EXTRA: Is there enough Cook Co. GOP for its endorsement to matter?

The Republican Party organization for Cook County apparently is sick and tired of being thought of as the GOP’s weak spot in the Land of Lincoln.

They’re planning to make a public endorsement this weekend concerning who they’d like to be the Republican nominee for governor come the 2014 election cycle.

WHICH IN MOST election cycles wouldn’t mean much. Because the Republican Party in this part of Illinois has become less and less important in recent decades. The idea that state elections pit Democratic Chicago versus the Republican rest of the state just isn’t accurate any longer.

It’s now Democratic Cook County and portions of the five surrounding counties against the rest of Illinois – which is why this state has gone from the early 1990s when it was still an accurate bellwether of the nation to being solid Democrat nowadays.

So what really will be gained by whichever gubernatorial candidate gets the GOP backing to take on Gov. Pat Quinn come the November general election?

Bruce Rauner, the North Shore venture capitalist who has close personal ties to Mayor Rahm Emanuel, would like to have it. Other gubernatorial candidates don’t want him to have it.

THEY ARE TRYING to spin the possibility of Rauner gaining the endorsement by saying that a Cook endorsement could be harmful. Gubernatorial dreamer Kirk Dillard told the Associated Press that voters in the rest of Illinois are so determined to have someone with no Chicago ties that a county GOP endorsement. “could be a hindrance in a place like Peoria.”

Yet I have to confess to wondering if this isn’t so much spin as a realization of fact.

In the last election cycle for Illinois governor, some 765,534 people voted in the Republican primary – of which about 162,000 came from Cook County. Which translates into roughly four votes from other parts of the state for every vote that comes from Cook!

QUINN: Will Cook GOP boost him?

Unlike the Democratic Party primary where somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of the vote can come from Cook – and most of the rest comes from the few sort-of urbanized pockets of Illinois (such as the areas around Peoria, East St. Louis and Champaign-Urbana – those crazy college kids!).

MY POINT BEING that I also recall that 2010 election cycle as being one where eventual GOP nominee William Brady – who’s trying again this time – really did have the whole rest of the state wrapped up.

Yet he lost because Brady got tagged in Cook with the label as being too alien from our own experience. Cook voters overwhelmed his dominance in the rest of Illinois.

I don’t see that much has changed. I sense there are people in that “rest of Illinois” who have been gnashing their teeth the past four years who will try again to win political influence away from Chicago.

Why do I sense that the way to kill interest in rural Illinois in next year’s election cycle is to put Rauner in that “top” post on the ballot? Because the perception is out there that Emanuel himself would just as soon have a sympathetic Rauner even over someone of his own political party like Quinn!

COULD THE COOK County Republican Party’s attempt to make a statement and be relevant wind up being a factor in Quinn gaining re-election?

It might be the exact opposite of the party’s intention, and could be why some people are engaging in the incredibly premature speculation over whether the Mighty Quinn – the one-time political gadfly and pain in the establishment’s butt – could become the state’s longest serving governor.

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Petcoke cleanup underway, but it will be awhile before Sout’East Side is clean

The far Southeast corner of Chicago (the land where the eastern boundary is Indiana – NOT Lake Michigan) has always been a heavily industrialized portion of the city.

Chicago's southeast corner far from pristine. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

 

It’s a place where the steel mill and other factory jobs that created the bulk of the local economy were located literally across the street. It was a place where the employees could walk to work.

HENCE, IT ALSO is a place that is far from pristine – particularly since it saw decades worth of buildup of various pollutants from back in an era when some people were inclined to think of “environmental cleanup” as some sort of alien concept.

I am a native of that part of Chicago (I am the grandson of immigrant steel mill workers whose one-time employers are now large, vacant plots of land), and my visits to the “old neighborhood” have always included being able to see things that just wouldn’t be tolerated elsewhere.

Although now, it seems they’re not even being tolerated in places like the East Side or South Chicago – as in a couple of the neighborhoods that comprise that distant part of Chicago. How distant? Try standing on the 106^th Street bridge over the Calumet River.

Look off to the north, and you can barely see the tip of the top of the Sears Tower (You call it Willis, I’m refusing to right now).

BUT THIS AREA got the attention of downtown this week when officials reached an agreement with companies that have had piles of petroleum coke along the edge of the Calumet River. That agreement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Illinois attorney general’s office was to be filed with a court on Thursday, although Emanuel said later in the day he would not be willing to go so far as an outright ban in Chicago.

A whole 'nother world from the Loop

Known more commonly as petcoke, the substance is a byproduct of the petroleum-making process. It results in mounds of the substance that then gets blown about by the breezes.

Which means that people who live in the area have been stuck having to accept as fact that their homes will get covered in the petcoke dust. Some people tell stories of finding the dust all over their freshly-washed clothes (if they put them out on a clothesline to dry).

It is inevitable that they (and I, when I have reason to return to visit) have inhaled the petcoke dust. Who knows what long-term damage is being caused?

The Port of Chicago presence (off in the distance) hasn't completely devastated Lake Calumet

 

THAT IS WHAT has motivated the activist-minded residents of the area, who in turn have put their share of pressure on government officials. Which is why government officials felt inclined to do something that makes it appear as though they’re resolving the situation.

Although it should be noted that earlier this month, locals noticed that the petcoke piles were being put onto ships and being taken out of the area. The agreement reached this week says that companies in the area that have petcoke are going to have to store it indoors, and also will have to monitor the levels of air pollution around those facilities.

Which sounds sensible enough; something that should have been agreed upon a long time ago. Except that such actions create expense that reduce the financial bottom-line, and therefore are considered to be a hassle by the more corporate-minded.

Yes, I’m pleased to learn that something is being done with regards to petcoke. I have relatives who live within blocks of these piles. I’m sure they will (literally) breathe easier.

ALTHOUGH IT’S FAR from over. All those decades of industry have left more than their share of pollution. With the vacant remains of many of those factories still in place, I can’t even envision just how tainted those Southeastern neighborhoods remain.

And how much of a miracle it is that something like Lake Calumet still manages to maintain so many species of nature despite all the toxins in the area.

What would they think in Lake View?

It’s going to be a long time, if ever, that my part of Chicago will be as clean as a place like Beverly or Sauganash – where the concept of a giant pile of salt out in the open would be unheard of, yet doesn’t even capture a second glance from the locals.

  -30-

What exactly is a “pro-business” state?

I’m sure that a segment of society – the part that calls itself “economic conservative” and “pro-business” – is gnashing its teeth and seething with rage at the thought that a major company deliberately chose to locate in Chicago.

Even though state government specifically refused to give the company – Archer Daniels Midland, Co., of downstate Decatur, Ill. – a tax incentive that it claimed was essential to making the move economically viable.

ADM, A PROCESSOR of crops into food and other products such as fuel, has long been the staple of the economy in Decatur. But life in central Illinois isn’t cosmopolitan enough for the corporate executives who run the company.

Which is why, earlier this year, ADM officials let it be known that they want to move their corporate offices elsewhere – under the guise of wanting easier access to airline flights for their executives to travel the world on business.

That made Chicago, with its O’Hare International and Midway airports, a natural.

Except to those who are determined to believe that nobody could possibly want to be associated with Chicago, They were the ones who were pushing the idea that Illinois would lose ADM unless it got with the program, so to speak, and started making concessions to businesses even if they made no practical sense.

IN THE CASE of ADM, they wanted to be given a tax incentive totaling $24 million during the next two decades. Which really is laughable – a tax break over just over $1 million per year for a corporation that does billions of dollars of business per year world-wide.

The real issue was one of a corporate entity thinking that government somehow exists to serve it exclusively – even if those interests contradict those of other people. Personally, I always thought the point of government was to keep the interests of everyone balanced.

As it turned out, the Illinois Senate took a vote in favor of the ADM request. But the Illinois House of Representatives never got around to it.

They stayed

Other issues always managed to pre-empt it from coming up for a vote – particularly the matter of pension funding reform that the Legislature acted upon earlier this month in special session.

IT SEEMS THE allure of Chicago was too much for the ADM officials to pass on – even if they technically reduced their offer and are now merely moving some executive positions to the Second City, rather than following through on their original thought that they would also develop a technology center where great scientific advances in agriculture would have been developed.

That would have been an interesting piece to have in Chicago; probably moreso than the presence of a few dozen suited executives who will now work in the downtown area and will be lost in the masses of the millions who flood into the Loop each day to earn a living.

Although if the dollar figures work out, it wouldn’t shock me to learn that ADM develops that piece of their corporate puzzle in the future.

But denying us that piece, for now, is probably ADM’s way of “punishing” Chicago for making them otherwise “lose face” in that they demanded financial concessions and wound up getting nothing.

NOTHING, THAT IS, except for the knowledge that they will be located in THE major city of the Midwestern U.S. and have access to the wonders that are Chicago.

So even though there are people who are speculating politically that the winners were Gov. Pat Quinn (who released a statement Wednesday talking of the “continued partnership as this dynamic company invests and grows in Illinois”) and his allies.

I’d argue the real winner is ADM itself for staying. And the people, because we rejected the notions of the ideologues who think we have to give and give and give. That would have been the real loss!

  -30-

Lottery a sucker game, regardless of how big the jackpot gets to be

By the time you read this, there’s a very good chance that one (or maybe several) people will have matched the right numbers to claim a Mega Millions prize that will be one of the largest – if not THE largest – ever.

Way too many people paid attention to a ritual similar to this to see if they were suddenly multi-millionaires

 

The drawing was Tuesday night for a prize of $636 million, or perhaps higher if it managed to grow in the final hours between when this commentary was written and when the drawing occurred.

WITH THE LARGEST lottery prize ever being $656 million (nearly two years ago, and split between winners in rural Redbud, along with Kansas and Maryland), this could turn out to be a big deal for somebody.

I would expect the number of players for this week’s drawing will be so many that so many different combinations of numbers will be played on tickets that it will be impossible for no one to manage to win the big prize.

So I’ll issue my premature congratulations to whoever does manage to come up with the winning combination, and will say I hope that having all that money doesn’t manage to screw up their lives by creating complications that us poorer folk can’t even envision.

As for me, I’m not going to have to worry about that. I could use the money. I have debts that need to be paid.

BUT A PART of me never fails to be amazed whenever I go to a gas station and get stuck waiting in a line because somebody ahead of me feels compelled to put down $50 or so in order to buy all kinds of variations of lottery tickets – in hopes of gaining their “fortune” in a single swoop.

Or perhaps that’s single scratch. As in digging out that penny to scratch off the coating that covers up the numbers to reveal whether or not they “won” anything. As though the person who blows half a sawbuck on lottery tickets thinks they’re successful because one of those tickets manages to win a $5 prize!

Maybe it would turn out like those employees of a bakery in suburban Chicago Heights who won a significant lottery prize early this year – only to have all kinds of people try to glom on (or were they wrongly cheated out of a chance to play?) so that it will be years before anybody gets any money remaining after legal fees are paid.

Then again, I’m also the type who just doesn’t get the appeal of the casinos in places like East Chicago, Ind., Joliet or Elgin – to name a few. And even if you think this an elitist thought, I think Chicago can do better than attracting a casino to within its boundaries.

Somebody's prize? Or criminal evidence!

I DON’T HAVE any moralistic qualms about gambling – I’m all for letting people decide what to do with their own money. I just don’t get the appeal of banking it all on a chance to “win” a fortune.

Particularly since when, if you think about it, there really is no difference between the modern-day lottery and the numbers racket of old – except that the only time the latter ever made it into the news was when self-righteous types felt compelled to make some sort of police raid under the guise of protecting the public from the scourge of gambling.

Personally, I have only once played a lottery game – several decades ago, because an editor of mine came up with a unique gag gift for the Christmas holiday. He gave us all “a hope and a prayer,” as in a single lottery ticket AND a plastic, glow-in-the-dark rosary.

I didn’t win anything from that ticket, but I actually still have that rosary (which glows a real sickly shade of green) and consider it a trinket of great significance because of its personal tie to that editor.

MORE IMPORTANT THAN if I had actually won a few bucks from that ticket.

So I haven’t rushed out to claim a share of Mega Millions in some fantasy that I could quit all forms of work and turn this weblog into a rambling account of my globe-trotting activities.

Because I suspect it would turn out to be more likely that I – and many millions of other individuals who likely now are disappointed with their losses – would wind up more like an individual who attended a recent holiday party I attended Sunday.

There was a gift grab bag in which we all contributed an item, then picked a present at random. This person picked nearly $50 worth of instant game tickets.

At least I'll know what day it is

IT WAS ALMOST humorous as she then spent the next 20 or so minutes diligently scratching off her cards to figure out what she won – she wound up winning nothing! They were all losers.

Somehow, I sense the calendar (decorated with photographs by Ansel Adams) I got out of the deal will be more worthwhile.

  -30-

Some people wish Ryan, Blagojevich could just fade off into the sunset

Some people are just determined not to wither away into anonymity – no matter how much the ideologically-inclined of our society desire it.

RYAN: Beginning 'elder' statesman niche

Because I’m not as bothered as some by the fact that our former governors George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich both popped back into the news columns in recent days.

I ACTUALLY FOUND Ryan’s weekend appearance at the South Side church that calls Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., its pastor to be intriguing in the way that George H. was capable of calling on international ties that usually wouldn't be associated with a state official to get something done.

And as for Blagojevich’s attorneys appearing in court on Friday to argue the merits of why his convictions should be overturned (or at the very least, his 14-year prison sentence should be lessened), well, that’s part of the legal process.

He gets to appeal. For those who’d rather not allow him the opportunity to challenge the merits of his conviction, I’d argue that’s an “un-American” thought to have.

I make such a statement because I notice that the Internet commentary on both of these stories is so overwhelmingly negative. People use the anonymity of such comments to make racist comments about Ryan, while claiming that one-time first lady Patti Blagojevich and the attorneys all ought to be silenced.

REGARDLESS OF WHAT one thinks of the gubernatorial stints of both of these men, such attitudes may be more despicable than anything either man did. And let’s not forget that Blagojevich is in the early years of serving that 14-year sentence.

While Ryan wound up doing six-plus years in a federal Bureau of Prisons work camp for his acts.

In the case of Ryan, he made what is being considered his first public appearance since being released from prison earlier this year.

BLAGOJEVICH: "Free Milorod?"

It was a memorial service on the South Side for one-time activist and South Africa President Nelson Mandela, and Ryan recalled the time he got to meet with the man.

ACCORDING TO THE Chicago Sun-Times, Mandela’s minions initially rejected Ryan on the grounds that he was not a national leader or other world-renowned figure.

But Ryan did make that trip back in the autumn of 1999 to Cuba and had met with Fidel Castro. Which meant that Ryan’s people were able to contact Castro’s people, who then contacted Mandela’s people to put in a good word.

That resulted in the initial meeting, and the fact that later when Ryan was seriously contemplating clearing Death Row of its 160-some inmates because Illinois’ capital crimes statutes were so flawed, Mandela was able to get through directly to the governor to put in his thoughts (which were in line with doing away with the death penalty).

Let’s be honest. That is a key part of why many of Ryan’s critics oppose him. Internet comments were more than willing to tie Ryan to Castro, the Mandela that was considered a “Communist” and the Bobby Rush of the Black Panther Party of old.

AN UNPLEASANT REMINDER that some people in our society are determined to live in their own little world, and wish they could force the rest of us to live in it with them – under their subjugation.

Those same people were upset that Blagojevich is able to appeal his case – in which arguments were heard before a Court of Appeals panel on Friday.

Some got all worked up over the fact that some judges on the panel were more than willing to ask questions implying that perhaps the sentence was excessive. Or that maybe the former governor’s conduct wasn’t really criminal – and that politics itself isn’t automatically bribery.

Personally, I’m inclined to think those questions came from judges who wanted to see if the attorneys would come up with a pompous or otherwise-stupid statement that would then be used to reject Blagojevich’s desire for freedom sometime before he turns 67.

BUT SOME PEOPLE are just determined to rant and rage that their desires to go overboard on Blagojevich aren’t being blindly followed.

Blagojevich may wind up spending more time in prison (even if he gets the sentenced lessened slightly). But we’re going to have to accept that Ryan is destined to become that political elder statesman with a colorful past (just like one-time Congressman Dan Rostenkowski).

This was just the first of many such public appearances he’s likely to make.

Which means I need to stock up on Tylenol for the Internet-induced comments I’m going to have to endure as a result.

  -30-

Crime on the decline; what will the ideologues find to rage about now?

I’ve had a semi-humorous gag line I use from time to time – that if you ask the typical Sout’ Side resident about “Harvard,” “Princeton” or “Yale,” they’re going to think you’re talking about a trio of streets located just west of the Dan Ryan Expressway.


More of the nonsense we need to overcome

So it was kind of assuring to learn the real-life Yale University has paid some attention to the Second City. Although the conclusion that the Ivy League academics came to was one that ought to be incredibly obvious to anybody who pays attention to our city.

THERE ARE CERTAIN neighborhoods in our otherwise-wonderful home community that have a disproportionate share of the violent crime that the conservative ideologues like to use in their rants against Chicago, Democrats, Rahm Emanuel, Richard M. Daley, Barack Obama or anything else that they feel like having a hissy fit about.

With just over two weeks left in 2013, Chicago has had barely over 400 incidents involving murder. It’s far under the more than 500 we experienced in 2012.

So instead of being a sign that things were getting worse, 2012 just seems to have been a freak of nature statistically.

Of course, I have always argued that the ideologues were making too much of the murder total – because I can remember my days as a full-time cops and courts reporter for the now-defunct City News Bureau.

BACK IN THE late 1980s into the early ‘90s when the city routinely hit the 900-plus total for number of murders. By no stretch were we setting any kind of local records.

And as for the fact that Chicago has a higher total of slayings than New York (even though Gotham proper has three times as many residents), perhaps the REAL story ought to be that New York’s total is so low.

Nah, the ideologues wouldn’t want to concede that point. They just want to whine!

EMANUEL: Still a target, regardless of facts

The reality, of course, is that Chicago has always had an odd separation – sometimes I feel like it is four different medium-sized cities (South Side, Southwest Side, West Side and North/Northwest Side) that have residents who have little to no contact with each other.

EVEN WITHIN THOSE mini-cities, so to speak, there are neighborhoods where one has to watch one’s back if they happen to be there, and others that are so isolated that there’s no legitimate reason to fear anything.

Even though the residents of those latter neighborhoods are usually amongst the most paranoid whenever they encounter someone they don’t recognize in their midst.

Which, according to the Yale academics, means that the real story of Chicago crime has nothing to do with whether any kind of record-high has been achieved in murder totals.

It is more about the fact that the gap between neighborhoods such as West Garfield Park and Lincoln Park has grown. That ought to be the real problem that we try to address.

BUT THAT WOULD require having people who are willing to look beyond their own neighborhoods and be willing to address concerns of people they’d prefer to ignore.

That is the true problem we face. We have too many residents who are willing to overlook urban violence if they think it really doesn’t impact themselves.

And as for the people who are impacted directly, all too often we’re willing to want to behave as though we think those individuals somehow brought this conduct on themselves.

I don’t know how seriously the Yale University study will be taken in these parts. I can already envision the jokes about pinheaded academics that will be told by people who want the New Haven types to mind their own business.

Bigger than Sox/Cubs?

ALTHOUGH PERHAPS YALE University had a self-interest in studying crime. Because Yale Street in Chicago cuts through some of those more-violent neighborhoods.

Having such a violent namesake street may well be more embarrassing to the university’s reputation than was their 34-7 loss this football season to arch rival Harvard.

  -30-

Everybody wants to believe everyone ought to be just like themselves

Megyn Kelly, the blonde babe news anchor for Fox News Channel, is getting more than her share of ridicule on the Internet these days for her statement on air this week that both Santa Claus and Jesus Christ were white.

Believe it or not, I’m not about to join in the abuse. Yes, it’s a nonsense-thought to have when you think about it.

YET I DON’T doubt that many a person just perceives things this way. It’s that instinct amongst us that everybody has to be just like us. Otherwise, maybe it means there’s something wrong with themselves.

That is what makes the modern-day reality of the 21^st Century in our society so scary for some – we’re not all alike. Nor should we have to be.

We’re at a point where we ought to quit thinking of the concept of a “Black Santa” as some sort of joke, and maybe a recognition of what we all are. Besides, we all ought to realize that Santa Claus is a Latino, flying around the skies in a sleigh pulled by reindeer fueled with “Magic Dust” (or so said Cheech Marin of the Cheech & Chong comedy team).

For Kelly to want to perceive Santa as a fat old white man is just a realization of who she is. Anybody who’s surprised that she’d think that way is the one I would want to question.

WHAT ELSE WOULD you expect from her?

Actually, my initial reaction when I learned of Kelly’s comments (which were in response to a commentary published at the Slate.com website and written by a black woman who wrote about being confused as a child because Santa in her house was black, while he was white everywhere else) was to recall a moment from my own college days.

One day in a class where we were engaged in a conversation either about Aristotle or Plato (I’m not sure exactly which one), somebody made a comment in support of the philosopher and referred to his “Christian” values.

 

To which the professor tried to hold back a laugh when he explained that the philosopher in question was not of any religious faith that could be called “Christian.”

THAT STATEMENT PROVOKED a debate amongst the students that took up the entire rest of the class session.

“Of course he’s Christian,” some students said. “We wouldn’t study him if he weren’t Christian,” others wanted to believe. “He’s a good person, so he has to be Christian,” was also heard.

There were some students who were not in agreement, and even tried arguing back that the words “Christian” and “good” and “moral” were not necessarily synonymous with each other.

Not that any of the initial group wanted to hear of it.

PERSONALLY, I RECALL that day in class as one of the most humorous moments of my academic life. Although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that others probably viewed it as some sort of moment when they were exposed to subversive thought.

Just like I’m sure that some people probably want to view the idea of a non-White Santa Claus as violating everything they want to believe about our society.

I ultimately came to realize that “Santa Claus” is about a concept – one of sharing and giving, which is what the upcoming Christmas holiday can be at its finest. (At its worst, it’s nothing more than a greedy gift grab – but that’s a commentary for another day).

If some people feel the need to believe that “sharing” and “giving” are concepts only relevant to themselves, then perhaps they’re saying more about their own hang-ups, and we should pity them for being so close-minded.

BESIDES, DIDN’T THE whole concept of Santa Claus and Jesus being either “white” or “black” get resolved all those decades ago by the “Archie Bunker” and “Henry Jefferson” characters on “All in the Family.”

 

At least when actor Carroll O’Connor’s Bunker character persisted in claiming that both Jesus and Santa were white, he was just going for a cheap laugh!

  -30-