"Joy and pleasure are as real as pain and sorrow and one must learn what they have to teach. . . ." -- Sean Russell, from Gatherer of Clouds

"If you're not having fun, you're not doing it right." -- Helyn D. Goldenberg

"I love you and I'm not afraid." -- Evanescence, "My Last Breath"

“If I hear ‘not allowed’ much oftener,” said Sam, “I’m going to get angry.” -- J.R.R. Tolkien, from Lord of the Rings

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

The Chicago Side

Via Digby, I ran across this: it's a statement from Zephyr Teachout, who is running against Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary for governor of New York. So why did I title it "The Chicago Side"? Well, there's this:

Andrew Cuomo is the Governor of New York, and he takes a lot of money from large powerful interests and then hands out tax credits to them. It's a Reaganomics model of financial monopoly capitalism. But the problem here isn't just Cuomo, it's that people like Cuomo dominate the Democratic establishment. Rahm Emanuel, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers, Robert Rubin, and so on and so forth, these people believe in a world where powerful economic interests control our lives and fate through monopoly power, and their partners in government help structure those monopolies. Political corruption and economic monopoly are two sides of the same coin-- too much concentrated power in too few hands.

Ah, yes, Rahm Emanuel, Mayor of Chicago. My joke used to be that Obama sent Emanuel back to Chicago to localize the damage. It's turned out not to be such a joke.

I see it in little things that on the surface look to be what we'd consider good. The City, for example, is pushing bicycles as an alternate form of transportation: there are now stations where you can rent a bike for the day all just about anywhere. (According to Wikipedia, at present there are stations from Berwyn Ave. [5300 North] to 59th Street in the south and Kedzie [3200 West].) Two things: this is being run by a commercial enterprise, Alta Bicycle Share, under contract to the City, and it's publicly funded -- we're paying Alta to do this. It's not all that cheap -- $7 per day, 30 minute limit on single rides, then you either have to walk or change bikes at a new station. If you're someone who wants to cycle, you're better off buying a second-hand bike. And I've noticed that the smaller, independent bike rental places are all gone.

And CTA ridership is way down -- whole bus routes are being cancelled.

And, although the Mayor ostensibly doesn't have a lot of clout in this area (and if you believe that, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you), the CTA has instituted a new fare payment system, Ventra, which again, on the surface looks good: you have a card that you can load online or at an el station or at certain vendors (Walgreen's, some currency exchanges). Just tap your card on the reader and you're in. If the reader decides to read your card. And if you've remembered to add value -- the reader, by the way, doesn't tell you how much you have left. The web site can be a nightmare (I finally had to call the customer service line to get into it -- some know-it-all had pre-registered my card, but didn't give me the log on info). If you hit a peak period at the customer service number, the automated system will cheerfully inform you that the estimated waiting time is X minutes, and then hang up. Oh, and of course, this is being run by a commercial enterprise under contract to the CTA/Pace. Rumor has it that this company has been kicked out of three or four other cities because the system was such a disaster. It's not really very good.

I'm not even going to get into the disaster that is our school system -- the Mayor, it seems, is pushing privatization (wonder why), and not doing much to revamp what we've got.

And always, in Chicago, the first question you have to ask yourself is "Who's getting the kickbacks?" Maybe no one, but there's a lot of history that says otherwise.

At any rate, go read the article at Hullabaloo. It's a good analysis of what's wrong with the Democratic Party, at least the so-called "centrists" -- they're just as caught up in Reaganomics as the Republicans, just less honest about it.

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