Food truck operators benefit from partisan desire to dump on Rahm

At first glance, it doesn’t make much sense that the conservative millionaire brothers who operate Koch Industries and fund many ideologue causes would care about the fate of food trucks – those mobile restaurants of sorts that have been the target of city regulatory efforts.

Those lines are what bothers restaurant owners, who see them as lost customers

Then again, it makes total sense. Not because the Koch brothers care about the notion of encouraging mini-businesses of sorts or about supporting the desire to eat anything from them.
 

Kochs want to aggravate Dem Emanuel

BUT THE FACT is that Chicago city government has been involved in an intense effort to impose so many regulations against food truck operators. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Monday about the significant fines imposed on operators to the point where some are being driven out of the mobile food-serving business.

Which I’m sure, to the Koch perspective, probably puts the concept of regulations on these food servers as some sort of cause they should fight against. Or more likely, something they should support because any effort to overturn the regulations would come across as a defeat for a “liberal-leaning” city like Chicago.

Food trucks these days can extend from high-end edibles...

In short, the Koch brothers would like to be able to tell a prominent-Democratic city like Chicago how it should operate. The same motivation held by the foundation controlled by Gov. Bruce Rauner, who also has contributed money to the cause of fighting for food trucks in Chicago.

Which, to me, falls in the category of someone who should be told to mind their own business. But that’s just me ranting. And this is also an example of partisan politics bringing together interests that normally wouldn’t give a second-glance at each other.

... to something resembling a basic sandwich

CAN ANYONE SERIOUSLY envision a Koch eating anything from a food truck? I can’t! How vehemently would they fight if similar food trucks tried operating in their hometown of Wichita, Kan.?

To be specific, the Koch brothers are providing financial support to the Institute for Justice. Based in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. (the Republican-leaning part of the D.C. metro area), the group is behind the lawsuit that seeks to challenge Chicago’s regulatory efforts against food trucks.

Some restaurants are in the food truck business

Particularly the rule that says the trucks cannot operate within 200 feet of an established restaurant. And also rules limiting the amount of time that a truck can stay parked at any one location.

Let’s be honest. These rules were passed by local politicos who were motivated by the political influence of the restaurant industry, which hates the idea of these food trucks because they’re mobile and cutting into their business.

JUST ENVISION HOW a restaurant owner feels when he sees people lined up at a food truck waiting to get something to eat, rather than coming into his restaurant and spending time at one of his tables.

It’s a loss of money. I know some people are more than willing to support the food truck operators just based on the premise that the city’s rules are an example of hard-core politicking by the restaurant lobby.

Although is it really any better for public policy to be influenced by the desires of a special interest (which is certainly the way I view the Koch brothers who use their millions to fund any ideological cause they agree with) whose only motivation is to wreck havoc with the city’s regulatory efforts.

Food trucks have come a long way since the last century

Personally, I don’t see any problem with the idea of regulatory efforts against food truck operators. There certainly are enough rules that restaurants themselves have to comply with. And when it comes to the idea of food service, you can’t be too cautious.

BUT IT DOES create an odd setting to see Kochs aligned with food trucks, since much of the reason those types of businesses are thriving is that they’re making efforts to appeal to a certain young, urban type who view the idea of ordering a taco with Korean-influenced stuffings (or whatever unique edible offering they have in stock) as further evidence of their sophistication.

Certainly not the kind of people who’d be inclined to back the Kochs on any of their preferred causes. But then again, if we were just talking about a truck with a grill with a fry cook slapping together a quickie egg or two, I doubt there’d be any appeal.

My own thoughts about these food trucks is that I don’t seek them out, largely because the ones that are supposedly “hip” and trendy charge way too much (consider $7 for a taco, like I saw at one truck on Sunday) for their food.

Which is why I expect this political fight is one that eventually will end on its own as the fad fades away. Those young people will get older, quit eating such stuff, and the new generation of young people will wonder how the old geezer-types ever thought it was fun to consume such stuff.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: A website devoted to the concept of letting people know where, at any given moment, they can find a food truck offering up something to eat.

People won’t realize until too late that quality costs more, but also means more

I managed to miss the gathering of a couple dozen people who picketed briefly this week outside the Tribune Tower to express their disgust with the very notion that the billionaire (and highly ideological) Koch brothers could wind up as the new owners of the Chicago Tribune.

But while I don’t doubt the Kochs would do funky things with the content of our city’s larger newspaper (I don’t buy into the concocted math that the Chicago Sun-Times uses to claim it is bigger), I think those people who are concerned about the quality of the news reports we get ought to be more concerned about what’s happening these days at the one-time “Bright One.”

AS I WRITE this, I’m still trying to accept the Sun-Times’ announcement that it found another 20 to 30 people it can lay off from their jobs – the Chicago Sun-Times no longer employs photographers.

Which strikes the historian in me as ironic in that one of the Sun-Times predecessors (the Daily Times created in the 1920s) billed itself as the first Chicago newspaper to rely heavily on photographs to tell the news.

Not that there won’t be photographs in the Sun-Times. The newspaper (along with its websites and any other products the Wrapports company decides to create) says it will rely on freelance photographers, along with the possibility of its news reporters being expected to take a camera of sorts with them to assignments.

A reporter trying to comprehend the intricacies of public policy so as to explain it properly to the public will have to take pauses in their mental process to snap a picture.

AND IF THEY wind up having to spend too much time getting that exact right shot, they’re likely to miss details.

Trust me when I say that it is going to impact the quality of images in the newspaper/website/whatever, it will hurt the reporting as well.

I write this knowing full well that I am not capable of doing both, and I know I’m not unique. I realize there are some professional newspeople who can point to times in their careers where they worked for publications that expected them to do double duty.

But that is evidence of the fact those people worked for cheap publications – ones that were small-staffed enough because they didn’t expect to publish anything of any substance.

SOMEHOW, I DOUBT that the Sun-Times’ key to financial success is to publish a less substantial newspaper – which would lead to less substantial websites and other information-oriented products.

Because the reality of our news is that while an increasing number of people may want to read their stories on the Internet, the websites that are the most highly-read are the ones that are affiliated with existing newspapers or television stations or other newsgathering outfits.

They are the ones that can reappropriate the content for the Internet. And in cases where they first publish a breaking story on the website, it can be updated and rewritten for the following day’s newspaper.

Which can result in better copy – except in cases where editors think the printed word is supposed to be less substantial than what turns up on the website.

I DON’T DOUBT that some, if not most, of the freelance photographers the Sun-Times winds up relying upon will be the same individuals who were, until Thursday, gainfully employed by the newspaper.

Some of them may even draw so many assignments that the amount of money in their paychecks will be about the same as they were taking home before. But freelancers don’t get the benefits or job security that usually inspires an employee to take his company’s product seriously.

What this all comes down to is an attempt to reduce the budget by not having to cover health insurance benefits. Because these workers are now going to have to figure out how to get themselves coverage.

Which means that it would be a heck of a lot of nerve on the Sun-Times’ part if they take up the cause of ranting and raging against “Obama-care,” because they’re adding to the number of uninsured who will have to take advantage of federal benefits – all so they can try to bolster their financial bottom line.

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Could Koch brothers breathe new “life” into Chicago Tribune? Define “life!”

I have to confess to having to fake outrage at the thought of the Koch brothers potentially becoming the new owners of the Chicago Tribune.

The Koch brothers' new Chicago office? The New York Times seems to think so

 

Yes, I disagree with the political ideals espoused by the brothers. And I think it would be cheesy for them to use the newspaper as an arm of their own personal propaganda.

BUT LET’S BE honest. We’re talking the Chicago Tribune of Col. McCormick. Seeing the newspaper being used in such a manner might well be completely familiar to the oldest of readers.

Even though McCormick himself died in 1955, it wasn’t really until the mid-1970s that his influence was really eradicated from the publication’s quirks. And there are some readers who are convinced that the conservative tendencies never really went away.

So the idea that the Chicago Tribune is a “conservative” newspaper? What else is new. It just means a different family name atop the mast-head.

Now the reason this is being stirred up again is that the New York Times on Sunday felt compelled to publish a story about how the Koch brothers – who have spent countless millions to try to influence elections with candidates of their ideological ilk – are among the entities who might buy the Tribune Co. publications.

IT ISN’T NEWS that they’re interested, along with several other entities – including Newscorp head Rupert Murdoch. But it seems that most of the business entities expressing interest in the Tribune Co. newspapers being for sale are really interested in buying the Los Angeles Times.

Murdoch himself seems to like the idea of taking over the LA Times just like his people took over the Wall Street Journal a few years ago.

Only the Kochs, the New York Times reports, seem willing to buy all the publications – including our city’s very own Tribune. Which is the preference of Tribune Co. types. They want one huge payday from a mass sale – rather than several deals for smaller amounts and the possibility that a publication or two might not be able to draw sufficient interest from would-be buyers.

Personally, I’d rather see the Chicago Tribune wind up in the hands of someone with an interest in Chicago proper.

BUT IT SEEMS that the only people willing to take on that kind of media property are those Wrapports types who took advantage of the Chicago Sun-Times’ lesser business status to buy themselves a daily Chicago newspaper with a lower price tag than the Chicago Tribune would command.

I don’t know if there is anyone else out there with the kind of whimsy to buy the Tribune – even if it gives them a chance to work out of that 24^th Floor office that once was the working place of the Colonel himself!

So we may well get the Kochs as a part of our media scene – although personally I find that as less of a shock to the local scene than the idea that WGN-TV, WGN-AM, CLTV and ALL THE OTHER media properties that make the Tribune a news goliath will no longer be connected to the Chicago Tribune proper.

If anything, such a buy may well ensure the continued existence of the Chicago Tribune brand name, since the ideologically-aligned newspapers in our nation (the New York Post, the Washington Times and others) wind up with ownership who are more interested in using them for political statements and other ego-boosting activities.

WHICH MEANS THE financial bottom-line just doesn’t matter as much. If it did, the New York Post would have died decades ago! And the Times in Washington would NEVER have been created!

And I’ve always taken the attitude that I don’t care if newspapers are blatantly ideological in their leanings – so long as they’re honest enough to admit their biases.

Because the bottom line is that we all can simply ignore any publication that feeds us too much nonsense on its pages or its websites. That IS the real American Way – not the trite trash that the Kochs might choose to spew at us if they succeed in making this purchase.

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What becometh our Chicago Tribune?

It will be intriguing to see what becomes of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper that likes to think of itself as the voice of the Midwestern U.S. yet at times isn’t even the most important newspaper in Chicago.

How long until all the slots are filled with the same publication?

There are just too many people in our city who want nothing to do with the Tribune and its particular worldview for it to be the all-dominant creature that it believes itself to be. Although certain others swear by it (and sometimes at it, which makes it a part of Chicago's inherent character).

WHICH IS WHY it would be particularly amusing if there turns out to be some truth to the notions being spread about that Wrapports, Inc. (the current owners of the Chicago Sun-Times) wants to buy “Mother Tribune.”

Wouldn’t it be a kick if the Great Chicago Newspaper War ultimately was won by the Sun-Times? After all the generations of talk by Chicagoans that the Tribune (and its broadcast properties) were the great elephant in the realm of Chicago news creatures, the dinky (I mean that literally these days) Sun-Times prevails.

It’s just too bad that the tug boat-like building along the Chicago River is no longer their headquarters. The irony of that architecturally challenging (yet appealing in its own warped way) structure prevailing over the gothic Tribune Tower would just be too much.

Although on another level, a Sun-Times-related purchase would be completely depressing. That company has managed to take over so many of the local newspapers and turn them into a homogenous mass that it feels like there’s hardly any “press” left.

A CHICAGO-AREA MEDIA that consists of a Sun-Times/Tribune conglomerate, the Daily Herald of suburban Arlington Heights and the Munster, Ind.-based Times of Northwest Indiana sounds so miniscule.

Yet the latest rumor in the mill talks of the Koch brothers – those ideologues who like to use their money to try to impose a conservative bias upon all of us living in this society.

Supposedly, the brothers would like to have a few major newspapers with which to put their spin on the news reports we all consume.

We’ll all be reading the reports in coming weeks speculating about how the Kochs will restore the days of Col. McCormick – who until his death in 1955 was more than willing to use the pages of the Tribune to take on all his political enemies (who were numerous).

LEAVE IT TO them, and the Tribune will become the great enemy of President Barack Obama (even though the newspaper actually endorsed him in both presidential election cycles).

Now I realize the brothers have put out a statement that declines to comment about the possibility of their purchase. Although the tone of the statement in the LA Weekly newspaper is more along the lines of a couple of egomaniacs enjoying the attention without wanting to say anything.

So anything could happen, I suppose. We might get the Kochs. Or the Sun-Times crew becomes all-powerful in their efforts to turn the news reports into SPLASH, GRID, a daily Carol Marin video and the Jenny McCarthy we can endure in print!

It became known that billionaire Warren Buffett is NOT interested in including the Chicago Tribune in his splurge to develop a media “empire” across the country – largely because he doesn’t like the idea that the Tribune people are insisting on selling all their publications in one shot rather than splitting them up amongst local ownership.

NOT THAT I'M saying he's some sort of savior. If anything, he wants the publications in smaller-scale communities where no one expects the same type of investment in the product that is required to make a major metro daily paper worth reading.

 

MURDOCH: A 'journalistic' savior?

But when one looks at the possibility of ideologues or trivialogues taking over the one-time World’s Greatest Newspaper, I have to confess that the rumors having Rupert Murdoch come back to Chicago a quarter of a century after he sold his interests in the Sun-Times don’t sound quite so awful. At least he's devoted a life-time to the printed word; no matter how cheesily his publications have displayed it.

Rupert Murdoch as the “savior” of Chicago journalism?!? Who’d have ever thought it possible!

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