strikes me as a lack of judgment on the part of a parent, even if it is not quite as sleazy as the people who really think that six-year-olds should be chanting about “shaking our booties.”

I just can’t help but think there are more worthwhile activities for six-year-olds to take part in. Such as my own niece who went through a brief cheerleading phase, but now at age 8 is showing some interest (and talent) at the piano.

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Let them eat their French fries

I don’t have a lot to say about the gathering of a few thousand people (in an arena designed to seat tens of thousands, that crowd was pathetic) that took place this weekend in Hoffman Estates under the name of Right Nation, other than to say that pundit Glenn Beck came up with a cutesy line when he criticized the first lady for trying to get people to eat more healthy foods.

As reported, Beck said, “Get away from my French fries, Mrs. Obama. First politician that comes up to me with a carrot stick, I’ve got a place for it. And it’s not in my tummy.” Definitely not subtle.

ASIDE FROM THE fact that a carrot-style enema would likely be painful, all I can think is that we ought to let the Tea Party types – whose idea of reform is a return to a form of this country that was most definitely unfair to large segments of its population – have all the French fries they want.

Eat too many of those things, and they’ll become bloated, cholesterol-laden, and likely to drop from a heart attack. That is a cruel thought on my part, perhaps even more harsh and cold (although not by much) than anything that has come from the mouth of a Tea Party type.

But my serious point is that it strikes me as pathetic that someone seriously sees a problem with a person in a public role (such as Michelle Obama) speaking out on public health and the need for us to take better care of ourselves, and who believes that the “American Way” somehow includes junk food.

Perhaps we need to clue in Beck that Gen. Jack D. Ripper’s speech about fluoride in the drinking water and “our precious bodily fluids” (Sterling Hayden in “Dr. Strangelove”) wasn’t meant to be taken literally.

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City apathy something to be overcome

It is a theory being peddled in various forms by many political pundits – Mayor Richard M. Daley screwed over his Democratic Party colleagues who are seeking election/re-election in the Nov. 2 elections when he made it publicly known that he has no intention of returning to office following the spring 2011 municipal elections. The capitol complex in Springfield, Ill., is an impressive looking place, but too many political people in Chicago view it as little more than a training ground ...

By this theory, Daley got politically-aware people who live in Chicago so wrapped up with interest in trying to figure out who will replace him at City Hall that they could now care less who represents Illinois in the U.S. Senate, or who holds all those state government positions that require one to think of Springfield as a place of significance.

I DON’T QUITE buy into this theory.

Not because I want to defend Daley or doubt that he would be willing to “screw over” his colleagues if he had something to gain from it.

It is more because the idea that local people think less of state government than they do our local politicians who work at City Hall or the county building is just a long-established fact. It would be something that people like Pat Quinn would have to overcome – regardless of what Daley had done.

My point is that even if Daley had kept quiet until after the Nov. 2 elections, there are politically-aware people in the city whose top thoughts would have been the speculation about Hizzoner Jr. – will he or won’t he, as in run for re-election?

THIS KIND OF attitude is something that a Democrat running for governor must overcome. He must get the people of Chicago to care enough to want to have someone with the city’s interests in mind elected to the top post – or just about any other state government post.

If anything, it is the lack of activity from the Quinn campaign to generate much in the way of feeling that is causing him to lag behind a candidate whose own regional ties and ideological leanings ought to be enough to take him down for the count with barely a punch from The Mighty Quinn. ... for holding a political post at City Hall.

Anybody who wants to blame Daley for making it all the more obvious that many people in the city just don’t care much about what happens Nov. 2 (perhaps they figure we have the president and the mayor, who cares who the governor is) are, in my mind, looking for excuses to justify lackadaisical campaign activity on the part of Quinn.

If Quinn can’t take apart a candidate whose limited rhetoric has included support for reducing the minimum wage and turning Illinois into a “right to work” state (just like Mississippi or Alabama) by making voters realize that William Brady’s vision of boosting the economy focuses solely on corporate interests rather than those of the people in general, then perhaps he deserves to be retired politically.

ALTHOUGH WHEN IT comes to Quinn, I’m never going to believe the man is gone for good until I physically see his tombstone. The state’s economic troubles aren’t his fault (or unique to Illinois), which means he could do yet another comeback when the political thought process quits taking these Tea Party types so literally.

I know some people are going to want to claim that Illinois inherently ought to be a Republican-leaning state – mainly because they look at the map and see how physically small the six-county Chicago-area is compared to the other 96 counties of Illinois where the GOP is as dominant in much of the area as the Democrats are in the city.

Then again, those six counties have two-thirds of the state’s population. I guess some people think that stalks of corn on open farm fields have Republican tendencies in and of themselves.

My point is that this is an urban state. Even when the Republicans had that 26-year streak going of consecutive Illiinois governors coming from their political ranks, Chicago’s interests had to be tended to. The major reason that the GOP held the governor’s post for that long was because most of those years were occupied by the administration of James R. Thompson – a Chicago native who continued to live in the city (just like Rod Blagojevich) even after getting elected.

IN FACT, THE closest the Republicans came to putting up a Chicago-hostile governor was the eight-year stint of Jim Edgar. But even Edgar, a native of the college town of Charleston, had his sympathies for the city and its culture – even though he was more than willing to say “no” on so many occasions to Daley himself.

Which means the real lesson out of all of this is not that Daley has undermined the Democrats. It’s that any winner of the Nov. 2 elections is going to have to pay attention to the city’s demands and interests.

Or else the new governor and Daley’s successor will wind up engaging in partisan battles that will make the 1990s fights between Daley and Edgar look downright meek by comparison.

If a “Gov. Brady” thinks he can be the governor for the conservative ideologues and merely shove their whims down the city’s throat, he will find himself being the ultimate one-term governor – losing a re-election bid in 2014, likely to whichever runner-up candidate rises to the surface in next year’s mayoral elections.

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Who should back whom?

It’s hard to say who was meeting with who in the session that took place Wednesday night between White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill.

The federal government officials from Chicago got together to talk about next spring’s mayoral campaign. Perhaps it was Emanuel trying to find out if he can count on Jackson family support should he decide to try to run for mayor.

THEN AGAIN, JACKSON has been a long-time dreamer of someday holding the political post that entitles him to that fifth floor office at City Hall. Perhaps he wants to know if Emanuel would, at the very least, not stand in his way.

There’s also the factor of Jackson’s wife, Sandi, who is an elected official in her own right – an alderman. There has been some talk that she runs for mayor, while her husband remains in Washington to portray himself as a powerful politician whose influence could benefit the city.

The problem with trying to figure out this scenario is that all of the above theories are feasible. That is to say, there is a certain level of nonsense to all of them. But none of them are completely ludicrous.

Because if Emanuel is to truly have a chance of becoming mayor (instead of becoming one of about two dozen dreamers who ramble around and don’t accomplish anything), he has to start building up some local political ties.

HE MAY HAVE been a congressman from the Northwest Side for a couple of terms. But Emanuel – a Skokie native – isn’t the traditional political type who worked his way up through a ward organization and has ties to the neighborhood.

His campaigns for U.S. representative always included time and money spent overcoming the image that he was just some outsider trying to steal away a local political post from a more deserving local person.

While he managed to overcome that perception then, it is questionable whether he can do it on a citywide basis – particularly when he starts getting into the South Side wards where the neighborhood ties issue is treated as all-important.

Getting himself aligned with the Jacksons could be a way of making a dent into the African-American vote – although it will also ensure that people who can’t stand the Jacksons will view him as Public Enemy Number One.

ONE POSITIVE ASPECT, in my mind, is that various newspaper reports indicate that Emanuel has commissioned polls to try to figure out how much he is appreciated in Chicago. It may be just another political geek resorting to polls to be told what he wants to hear (that we really, really love him and want him back), but at least he’s not buying the District of Columbia hype.

If one paid too much attention to the Washington Post, they’d think that Emanuel is the people’s choice and that Election Day is a formality.

But was this really a meeting about Emanuel? Or was it Jackson who is trying to redeem himself from the fact that his name got brought up so prominently during the criminal proceedings against former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The political perception about Jackson is that while he may not face any criminal charges, his ties to Blagojevich have left a stain that makes him un-electable for any post other than his current seat in Congress representing the far South Side and surrounding suburbs.

UNLESS SOMETHING MORE severe breaks, that perception will pass with time. Jackson is only 45. So he is young enough that he could still be a viable candidate for mayor in a future election. Perhaps he could be the person who succeeds whoever wins the municipal elections next spring.

Then again, many political types are basically impatient and believe in seizing the moment – particularly a moment like this where the campaign is a free-for-all and it might only take about 26 percent of the vote in an initial election to qualify for a run-off.

Is Jackson looking to reinforce his own chances by having a get-together with Emanuel? Or could it be about trying to clear the way for his wife so that perhaps the seventh ward alderman would have a chance to emerge from the pack of rabid dogs/mayoral dreamers, all of whom now view the mayor’s post as a nice juicy bone to gnaw at.

Of course, it could also turn out that neither of these men will factor in the final result. Perhaps the real work is taking place in the neighborhoods where candidates are trying to drum up enough interest to get people to actually care about their own futures.

MAYOR DART? MAYOR Meeks? Mayor del Valle? Who’s to say at this point which potential candidates deserve to be taken seriously?

But you have to admit – this mayoral speculation is more interesting than the Ililnois gubernatorial campaign (with Republican hopeful William Brady going out of his way to avoid saying about immigration reform the things that his hard-core partisans want to hear, and Green Party hopeful Rich Whitney showing us why he and his partisan allies are losers with his whining about a lack of campaign funds) that ought to be the focus of our attention these days.

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Why can’t they all just get along?

It is a long-standing sentiment that likely will always exist within our local law enforcement – federal officials based in Chicago and the local cops and prosecutors don’t have much use for each other.

It was on display throughout the political corruption trial this summer of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich – whose attorney was a criminal law veteran of the scene at the Cook County Criminal Courts building. Many pundits and observers tried to make a point of how his crude, hard-hitting ways didn’t fit in with the more refined (in a sense) atmosphere of the courts at the Dirksen Building.

BUT BEFORE ANYONE presumes that this means federal law enforcement types are somehow superior to their local legal types (even though one could argue that Sam Adams Jr. managed to avoid conviction for Blagojevich on so many charges that he beat the feds), keep in mind that the ill-will really does run both ways.

Local cops and prosecutors can be just as arrogant when viewing their federal counterparts. Which has always been behind the fact that Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis doesn’t have the support of the cops working the streets – and has many police officers counting down the days until next spring when they expect him to be fired.

It was with that goal in mind that the Fraternal Order of Police local representing Chicago police officers held a protest march, picketing the police headquarters on 35th Street and Michigan Avenue on Wednesday to let it be known they want their boss fired.

So now, when Weis is replaced by whoever does manage to win the mayoral election next spring, it will be the more politically motivated of cops who will take credit for personally getting him dumped. Maybe the real problem is that these FOP-types spent the past two years resisting Weis, instead of trying to work for the betterment of the public. All that jazz about "serving and protecting" that cops claim they're there to uphold?

I DON’T THINK the local police deserve that credit for Weis' departure. I view political appointments like police superintendent as being similar to a baseball team manager – you get hired to get fired. Weis will be replaced, just as some day White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen will be fired. It won’t mean that his stint running the ballclub was a failure.

Just as we shouldn’t be too quick to write off the Weis era of the Chicago Police Department, just because the rank-and-file of cops never took to him because he is a former “G-man.”

Weis’ law enforcement career was within the FBI and included posts in several cities, including a stint as Special Agent In Charge of the Chicago office. That is what appealed to Daley when he picked Weis for the top local police post back in 2008.

An outsider with no ties to anybody who wouldn’t particularly feel beholden to anybody and would be willing to make changes, regardless of whose feelings are hurt. What we learned on Wednesday by watching this protest is whose feelings were hurt, and remain hurt, and are now determined to craft the circumstances in such a way that they can claim to have run Weis out of town.

NOW I’M NOT necessarily a Weis defender. Nor am I particularly a critic of his. Personally, I think he has done as competent a job as anybody could in that position – particularly when one considers that the economic struggles that have impacted our society in recent years have also caused government entities to have to make cuts in areas they would have preferred to avoid.

That includes law enforcement.

At a time when the Chicago Police Department could use more staff, it is getting less. Weis has tried to compensate for it by shifting officers about on special assignments so as to put more people into critical situations.

But that has the police types whose focus is purely on their own district all upset when it is their officers who get shifted away to somewhere else.

I KNOW SOME people are going to complain about the crime rate in Chicago. They’re going to claim that Weis hasn’t caused it to reduce dramatically. Perhaps it is because my days as a full-time police reporter-type person were two decades ago when Chicago would see nearly 1,000 murders per year (a day without a killing was rare, and the weekends with multiple slayings were all too common), but I look at the current situation as an improvement.

Even though President Barack Obama this week in Philadelphia cited his adopted home town’s violence – particularly the 40 Chicago Public School students who were killed the last school year – as an example of the challenges facing teenagers today.

I see improvement. I also realize that the outlandish incidents (such as children being killed) will always draw more attention and will make the entire situation appear more severe.

But this is what Weis’ critics don’t want to have to acknowledge. They’re more interested in propagating the schism between the federal and the local law enforcement types (which is a true sentiment, I still remember the choice obscenities I heard two decades ago when I was a court reporter and I heard various assistant state’s attorneys use whenever they talked about their encounters with the FBI or the U.S. attorney’s office).

WHICH MAKES ME wonder if part of the real problem when it comes to crime in our society is that our law enforcement types seem so hung up on their jurisdictions and can’t work together more easily.

Perhaps we have a police department that needed the shakeup, instead of a superintendent who would make the rank-and-file feel more comfortable? In short, will the perception next spring be that Weis got fired because he was doing what he should have been doing?

Which also makes me think that perhaps Rodney King’ quotable moment during the Los Angeles riots of 1992 was a line that ought to be recycled these days toward our local cops and their federal counterparts.

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