Will we EVER get new A.G.?

One of the things I remember from the days of Harold Washington and Council Wars is that the aldermanic opposition to Harold was so intense that they rejected just about everything he proposed.

 

To the extent that there were political appointments of individuals who didn’t get confirmed until after the end of the time period to which they were originally appointed.

 

MEANING THAT A lot of positions sat empty and in a holding pattern – nothing was really able to go forward.

 

Why do I expect that the Congress is more than willing to have the same happen with regards to the position of Attorney General? Eric Holder, who was one of the few original Obama Cabinet members to remain in place the entire six years that Barack has occupied the Oval Office, let it be known he’s stepping down.

 

Obama now has to come up with a new attorney general to finish out the remainder of his presidency – running through January 2017.

 

Because of the process involved in finding a prospective nominee, there likely won’t be a “name” for anyone to consider until late this year. By which time, we could have had the Nov. 4 elections and there may be a Republican majority in the U.S. Senate.

 

WHICH WOULD MEAN open hostility toward anyone that Obama put forth. Heck, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, already is going about hinting that the Republican caucuses in Congress will be as obstructionist as the “Vrdolyak 31” in the City Council of old.

 

Would they really have the nerve to oppose anyone for just over two more years? Thereby waiting for the next president (whomever that turns out to be) to pick a new A.G.? Would they leave the legal office of the federal government in limbo?

 

I don’t doubt for a moment they fantasize about such an action; probably justifying it in their minds as the “tearing down” of a government they don’t trust. Although such actions are exactly why real people don’t trust the ideologues of the Tea Party movement.

 

I do find it amusing that the Chicago Sun-Times already has put forth the idea of Patrick Fitzgerald as a potential Obama nominee. The idea that he prosecuted both George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich while serving as the Chicago-based U.S. attorney allegedly would make him acceptable to all sides of a partisan argument.

 

ALTHOUGH I WONDER if it really makes him untrustworthy to all political people who would fear that he would go after their particular political interests and not focus attention solely on the “opposition,” whomever they might consider that to be.

 

I find it amusing that if he were to somehow get the post, he’d be the second-straight Attorney General with a record of going after Chicago-type political interests. Let’s not forget that Holder was once a U.S. attorney who handled the prosecution of Dan Rostenkowski – turning him from the mighty Ways and Means chair to a federal inmate.

 

But it should be noted the Sun-Times seems to be the only entity that believes Fitzgerald is in the running. The Washington Post recently came up with a half-dozen or so names of people who seem to have more direct Washington political ties.

 

They include Solicitor General Don Verrilli, Jr., who was the one who defended the Affordable Care Act when it was argued before the Supreme Court of the United States.

 

I CAN ALREADY hear the rants and rages from the individuals who can’t accept the reality that having so many people without health insurance in our society is a significant burden to us all.

 

That debate might even get more stupid than anything that occurred at City Hall during the Washington era.

 

All of which makes me think that there are political people destined to permanently taint their reputations in coming months with their actions. Just like Vrdolyak did all those decades ago.

 

It’s too bad some people can’t think before they open their mouths!

 

  -30-

Congress opposition to Obama reeks of memories of 'Council Wars' of old

I've stumbled across commentary from the conservative ideologues who claim that the latest controversy concerning children from Latin American nations showing up at the U.S./Mexico border is the ultimate evidence of President Barack Obama's ineptitude in office.

They say his failure to offer up a quick, and definitive, solution to this problem is a sign that he's weak and should never have been elected to office.

OF COURSE, WHAT doesn't get said in these instances is that the solution they want probably is just one step removed from armed troops at the border -- prepared to do a re-enactment of the National Guard at Kent State University if those miniature foreign freaks comes too close to the border.

Obama's solution, thus far, was to ask earlier this week for some $3.7 billion (yes, "B" for billions) for funds that would be used to cover the cost of humanitarian aid for this flood of children headed for the United States.

It might well turn out that most of the kids will be turned away, sent back home, once they are checked out here. A few might find legitimate places to stay in this country.

But that goes counter to the ideologue way of thinking, which wants to view these young people as "illegals in training" (or maybe, illegal-ites) for whom there must be a hard-line approach to giving them the boot.

YES, I'M REFERRING to those nitwits who spent their Independence Day gathered at the border in Murrietta, Calif., chanting "U.S.A., U.S.A." and "Go Home!" at busloads of kids who were arriving to be processed.

In short, to determine the responsible approach for dealing with them. Instead, nonsense rants shouted down common sense, and those busloads were intimidated away from Border Patrol processing centers.

These are the same people who are getting grouchy at the thought of Obama citing the need for some federal funds to cover the cost of determining what needs to be done with the situation.

These also are likely the same people who are wetting their pants with glee at the thought of one-time Vice Presidential dreamer Sarah Palin going around using the "I" word (as in "impeachment") to talk about the president.

FOR SOME PEOPLE, that is the reason they're excited about the Nov. 4 election cycle. Keep control of the House of Representatives, and gain a large-enough caucus in the Senate that you can dominate activity there, and suddenly the thought of "impeachment" isn't a fantasy.

The nutjobs of our society will be able to actually take a partisan vote so they can tag the Obama legacy with the thought of removal from office. They couldn't beat him at the polling place, so they're going all out in their ideological fantasies.

If there is one thing Obama is guilty of, it's that he hasn't dealt harshly enough with these people. Just as how he has gone this far into his presidency without trying to do anything other than give lip service to serious immigration reform.

Does Obama really have a blind eye as to how intensely certain elements of our society despise his ideals and are determined to oppose everything that the people who voted him into office wanted (and expected) from him?

AS FOR THE new round of funding, it sounds like a tremendous amount for those who put their entire focus on municipal activity and state officials -- and expect federal representatives to do what they are told by the local types who usually have no comprehension of the big picture.

But we're talking about funds that will go for expansion of the Border Patrol and other operations -- including the hiring of more immigration judges and conducting of aerial surveillance.

Operations that the ideological types would usually be the first to call for. Except they don't want a certain president to wind up getting credit for handling a situation (some 52,000 minors arriving in this country without any adult supervision during the past three weeks) in a responsible manner.

Which is why we get the trash talk, and the reluctance from Republicans in Congress to back this latest round of funding.

IT REALLY IS all so reminiscent of the "Council Wars" we in Chicago experienced some three decades ago in the City Council -- when an opposition determined to take down then-Mayor Harold Washington was willing to stall the city government into submission.

Short-term harm to government was justified by the thought that a chief executive of their own preference could fix the problems they were causing for partisan and racial reasons.

Perhaps we need to keep that in mind as we watch the activity toward Obama in Washington in coming months.

  -30-

Boehner ain’t no “Fast Eddie,” who wouldn’t have apologized for actions

I’ve always thought of the opposition to the Barack Obama presidency as being a national equivalent of the “Council Wars” of old.

BOEHNER: Fast Eddie wouldn't apologize

The Republican opposition that wants to oppose everything on ideological grounds (they don’t want Obama having any accomplishments to claim, and would impeach him in an instant if they could come up with anything resembling grounds to do so) looks, and sounds, a lot like the Vrdolyak 29 of old.

THAT MAJORITY IN the City Council in the mid-1980s, after all, was willing to create some short-term harm in city government if it meant taking down Harold Washington as mayor.

A lot like the way the ideologue Republicans in Congress, particularly the House of Representatives majority, plans to vote on Friday for a measure that continues to fund the federal government ONLY IF it also includes measures that dump all over the Obama version of health care reform!

It comes across as cheap and petty and whiny and obnoxious and short-sighted and harmful an act as anything that the City Council did when it had a majority opposition leadership of Edward R. Vrdolyak.

Except, …

I COULDN’T HELP but be astounded at the news coverage this week when House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, let it be known he was going to let the ideologue-minded segment of his caucus dominate this issue.

There was speculation early on that Boehner might try to keep federal government working without turning the whole affair into a politically partisan battle.

Envision a similar Obama/Boehner moment

Instead, Boehner is letting his caucus tell him what to do, and he is trying to make it appear as though he has little to no choice in the matter (although it should be noted that some of the members of Congress in his caucus have hinted they would be more than willing to dump Boehner as House speaker if he DIDN’T go along with them on this issue).

“The key to any leadership job is to listen,” Boehner told the New York Times.

WHAT A WIMP!?!!

The “Fast Eddie” of old would never have tried to sound apologetic for an action that was openly hostile to the interests of Mayor Harold Washington. Even if he disagreed with the actions of his allied aldermen, he’d try to make it appear as though it was the aldermen who were following his lead.

Heck, they probably would be following his lead. For it was Vrdolyak who came to the realization that he could get away with open defiance of Washington because of the number of people who didn’t want to perceive it as any kind of historic moment that Chicago had elected its first African-American as mayor.

Just as there are some amongst us who resent the idea that it’s at all special that Obama was chosen as president in the 2008 election cycle, and that their most hostile mood didn’t sway the true majority of the electorate in 2012.

I’M NOT ABOUT to predict how this particular Congressional mess will play out. It won’t surprise me if they manage to create a procedural mess that impacts the federal government operations in some form.

Although I suspect the only people who will look upon this approvingly will be the individuals who live in those isolated congressional districts that actually elect these yahoos and put them in positions where they can impact all of us!

A part of me wonders if actions like this will wind up backfiring upon the GOP desires for increased control of the federal government because it will make many of us appalled enough to want to have leadership that can contain their harmful desires.

OBAMA: Does he compare to Harold?

In short, we’ll get tired of these political tactics – just as we eventually tired of “Council Wars” and future elections ate away at the “29,” turning it into an aldermanic minority.

I EVEN WONDER if these people in Washington could have an impact upon our state government election cycle in 2014.

I know Republicans are counting on the fact that the apathy surrounding Pat Quinn at the top of the Democratic ticket will be a drag on all Dems. But will enough of these ideological acts in Washington be enough to scare the Democrat-leaning Chicago-area voters into turning out in such large numbers for state elections that GOP candidates wind up losing anyway?

Not that I expect anyone in Congress to engage in last-minute reflection upon their actions before they take a Friday vote. Because, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the Washington Post, “Bipartisanship is a thing of the past. Now, all we do is ‘gotcha’ legislation.”

That’s why little gets done by our government. And history will wind up recording our current era as being especially touched upside the head by the stupid stick, just like we now remember much of the nonsense that occurred in the City Council some three decades ago.

  -30-

Washington’s (as in Harold) birthday

I’m not sure whether to be reassured or see it as hypocritical the ceremonies that were held this past week to mark Thursday – which would have been former Mayor Harold Washington’s 90^th birthday anniversary.

WASHINGTON: Harold, Harold!



If he were still alive.

BECAUSE WE ALL know that Harold Washington died at his desk at City Hall on that day before Thanksgiving in 1987. He was not quite 65, but was carrying excessive weight at the time.

Personally, I have faint childhood memories of the Daley (as in Richard J.) years, and can remember the days of Jane Byrne. But a lot of my own political observations began forming in those years of the Washington administration.

I was about to finish high school when he got elected in 1983, and had just finished college at the time of his death in ’87. I remember the ugliness of those years, what we now like to dismiss with the phrase “Council Wars” without having to relive the mean-spiritedness and hatred of the era.

Which may be good. Personally, I don’t feel the need to relive every insult spewed by every political geek (some of whom are still relevant in this century) who was bothered by Washington’s complexion.

OR, AS WASHINGTON himself once joked, “Maybe they don’t like the way I part my hair?”

DAWSON: His legacy in dispute



But when I read the accounts of what happened at the downtown public library (the big building named for Harold Washington himself), it seemed like someone was determined to go to extremes to forget the ugliness.

The theme pushed that day is that modern-day Chicago is very much a product of Harold Washington – even though I’m sure there are many who want to view it as solely the vision of Richard M. Daley and his 22 years as the Man on Five.

Harold got credited for envisioning a Navy Pier that wasn’t a decrepit relic and could actually be the site of a tourist attraction and the idea that there could be a downtown theater district that didn’t consist of theaters showing old pornographic flicks.

PERSONALLY, I THINK as I write this on Friday while the Chicago White Sox are desperately trying to hold onto a lead to win their home opener for 2012 against the Detroit Tigers that this event wouldn’t have happened at U.S. Cellular Field if not for Washington.

He was the one who was insistent that the ball club had a bond to its location between the Bridgeport and Armour Square neighborhoods – at a time when many others would have been eager to ditch the site.

But the Washington years are trivialized if we merely try to remember them for a few projects that became reality and actually succeeded. I believe if Washington himself were to arise from the grave, he’d be the first one to call such trivia nothing but b.s.

I will always believe that the ultimate legacy of those mid-1980s years is that Chicago was forced to confront the possibility that its black population was significant enough to warrant political influence of its own.

THE DAYS OF political people such as William L. Dawson, the long-time South Side congressman who cooperated with the regular Democratic organization (a.k.a., ‘da Machine’) and took the crumbs administered by white leaders for his black district were gone.

Perhaps to crush such a condescending attitude, it took an in-your-face spirit such as Washington’s mayoral stint to make people realize that Chicago would not slide off the face of the prairie and into Lake Michigan just because a non-Irish ethnic person held the top job.

Which in my mind brings us to the present in our federal government, where a  fellow Hyde Park neighborhood resident happens to have the top political post and has encountered partisan hostility from the day he declared his candidacy.

A lot of the activity that comes from the most partisan of Republicans reminds me of the antics of Council Wars, with some of the language toned down. Although a part of me wonders if it will get ratcheted up a few notches should Republicans manage to win majorities in both the House of Representatives AND Senate?

OBAMA: A similar legacy?

WILL WE GET the even-more-blatant hatred that will feel no need to mute itself – because it will believe that it represents a majority of the people (largely because it lives so isolated in our society that it rarely comes into contact with anything unlike itself).

I have consistently believed that we’re now going through on a national level what Chicago went through back in those summers of ’84 and ’85. We’re all going to have to learn that the United States of America isn’t going to the ghetto just because it has a president whose ethnic origins trace (in part) to Kenya.

Which makes me wonder; does this mean some time around the year 2030, we’re going to be getting sanitized tributes to Obama – telling us of his accomplishments while ignoring the fact that a segment of society was determined to thwart him at every turn?

The day we hear a conservative ideologue of the future praise Obama’s health care reform initiative (or criticize it ONLY because it didn’t go far enough) is when we’ll know the revisionists are out to sanitize their nonsense-talk just as much as they’re doing now with their memories of Harold.

  -30-

At least we won’t have to hear that insipid football jingle anymore

On this day that President Barack Obama is having the 1985 Chicago Bears make their appearance at the White House (minus the deceased Walter Payton, the not feeling up to it William Perry and the politically hostile Dan Hampton), I can’t help but think of another football-related moment involving the president.

His own way got him in trouble



It’s sort of football-related, as it was country singer Hank Williams, Jr., managing to offend the populace by making his comment that seeing Obama and House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, playing golf together was an absurd sight.

HOW ABSURD? “IT’D be like Hitler playing golf with Netanyahu,” was what came out of Williams’ mouth just over a week ago.

He first tried to explain what he meant, then finally apologized (for implying that Obama fell into the “Hitler” end of that analogy). But now he has people thinking he’s a pea-brain, and ESPN is deleting his “Are you ready for some football?” slogan from the beginning of their NFL Monday Night Football broadcasts.

Which might not sound like much. But it was a high-profile moment that for many people was what he was best known for (that, and being the son of the real Hank Williams).

Are they really such ...



In listening to Williams try to explain himself initially without apologizing, he said that he was merely trying to express the absurdity of seeing two public officials who are so diametrically opposed to each other behave in public like they’re the best of golfing buddies.

WHICH MAY BE a legitimate thought to have.

But as I see this, what is offensive here is the idea that some people want to believe electoral politics is some sort of blood sport that requires the president and the House speaker to be enemies of the highest order, all because they choose to have different letters (the “D” for Obama, the “R” for Boehner) following their names.



... unlikely counterparts?

If our government were truly conducting itself in a proper manner, we’d be expecting those high-ranking officials to work together. If anything, the real question about the sight of Obama and Boehner playing golf ought to be, “Where in the (excessively hot and miserable place for sinners) was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.?

Instead, we’re acting as though there ought to be animosity between the government leaders, and that somehow cooperation is a bad thing.

AND BY RESORTING to a comparison of the duly-elected leader of our nation to the leader of Nazi-era Germany, it seems clear that what is really being said is that Boehner is the one who should be avoiding all advances toward cooperation – no matter how serious the problems of our nation become.

It reminds me of the old City Council mentality of a quarter-of-a-century ago – the days of “Council Wars” when the opposition to then-Mayor Harold Washington was so intense that they were knee-jerk voting against anything he wanted.

No matter how much something was needed to keep the city going, they voted “no,” and would privately admit that a couple of years of a failing city might be a good thing in the long run if it persuaded people to blame Harold and dump him from office.

Of course, it didn’t work that way, and the fact is that we now are fairly unanimous in seeing the vapidity of such logic. Which is what I think we’re going to feel a few decades from now when we look back on the Obama years.

HANK WILLIAMS, JR., comparing Obama to Hitler is so absurd as to be laughable. I can’t really get offended by it. But hearing that it is somehow our duty to oppose the president?

That is a concept I can truly be offended by, particularly since Obama’s biggest offense among his most solid supporters is that he has been the guy who has gone too far in trying to reach a common ground with his opposition (one that is determined to see him fail).

It also makes me laugh to see these ideologues aligning themselves (in this analogy) with the Israeli prime minister. How many of the country music fans who listen  to Williams and his father would have had their own qualms of backing someone who is Jewish under any circumstances?

All in all, this situation provides for some bizarre circumstances that show just how absurd our partisan political ties have become. Perhaps the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur could be extended to all of us so that we could spend tonight and Saturday atoning for some of our more nonsensical attitudes.

AND AS FOR Obama himself? He can indulge himself in some football fantasies by having the Bears over for a visit.

With former coach Mike Ditka and former quarterback Jim McMahon among those who say they will attend, Obama can relive those days of the mid-1980s not because of the hostile rhetoric against Harold Washington but for the unanimous love the Bears created (the sounds of fans barking like dogs still echoes in my brain) by actually winning a Super Bowl title.

  -30-

Bodyguards a relic of what we once were

Perhaps it is all too appropriate that the issue of Fourteenth Ward Alderman Edward Burke and his bodyguards lingers over us.

BURKE: A Council Wars remnant?

The fact that he has a four-person security detail full-time is a remnant of the “Council Wars” of old, when racial tensions turned our local politics into a verbal brawl that some feared could get physical.

SOME PEOPLE SEEM a little too eager to claim that this latest municipal election cycle is one where we no longer care about race – as though such considerations are irrelevant. Almost like they never mattered.

But they did.

Burke got those bodyguards for as long as he serves as finance chairman of the City Council because he was able to convince a judge back in the mid-1980s that HIS life would be at risk because of all those baaad people who would do him harm.

Not that anyone ever tried to do anything to “Flashy Eddie.” But what cracks me up about the idea of Burke needing bodyguards is that the reason there was tension back in the mid-1980s was largely BECAUSE of Burke, who along with “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak led the open revolt of a 29-member Council majority against then-Mayor Harold Washington.

THEY WERE ABLE to do so because they sensed the hostility much of Chicago felt toward the idea of an African-American person being elected mayor was so intense that many people would not object to their behavior.

If anything, the person who was the target of hostility was Washington himself, NOT Burke. Not that anyone ever went so far as to try to harm the mayor back then.

WASHINGTON: He really needed them



But if they had, it likely would have been because they felt motivated by the rancid rhetoric that used to come from the mouth of people like Burke. I’m not saying that Burke went so far as to call for bodily harm to befall Harold Washington.

But there would have been many Burke supporters back then who would not have been the least bit upset if something bad had happened to Harold.

NOW I AM not writing this commentary to engage in a two-and-a-half decades after the fact attack on Burke. I realize that time passes, and we all have to move on. I also realize that Burke himself throughout the years has made statements acknowledging how out-of-line much of his own political behavior was back in those years when Aaron Freeman turned our municipal government into a Star Wars parody that was all-too-accurate in its humor.

But to read from the court order that demanded that Burke have his own security detail, similar to that of the mayor himself, is just too bizarre if one does not have the proper historic context in their minds.

And the sad part of Richard M. Daley managing to serve as mayor for as long as he did is that there are too many otherwise-knowledgeable political people who came of age AFTER the Washington/Sawyer years.

They think the Daley way is the ONLY way that Chicago operates.

THEY HAVE FALLEN into this image of Burke as an elder statesman; the guy who likes to make long, rambling statements that manage to incorporate obscure details of Chicago history on just about every issue.

Perhaps they go along with the mentality that somehow, Burke is as important as any mayor and ought to have the same security detail. A part of me seriously wonders if the reason he wanted it back in the mid-1980s was to create the impression that he was a Washington equal – instead of just one of 50 alderman, compared to a single chief executive, for city government.

Then again, when that court order was signed that requires Burke to have the security detail so long  as he remains finance chairman, who would have thought that he’d still be going strong this deep into the 21^st Century.

For that fact, who’d have thought he’d still be an elected official for many years beyond the 1980s?

THIS COURT ORDER is one of those legal documents with aftereffects that linger well beyond the period of time when they might have been necessary.

So would it be nice if Burke were to have enough decency to realize the time in which he might have been able to justify city expense to maintain his security detail has come and gone?

It would be. Not that I expect he will.

For Burke is an elected official. He has just as much of an ego as any other. I’m sure that after nearly 25 years, having four men who otherwise would be patrolling the streets as police officers on hand feels like second nature.

MAYBE THOSE OFFICERS even feel like part of the extended family to Burke and his wife, Anne, the Illinois Supreme Court justice (who, if you want to know the truth, strikes me as needing a security detail far more than any alderman does).

He’s not about to give up a “family” member any time soon. Which means we, the people of Chicago, will be stuck with this remnant of Council Wars for the immediate future.

  -30-

He’ll be home for Christmas

Ed Vrdolyak, the man who was once the face and the voice of the vocal opposition to Harold Washington, went to prison this week.

His "time" has arrived



“Fast Eddie” reported Wednesday to Bureau of Prisons officials in Terre Haute, Ind., the site of the maximum-security prison that has a minimum-security work camp where Vrdolyak will serve his 10-month sentence.

WE’RE GOING TO hear a lot of wisecracks in coming months based on the fact that Vrdolyak will now be at the same prison facility as former Gov. George Ryan. Cellmates? Who gets to do something funky to whom? Or will prison officials just build a new special wing in Terre Haute for corrupt Chicago politicos?

Yet I can’t help but look at the two political people together and appreciate all the more what a sweet deal Vrdolyak managed to get for himself in U.S. District Court. He had an even better one at one point that would not have required any prison time for himself.

But not even Fast Eddie had the connections to make that deal stick.

Seriously. Ten months?

VRDOLYAK WILL BE back at his East Side neighborhood home for the Christmas holiday season. Depending on how one calculates the math (and just how well behaved Edward R. remains while serving his sentence), Vrdolyak may even be free just in the nick of time for Thanksgiving.

While Fast Eddie (the nickname dates way back before Harold Washington) won’t be able to spend Independence Day with his family this year, somehow I think he’ll get over it – unlike Ryan, who has a serious chance of having his wife die in coming weeks without being able to see her again, and gets to think of Independence Day as the date he will finally be set free.

Just over two years from now, that is!

What also amazed me about Vrdolyak’s fate is that it came long after his active career as an elected official was over. While he was still an adviser of sorts to certain political people, it’s not like Vrdolyak has to give up a political post.

HE DIDN’T EVEN have to give up his career as an attorney specializing in personal injury law, and running a law firm named for himself.

Vrdolyak had already retired from practicing law. So he may have been disbarred. But he wasn’t handling any more cases anyway.

His legacy was already set, and nobody is going to think any less of Vrdolyak because his biography will include a prison term.

In fact, I’d be willing to bet that Vrdolyak’s eventual obituary will not lead with the fact that he went to prison. The fact that he was willing to lead the City Council in revolt against the desires of Chicago’s first African-American mayor is more intriguing than the fact that federal prosecutors were able to get a conviction against him for a real estate transaction along the Gold Coast neighborhood.

ALTHOUGH THE VERY fact that Vrdolyak rose from a Croatian/eastern European enclave at the far southeast corner of Chicago to being able to do real estate deals along the city’s Gold Coast is probably a legacy in and of itself, and a story that should be told in the context of Chicago’s many ethnic groups.

Not that the Washington allies will want to tell it. Many of the same people who are disappointed these days that the mayoral aspirations of Carol Moseley-Braun aren’t resulting in a stronger campaign (although it may be strong enough to qualify for the runoff election to be held April 5) are probably feeling a sense of glee. “Fast Eddie” in Terre Haute.

Of course, if I wanted to be nasty, I’d point out that Washington also had a tax-related conviction for which he served his own jail term, doing his time at the Cook County Jail. Washington-backers shouldn’t get too cocky about this.

The smart-aleck in me wonders if this now creates the potential for a future conversation in the hereafter between Washington and Vrdolyak similar to that moment in “The Blues Brothers” when the cabbage rolls served to inmates at Terre Haute was compared to the oatmeal served at the Cook County “slam.”

THE MORE SERIOUS political observer in me actually is relieved that Vrdolyak won’t be available to comment on Feb. 22 (or April 5, for that matter).

Those are the Election Days to be held for Chicago city government, and with the potential for racial disharmony that could crop up depending the election results, you just know somebody would have felt the need to dig up Council Wars and try to get Fast Eddie to speak about how the current situation compares to the past.

I don’t know what Vrdolyak would have said, although I do know there are some people who continue to this day to defend the Vrdolyak name on the grounds that his actions helped keep Washington from accomplishing more as mayor.

Take that attitude for what it’s worth. You may want to think it is one buried deep in our city’s past.

I SAY WE’RE going to learn on Election Day just how relevant Vrdolyak is to the way some people in this city still think, and that he’s not as “gone” as some of us wish he was.

Just think Bing Crosby, singing, “I’ll  be home for Christmas. You can count on me, …”

  -30-

Ten months, versus probation, for Fast Eddie. It’s a political/legal “do-over”

Reading about the court hearing held Friday that resulted in one-time Cook County Democratic Chairman-turned-Republican Edward R. Vrdolyak receiving a 10-month term in a federal correctional center made me feel like I was 10 years old again, and not just because “Fast Eddie” was a Chicago politico back when I was a kid.

Learning about what happened to Vrdolyak, I felt like a kid playing ball when someone managed to hit some dinky little squib that neither side could agree on whether it was a base hit or an out. So we’d do a “do-over.” Forget what happened. Just re-start the game afresh.

FOR WHAT HAPPENED to Vrdolyak was the legal equivalent of a do-over. The people who had a problem with the fact that Vrdolyak last year received probation, a fine and NO prison time as his punishment for pleading guilty to charges pending against him in U.S. District Court managed to find a sympathetic appeals court to order the re-sentencing that finally occurred on Friday.

A new federal judge in Chicago reviewed the facts and calculated that some prison time was required – although not nearly as much as the federal prosecutors wanted Vrdolyak to receive.

Ten months is not the 3.5-year prison term that prosecutors wanted – both back when Judge Milton Shadur gave him probation last February, and when Judge Matthew Kennelly imposed his sentence this week.

The difference between the two men was that when Shadur used the legal formulas to calculate how much money people were cheated out of by Vrdolyak’s illegal acts, he came up with a figure of “$0.” Kennelly agreed with the appeals court that a true figure is “$1.5 million.”

FOR THOSE WHO want to think that Vrdolyak still got off too light, one ought to keep in mind that the fine of $50,000 he originally would have had to pay has now been more than quintupled to $260,000.

Although it turns out that many of the other aspects of probation mean that he will get credit for the many hours of community service that he has already performed during the past year-and-a-half.

In short, those people who were gleefully hoping for an image of Vrdolyak dying in some sordid prison setting are not going to get their way.

Which is another reason why the Vrdolyak situation makes me feel like a 10-year-old. Actually, it makes me feel like I’m surrounded by a batch of 10-year-olds. All of us thinking with our emotions, rather than any sense of logic or rationality related to this specific case.

BECAUSE I DOUBT that many people could actually tell you the specifics of the “crime” for which Vrdolyak ultimately pleaded guilty two years ago, was finally sentenced on Friday, and likely will use the bulk of the year 2011 to actually serve his prison term.

The actual charges were conspiracy to commit mail fraud and wire fraud. Prosecutors say that when Vrdolyak arranged for a $1.5 million payment for attorney Stuart Levine for a $15 million sale of property on the Near North Side owned by the University of Chicago Medical School, it was an act that should be regarded as criminal.

But what creates the visceral reaction to the name “Vrdolyak” that people feel every time this case comes up is due to the activities of decades ago – back when Harold Washington became mayor and “Fast Eddie” realized that the racial animosity many Chicagoans felt to the then-new concept of an African-American politician holding a position of true leadership meant that he could get away with openly defying the mayor.

For a couple of years, Vrdolyak was the leader of the “29,” the opposition aldermen who used their majority to stall government, thwart mayoral initiatives and deprive the executive branch of the city of any legitimate accomplishments.

I STILL SAY that if Republicans in Congress gain majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, the next two years of federal government will be a national version of the “Council Wars” of old that caused the Wall Street Journal to dub Chicago as, “Beirut by the Lake.”

The people who are all insistent that Vrdolyak must go to prison are so hard-core because they want to think of him receiving that punishment because of the way he defied Washington (would it be rude for me to remind people at this point that Washington himself once served a 40-day jail sentence for income tax-related charges?).

I literally stumbled across one anonymous Internet commenter who quipped that the spirit of Washington was “giggling” at the thought of Vrdolyak doing time in prison.

A part of me just finds that logic twisted, even though I realize that Vrdolyak’s backers are the ones who unashamedly spout their racial rhetoric, and defend Edward R. for standing up for their views.

PERSONALLY, I AM glad that Vrdolyak didn’t get anywhere near the 3.5 years that federal prosecutors were seeking. That strikes me as being excessive. I’m in full agreement with Kennelly, who said Friday that the prosecutorial request was, “unjust.”

But I still have to agree with my original thoughts back when he originally got probation. No amount of punishment was going to appease Vrdolyak’s critics, in part because of his age – he’s 72. Vrdolyak is retired from the law firm he founded and his sons now run (so disbarment doesn’t really affect his daily life) and he isn’t about to run for electoral office anytime soon (he hasn’t been a candidate for more than two decades).

The only thing that really gets hit is how comfortable a retirement Eddie gets to experience. Which is why Vrdolyak summed it up best when he described his situation as, “dumb, it was stupid and I was wrong.”

I couldn’t have written it any better.

  -30-

Health care “issue” won’t go away. Or, who are 7 percent with “no” opinion?

There are those people who are gloating that the death last year of Ted Kennedy, a long-time champion of serious health care reform, ultimately started the process that could kill off President Barack Obama’s attempts to achieve that goal.

For it now is possible with the election of a Republican this week in a special election to finish the remainder of Kennedy’s term in the U.S. Senate that the GOP – if they unite as a caucus – has enough votes to “filibuster” on issues.

IN SHORT, THEY can prevent anything they want from getting voted on, regardless of whether or not a majority of Congress wants to do something. Illinois Republican Chairman Pat Brady was bloviating Tuesday night even before the Democratic candidate's defeat was official.

Now I’m not going to complain about the concept of the filibuster – it exists to prevent a majority from running roughshod over their opponents. It is supposed to encourage bipartisan cooperation, although all it does many times is create political inaction.

Besides, being from Chicago, the period of government we are going to be in for the remainder of this year and possibly the next two will seem familiar.

I’m old enough to remember “Council Wars,” that period of the mid-1980s when opponents of then-Mayor Harold Washington had a majority and used it to kill off anything Washington desired to do.

OF COURSE, WASHINGTON had that veto power to kill anything that his opposition majority wanted. What we in Chicago got for a few years was a period of petty bickering (often racially-tinged) and a complete lack of activity.

Which is what the Republican caucuses in Congress want. Since they don’t have the majorities and control like they once did in the early 2000s to ram through their own partisan agenda, they want a period of nothingness – in part because they don’t want an Obama administration to accomplish something that will go into the history books as politically or culturally significant.

Anybody who doubts that racial considerations factor into this political equation is being naïve. I’ll be the first to admit that some people in this country felt like the 2008 election of Obama with its "historic" overtones was a rejection of their “values.” Whether or not that “rejection” was a good thing is an issue for another day.

So a of this is about denying Obama any accomplishments, of which passing a health care reform program into law would have been a significant one.

NOW I KNOW there is talk going around Washington about how to take the current situation and get around the political partisan rules that could prevent a straight-forward consideration of the issue.

Some of it centers around forcing the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives to accept the Senate version of health care reform, rather than trying to reconcile the differing measures that passed through the House and Senate.

That causes a distaste among the “blue dogs,” the basically-conservative officials who managed somehow to get elected as Democrats even though they come from largely rural, conservative areas. Because it means they’re going to have to eat a certain amount of crow from their Democratic colleagues.

Others think it might just be best to give up on the current bill, which pundits like George Will already are saying is evidence of Obama’s ineffectualness. They blame him for placing so much attention on a single issue, then failing to deliver.

THE “POLITICAL HACK” in me can see the logic, because it would emphasize the fact that the issue failed due to the Republican opposition that was purely for partisan political reasons. There is a part of me who wonders if Obama’s re-election bid is now clinched because he’s going to have an easy target to blame for everything he will try to do – but which the GOP legislators will knock down in hopes that a future president of their ideological preference can address and get credit for.

The people who for the past year have been critical of Obama for inactivity are going to have their eyes opened as to who is deliberately standing in the way of the progressive goals they would like to see our government achieve.

But a large part of the problems with our governments these days is that the “political hack” in all of us is being allowed to prevail over the part of us that is concerned with doing “the people’s business.”

When it comes to health care, the problem remains. There is that “47 million” figure, as in the estimated number of people who do not have any form of insurance to cover the cost of their medical treatment. The end result is that in some cases, these people place burdens on the emergency rooms of our hospitals to get some minimal form of care and the hospitals suffer financially by having to “eat” the cost.

IN MOST CASES, though, those people just don’t get the adequate level of care, which makes them a drag on our society.

Which is the part that I think the ideologues on this issue who want to believe that someone else’s health care isn’t their problem are failing to believe. Having that many uninsured is a drag on our society. It’s that so-called “weak link” threatening the strength of the whole chain. Just because some people prefer to put partisan politics ahead of addressing the issue does not mean the issue goes away.

For those who want to spin this issue as somehow being related to Obama’s unpopularity, I couldn’t help but notice the Gallup Organization’s daily update Wednesday for the president’s approval rating. Forty-three percent of those surveyed disapprove, compared to 50 percent approving.

Which makes me wonder how this disapproving minority can be that haughty? And what cave have those other7 percent of the public been living in this year?

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Will the political gamesmanship skills of our Congress be tested in coming days (http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-dc-health-congress,0,5376753.story) to try to salvage (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/19/AR2010011904426.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2010011904461) something from the past year’s debate on health care reform?

Perhaps the reason the president’s “approval” rating seems so low these days is because it was so ridiculously high (http://www.gallup.com/poll/125294/Approval-Typically-Falls-Points-President-Second-Year.aspx) in the early, giddy days of his administration. Nobody seriously could have maintained that “high.”

Who’s the face of the GOP opposition?

Was I wrong?

http://chicagoargus.blogspot.com/2008/11/if-obama-is-harold-then-whos-national.html

NOT REALLY, WHICH is kind of sad when you think about it.

It was just over one year ago (on the day that Barack Obama won election to a four-year term as president, to be exact) that I wrote a commentary that I wish reflected bad on my comprehension of electoral politics.

It was a piece of analysis wondering how close the Obama administration’s ability to govern would come to those years from the mid-1980s that we now recall as “Council Wars” on account of the fact that a vocal opposition did whatever it could to thwart the governmental desires of then-Mayor Harold Washington.

About the only aspect of that commentary where I wrote that a segment of the U.S. population would, “spend the next four years doing whatever they can to thwart an Obama presidency from achieving its goals” that hasn’t fully come true is the part where I pondered which politico would become the national equivalent of Edward R. Vrdolyak.

IN ALL HONESTY, none of them seem to have become the “face” of the opposition the way that Vrdolyak is still remembered as the namesake of the City Council opposition that openly defied everything Washington tried to do during his first couple of years as Chicago mayor.

Which means either that this particular band of political people either is somewhat bland, or personalities such as that belonging to “Fast Eddie” are a rare breed indeed.

I’m sure that Sarah Palin’s followers would like to think that the one-time Alaska governor has that kind of pull about her to lead people in opposition to Obama. Yet I don’t count her because at this point, she’s all talk.

She has no political position with authority that can be used. She can only try to shame the Republican members of Congress into going along with her will, which is the same as Rush Limbaugh and the assorted right-wing rabble that wishes they had Rush’s ratings and “talent” when they go “on the air.”

BUT LOOKING AT this first year of the Obama administration makes me realize that the same mentality that once inspired 29 aldermen to band together to vote against anything Washington even hinted he liked is the same that creates the partisan political votes for what may well have been the two big accomplishments from the federal government this year – getting the Senate to confirm Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court justice and to approve a health care reform package that (while watered down considerably) still gets criticism as being “too radical.”

The mentality that allowed some members of Congress in good conscience to think we’d be better off doing nothing to resolve the situation of some 47 million U.S. residents without any form of health insurance is the same as the one that once allowed members of Congress to refuse to confirm mayoral appointments for years (meaning some people ultimately got confirmed to positions whose terms had already expired).

Some people thought that a short-term loss related to the daily operations of government would be beneficial in the long run if it meant preventing anything that a “disliked” chief executive might well be able to use as an “accomplishment.”

There are those who will try to give Obama credit for getting through a health care reform proposal (assuming, of course, that the measure is not killed off by a conference committee that can’t resolve differences between the Senate and House of Representatives’ versions of the bill), while others will claim that the big victors of 2009 were the Republican officials who were able to make Obama’s professional life so difficult.

FOR MY PART, I’m thankful that the U.S. Senate literally wound up this year with that “filibuster-proof” majority. For if there really were 41 Republican members of the U.S. Senate, then we likely would have had our government achieve absolutely nothing during the previous year. Which is why the 2010 elections will be interesting.

It usually happens that the opposition political party to the president gains some strength in the mid-term elections. And even if you believe there isn’t going to be a massive shift in political power during the upcoming year, all it will take is for a couple of states to shift and we really will get the stalemate that was “Council Wars” to occur on Capitol Hill.

Ultimately, the cheap rhetoric and namecalling that bordered on racial slurs was embarrassing to Chicago. But it was the willingness of some Chicago officials to do nothing out of spite to the chief executive that was the real shame of that political era in the mid-1980s.

I would like to think that we won’t experience the same offensive silliness some nearly three decades later on the national level.

-30-