Rahm wants federal cts to fight against Trump's 'hot air' on immigration

Odd timing, to say the least, to learn of Chicago’s intentions under Mayor Rahm Emanuel to take the federal government to court what with the hostile and threatening rhetoric being spewed during this Age of Trump with regards to immigration.

I'm sure that Rahm Emanuel ...

For it comes at the same time that Cook County government is planning to sue the people who fought so hard to challenge the legitimacy of the pop tax. The county wants the months’ worth of revenues they otherwise would have collected during July from such a tax.

BUT JUST AS carbonated beverages create a gassy condition, one can also claim that the Trump administration, through its Justice Department, has also been full of hot air every time it talks about immigration policy and the way some cities – including Chicago – show support for the immigrants through “sanctuary city” status.

President Donald J. Trump has let it be known he wants to start penalizing those municipal governments that won’t hop into line with his rhetoric – which is meant to appeal to the segment of our society determined to live in bigotry.

Many of those people live in isolated communities of this nation, and in fact it wouldn’t shock me to learn that many of the people who chose to live in Chicago did so to escape such narrow-minded people like these.

Anyway, we’ve been hearing months’ worth of threats about how federal funding provided to the city will be cut – unless the city stops its policies that restrict the ability of local police to get involved in areas of the law involving immigration policy.

WHICH, AFTER ALL, is a federal issue that local officials really are not the least bit qualified to handle. No more than we’d want Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to be involved in the daily investigations of the homicides occurring in the city.

Emanuel this week said he plans to have attorneys argue in U.S. District Court that the U.S. government cannot tamper with Byrne grant funds from cities it is upset with.

... can find a judge somewhere in this complex ...

As the Chicago Tribune reported Friday, those particular grants are used to buy squad cars for the Police Department. It’s not a large sum of money at stake.

Which makes this more about the principle of the issue – getting a federal judge in Chicago to tell the president to back off his harassment. Which, admittedly, is being done largely to score bonus points for the president amongst his ideologue followers.

JUST AS WHEN Trump early on in his presidency tried to impose his travel restrictions against people from certain Middle East countries from being able to enter the United States, the federal courts came up with judges willing to thwart the president’s ideological, nativist desires.

I’m sure there is a federal judge working in the Dirksen/Kluczynski complex who will be more than willing to view Emanuel as a daily part of his/her legal life – while the president is just some esoteric concept who complains that his government-issued mansion in D.C. is “a dump.”

Any real resolution of this issue (whether cities have the right to refuse full compliance with the whims of federal immigration officials) is going to be decided at a higher level.

Maybe even possibly the Supreme Court of the United States – which probably is going to become preoccupied in coming years with determining just how much of Trump’s rants and “tweets from a twit” that he tries to impose into law have any legitimacy.

WHICH MAKES THE use of the local federal courts the same as the lawsuit the county is pursuing to pressure the anti-tax activist types to back off their opposition to the pop tax.

... to tell Trump to 'stifle' himself on immigration

Maybe it’s a form of legal intimidation. Or maybe it’s using the system to try to prevent others from abusing their authority. Which is what many view Trump’s efforts on immigration policy to really be all about.

Yes, the pop tax is about raising more government funds through a fee on the sale of carbonated beverages – those that can make us let out a loud belch.

Which, when you come to think about it, is about the same reaction I feel every time I think of the Trump administration’s efforts to use peoples’ nativist attitudes against immigrants to try to lessen the record-low disapproval ratings they are garnering.

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Cook: Somebody must pay pop tax

Cook County Board officials estimate that some $17 million in revenue was lost during the month of July – which is when the courts considered legal actions that challenged the legitimacy of the penny-per-ounce tax on pop and other sweetened beverages.
 

Must be vintage if bottle only a dime

So now that the courts have ruled that the pop tax has legal legitimacy, county officials are talking about forcing someone to cough up the amount of cash they were denied during July.

SPECIFICALLY, THE COUNTY has filed a lawsuit against the Illinois Retail Merchants Association – one of the groups that was supportive of the effort by anti-tax activists to challenge the legitimacy of a pop tax.

The one that was supposed to raise some $67.5 million through the rest of 2017, and another $200 million for the 2018 fiscal year that begins Dec. 1.

Money they insist is needed by the county if its budget is to come out balanced in the end.

So losing a month’s worth of revenue is a significant loss to the county, so much so that it wants to file the legal action that many see as purely punitive towards any group that would dare speak out against the county.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T expect the county ever will get any money from this lawsuit of theirs. I think it is more of an intimidation tactic.

As in when one considers that when a Cook County judge last week handed down the ruling that upheld the pop tax’ legitimacy, the retail merchants association made a point of saying it was “weighing our legal options,” then earlier this week filed their own appeal of Judge Daniel Kubasiak’s ruling.

One that was meant to get an appeals court to strike down the pop tax once again.

 

PRECKWINKLE: Willing to fight for pop tax

I suspect that when their appeals disappear, the county’s lawsuit against the association will also wither away.

SUCH TACTICS MAY be strong-arm tactics that border on intimidation – although to tell you the truth, it’s not like business-oriented groups such as the association aren’t capable of deploying their own collection of goons to try to intimidate government entities into going along with their demands.

But then again, I’m also waiting to see what becomes of the 300 or so county employees who were laid off from their jobs last month due to the financial shortfall caused by temporarily losing the county pop tax.

County officials weren’t exactly quick to say when those people would be restored to the payroll – which as far as I’m concerned is a sleazier move than any tax hike being imposed on people who just feel compelled to have their dose of a carbonated beverage as part of their daily sugar intake.

Perhaps this particular tax just doesn’t offend me much because it is for a product that we choose to enjoy, or can decide to do without. And realize that sentence was just written by someone who enjoys an occasional Coca-Cola. Although I also have been making my own effort during the past year to reduce the amount of pop I consume.

WE COULD CONTINUE to engage in a back-and-forth battle over the pop tax. Or maybe we could move on to issues of true significance instead of fighting over the resulting price increase.

Pop tax couldn't wind up here, could it?

Because the reality is that nothing costs the same as it used to. Everything is more expensive these days. Remember it wasn't long ago that gasoline cost less than $1 per gallon?!?

Yes, the idea of having to pay an extra 20 cents for that single-serve bottle of pop ($1.89 at a Walgreens, the last time I bought one) kind of stinks. It makes me think of when I was a young child some 45 years ago having to accompany my mother to a neighborhood laundromat and being allowed to buy myself a pop from the vending machine for about 20 cents.

As in the total price – not just the tax added on! I find that price hike much more offensive.

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EXTRA: Leaflet-to-leaflet combat?!?

These leaflets are starting to turn up in mailboxes this week, efforts by the Stand for Children Illinois group to remind people that the legislators who cast votes in favor of the Education Funding bill may actually have been acting in the interests of educators and NOT just partisan political hacks.

As Gov. Bruce Rauner would have you think -- what with the way he persists with calling the bill a "bailout" for the Chicago Public Schools.

WE'RE GOING TO see many more of these glossy-papered messages cluttering up the mailboxes of those people who live in districts where the local legislators were supportive of the public schools' interests.

Which is something I'm sure will offend the environmentally-minded amongst us. Just think of all the trees that perished to make the glossy paper that created these fliers? Let's at least hope people have the sense to dispose of them in a recycling bin once they give them a momentary glance.

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Latest dream to revive one-time South Works site, will this become reality?

The one-time site of a U.S. Steel plant at 79^th Street and the lakefront is one that causes people to dream.

Barcelona Housing Systems has these dreams for the one-time South Works site. Many other developers have prepared similar sketches for what could be done with the former steel mill.

It is larger than the downtown area of Chicago, and it sits largely empty (although the giant concrete breakwall remains – too large for it to be practical to tear down). It is a real estate developer’s fantasy site in terms of wanting to build something there.

HECK, IF WE had Donald Trump interested in building more things in Chicago, he probably would have turned the site into Trump, the Park – a lakefront facility devoted to promoting his glorious public image.

But we don’t, which is why the site has been one of continuous speculation – including the most recent plans detailed this week by which Emerald Living of Dublin and Barcelona Housing Systems want to acquire the 440 acres of land where steel was once manufactured – and turn it into some 20,000 units of housing.

The latter company has a process of modular, environmentally-friendly technology that is supposed to make it financially practical to build large numbers of housing structures in a short period of time.

As for whether this plan will ever become reality, who’s to say? What I know is that the one-time U.S. Steel South Works site has had so much speculation about what can be done there during the decades since the steel mill there was shuttered.

YET NOTHING MUCH has become of it.

I remember when a deal was reached for Solo Cup Co. was going to build a plant on part of the land (there’s even one of those Jeffery Baer programs on WTTW-TV about Chicago neighborhoods that declares this the future intent of the site).

Most recently, a portion of the land was going to be acquired by the Mariano’s chain of upscale supermarkets so that they could build a grocery store that could service the nearby South Shore and South Chicago neighborhoods – along with my personal favorite Chicago sub-neighborhood; the Bush!

Then, there was the 12-year period in which McCaffery Interests developed a plan to turn the site into practically a new Chicago neighborhood – with its own housing, schools, retail shopping and a marina for the boats that naturally would be owned by the people who lived there.

WHICH MEANT IT was intended to be an upscale community that took full advantage of the proximity of Lake Michigan just to the east. A concept that bothered many of the local residents of the aforementioned existing neighborhoods.

Because those are blue collar areas that, in fact, include one of the oldest Spanish-speaking enclaves in Chicago. They were the kind of neighborhoods meant to house the people who actually worked in the steel mills.

Which, in fact, is why my own grandparents lived in that area. People could walk to work every day.

My grandparents are long gone from South Chicago. But the people who remain were the types to spew out the word “gentrification” as an obscenity – seeing any development as an effort to chase them out of the neighborhood where, in many cases, their families had lived for decades.

SO WHETHER THIS latest project can advance forward is going to depend on how it is presented to the public.

There actually would be one benefit to new housing being built in the area – much of the existing housing stock in South Chicago is old. The house where my maternal grandparents lived is now a vacant lot, but the structures up and down the block date back to that era.

My point being they are old, and some of them haven’t been maintained to an ideal standard. There could be a use for new structures – and something has to become of the site. Having it just sit there idly by is not realistic.

Even if there are people like one anonymous Internet commenter who said he wants the site left alone so that lots of new people don’t move in and screw up his isolated neighborhood. An attitude that is the perfect public policy recipe for a whole lot of nothing to occur for decades to come.

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Does a ring really make up for shabby treatment of Bartman through years?

To me, the scary part of the whole ‘Bartman affair’ is that it offers up actual evidence that Homer Simpson was right when he commented on a long-ago episode about sports fans’ behavior.

Steve Bartman is the Chicago Cubs fan (a concept I never will be able to comprehend) who for 14 years has been blamed by so many other Cubs fans for the failure of the ball club to win the National League championship of 2003.

HE TRULY HAS been reviled for the fact that when he attended Game Six of the final round of National League playoffs that season, he was one of several fans who tried to catch a ball that wound up in the stands.

But which Cubs outfielder Moises Alou ranted and raged at the time he should have been able to catch as a foul ball for an out.

Bartman didn’t even get the ball, but the public perception was that fan interference by the computer programmer was to blame for Alou being unable to make the catch.

Cubs fans just wanted an excuse for Alou’s failure, and the following error by shortstop Alex Gonzalez – both of which caused a seven-run rally that blew a Cubs lead and resulted in the Florida Marlins ultimately going on to the World Series that year.

BUT BARTMAN HAS had to take the blame, to the point where there have been times in his life he’s had to live in seclusion. He definitely has had to keep a low profile in life, all because of the Cubs fan-types who believe Simpson when he said, “this ticket (to a ballgame) doesn’t just give me a seat, it gives me the right, NO the DUTY, to make a complete ass of myself.”

Cubs fans have certainly lived up to that standard whenever the subject comes up.

To the degree that Cubs ownership this week felt compelled to have a special ring made up of their 2016 World Series-winning accomplishment, and to present it to Bartman.

Sort of an apology by the ball club for all the harassment he’s had to endure, when in reality he was just another geeky Cubs fan who was probably just as disappointed as anybody else that the baby blue bears didn’t win it all in ’03.

FOR WHAT IT’S worth, any Cubs fan can go to the Josten’s store set up at Wrigley Field this season and buy themselves a ring – a $299 starting price, or $499 for the deluxe model.

But this particular one is going to have the unique status of having been issued to Bartman himself. Should he ever try to sell it, the ring will be worth more than just the current value of the diamonds used to piece it together.

This ring may well wind up being one of those items that is the basis of the Bartman estate that gets passed down through the generations. I almost feel sorry for anyone pathetic enough who in the future tries to steal it – it would be too hot for anyone else to legally get anything for it.

Personally, I’ve always viewed the whole Affair le Bartman as evidence of the irrationality of the Chicago Cubs and their fan base. Blaming a guy sitting in a seat down the left field foul line for the activity that occurred on the playing field.

BY COMPARISON, FANS of the Chicago White Sox (a more sensible breed on so many levels) know the reason their ball club lost the 1983 American League playoffs was due to a baserunning gaffe by infielder Jerry Dybzinski. Only Cubs fans want to place blame elsewhere other than the playing field.

So it may be a bit extravagant that the Cubs management felt compelled to issue such an expensive (and gaudy, to be honest) piece of jewelry.

Although I like Bartman’s own attitude – he issued a statement in which he said, “my hope is that we all can learn from my experience to view sports as entertainment and prevent harsh scapegoating.”

While in reality, I suspect what he wants to do is be able to go back to being just another anonymous schmo sitting in the stands while watching a ballgame.

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EXTRA: We all lose!!!

I suppose Democrats in Illinois can claim some sort of politically strategic victory in that they prevented Gov. Bruce Rauner from being able to use his amendatory veto powers on the state Education Funding bill on Monday.
 

RAUNER: Couldn't wait to A-Veto Ed Funding bill

Because they waited until so late in the business day on Monday to send him the measure approved by the General Assembly, Rauner was unable to give the bill his rejection until the opening of business on Tuesday.

BUT THE BOTTOM line is that the measure that details exactly how state funds for public schools are allocated remains in limbo. Rauner used his powers to alter a bill to erase portions meant to stabilize the pensions provided to retired teachers of the Chicago Public Schools.

Which actually are handled differently from the way retired teachers in school districts across the rest of Illinois are handled. Leaders of the General Assembly argue they were merely trying to make all public school districts the same.

But Rauner, in his amendatory veto statement, insisted in sticking by his viewpoint that giving this to the Chicago school system somehow throws things off-balance, and in fact amounts to short-changing public school systems in the rest of the state – particularly the rural portions where there are districts that struggle financially.

Of course, Rauner’s viewpoint, and resulting actions, are not a surprise. He has consistently said he intended to reject the Education Funding bill – which is why Democrats used their own procedural moves to delay Rauner’s ability to reject the bill.

WHO’S PLAYING HARDER-ball politics? Does it really matter?

For the politicking over this issue isn’t complete. At some point, the General Assembly has to reconvene to consider the changes the governor has made to their legislative labor.

At which point, they could try to override his changes and force the bill to become law the way they wrote it. Similar to how they forced a budget to be enacted for state government even though Rauner was all for continuing a political stalemate that had already exceeded two years in length.

 

MADIGAN: Will do all to make Rauner look bad

Although the reality is that many of the Republican legislators who were willing to revolt against Rauner on the budget probably won’t do so for an Education Funding bill. Particularly with Rauner’s Chicago rhetoric being spewed.

WE’RE GOING TO remain in a level of uncertainty over public education, and we’re going to have to wait to see who the public winds up deciding is to blame for any confusion caused to the public schools.

Particularly if that confusion winds up impacting the ability of the public schools to open on time.

Just as the one thing Rauner did right politically two years ago when he started all the budgetary stalemate nonsense was to ensure that at least the schools got their money, the schools are what could cause people to revolt.

The reality is that many people view the schools as their kids’ babysitter – a place where they can be sent for the day while they work or take care of other business. Actually putting people in a position where they have to take the time to watch their own kids all day is a sure-fire way to tick them off!

I’M SURE POLITICAL people will make attempts at high-minded, profound statements about wanting to protect our children and ensure they receive the best education they can so as to guarantee our society’s future. But it would be a bunch of bunk.

 

A jolt of political "wisdom?"

Our political people, on both sides, are acting in ways meant to protect their own self-interest. Nobody is really concerned about society, or the people or the public concern.

Anybody who is making clear-cut statements about this issue and declaring a “winner” is merely revealing their own partisan leanings, which means they predicted a winner weeks ago. We don’t have a winner. We’re all losers, in the end.

As as Lily Tomlin used to say back in her “Laugh-In” days, “And that’s the truth, pthbthhh.

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Does anybody really feel compelled to give political millionaire Rauner their own money to help get him re-elected?

My guess is that Illinois’ governor is disappointed with me, and everybody just like me, who ignored his plea on Monday for cash to supplement the personal wealth he plans to commit to the 2018 electoral efforts to keep himself in office, and also to get a more sympathetic state Legislature to rubber-stamp his efforts.

RAUNER: Wants your President Grants

While many people were paying attention to the Statehouse to see if Bruce Rauner really would instantly amendatorily veto any Education Funding bill sent to him Monday by the General Assembly (the bill was sent to him so late in the day that he wound up not being able to act on it -- maybe Tuesday?), my attention was caught by his fund-raising plea.

AS IN RAUNER insisting that Monday night was a deadline by which people had to send their contributions to him if they want to support his desire to stay in office for another four-year term.

“This month’s contributions go directly to sending the Madigan Machine a clear message; Illinois is not going back to the old way of doing things,” he wrote, while suggesting that $50 was the recommended donation.

In fact, Rauner was hoping to get 32 people to donate $50 each – with the 32 being symbolic of the figure he’s repeatedly using to describe the income tax adjustment that was made over his objections when the General Assembly in early July finally settled on a budget for state government.

Of course, one could argue that the “old way of doing things” within state government entailed actually approving budgets and keeping the mechanics of state government operating.

THE OLD WAY didn’t involve being willing to put things at risk just for the sake of partisan politics – just as the governor’s desire to mess with approving an Education Funding bill is also a willingness to put partisan politics ahead of ensuring that the schools get their initial state aid payments as scheduled on Aug. 10.

If that deadline is missed, we could have some sort of delay with the public schools being able to open, since so many districts rely upon their state portion of funding in order to operate.

I’ll admit that the delay in getting an Education Funding bill to Rauner for his consideration was a political maneuver by Democrats – who knew that Rauner intended to play politics with the issue so as to take pot shots at the Chicago Public Schools while hopefully appeasing the rest of the state.

Our state, at times, feels all topsy-turvy

This is the new way, it seems, that Rauner wants us to support with our campaign contributions. Although I suspect the reason he asked for only 32 donations is probably because he suspects there aren’t many more than 32 people in all of Illinois willing to give their money to his campaign.

A RAUNER ELECTORAL effort truly is going to be a self-funded campaign, as we’re going to see just how far people will go in order to buy themselves a government post with which to assuage their egos.

One other part of Rauner’s campaign appeal caught my attention. Many modern-day e-mail appeals for contributions by Democrats go out of their way to imply that tiny amounts of money can build into the large sums needed to operate a credible campaign.

Appeals for as little as $3 are not uncommon.

Yet Rauner wants for his efforts to build a Republican Party in his image some $50. It certainly wasn’t inspiring enough to make me rush out to find a debit card so as to type in my personal information so that they could get my money instantly – in time to beat their July 31 Midnight fundraising deadline.

WE’RE IN A political mindset. Just about everything is going to be given a spin. Such as the announcement last week that the Illinois State Fair this year won’t include an official “Democrat Day” political rally at the fairgrounds.

MADIGAN: Giving the fair back to fans

There are those who are trying to claim that this is Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, being afraid to publicly face people at a time when the school funding is uncertain.

Although considering how few Chicago people attend the state fair, it makes some sense that the urban types who do come probably want to see the rest of the fair attractions and don't want to hear more campaign blather.

Give ‘em a lemon shakeup and maybe a ticket to a Foghat or Alabama concert (even though the latter is technically on the fair's "Republican Day"), and they’ll enjoy a little less political rhetoric being spewed about.

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