So much for friendship amongst pols; will we someday want Quinn back?

In recent years, the reason city officials were unable to move forward with long-desired dreams of locating a full-scale gambling casino within Chicago was the political split between mayor and governor.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s attempts to get something approved by state government fell through because Pat Quinn wasn’t going to knee-jerk approve something just because city officials wanted it.

HE ALWAYS HAD his own concerns about expanded gambling opportunities and the wishes of some political people to count on casino tax revenues to try to resolve government financial problems.

It was always readily known that there was no love lost between Quinn and Emanuel when it came to gambling issues.

So much so that some people speculated that Emanuel wouldn’t be the least bit upset if Quinn were to lose his 2014 electoral bid. Particularly since there was some sort of personal friendship between Emanuel and Bruce Rauner.

It is with that dynamic in mind that I have to admit to being amused that Quinn’s defeat does not seem to have opened up the chances of a casino coming to Chicago any time soon.

VARIOUS NEWS REPORTS indicate the issue has been discussed in recent weeks. Rauner is being non-committal as to whether he’s willing to sign off on a gambling measure that the General Assembly would have to give approval to first.

In fact, it would seem that Rauner is throwing out hints that he’s going to demand political support from Emanuel and other Chicago political people for many of the ideological measures HE wants to see passed into law.

Including the “turnaround agenda” that the governor tries to describe as a reform of our state’s economic condition but is really nothing more than a batch of measures meant to bring Illinois as close to being a “right to work” state as it ever could be.

Because the reality is that Illinois isn’t Mississippi or Alabama. Heck, we’re not even Indiana – even though I’m sure people living in places like Danville or Effingham wish we were.

CHICAGO OFFICIALS ALREADY have made it clear they’re not backing “turnaround,” refusing to pass the symbolic resolutions that Rauner is asking municipal governments across Illinois to support.

In fact, our city and county officials have gone just the opposite – letting it be known we’re among the hard-core opposition to measures meant to undermine the ability of organized labor to look out for its interests.

Now, Rauner is hinting (if not coming right out and saying) that he expects a little bit of support for his ideological measures, or else he could become more of an obstacle than Pat Quinn ever was to the long-standing gambling dreams that Chicago has had.

Personally, I don’t care if Chicago ever gets the casino some believe is an absolute necessity to our future. I’d like to think Chicago offers so much in the way of amenities that it’s not necessary.

FOR THE SAME reason that we don’t see Chicago trying to become the location of a state prison facility, I’d like to think we don’t need a casino. We’re above that!

But the politicking for gambling is so intense that I doubt the issue will ever wither away. There are those who just aren’t going to be happy until they can go play Blackjack or roulette without having to pay the cost of a trip to Las Vegas – or, if they’re the type of frequent gambler that Vegas loves, lose so much while gambling that the casino comps the cost of their trip.

Particularly if this does wind up being the issue that develops an Emanuel/Rauner split and keeps much of anything from getting done.

It would be the ultimate laugh if gambling wound up becoming the issue that made many of us wish we could have Pat Quinn back as governor!

  -30-

Does anybody really believe that anyone can now get hired at City Hall?

I was amused to read an Associated Press account about the fact that a federal judge lifted a series of restrictions meant to ensure that government jobs weren’t given out purely as rewards for political work.

Who you know may not be enough to land a job at Chicago's City Hall anymore -- that was the story's lede. Do you really believe this to be true?

EXCUSE ME FOR being skeptical, but there’s always going to be a degree to which people hire those with whom they are most comfortable, and to whom each election cycle will mean the coming of new blood – largely because the old blood will have lost their political sponsors in the electoral posts.

Besides, we do have to admit that much of the old, incredibly blatant, ways of government hiring have gone by the wayside. A new generation that just isn’t inclined to be so obedient just to get a job has come in.

Personally, I view the lifting of Shakman Decree restrictions as being merely an acknowledgement of that fact. The blatant problems are over. But the more subtle ones are not, and likely never will be.

What we have to be less concerned with is less about who “sent” someone for a particular post, and more about whether government work (“the people’s business,” as some cynical pols refer to it), actually gets done.

BECAUSE MUCH OF the work done in these clerical jobs is stuff that could be done by many people – including the ones who got the jobs because they happened to know somebody.

There are times I wonder if the people who complain the loudest are the ones who are jealous that the only people they know capable of “getting them” a job are ones who work in a gas station, and not some sort of pseudo-cushy political posts.

If they had the right contacts, they’d suddenly be all for the old system.

And yes, I have to tell you that many of these jobs can be mind-numbing in their own right. If not for the perspective that you’re doing work for the public, nobody would want many of these clerical posts.

BECAUSE ANYBODY WITH any real intelligence who works within government either has some sort of serious dedication to the public good (more intense than you’d see in a police officer or social worker), or else they wind up leaving to make much more money in the private sector.

Now I suppose I should say that I once got a government job because of who I knew. It was back when I was in college and I needed a job for the summer. It turned out I knew someone who knew then-Rich Township Democratic Committeeman Lee Conlon.

It also turned out that Conlon and I had both attended the same university. So the next thing I knew, I was showing up at the office of then-Cook County Assessor Harold “Bus” Yourell, whose chief of staff had but one question for me.

 

Literally, it was “Who sent you?” That was my only qualification for a summer’s worth of work in the basement recording land transactions in giant ledger books (the county hadn’t yet fully computerized such information, so the books still had to be kept up to date).

I CAN’T SAY any of my colleagues were particularly qualified for the job. Then again, I don’t think anyone out there would have done any better than we did that summer.

Even if I was, theoretically, just a political hack who was eminently replaceable.

Do we really want a government operated by somebody, even if they have no real qualifications or skills, that anybody sent?

  -30-

Casinos, glorious casinos located everywhere, sounds like nightmare to me

Sometimes, I wonder what goes through the minds of people who are eager to have gambling in the form of slot machines.

Because it seems they won’t be happy until we have the chance to play a slot machine everywhere we go. A trip to the tavern? Toss away a few quarters.

HOW ABOUT A trip to the supermarket? Get people all worked up that they can win enough money to “buy” their groceries that day, and claim it’s their own fault when they wind up losing.

Catching a flight to somewhere, and you have a layover at a stray airport? Pass the time away by trying to win a few bucks, that perhaps you could then spend on overpriced items at the airport gift shop!

The latter scenario is the one we’re focused on now, as the City Council used budget hearings to consider whether slot machines ought to be installed at O’Hare International Airport.

Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino pointed out how slot machines are now common sights at airports around the world – not just the one at Las Vegas (where the slots at the airport used to be an amusing sign of just how reliant that city’s existence was on gambling and casinos).

OF COURSE, ANDOLINO didn’t bring up any of the potential for moralistic flaws in having gambling. She described a situation where people could spend that four-hour layover at O’Hare by getting a spa treatment, something to eat, then entertaining themselves by pitching quarter after quarter into the slot machine – in hopes of winning themselves a few bucks before they move along to their actual destination.

Personally, I don’t care if people want to gamble (and yes, it’s gambling, not gaming). The idea of a casino in an airport doesn’t stir up some special sense of disgust in my mind.

Will this soon become the "O'Hara" casino?

But it’s just the idea that I wonder where the idea of slot machines outside of traditional casinos will end.

Do we really need to have them at the public library, or in our favorite fast-food restaurants? How about mobile slot machines on board the “el” or perhaps all the old telephone booths can be converted so that people can fulfill their urge to gamble while walking down the street?

YES, THESE KINDS of images are quite a bit over the top. They are extreme.

But I get the sense that the supporters of expanded gambling (the ones who argue that any moralistic qualms about gambling are irrelevant at a time when many governments need all the tax revenue they can get to pay their bills) really want us to be able to toss away our spare change on something other than a video game.

Hey, why not convert all those old video arcades into places where people could gamble?

My own viewpoint is that there has to be some limit to the number of gambling opportunities, otherwise they wind up cannibalizing revenue from each other.

WHICH WOULD MAKE no one location all that profitable. You need to have fewer casino gambling opportunities in order for them to take in significant amounts of revenue (which is what is needed in order for the government taxes to reach significant levels).

Personally, it was why I was kind of pleased to see Gov. Pat Quinn use his veto power to reject the bill that would have created a Chicago casino, another in southern Cook County and a third not far from Waukegan, along with a couple others outside of the Chicago-area and slot machines at places like racetracks, the Illinois State Fairgrounds in Springfield AND the Chicago-area airport.

What we have is city officials trying to keep alive a concept that Quinn has already dropped the bomb on – and for good reason.

Otherwise, we’d probably have to carry the slot machine plan out to its extreme – when will be the day that a slot machine will be installed in everybody’s home? We can lose our money directly to government while clad in our pajamas without ever having to walk out the front door.

  -30-

Solving a problem that doesn’t exist?

I’m not quite sure what to think of city Clerk Susana Mendoza, who on Wednesday came up with a solution to a problem that I never really realized existed.

MENDOZA: Solving a non-existent problem?



The problem is the inconvenience factor involved in having everyone in Chicago who owns an automobile having to renew their city stickers by June 30.

I’M SURE MOST people think of it less as an inconvenience and more as a citywide rip-off that they have to purchase a city sticker at all for every vehicle they own – or else risk the Wrath of Rahm and other city officials who will have them ticketed (should Chicago police ever stumble across their vehicles) and fined!

But Mendoza seems to think that it will seem less painful for people to have to buy the stickers if they don’t have to deal with massive lines as every single motorist rushes to her office all at once to make their purchases – at $85 a pop.

The Chicago Tribune reported Wednesday how her office is drawing up a year-round sticker purchase plan – one that is being copied heavily from the way the Illinois secretary of state’s office handles the renewal of license plates.

Those identification plates on our cars are good for one year, then we have to purchase a new sticker each year that indicates we paid our $100 fee for the upcoming year.

BUT THERE ARE 12 different deadlines, on account of the fact that everybody gets until the end of the month from one year they purchased them to renew them.

In my case, June 30 is the big date – the one by which I have to go to a motor vehicle bureau and wait in the lines for a procedure that – once I get to a clerk of some type – takes all of about three minutes to complete.

It’s the wait in line that winds up being annoying to us – envision an hour-long wait for a three-minute process.

It can be just as bad when it comes to buying the city sticker, except that I’m not sure it is really appropriate to compare the two because there is a bit of a difference.

THE LICENSE PLATE is something that is meant to help public safety officials (particularly those highway patrol types of the Illinois State Police) identify an automobile much quicker than would otherwise be possible if they had to look up the VIN number every single time they made a traffic stop.

The city sticker always reeked of being just another fee the city charges us to try to raise revenue – and not one that provides any real benefit to the public.

Which is why a part of me admires the rare community that doesn’t sell city vehicle stickers. I still remember when I lived in Springfield, Ill., and first moved to the capital city.

Local officials looked at me like I was a circus freak when I inquired about how to get a city sticker. Of course, Springfield city officials have their own tax (1 percent on the purchase price) on local residents whenever they buy automobiles – which I learned when I bought a car while living there.

BECAUSE I BOUGHT the car from a suburban Chicago dealership (out in Oak Lawn, if I recall correctly), I wasn’t charged the tax. So Springfield sued me, although they dropped the lawsuit when I came up with $148 for the tax.

But back to city stickers. I’m just not convinced people are going to feel at all relieved that they won’t have to cram into a clerk’s office (or a currency exchange) all at once.

If Mendoza really wanted to make people happy, she’d figure out a way to reduce the fee – if not eliminate it altogether.

Not that I expect that to ever happen. City officials are too dependent on the revenue (about $110 million this year, according to the clerk) by now to be able to afford to give it up.

BESIDES, IF THERE’S a date we’d really like to do away with, it’s April 15.

Tax Day!!!!!!

All the tension we all feel from having to account for our incomes and hope that the Internal Revenue Service doesn’t find some bureaucratic rule that can be used against us.

That would be a significant move if we could reduce it by 1/12^th.

  -30-

Wrigley Field a battleground, but that’s not really new politically-speaking

I have found it amusing in recent weeks to hear the political rhetoric related to Wrigley Field.

Government officials want to help the Chicago Cubs with the overhaul of their 98-year-old building that would be required for the ball club to keep playing there for another few decades.

Will a renovated Wrigley resemble this by much?

YET NOBODY WANTS to appear to be helping.

Which is why we get the rhetoric from Mayor Rahm Emanuel such as, “I will not put my money in their field so they can take their money and invest around the field.”

Implying that the real money to be made is not by operating a ball club and staging ball games, but instead running the taverns and souvenir shops that peddle to the people who feel compelled to watch a ball game live – instead of on television.

Part of what I find funny about that line is Emanuel’s description of “my” money, when it is really city taxpayer dollars at work. Emanuel may be the chief executive of Chicago city government, but he works for us.

EMANUEL: Fighting for No. Side like ...

BUT WHAT I really find amusing is the fact that certain things never really change.

Because getting government involved in sports is really more about government than sports. The Cubs are having to do business with our government, just like any other entity.

Only the Cubs, like any other sports franchise, has a certain cachet they can feed off of. There are people who would be very ticked off if the ball club were not to continue to stage its games at Clark and Addison streets as they have every year since 1916.

They would be more than willing to take it out on Emanuel come 2015, or any year in the future that he were to try to run for another political post; just in case there is any truth to the rumor mill that has Emanuel seeking the Democratic nomination for U.S. president in ’16 – which is more likely to be the year that Wrigley Field reaches its 100^th anniversary without having a single winning World Series team.

WASHINGTON: ... fought for Sout' Side.

EMANUEL KNOWS THAT fact, too. He may not care much personally for baseball. But he knows that being perceived as the North Side mayor who let the North Side’s baseball club of choice get away would condemn him politically.

It was the same back in the mid-1980s when it became obvious that Comiskey Park (opened in 1910, and never as well-maintained as Wrigley Field) was seeing its final days.

If the ball club had had its wishes, the Chicago White Sox would be the team of DuPage County, or just about any location other than 35^th Street and Shields Avenue.

But that was where the political people of Chicago wanted the team to stay (Cubs to the north, Sox to the south, Bears in Soldier Field and the Bulls/Blackhawks combo on Madison Street).

THEN-MAYOR HAROLD Washington was just as South Side-oriented as Emanuel is to the North Side. The Hyde Park resident knew that the Sox couldn’t be allowed to leave the city.

I’m sure he also knew that if they did leave, he’d be the one who got the blame from his critics – including the descendants of the South Side Irish who were always looking for something, anything, to blame on him.

He was the one who ensured that talk of a new stadium centered around the lots located across the street from the old ball park – whose eventual price tag of about $160 million is about one-third of the estimated $500 million renovation cost for Wrigley.

Even though the city’s finances were such that they didn’t have the money to think of constructing such a facility themselves, it was Washington who made sure that state officials (including then-Gov. James R. Thompson) didn’t think of trying to shift the team to a new Chicago-area location.



How will a Wrigley political fight compare to the Battle to replace Comiskey, circa '88?



WHICH MIGHT HAVE actually made it an easier sell politically across the state – particularly to those rural political people who root for the St. Louis Cardinals, cared less about the South Side, and would have taken a perverse pleasure in turning the White Sox into the equivalent of the St. Louis Browns – and eliminating Chicago’s baseball status as a two-team town.



Somehow, I have a feeling we’re not going to get the drama of ’88 – when the White Sox political battle came down to the final seconds in the Illinois House and where some political whiners still insist that the deadline for approving a deal was blown.

Any deal to renovate Wrigley Field to ensure that the grandstand and its upper deck don’t come tumbling down on the fans in the middle of a Cubs/Houston Astros game will likely get rammed through with Emanuel’s “unique” brand of “political diplomacy.” He’s already going around saying a deal is in its “final stages,” despite disagreements elsewhere about that characterization.

Then again, such a moment might be preferable in the sense that it would put those fans out of their misery of watching such dreadful-quality baseball. Although maybe we could arrange for politicians to be attending that ballgame. In which case, we’d be doing society a favor.

  -30-

Innocuous images can take on bizarre meanings in street gang-land

I kind of wish I could have attended the session held Wednesday by city Clerk Susana Mendoza that related to the new city vehicle stickers that will soon go on sale.

The infamous vehicle sticker

Because Mendoza had to have a serious sit-down with the Police Department and the researchers who spend their time studying the routines of street gangs – all to figure out if the city was about to pay tribute to them.

THE NEW CITY stickers have a design that shows a heart with the Chicago city skyline imposed over it. Reaching above the heart are hands of various races – all trying to grab at symbols for the police and fire departments, and for paramedics.

It was meant to be a tribute to the support we all are to feel for public safety employees who try to protect us from the dangers of daily life.

To make it even more cute, it was designed by a 15-year-old boy as part of the city’s annual contest that is meant to make the vehicle stickers something more than a cold cash-grab by the city for those of us who operate a car and live within city limits.

But there are those people who see something sinister in this, and their view ultimately prevailed as Mendoza announced Wednesday afternoon that the design will not be used.

THERE ARE THOSE who are convinced that this new city vehicle sticker is loaded with imagery meant to promote street gangs. There are those who say the boy who won the city’s contest is actually a gang member himself, and that he managed to pull off a big con against the city – making us all look stupid for the next year as those stickers are forcibly displayed (unless a motorist is willing to risk a significant fine) on local automobiles.

One website written for police officers (Second City Cop) speculates that this may cause the annual vehicle sticker contest to end. You just can’t trust these young people.

Another website that is much more graphic in its content (written apparently for those police who want to believe all the conspiracy theories being touted) seems to think that this was inevitable and we should have known better than to ever let certain types of people try to express themselves.

This particular website (check it out for yourself) goes into details about how the heart-shape of the skyline can be a street gang symbol, and how the hands that reach above to the police symbols have their fingers positioned in ways that could be interpreted as pitchforks – which also can be a symbol.

OR MAYBE IT isn’t. The boy's mother is now saying there's nothing gang-intended about the design.

Personally, I think these symbols are rather innocuous. There may be some people who wish to interpret them in a gang context. But then again, there will be others who won’t.

If anything, I wonder if giving in to this interpretation gives them some legitimacy. I can’t help but think that we’d be better off if we delegitimized anything that is gang-related – taking their alleged symbols and turning them into a meaning that has nothing to do with the gangland life.

Ultimately, that is how those gangs will die off – turning them into nothing. They exist because they provide a sense of something, of somebody, to people in our society who have nothing else to turn to.

NOW I DON’T have any evidence to indicate that this particular teenage boy had any particular motivation with his design. Maybe he did pull off some sort of scam on city officials. Maybe he didn’t. Nobody, except for the kid, really knows.

I suspect the people who are getting the most into this conspiracy of vehicle stickers loaded with gang imagery are just the kinds of people who want to rant and rage about everything surrounding them. Mendoza seems to think that by scrapping the stickers, she can avoid the argument -- which is quite a bit of a distraction from a government that should be focused on serious issues.

For all I know, perhaps their real objection is the multi-racial collection of hands that reach out to public safety people for protection.

Maybe in their world, the police and fire swat back at the hands whose colors don’t match their own.

  -30-

White guys in the Latino caucus?

It always amused me that state Rep. Dan Burke, D-Chicago, went out of his way to include himself in the Illinois House’s Latino caucus – making a point of sitting in with other Latino state legislators whenever they would meet privately to derive their stance on certain issues.

Burke said he felt that since his legislative district on the Southwest Side had such a significant Latino population, it was his obligation to try to understand his constituents.

BECAUSE NOT COMPREHENDING them would be a sure-fire way toward having them turn on him and vote someone else into office.

Some people ridiculed his gesture as nothing more than a token effort to understand Latinos, and that just because he sat in on a few meetings did not make him suddenly aware of what his constituents were thinking.

But on the whole, I always saw his gesture as being more than most political people were willing to do – since the usual reaction of a political person representing an area with a growing Latino population is to somehow cling to the declining white population in the area and try to figure out ways to maximize its political power!

In short, political denial.

SO IT IS with a feeling of amusement that I will be observing the City Council in coming months, where the head of the council’s Latino caucus (25^th Ward Alderman Danny Solis) said this week that the caucus is now willing to include aldermen who represent neighborhoods with significant Latino populations.

Solis said he wants to increase the influence of Latino politicos, and figures that this is one way to boost the total numbers – which will go up after the 2015 municipal elections when new aldermen are elected under the new ward map that has 13 Latino-based wards and two more wards that are Latino-influenced.

Now whether that tactic will work is questionable. Because the real factor is whether the white aldermen will want to alter their view of the world to include their Latino constituents more thoroughly.

If they don’t want to, it won’t matter if Solis is able to include their names on his “list” of Latino-leaning aldermen. Latinos might not gain much from this move.

BUT I WILL say that if these aldermen have any sense whatsoever, they will reach out to their growing numbers of Latino constituents (29 percent of the city’s overall 2.7 million population is Latino, according to the 2010 census).

If they have any sense, they will accept this invitation as the least of gestures they can make to representing the people who live within their wards. They ought to be jumping at the chance to make this move. If they’re not willing to do so, then perhaps they deserve to get dumped come the ’15 election cycle.

So 14^th Ward Alderman Edward Burke (Dan’s brother) will get the chance to show some understanding, as will 10^th Ward Alderman John Pope (whose ward includes some of the oldest Spanish-speaking enclaves in Chicago and will now be 63 percent Latino).

Other aldermen who got un invitado include Marty Quinn (13^th Ward), Toni Foulkes (15^th Ward), Michael Zalewski (23^rd Ward), Nick Sposato (36^th Ward) and Richard Mell of the 33^rd Ward, who was in charge of the recently-completed redistricting effort for the Chicago City Council and whose daughter, Deb Mell, serves in the Latino Caucus in her role as a state representative from the Northwest Side.

SO WHILE CANDIDATES such as Pope have been successful at defeating Latino challengers (claiming he can appeal to Latino voters) and people like Sposato had approached the Latino Caucus leadership in the past about being included (only to be rebuffed), we’re going to get a better picture of how interested they are in the growing segment of their wards.

This is one case where a politician acting in their own self-interest would also be beneficial to the people of Chicago as a whole.

  -30-

Gambling versus gaming – that’s what Quinn/Emanuel casinos quibble is about

While watching the activity this week of city and state government, I can’t help but compare the casino-related rhetoric of Gov. Pat Quinn and Mayor Rahm Emanuel to the shouting matches I occasionally hear between my 11-year-old nephew and my 8-year-old niece.

EMANUEL: For gaming?



I adore both of them (along with my other nephew and niece). But when they get into one of their “he (or she) took my (fill in the blank),” I just want to tell them both to shut their yaps. Because neither one comes across looking good.

WHICH IS ABOUT what I think of Emanuel and Quinn, who all throughout the week engaged in a back-and-forth related to the idea of a casino being built in Chicago to help bolster city finances.

Emanuel is a big backer of the idea, and it was in part because of his political muscle that the General Assembly this spring passed a bill that includes the massive Chicago-based casino that city officials have desired for decades.

Eventually (there are some procedural maneuvers that still have to take place), the issue will wind up in Quinn’s hands. Considering that Quinn has only lukewarm support for a Chicago casino – and hates many of the other gambling measures that got attached – he could be the guy who gets to use his “veto” power to kill off the idea.

Which is what lies at the heart of this week’s rhetoric.

THE POLITICAL HISSY hissy fits started at City Hall, where Emanuel tried to step up the idea that a Chicago casino has significant benefits to offer.

It was a wish list, of sorts, that he rattled through. Roads that will be repaired. New schools to be built. Upgrades to the elevated train system maintained by the Chicago Transit Authority. Improvements to public buildings to make them more energy-efficient.

QUINN: Against gambling?



All of which will only get done if the city gets the infusion of cash it would count on if a casino is built in Chicago and the city were allowed to tax it at a significant rate.

Not that Quinn was impressed. He responded by telling people that Emanuel is being premature in trying to figure out how to spend tax money from a casino when it is not a done deal that he will approve it.

PERSONALLY, I THINK Quinn ultimately will approve whatever gambling expansion bill winds up before him. But I think that bill will be significantly scaled back to the point where it will bear little resemblance to the measure now on hold in state Senate President John Cullerton’s desk drawer.

But while he didn’t use the word “veto,” he used words to imply that he might wind up rejecting the casino expansion proposal once it gets to him.

Some might say that Quinn was trying to rub Emanuel’s face in the muck that always arises whenever gambling as an issue comes up. Everybody should say that Emanuel definitely intended to do that to Quinn when he responded a couple of days ago, telling the Chicago Sun-Times that he had previously given Quinn a copy of his wish list – and that Quinn supposedly told Emanuel to make it public.

Is Quinn’s response to Emanuel hypocritical – a chance to play to those people who want to view gambling as the almighty evil?!? Or is this all a lot of childish chit-chat from a couple of pols who have spent too much time outside in the summer heat?

PERHAPS THEY BOTH need a cooling-off period before we let them speak further? It definitely bothers me to think that our mayor and our governor need a “time-out” (just like my nephew and niece) before we all go any further.

Now insofar as who gets the high ground in this shouting match, a lot depends on one’s own ideological leanings on this particular issue. I think they’re both so juvenile that neither deserves to be thought of as the winner.

Also, I couldn’t help but notice that Emanuel this week said how he thinks the bill has adequate safeguards to prevent the possibility of all this new gambling becoming nothing more than opportunities for organized crime to make more money.

Which makes him think that people who talk of increased crime and the need for strong oversight (which includes the Illinois Gaming Board and the Chicago Crime Commission, to name a few) are deliberately ignoring the economic benefits to government that can be derived from gambling.

THAT COMMENT REMINDS me of something I once heard state Rep. Louis Lang, D-Skokie, say in how he judges people’s opinions on this issue in part by whether they use the word “gambling” or “gaming.” He thinks people who persist in calling it “gambling” are deliberately trying to exaggerate the social ills and do not deserve to be taken as seriously as those who use the word “gaming.”

Emanuel and Lang are of the same mind on this issue, while I’m sure those who use the more traditional spelling are leaning toward the hesitancy of Quinn – who on Friday found an “issue” to preoccupy his thoughts.

How else to explain that Friday in Illinois was “Sheen Estevez Day” – honoring actor Martin Sheen and son Emilio Estevez, who were in Chicago promoting their new film.

And as for other acting son Charlie Sheen? I’m sure he’ll get his Chicago moment someday. Perhaps he’ll be in the city and will visit the casino when it finally gets built – dropping who knows how much money on craps, liquor and women all to benefit our city government.

  -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-

How different will things be under Rahm?

“Chicago ain’t ready for reform” – Matthias “Paddy” Bauler, April 1955.

“Today, more than any other time in our history, more than any other place in our history, the city of Chicago is ready for change” – Rahm Emanuel, May 16, 2011.

  -0-

EMANUEL: Agent of change? I think not

Why do I have a funny feeling in the pit of my gut that former Alderman Paddy Bauler’s 56-year-old assessment remains more accurate than Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s official pronouncement Monday in the moments after he officially became the 46^th person to serve in that position.

And yes, I count people like David Orr when I come up with that mayoral total.

BUT BACK TO the concept of “change.” Is the election of a one-time White House chief of staff and member of Congress to run our city government the factor that will bring about change (dare I think, "reform") in the way things are done in Chicago?

I suppose it depends solely on how one defines “change.” Because I’m not sure I see anything terribly significant being altered. If anything, I’d say the people who gave Emanuel that 54 percent majority WITHOUT having to endure a runoff did so because they want things to stay more or less the same as they were under Richard M. Daley.

There will be some things done differently, although I’d argue those will be superficial changes.

The Chicago White Sox won’t be able to count Hizzoner among their season-ticket holders. That Opening Day appearance Emanuel made at U.S. Cellular Field wearing a White Sox warmup jacket will probably be his last at the ballpark this season – unless the Sox seriously get their act together and make it all the way to the World Series. Even then, he might only grudgingly attend; with President Barack Obama nudging him along.

EVEN THEN, EMANUEL (who has been quoted as saying, “I hate baseball”) isn’t going to be that guy who plays at cheering for sports. A fairly decent write-up by the Associated Press that was published in many newspapers this weekend shows just how “into” the arts – particularly music and dance – our new mayor is.

It also does not shock me to hear from the activists who are screaming that this mayor is “too North Side” in his focus, and that much of his mayor-elect activities ignored the majority of the city south of Roosevelt Road.

This is a North Side guy in actuality. For the next four years (barring some sort of tragedy), there won’t be someone with the Sout’ Side in his veins working on the fifth floor. Anybody who didn’t realize that when they voted earlier this year deserves whatever aggravation they now feel.

If you wanted a hard-core South Side guy, you should have listened to Alderman Ed Burke and voted for Gery Chico.

BUT LIKE I said, these are trivial aspects.

The reason I don’t see serious change is because Emanuel was the candidate preferred by the business community. He also is the guy who ran Obama’s White House for nearly two years – the same two that has many progressive types thinking that Obama might not have been what they had hoped for when they voted for him in 2008.

Because Emanuel’s strategy, both in overseeing the effort in 2006 that saw Democrats take back control of the House of Representatives and in running the White House staff for Obama, was to search for those more conservative people who would be willing to wear the “Democrat” label – even though many of their ideological beliefs might make them a better fit for the opposition.

This was the guy who was instrumental in giving us candidate Tammy Duckworth for Congress over primary opponent Christine Cegelis because she was the type who wouldn’t attract Republican voters, and also kept Obama from even thinking of touching immigration reform because he didn’t want to upset those same voters.

HECK, THAT WILLINGNESS to put aside the ideological issues that bring many to the Democratic Party to begin with is the reason he gets the business community backing. If anything, it might very well be that relationship between government and business interests that most needs to be studied and considered for change.

If you view “change” as accepting defeat on certain issues and feeling the need to concede, then Emanuel is change. To me, it seems more like accepting the status quo on certain issues that need to be changed.

Not that I’m complaining (too much) about how the municipal elections turned out this year. I accept that Emanuel has certain administrative qualities from his past political posts that will come in handy.

I also like the fact that the people most offended by the concept of “Mayor Rahm Emanuel” are conservative ideologues who desire Rahm to wither away into nothingness so they can brand his Democratic Party political career a failure. There may well be times when Emanuel will turn that hot-head temperament of his against someone who has the city’s worst fears at heart. That will be something to see.

THEN AGAIN, WASN’T an ability to be stubborn and think that he was always correct when it came to urban issues one of Richard M. Daley’s traits (along with that of his father, Richard Joseph)? Where’s the change?

As for those who would argue the fact that a Jewish person is now mayor of Chicago, I'd argue that the reason many in this city voted for him so eagerly was because he was the closest resemblance to a traditional white guy candidate they could find in this particular election.

In short, I don’t see some radical shift in the way our city government does business. A part of me seriously wonders if Emanuel is merely the Fifth Floor seat warmer until the day that the next generation of the Daley family is ready to run a campaign for Chicago mayor.

BAULER: A "true" Chicagoan still?



It makes me wonder if Paddy Bauler hit on the very nature of Chicago on that date many decades ago when he reacted to the coming of the original “Mayor Daley.” His words still resonate, even though he has been gone from this Earth nearly as long as Daley, the elder.

INSOFAR AS WHICH North Side official you’d rather deal with (Emanuel or Bauler), consider this. Rahm may have once aspired to be a dancer. Yet Paddy used to brew his own brand of beer at his tavern at North Avenue and Sedgwick Street.

Take your pick.

  -30-