People willing to play partisan politics, so long as they think it's just someone else's money at stake, not their own

A pair of intriguing tidbits I stumbled across Friday on the Internet – the federal government shutdown affects the IRS employees who would process tax returns. Those people who go out of their way to file their returns promptly in hopes of getting a near-immediate refund will have to wait to get their money back.

IRS to become factor in govt shutdown

I also stumbled across a Facebook-type friend of mine who offered up the opinion that the shutdown will last “until” people start noticing their refunds aren’t coming in.

IMPLYING THAT DESPITE all of President Donald Trump’s attempts to turn the lack of a federal budget in place into a fight for a barricade to be built along the U.S./Mexico border will ultimately end as a fight over income tax return checks.

Or perhaps I should say, the direct deposits made into their bank accounts of their refunds.

And dadgummit, the people will be more than willing to blame Trump for the whole affair – if they think he’s depriving them of their own money.

This whole government shutdown has become pathetic – even by the standards of partisan political battles. It is a complete non-issue that has been elevated to the level of significance during the past two weeks.

SOMETHING THAT SHOULD never have gained any traction has elevated an irrelevant (to the overall budget questions) issue such as immigration policy, and is being turned into something catastrophic.

What’s really sad is we have no real idea how long it could last. For Trump himself has made comments implying both that this is an issue that could extend for months, if not years; and that it won’t. If anything, his admission that it won't sound more realistic, because otherwise, we'd have to think The Donald is dumb enough to make the same mistakes of stubbornness that dragged the Illinois governorship of Bruce Rauner to its demise last election.

Will IRS, credit card co's push Trump to back down

But the, it wouldn't be surprising to learn that Trump thinks he can declare the situation a “national emergency” and issue an executive order to have a border wall built regardless of what anybody else thinks, while turning the budgetary issue into a moot point. Which, truth be told, is the only style Trump has for governing.

If anything, his presidency to date has been evidence of why business executives with oversized egos are completely UNqualified to play politics or govern the public.

WE’RE GOING TO see politics more and more in coming days – what with the newly-elected House of Representatives that has Democratic Party leadership being more than willing this week to take as one of its first actions a vote that puts in place a federal budget that enables the government to operate.

Oh, and by the way, it ignores Trump’s wall “demands” completely, leading many to say Trump will use his “veto” powers and keep the shutdown going – with him them spewing more trash talk to place blame on Democrats.

Particularly on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whom I’m sure Trump will greatly resent if history winds up recording her as the woman who thumped Trump on this issue, or any other that will come up in the next couple of years.

There are those politicos who are saying that a failure to get something resembling a border barricade built will be the ultimate demise of his presidency. That is, if you believe Rep. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C.

WHICH IS NONSENSE talk, except that Trump himself spews so much nonsense that I don’t doubt he’s inane enough to believe it all!

Does it offend Trump ego to deal w/ Madame Speaker?

So I don’t really know how long all of the nonsense is going to last. It may well be that tax return issue that forces action to take place. Because we’re at that time of year where some people like to file their returns immediately after New Year’s Day so they can get a quickie refund – and a cash influx to help pay all those bills they incurred during the holiday season.

Forget the high-minded talk of Democratic ideals or cheap “America First” rhetoric or whatever partisan side’s talk you tend to listen to.

The real demanding presence could wind up being Visa or MasterCard sending people the bills demanding they “pay up!,” which they won’t be able to until that refund check, actual or digital, comes rolling in.

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Survival of Ed Burke? Or the creation of a new Latino political power couple?

So what’s going to be the outcome of this year’s aldermanic elections for Chicago’s 14^th Ward – one of those Southwest Side bastions that likes to think its all politically powerful because its alderman for the past 50 years has been Ed Burke.

BURKE: Latinos to decide if he stays, or goes

Because he’s the council Finance chairman and has been around so long, he has developed a certain undue influence as the aldermen other aldermen seek out for support, and whom mayors themselves think twice about before double-crossing.

BUT BURKE HAS the rumor mill running overtime in thinking he’s under the microscope of the FBI. Nobody knew for what until Thursday, when federal prosecutors filed extortion charges against the long-time alderman for allegedly trying to get the owners of a Burger King franchise to throw legal business to his law firm.

Even before the charges were known, Latino activists who have long noted the area’s growing population shifting from the white Irish of old to a growing mix of Mexican-Americans were thinking this is now the time to dump Eddie and replace him with “one of our own,” so to speak.

But the one thing Burke has going in his favor is that the ethnic vote could wind up being split. It seems that five candidates of Latino ethnic backgrounds have declared their candidacies to challenge Burke come the Feb. 26 election – and April 2 runoff, if necessary.

The last official population count of the city showed the ward with a 79.89 percent total of Latinos. This is NO longer a part of the white ethnic class that three decades ago rewarded Burke for his vocal opposition to Harold Washington’s time as mayor.

Patino and Ortiz (below), … 

WITH SOME 54,000 residents roughly, only 16.87 percent are white. Although many of them are the ones who have lived in the area for decades – if not all their lives. They may also be the ones who most strongly identify with the ward’s old identity – and could easily be swayed into thinking this is an election to keep things the way they were.

Theoretically, a 78.89 percent group ought to be able to mop up the floor with the 16.87 percent group. Particularly if one thing they have in common is that it’s not a black-friendly environment (only 1.5 percent African-American population).

But then we get back to the idea of there being five candidates who will be making the political appeal that it’s “time for change.” Split that majority up five ways, and the white minority becomes large enough to win. Especially if many of the Latino voters can be swayed into thinking that casting a ballot is not worth their time.

… the couple who topple the Burkes?

It was to that end that new Rep. Jesus Garcia, D-Ill., who wants to be viewed as the most-powerful Latino in Chicago politics, felt compelled to intervene in this particular election – making an endorsement of a 28-year-old neophyte to beat Burke.

TANYA PATINO HAS never held elective office before. Her education was in engineering, and Garcia said she could bring an interesting perspective to the City Council – where most aldermen merely think of construction projects as something that brings jobs to their district and puts sizable contributions into their campaign funds.

Patino also is, according to the Chicago Tribune, the woman who is dating Aaron Ortiz, the man who next week takes over the Illinois House seat that was held for many decades by Burke’s brother, Dan. The same elements that took down Dan’s re-election last year are now being turned on Ed.

So is the Ortiz/Patino pairing going to go into the books as the one that knocked the Burkes out of the local political scene altogether? Or will Ed Burke figure out a way to stretch what likely will be his backers’ enthusiasm into a large-enough group to win?

Don’t think this can’t happen. I still recall the 1990s when Republicans got control of the redistricting process and took the Illinois House map for the southwest side and tried to create a whole series of districts meant to bolster the number of African-American legislators.

Some things haven't changed since days of Harold

IN THEORY, THEY did. But in reality, a then little-known lawyer named Tom Dart (I first met him years ago when he was with the state’s attorney’s office at the courthouse in suburban Markham) decided to use his white ethnic Mount Greenwood neighborhood base up against the black majorities that comprised the surrounding neighborhoods within the legislative district.

That 1992 election saw Dart defeat a half-dozen African-American candidates and serve in the Legislature for a decade – eventually building up the greater kind of support that has enabled him to rise to his current post as Cook County Sheriff.

I’m also aware of many suburban communities where majority African-American populations have developed, but that the local governments are run by white people who’ve been around for decades and keep getting re-elected because the long-time residents care enough to turn out to vote on Election Day – while others don’t bother.

So I’d say it’s uncertain as to what the ultimate outcome of the aldermanic election will be – Burke’s continued political survival? Or Ortiz having to accept that his girlfriend could get elected to a position that (within the local political pecking order) outranks his?

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EXTRA: From Donald Trump down to Burger King, the deals that exist in Chi

If you think about it too long, it becomes pathetically laughable.

BURKE: An ultimate petty political scam

Edward M. Burke, who is about to hit the 50-year mark in terms of his service on the City Council, faces criminal indictment because of deals his law firm did connected to a Burger King franchise that wanted to operate in his neighborhood.

THAT'S RIGHT, BURGER King. As in the makers of the Whopper who used to challenge McDonald's by giving us the chance to "have it your way" when eating a hamburger. Most definitely NOT Donald Trump.

It seems the operators of a Burger King franchise at 4060 S. Pulaski Rd. had plans for remodeling the place, and that effort was going to require permits issued by City Hall. Those people were advised to hire their legal counsel from Burke's law firm to ensure the process was done correctly.

Then, it is alleged that a company executive was advised how it would be advantageous to their interests to make a campaign contribution that Burke would then pass along to other political people. News reports on Thursday indicated that mayoral hopeful Toni Preckwinkle was meant to be the recipient of the money.

The U.S. Attorney's office, however, is viewing all this behavior as criminal; hence the criminal complaint made public Thursday that files one count of attempted extortion. Although I can easily envision how political operatives will argue this charge is an attempt to criminalize the political process.

TRUMP: So much for taking down president

REMEMBER HOW SOME people were getting all hyped up over the idea that Burke was somehow under investigation because of his ties to Donald Trump in pre-presidential days, back when he was trying to get City Hall to approve the construction of his monstrosity of a namesake building along the Chicago River? Which even Trump himself has complained about.

We had some seriously drooling at the very thought of a political scandal connecting da Hall to the White House -- and one that could take down Trump as well! Not quite. Not even close.

The new preferred 'fast food' of the City Hall set?

Instead, it seems that all that really was at stake was someone trying to do a remodeling so that you could eat a Whopper in slightly-less-grungy conditions the next time you happened to be in that particular neighborhood.

And that Burger King franchise now gets a further bit of notoriety, as early news reports noted it was the same place where Laquan McDonald was walking past on that date in 2014 when he was shot dead by police for ignoring their demand that he stop his erratic behavior.

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Freshman senator already declares candidacy for an Illinois top pol spot

I remember a time some two decades ago at the Statehouse in Springfield interviewing a legislator – Nancy Kaszak from Chicago’s Northwest Side.

STAVA-MURRAY: A freshman playing like powerhouse

What sticks in my mind about this interview was now unproductive it was. She wasn’t able to say much, ultimately explaining her ignorance on the issue by saying, “I’m a freshman” and that leadership hadn’t kept her fully appraised of this particular issue.

I COULDN’T HELP but think back to Kaszak when I heard this week about Anne Stava-Murray – a newly-elected Illinois House member from suburban Naperville. She hasn’t even taken office yet, but already has declared her political intentions for the 2020 election cycle.

She’s am ambitious sort, I’ll give her that. She’s going to run for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois that will be open next year. That, of course, is the seat currently held (and has been since 1996) by Richard Durbin.

Of course, the presumption is that Durbin will be seeking re-election. If he were going to try moving to another political post, the obvious shift would be to try becoming Illinois’ governor.

DURBIN: Does he have credible opponent?

But that would have entailed him being willing to give up his current Senate seat in order to run in last year’s election cycle – instead of becoming one of J.B. Pritzker’s political supporters. He wasn’t willing to risk his seat – and it may well be he enjoys being one of the Senate’s elder statesmen, with hopes his name will someday be held in the same regard as Everett McKinley Dirksen, who served in D.C. from 1933 until his death in 1969.

THE LONG-AGO Republican from Pekin who became among the GOP elder statemen with a reputation for being willing to work in a bipartisan political manner. A legend, of sorts, in the halls of Capitol Hill.

Except to people like Stava-Murray, who claims that if Durbin were serious, he’d have already formally declared his candidacy. Although I suspect he already has the beginnings of a re-election bid up and running in a low-key manner.

MADIGAN: Her 'real' opponent?

She’s already setting her sights on Durbin, which will have one political benefit for her.

It will help her erase the stink of being just a freshman representative in the Illinois House – one that she was definitely going to face because she has openly talked of the need to dump long-time (a full half-century) Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, from his political post.

SHE WAS IN full agreement with those Republican ideologues who tried running campaigns last year on the grounds that we need to “Dump Madigan!” and she publicly refused to take the aid that Madigan usually provides to Democrats to support his own Illinois House majority.

It’s not likely she’d have a lengthy future as a representative, since I don’t doubt the Madigan operation is already seeking someone more politically sympathetic to “Mr. Speaker” to challenge Stava-Murray come 2020.

DIRKSEN: Most definitely of the past

But by doing this, she’ll shift the story from her being a renegade legislator to her being one of Illinois’ top politicos (along with Sen. Tammy Duckworth, Gov.-elect Pritzker and whichever of the assorted characters manages to win the mayoral elections to be held next month and in April).

I don’t doubt that Democratic operatives will go out of their way to undermine Stava-Murray and try to ensure she returns to being a political nobody after next year.

BUT I HAVE to wonder what goes through her mindset – if she really thinks she’s the beneficiary of a revolutionary “movement” against Madigan, instead of someone who won because of the intense level of contempt many of us feel for Donald Trump!

TRUMP: His critics led Stava-Murray to win

To me, the explanation is that she’s from Naperville – which once was a part of the great DuPage County Republican organization that was among the strengths of the GOP nationwide.

There once would have been a time when Stava-Murray would have been a Republican aspirant for political office – except that the Republicans have gone so far overboard to become the political party of rural America that I suspect if she had tried to run in the Republican primary last year, she’d have lost. They wouldn't want her. She's a Democrat by default!

It may well be that Stava-Murray is showing off her political ignorance and doesn’t fully realize “which side” she’s on. For her sake, she’s going to have to figure things out and “pick a side,” or else it could turn into a bloody two years for her.

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Who provides Chicago football fans with their cheap thrills for the season?

Fans of the gridiron are having their share of potential thrills, along with disappointments, now that we’re at the time of year in which the bowl games are being played.

Will the Chicago Bears still be relevant when the Super Bowl comes to Atlanta?

We’ll have to see just how the Chicago Bears fare – with some fans being delusional enough to think this is the year of a Super Bowl championship.

OF COURSE, THIS could just as easily be the year the Bears get knocked out of the playoffs in the first round when they take on the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday.

In which case, this could easily turn out to be the season where all of the big-time football teams managed to fall short.

After all, Notre Dame is the team that lost only one game this season and qualified for the Cotton Bowl – which theoretically could have put them in contention for the national title for college football.

But the Fighting Irish managed to get walloped in that game against Clemson – thereby reinforcing the attitude felt amongst many that Notre Dame’s days of being a college football power are all long in the past.

IF THE BEARS manage to get knocked out early in the playoff rounds, the disappointment would be comparable to that of Notre Dame.

Sad sack of Chicago-area football; or can we just write them off as Hoosiers?

Which is where Northwestern University comes in. The suburban Evanston-based school that likes to market itself as “Chicago’s Big 10 Team” fell short of winning the Big 10 conference title – losing to Ohio State, which on Tuesday won the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif. But they did get one of the lesser bowl games, and managed to win.

A 31-20 victory over Utah in the Holiday Bowl – which means the Wildcats got a trip to San Diego. While we got soggy wet on New Year’s Eve, they got California sunshine just as they would have if they had managed to prevail against the Buckeyes in Indianapolis.

Was the one-time Dyche Stadium the place where most interesting football of 2018 was played?

It could turn out to be the highlight of Chicago-area football for the season – unless the Bears truly are capable of going on a winning streak to take them all the way to a Super Bowl victory in Atlanta on Feb. 3 – which could show that the 12-4 record they achieved this year wasn’t a complete fluke and that the only fluke of the year may well have been Notre Dame.

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Chicago’s homicide rate down for another year, but is anyone swayed?

For the second straight year, it appears Chicago’s tally of homicide will decline, and certainly isn’t anywhere near how high it reached back in the days of some three decades ago.

Workload not as violent, but it doesn't feel easier

Yet let’s be honest; I have no doubt that the instant another incident occurs that we’ll get another diatribe from Donald Trump and his ilk about just how god-awfully violent the Second City is.

AS THOUGH THE key to our improvement is to replace our elected officials with people inclined to sympathize with this Age of Trump we now live in. Allowing ourselves to be perceived as “blue” and the reason why Illinois is so intensely hostile toward Republican interests is the real reason for the diatribes.

For I doubt the people who make such absurd statements really care about the conditions in Chicago. It’s just another partisan piece of rhetoric they can use against the political opposition.

I doubt they care in the least about the people who actually have to suffer in the parts of Chicago that provide the bulk of the incidents that comprise most of the city’s homicide rate. If anything, I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the ideologues who most complain about the city’s statistics related to violence think the people who are the brunt of the incidents are to blame for their own circumstances.

That’s the reason why I have such hostile reactions toward anybody who tries to make an issue of the homicide total – which in coming days is going to get another update.

FOR WE’RE IN a New Year. As of Friday (Dec. 28), there had been 570 people killed by the deliberate actions of another human being (which is the very definition of ‘homicide’). When one adds in the weekend running through incidents as late as midnight Monday, that’s bound to increase a bit.

But it would take a total bloodbath for the death tally for Chicago to exceed the 675 of 2017, which itself was lower than 2016 – which is starting to appear more and more like some sort of statistical fluke.

Rather than a return to the days of the late 1980s into the early 1990s, when it was typical for there to be between 900 and 1,000 homicides per year – which means the recent spurt isn’t even close to what this city used to experience.

Not all explosions are celebratory fireworks

I’ll be honest and admit that era sticks in my mind particularly harshly; largely because that’s back in the day when I worked for the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago and the daily activity of the Chicago Police was on the forefront of my mind.

BUT EVEN THEN, the bulk of violent crime in Chicago was contained to certain neighborhoods. There were parts of Chicago where a single violent death would be considered a major headline, while other parts of Chicago would have so many incidents that most of them were never covered beyond anybody but a “City News” kid reporter.

The sad part of this story is that, according to a Chicago Tribune report on Monday, it appears the leading police districts for violent crime will be Harrison on the West Side and Englewood on the South.

Which, to be honest, were the leaders for violent crime back in my own police reporting days.

It’s as though nothing has changed, and certain parts of Chicago continue to get the brunt of everything that is wrong with the city – while other parts manage to benefit from the city’s improvements of recent decades.

WHICH IS WHAT I’m sure the ideologues will complain is some form of hypocrisy on the part of Chicagoans – talking up our strengths while ignoring those of us who don’t fall into certain demographics.

TRUMP: Numbers won't matter, he'll complain!

Yet I’d also note that the ideologues are more than willing to see certain peoples amongst us (most often, the ones of us whose complexion doesn’t resemble their own in the least) continue to suffer from violence and the other societal problems that are brought about by such attitudes.

As in they’re merely interested in using a high homicide tally to tag the rest of us with a dirty brush. And as for the people who will suffer, I can’t help but think of those who (invariably) will perish in the early hours of Tuesday – starting off a new year with the same ol’ nonsense,

You just know someone will be hit by stray shrapnel from a nitwit who thinks the way to kick of 2019 is to fire off a weapon into the air; hitting an unintended target several blocks away.

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A glorious new year from the Imps

It's 2019, a brand-new year. Some may think we should be looking forward.

And yet, I can't help but get a kick out of this musical number of old. From Hellzapoppin' 1941,  turning the ever-traditional Auld Lang Syne into a jazzy dance number.

AS FOR THOSE of you who will find Satanic imagery a bit much, I can't help but think you should lighten up a bit. It's too comical to take seriously. Particularly the cutesy dogs being chased about by Satan's little helpers (and no, I don't mean Bart Simpson's pet dog) as they exit an automobile.

So enjoy, as we enter into another new year. And here's hoping that 2019 turns out to be a far-better year than the one we had a century ago -- when 1919 saw serious race riots on the South Side AND the Chicago White Sox losing the World Series that some are determined to forevermore lambast the ballclub for.

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