tfl: The Flatiron Life

This afternoon the Unitary Government of the County of Cook

State’s Attorney:
3 candidates for an open position, Anita Alvarez (D), Thomas O’Brien (Grn), Anthony Peraica (R).

I think all three of these candidate would make a fine State’s Attorney. The State’s Attorney seems to be the only political office that is not totally corrupt. They are all say they are committed to keeping it that way. They all seem to be sound attorneys. Alvarez and O’Brien both currently work for the State’s Attorney.

I eliminate Peraica, because I don’t want him to lose his current job. He is a vocal critic in the minority on the Cook County Board. Seem like to much of a crap shoot around who would replace him on the board.

Alvarez seems to have risen quickly. This always worries me in Chicago politics, but it seem to be because there was a lot of infighting amongst the other primary candidates. O’Brien appears to just be someone who offered to run for the Greens.

I am going to vote for O’Brien. I think he would be fine if elected. I doubt he will be elected and i don’t mind helping a 3rd party remain as an “established” party and have easier ballot access in the future.

Clerk of the Circuit Court
All three candidates want to modernize the access for the records maintained by the clerk. Brown, the incumbent, says she has modernized some. The republican challenger, Diane Shapiro, who uses the system in here job says it is antiquated.

Mix in my desire for change with Shapiro’s criticism of an antiquated system for public records and you have my vote for her.

Recorder of Deeds
Eugene Moore has been RoD for nearly a decade. He is part of the machine, there is no way he will be voted out. The Republican challenger did not fill out a questionare, but the Green did. I am voting for Terrence Gilhooly (Grn) based on the Change Principle.

Board of Review (2nd)
From what I have read Joseph Berrios (D), also leader of Cook County Dems, is the “King of insider deals”. He has made this little known entity he personal fiefdom. Unfortunately, the two challengers do not appear to actually be campaigning. I am torn between no vote and a vote for the republican under the Change Principle.

Metropolitan Water Reclamation District
Here I get to choose three and the choice for me is simple. If the Green party is specialized for anything in government it seems like they would be best suited for Water Reclamation District. None of the Green candidates appear to be for closing down the drinking water system or want to start some boondoggle of a plan for sewage and run off.

Zara Paris

When we honeymooned in Paris, there were just two places Jos really wanted to go shopping. Galleries de Lafayette and Zara.

Zara is like an upscale H&M. Nice place if you are into shopping and I had fun people watching while Jos shopped.

Now we only need to go to Skokie to visit Zara and 2 location are coming to the city next year. According to the Wikipedia there are 36 US locations, but it will remain a honeymoon memory for me. (I cannot believe that was just 2 years ago.)

I don’t know if you heard, but the streets are safe, clean, and well maintained through out the PRChi. The City managed school district is churning out well educated young citizens. The government operates with an efficiency never seen in government before. So, on to more important issues.

Chicago is nowhere near the front runner for the 2016 Olympics. Good news.

I noticed one of the other cities in the running is Baku. I had never heard of Baku, so that makes it my pick or the 2016 Olympics. The Olympics seem like a great way for cities to get there name on the map.

Baku is so unknown, I could tell you it is the capital of Azerbaijan, but most people have never even heard of Azerbaijan. Double Bonus!

Mayor Daley is getting all the ducks in a row for the Olympics. The latest is an overhaul of how the public interacts with Park District officials. Basically, you cannot and if you try the district will stop you.

The prospect of this monstrosity actually coming to my fair city freaks me out. The city will not be the one it is today after the Olympics and it will be massively in debt. This will probably be the right time for 8 year old Jonah to become a Hoosier.

Ben Joravsky has another of his great articles on how taxes work in Cook County.

Daley controls that. He does so because in our infinite wisdom, we voters have made it clear that we’re comfortable with a relatively benign brand of tyranny where one man controls everything. And I mean everything. Through board appointments and endorsements of elected officials, the mayor oversees the schools, parks, city services, and even to an extent the county—he virtually handpicked Todd Stroger to be president, and his brother John is chairman of the board’s finance committee. And of course he controls the city’s budget.

Nothing new. He Honor is trying to hide the fact that he is the reason taxes are going up.

Joravsky details some amazing increases. (We got our tax bills for the first half, last week.) I thought our taxes are high, but some people have had amazing increases in iffy hoods.

He closes with what is a sad truth about how statist culture changes people.

I used to think that once average Chicagoans got hit with big tax hikes they’d finally rise up against their leaders. But now I’m starting to think they’re too bewildered to fight back. As some aldermen are always telling me, if you keep the people dumb, they’re easier to control. In this respect, Mayor Daley’s press conference on assessments was a step in the right direction.

Chicagoans (and probably Illinoisans in general) should take a read of this article in the Chicago Reader for an example of exactly how the city works. The names with be dizzying, but it is worth the read all the way through.

I once saw a guide for new Chicagoans which listed our form of government as “Patronage”. It is so disheartening to me that these plays happen in daylight and yet the Democrat voters continue to vote for who the machine says they should.

I was rather surprised to read this today in my Trib feed,

Chicago could close 10 to 15 public elementary schools in each of the next five years, officials are expected to announce Wednesday, as enrollment plummets on the city’s Near West and South Sides. (my emphasis)

Some of the schools in Chicago are only 50% utilized and a few are only at 30%. The overall elementary enrollment has fallen by 41,000 future Daley voters in the last 7 years.

Warum?

James Dispensa, director of CPS demographics and planning, said it was part of a larger trend nationwide, driven by falling birthrates. The children of many Baby Boomers, meanwhile, have moved on to high school, where enrollment remains strong.

The US birthrate has been of recent interest to me. (Obviously?) I know a lot of people who are pregnant, have given birth in the last year or so, or I expect to have children in the next 2 years. (If your name has an ‘r’ in it I am thinking of you.) It is hard for me to tell if this is part of a larger trend or if I just know a lot of people at the same stage in life who are just the normal breeders.

I bike a lot around Chicago.

I take the CTA a lot around Chicago.

I am going to think twice about mixing the two.

Outside of the Walgreen’s at Laurence, Lincoln, and Western there is a statue of Pres. Lincoln.  Inscribed at the base of the memorial is “Free society is not, and shall not be, a failure.”  The stores Lincoln has his back to are not sure that the PRChi is part of a free society.

Ben Joravsky in the Chicago Reader this week reports these shops have been sent letters of Eminent Domain intent from the City.  It is the Cities intention to transfer their property to another private owner.  Why does the city want to do this?  Higher tax revenue of course, but also for the small business owners own protection.

The acquisition letters set off a panic among the merchants affected. But their local alderman, Eugene Schulter of the 47th Ward, insists that the acquisition authorization letter’s part of a process he’s initiated over the last couple of decades to protect small businesses. Schulter says he’s routinely bombarded with calls from developers eager to buy up property and tear it down so they can build big-box monstrosities “like you see on Clybourn near North Avenue.” He claims the threat of eminent domain wards off that kind of development: if property owners can’t sell their property, big-box developers can’t buy it up.

Thanks Mr. Schulter, thanks for keeping people from keeping these business owners from making sound business decisions.  Good thing the city knows what is best use of land or we might just go around developing things people want to go to and turn a profit.

The city has not come to take their land away yet.  Just the treat isdamaging though.

But there are still problems for property owners under the threat of eminent domain. For one thing, it’s harder to get bank loans for improvements or expansion. “What bank is going to lend me money if they know the city might take my property?” asks Hidvegi. And even if merchants were invited to return to whatever gets built on the block, they’d most likely be coming back as tenants rather than tenant-owners. “We may wind up paying rent for less space,” says Hidvegi—not to mention no equity.

Silly Chicagoans, one day we will learn.  In the People’s Republic of Chicago we are all renters, deeds are childish attachments to the past.