What’s more important to the political people; gay marriage or re-election?

Something I have learned over and over about the Illinois General Assembly is that it is a legislative body that likes to do things on its own time-clock and resents it whenever it perceives that someone is trying to rush them.

A house of inactivity??!?

Heck, one of the reasons that the last-minute bill back in 1988 that approved the funding for construction of a new stadium for the Chicago White Sox was controversial was that it got rammed through the legislative process when many political people would have just as soon put the issue on hold for a few years.

KEEPING THAT ATTITUDE in mind, I’m not going to be surprised if Illinois House of Representatives officials wind up doing nothing in coming weeks with the issue of gay marriage.

The bill that would allow same-gender couples to have legally legitimate marriages already has Illinois Senate approval, but has yet to come up for a vote in the Illinois House.

Back in May, state Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago, implied when he didn’t push for a vote on the issue that it would be something that would come up in the fall Veto Session.

Well, the Veto Session is scheduled to begin this week (although the substantive work by the General Assembly won’t take place for another couple of weeks).

DOES THIS MEAN we’re on the verge of a measure being sent to Gov. Pat Quinn for his approval? He has said he’d sign it into law the moment he gets ahold of it.

I was amused by reading the advance stories on this issue published by the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times – both of which seem to be as skeptical as I am that anything will happen.

Will we get an Illinois House version of this roll call?

 

The Tribune emphasized the Veto Session’s time proximity to the upcoming election cycle. Candidates for the March primary would have to submit their nominating petitions to get on the ballot by early December.

Meaning anybody who’s determined to keep the homophobic viewpoint as a part of Illinois would have an incumbent legislator’s “yes” vote fresh on the electorate’s mind. There’d be time to get themselves on the ballot and stir up resentment toward an incumbent legislator.

ALTHOUGH I WAS intrigued by a mention in the Sun-Times report, which says that some of the financial types whose cash props up political campaigns are eager to have a vote on the issue even if it winds up failing.

This rhetoric will rise!

Because they want it on the record who would vote “no” on the gay marriage issue – so they can start providing the funds to political challengers who could possibly defeat them!

The point of all of this is that no matter how someone votes, there will be someone else who will become offended. There likely will be somebody who loses their legislative post because of their vote on this issue – regardless of how they actually vote!

All of which makes me think the legislative leadership will take the politically cowardly (they’ll say they’re just being safe) stance of doing nothing. The bill likely will not get called up before the Illinois House.

AFTER ALL, THE point of the Veto Session is for the General Assembly to consider the bills that the governor spent the summer months vetoing. Other issues are supposed to wait until the spring. It is their chance to either override his intent, or decide that it’s not worth fighting for and they go along with it.

Will the next step take place this week?

For now.

This same attitude may well apply to the pension funding problems our state government faces. Nothing will happen because nobody can agree on what should be done.

Considering that Quinn has said he wants action on that issue before he’s willing to do much of anything else (particularly those tax breaks soon-to-be-formerly-of Archer Daniels Midland wants to stay in Illinois instead of moving to a place like Dallas), this veto session could be a whole lot of nothing.

PARTICULARLY SINCE THE one controversial amendatory veto by Quinn has already been dealt with – the General Assembly couldn’t wait until October to dump all over the governor when it came to the issue of “concealed carry” of firearms. They reconvened in special session during the summer.

That was more about the Legislature asserting its own self-interest. Which, sad to say, is the usual motivation for any time the General Assembly gets off its collective keister to do anything!

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The Redskins used to be about Dixie; the team name will change in due time

With the Chicago Bears headed off to the Maryland suburbs that contain the stadium used these days by the Washington Redskins, we’re going to get our own earful of the controversy about whether or not the D.C. entry in the National Football League has a tacky, offensive and racist nickname.

People in positions as prominent as President Barack Obama have said they don’t approve of the term that was meant as a slur against those whose ethnic origins trace back to the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

WHO SURE WEREN’T white, and to whom the phrase was meant to dehumanize them (they didn’t even have real skin like “normal” people).

So yes, it is obvious that the nickname is tacky, and if the Washington ball club were at all sensitive to the real world, they would have ditched the nickname decades ago.

But the team owners have dug themselves in, claiming that to change the name now would be to disrespect the decades of sporting glory the team has brought to the nation’s capital.

Which is stupid. But if they want to take the abuse that goes along with an offensive nickname (rather than worrying about the quality of their offensive line), then so be it. It's not a "badge of honor."

PERSONALLY, I’M NOT getting too worked up because I really do believe the day will come when “Redskins” will disappear. It will be a low-key change. And the only people who will have an objection will be those ideological twits who are determined to go to their graves defending a status quo that gave them a right to look down upon anyone who wasn’t exactly like themselves.

Do fans of 'Redskins' think they're still at Griffith Stadium

What makes me think this is the fact that the Washington team’s own history shows signs of change to the atmosphere and culture of professional football in the capital city.

This was once such a Southern-oriented team – one that took advantage of the fact that it was the only NFL franchise south of the Mason/Dixon Line and east of the Mississippi River where they marketed themselves as the South’s team.

Back in the days of the Civil Rights movement when Southerners were convinced those Damn Yankees were taking over the capitol, probably the only thing out of Washington they had use for was the Redskins. Now, they probably even regard the team as the “enemy.”

THIS IS THE franchise that was the last to integrate to include black athletes on the roster. 1962 – they even make the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies look good, by comparison.

Those teams never had Illinois-born George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party goons protesting in support of the concept of, “keeping the Redskins white.” Which is such a ridiculous concept, if you think about it.

So many changes since then

This also is the football team whose own marching theme has been re-written throughout the years so as to tone down all the lyrical references to scalping, the lyrics written in a style as though Tonto were talking and the bit at the end where the melody of the song broke out into a line of “Dixie.” (The line about “Fight for old D.C.!” for a little while was “Fight for old Dixie”).

Somewhere in my belongings is an old vinyl record album of NFL Marching Songs from 1960 – which meant that it includes the version of the song for the Redskins as it existed back then.

TO THE MODERN ear set, hearing a Washington-song end off with the unofficial anthem of the South is bizarre. Just as I’m sure in future years, it will be equally bizarre for D.C. football fanatics to think their team used a slur as its image.

We will get to that point someday. It is inevitable.

Just as one other fact remains true. “Hail to the Redskins” may well be one of the oldest marching themes for an NFL franchise. But it’s pretty lame compared to “Bear Down, Chicago Bears.”

It doesn't have to be about 'Redskins' or Chief Wahoo!

 

Go Bears!!!!!!!!!!!! And maybe Washington could take lessons from our very own Chicago Blackhawks about how one can use native imagery in their identity without being so blatantly offensive.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: I don't agree with publications that think they're taking a high-minded stance by refusing to acknowledge the nickname "Redskins." It exists. It ought to be reported as such to the point where we make it uncomfortable for it to be used by the team. Otherwise, it comes across like we're merely ignoring facts we'd rather not acknowledge.
 

Chicago evolutions; Is there now a city that lives on only in my head?

Every time I happen to be at State and Randolph streets, it triggers a childhood memory – an old advertising board for cigarettes that used to have a picture of a man smoking the tobacco product.

Maybe I'm not alone in remembering?

With real, live smoke coming from his mouth.

YEAH, I KNOW. It’s the kind of gimmick that only a 4-year-old would find amusing. But if my mind recalls correctly, I was 4, and I was downtown with my father taking in the ambiance of a crowded metropolitan area.

A sensation that still gives me a tingle in my spine every time I set foot in the Loop.

Although I suspect I’m the only person who walks by that intersection and has recollections of a more-than-four decade-old advertising billboard. They’re really getting their money’s worth.

Then again, it is far from the only memory I have that still registers in my memory whenever I’m in this wonderful Second City.

TO ME, A trip up the Dan Ryan Expressway always manages to cause some confusion round about when I get near 85^th Street. Because a part of me expects to see the bright-red with white lettering advertising billboard for the Magikist carpet-cleaning company.

Those of you of a certain age know exactly what I’m writing about – the Magikist lips. Which may well have also had advertising signs on the other expressways. But the Dan Ryan sign is the one so burned in my brain that I always have to remind myself that it doesn’t exist anymore.

A part of me still looks for those lips

In fact, it has been gone for more than two decades – 1992, to be exact.

It is similar to the sensation I experience whenever I ride on the Dan Ryan or a commuter train and approach 35^th Street.

A PART OF me looks to the north side of the street to see the worn-brick building with so many coats of whitewash all over it where the White Sox have played baseball since the days of Ray Schalk and Joe Jackson.

The "Cracker's" old field still sticks in our minds

Only it has been gone for even longer than those lips! Which may be a large part of the reason why the structure known as U.S. Cellular never gets its due respect – seeing it reminds of us what was lost! I suspect at times even the younger generation (there are people old enough to think they're "life-long" Chicagoans who are too young to remember Comiskey Park) knows it missed out on something!

Just on Thursday I was walking along Randolph Street in the Loop when I remembered the buses I used to take back when I was in college, and the way they would take me all the way into downtown from Bloomington, Ill., to the stations along Randolph, which also used to have those garish theaters before the area tried to convert itself into an “upscale theatre” district. One that I suspect is limited and second-rate compared to the "real" theater districts of New York City. Do we make ourselves look silly by comparison?

 

Yes, I recall how seedy the area used to be. Just as in the South Loop (particularly the area around the old 11th and State headquarters of the Chicago Police Department), one didn’t want to linger around either area too long. Although there’s a part of me to which my favorite scene in the Blues Brothers film were those few moments of stock footage (think of the Peter Gunn theme) of the seedier parts of Chicago leading up to the flophouse (transient hotel, to use the proper term) where Dan Aykroyd’s “Elwood Blues” character really lived.

 

WHOSE GHOST WOULD be more appalled at the modern-day status of Chicago -- "Cracker" Schalk in seeing his old ball field paved over into parking, or John Belushi's "Jake Blues" character missing his cinematic home that is no more? All of this always triggers memories to me of what once was, and will never be again.

Of course, it’s not just places that change. So do even the gadgets and gizmos that exist amongst us.



How common will this become?

Just on Thursday I noticed for the first time ever a newsbox that had been rigged up to accept credit cards. Just swipe your card through the slot, and you can open the box and take a copy of the Chicago Sun-Times.

Is this the wave of the future? I could see how it would appeal to a younger generation that wants to think of money as something accessed through a card, rather than cash to be carried with them.

ALTHOUGH I WONDER how good an idea it will seem to be when the first time harsh Chicago weather causes the device to malfunction – either causing it to refuse to sell papers or causing it to charge someone $10 a copy. Maybe that’s a Sun-Times fantasy of a way to keep the paper alive! Or maybe it can record the card numbers of those people who think it's okay to help themselves to multiple copies of the newspaper!

All I know is that in the Chicago of my mind, people carry change on them when they want to buy a newspaper, perhaps after attending a ballgame on the northeast corner of 35^th and Shields and passing those lips on the way back home.

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EDITOR’S NOTE: The popularity of the Forgotten Chicago website makes me wonder if I’m not alone in remembering fondly what once was in our wonderful home city?

Will Chicago start spewing, get stagnated by, the “reparations” label?

It seems that some people want the stain of one-time police Commander Jon Burge to live on for a long, long time.



The future Chicago Police Dept. image?

Because that’s what’s going to happen if a measure introduced before the City Council this week ever becomes law.

THE ACTIVITIES OF the then-Pullman Area violent crimes detectives who allegedly abused to the point of torture the people they were arresting for assorted crimes remain in the news even with Burge sitting in a federal prison in North Carolina.

Because we periodically get the reports of the City Council (on behalf of the Police Department) and the Cook County Board (on behalf of the state’s attorney’s office) giving their approval to settle out-of-court various lawsuits filed by people who suffered physical torture anywhere from about 1972 to 1991.

Which is when the public outcry reached a peak intense enough that Burge finally had to retire. Ultimately, the only thing prosecutors were able to get on him was a perjury conviction – for his testimony during some of the civil lawsuits when he said he never tortured nobody!

Under the measure introduced by 1^st Ward Alderman Proco “Joe” Moreno and 21^st Ward Alderman Howard Brookins, people with claims of torture would go before a to-be-created city committee that could issue them reparation payments that could consist of counseling, job training, help with tuition if they want to attend one of the schools in the City Colleges of Chicago system, and something formally resembling an official policy.

Will this CPD image be supplanted by Burge?

THE PART THAT gets my attention though is that history lessons would have to be taught about the extent of Burge’s activity on the Far South Side all those decades ago.

I can already envision the arguments we’re going to get from people who are going to want the worst possible spin placed on the incident AND from those who desperately want to believe that police are justified in using such physical treatment on people they want to write off as criminals.

Burge is going to live on in our collective memory. I just wonder if THIS is going to be the Chicago Police Department image that will overtake the conduct of cops at the 1968 Democratic Convention, just like that event overtook the police behavior at Haymarket Square.

Part of what bothers me about this is the fact that proponents of this change want to use the “reparations” label to describe it. That has already become a loaded term for those people who want to ignore the impact of slavery upon our nation and our society. My own stance on that issue is that reparations should have been paid to the slaves themselves, and that our nation should be ashamed of itself for not having followed through on that "40 Acres and a Mule" promise.

THEY’RE GOING TO gain some moral outrage over wanting to reject this idea as well!

It ensures we’re likely to never be able to overcome the emotional damage our city suffers from Burge if we’re picking up on such loaded terms. This could become a matter just as intense as those people who want to refer to the experience of slavery in this country as a “holocaust” – regardless of the fact that it is the wrong word to use.

It’s not that I don’t sympathize with those who suffered at the hands of people who used their official authority to abuse the rights of the public – or at least those people in the public they didn’t like much.

The past image of the CPD's violent behavior

 

But I can’t help but see the lawsuit settlements (WBEZ-FM radio reports that some $84 million has been paid by city government alone) as being the restitution given to those who actually suffered.

IF IT SOUNDS like I’m saying that someone who has a gripe should take it to the courts, perhaps I am.

I’m just skeptical that this latest measure will do anything positive. Which might be the real damage from Jon Burge to the city.

Creating an abusive legacy for the city that just won’t die.

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EXTRA: Will Ill. high ct. back Gov?

Will Ill. Supreme Court back Quinn?

So what happens if the Supreme Court of Illinois decides that Gov. Pat Quinn was justified, after all, in his attempt to deny pay to the state Legislature while the pension funding problems confronting the state were still pending?

It won’t mean the state gets the money back.

FOR THE ILLINOIS comptroller’s office made sure to rush out the checks for legislative salaries for August and September, and the General Assembly members have since received their pay due Oct. 1.

I don’t envision any of the 177 members of the Legislature chosen to do “the peoples’ business” being willing to “give back” the money they were paid – that’s three month’s salary.

Would you be willing to give back that much money from your own income?

All of this is a relevant possibility, because the Supreme Court on Wednesday issued an order saying it will hear arguments by Quinn and his attorneys to challenge the Cook County judge who last month ruled that he had no authority to withhold pay from anyone in state government.

TYPICALLY, SOMEONE WISHING to challenge a circuit court ruling would have to take their case to the Illinois appellate court for their part of the state. Only after that court rules would the state Supreme Court even consider hearing the case.

Wednesday’s ruling allows Quinn to skip a step and ensures that the Illinois high court will rule on the issue eventually -- although the case may not be heard (and ruled on) until next year.

They may well decide that the Cook County court (in the form of Judge Neil Cohen) got it right. Or they may not. I try never to predict what appeals courts do on any level! Judicial temperament can be so erratic and unpredictable.

QUINN: About his political ego now

There won’t be any financial savings to the state – other than the fact that Quinn insists he’s still refusing to accept a salary while the whole pension funding issue is pending.

BY THIS POINT, it’s personal. Quinn would like to have a court ruling that backs him up. Not that the public at large objected to the idea of legislators going unpaid (they probably believe the political hacks don’t deserve any salary at all).

But he’d like for history to record that he’s making some sort of effort – compared to the Legislature. Where the typical member doesn’t have a clue what is going on, and where the members of a special panel that are supposed to be studying the issue seem split.

Should there be an effort to protect the interests of state employees who have worked all these years with some expectation of retirement benefits? Or should this be part of an effort to weaken the influence of organized labor within state government?

It’s important to realize that this has become an overly partisan political issue, regardless of who one listens to. And one in which no one really has a clue if it can be resolved during the Legislature’s upcoming veto session – regardless of Quinn’s constant rhetoric that he’s doing everything he can to try to solve the pension problem.

WHETHER ONE WANTS to accept it or not, the Cook County courts put themselves into a political hissy fit when Cohen ruled.

Will the high court further enhance the partisanship with their ruling? We’ll have to wait to see just how more mucked up things can become!

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Did CPS drive students away from school? What can keep them in class?

When the Chicago Public Schools closed several of its inner-city facilities as part of a measure to control costs, much was made of the complaints from some parents that they didn’t want their children to attend the schools that had been picked for them as alternatives.

In many cases, it seems that the walk to the new school would cause kids to have to enter, or pass through, neighborhoods that were not deemed safe.

IN SOME CASES, street gang alliances were not being taken into account, and parents feared their children might get caught up in the middle of that layer of nonsense that afflicts our city’s neighborhoods.

So it was with some interest that I read the Chicago Tribune report published Tuesday that said almost half of the kids who had their old school closed were not transferring to the schools that CPS officials intended for them to go to.

Which means the roughly $233 million in renovations and other improvements that were meant to help the “new” schools accommodate the extra student load may not have been spent in the most practical of manners.

The Tribune has reporters who found parents who decided that rather than have their kids go to school at the place the Chicago Public Schools thought was practical, they were making arrangements to send their kids elsewhere.

EVEN THOUGH IN many cases, it means an even longer commute and more of a hassle for the parents – all because they REALLY, REALLY don’t want their kids in school environments where they fear the urban violence factor will overcome any learning benefits their kids might get.

The Tribune found the Metcalfe Elementary School near the Pullman neighborhood that has 77 new students due to the school closings of earlier this year – even though that school wasn’t supposed to get newcomers, has limited access that creates problems for students with disabilities, and a lack of funds to fix the problem.

All in all, it sounds like a mess – school closings that weren’t thought out thoroughly enough.

Now I’m not about to start ranting (again) about the flaws in the school closings. To briefly summarize my past stance, it was that while I realize the fact that many of the closed schools were aging facilities that needed replacement, the whole issue put many parents in a position where they were forced to fight to keep flawed schools open!

BECAUSE SCHOOL OFFICIALS didn’t quite think the issue through to the end.

It seems that the parental concerns about the places where Chicago Public Schools officials wanted to shift students are more intense than the potential for financial savings that were incurred by the closings.

I’m wondering when the novelty of a longer school commute wears off and it becomes just a hassle, how many kids are going to wind up finding “excuses” to miss more and more school.

A mind may be a terrible thing to waste – or so goes the old United Negro College Fund tag-line. But some people may be put in positions where they will feel it is just beyond their means to fulfill a quality education.

WHICH IS A terrible way to view the situation. But it is something that some people are likely to do.

In fact, I’m wondering if some students wind up being lost along the way. They’ll just decide that transferring anywhere is a hassle.

I’d like to think this is a situation that can be resolved by some serious thought and a willingness of public officials to view the issue more from the perspective of what is good for the children and less of what benefits the interests of the public officials.

Because the cost of continuing to mismanage this situation is way too high on our society for us to be able to afford it in future years!

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Celebrity candidates a unique breed. Would you vote for Ventura for Prez? What about Erika for Congress?

I’ll confess to not fully understanding the concept of “celebrity” political candidates.

Sen. Ditka? Who's kidding whom!

 
By that, I mean the type of person who has accomplished something in some field that put them in the public eye. Which makes them think they can turn that public attention into votes to get themselves elected to political office.

HECK, THE PEOPLE of Minnesota got one-time pro wrestler Jesse Ventura for four years as their governor – and he’s inspired enough by that victory that he’s now going around talking about wanting to run for president come 2016.

With broadcaster Howard Stern as his vice-presidential running mate, nonetheless. Although I’ve also heard speculation that rocker Ted Nugent also is contemplating a presidential bid to espouse his love of firearms.

I don’t see either one of them seriously being capable of holding elective office, although I’m sure there are some knuckleheads in our society who will cast ballots for them just for kicks.

Which is what it all comes down to with these types of campaigns. I’m sure some will try to claim that Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns are the same thing in that he developed celebrity status while on the campaign trail that encouraged some to vote for him – but they really aren’t.

BUT THE FACT remains that we occasionally get these types of people thinking they are somehow fit for public office. And I can’t always predict how seriously they will be taken.

Take Mike Ditka, who actually had some Republican operatives back in 2004 trying to encourage him to run for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois after GOP nominee Jack Ryan’s campaign fizzled out (due to the actions that occurred during his marriage to celebrity actress Jeri Ryan).

Ditka didn’t take the bait – thereby sparing himself a likely defeat to the very same Obama in his pre-presidential days who had already begun to establish the aura that has persuaded many people to cast their votes for him.



The Libertarian duo?

Although I find it humorous that Ditka in recent days has felt compelled to spew rhetoric implying he should have run – because he could have somehow spared us all the concept of a “President Obama.”

DOES DITKA THINK that sucking up to the ideologues by feeding their fantasies will somehow encourage the political operatives to consider him as a candidate for office in some future election cycle?

Or was Ditka just bored enough to the point where he felt compelled to share his fantasies with all of us. My own fantasies involve a Pulitzer Prize or two, but I don’t feel compelled to write rants telling you about the stories I could have covered that might have won me that top prize!

It makes me wonder why some people feel compelled to spout nonsense. Although I realize they’re trying to appeal to the kinds of people who don’t really understand government operations and probably resent the fact that government has influence over their lives.

Dumbing it down to the level of voting for a Ventura, or contemplating a Ditka may simplify it in their own minds – even if it would do nothing for public policy.

YET THE STANDARDS of fluff fluctuate.

 

I suspect many of the same people who want to take seriously the idea of a “Sen. Mike Ditka” are the same ones who are dumping on the congressional campaign of Erika Harold.

HAROLD: Seeking a higher title

She is the Miss America from 2003 (2002’s “Miss Illinois”) who has since graduated from Harvard, worked for a time as an attorney in Chicago, and has since returned to her hometown of Urbana so that she can seriously run as a Republican for Congress.

We in Chicago would have treated her like a complete joke if she had run a GOP campaign for one of the city’s congressional districts.

THE DENIZENS OF east-central Illinois are getting all worked up over the thought that Harold would take on freshman Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Ill. The ideologues want him to be able to build up seniority instead of having Harold dump him – even though any serious reading of her own philosophical beliefs indicate she sides with them on so many issues.

Davis, of course, is one of the GOP Congress members who faces harm due to the federal government shutdown. Which makes me wonder if Harold could capitalize on this.

 

Too bad she didn't wear an Illini t-shirt

Or will it be one of the Democrats seeking that post who will manage to prevail.

Because it seems that some people are just having too much trouble taking seriously the notion of a “Miss America” in the House of Representatives. I can’t figure if it’s her racial background (she’s not lily white) or just her gender (they’d love her as a politician’s spouse).

ALTHOUGH IT PROBABLY makes as much sense (if not more, considering Harold’s actual education and work experiences) than having a one-time New Orleans Saint coach in the Senate – which would have only one possible benefit.

It is about the only way we in Illinois would ever get a “Saint” amongst any of our government officials.

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