POLITICS AND THE LAQUAN McDONALD SHOOTING: THE TIMELINE DOESN’T FIT THE NARRATIVE

11/26/15

There are few things that virtually all parties involved, and not so involved, agree on concerning the Laquan McDonald case.  One is that it took an awfully long time for the tapes of young Mr. McDonald’s shooting to be made public.  Another is that it took a similarly long time for State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, who can perhaps worst be described as an apolitical prosecutor, to bring criminal charges against Officer Jason Van Dyke, the shooter in the case.   

This being Chicago, where all things are political, the operative narrative is that the release of the tapes was delayed until after Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s reelection on April 7 and that prosecution was concurrently delayed because a criminal case would engender demands that the tape be released.   Further, the argument goes, Mr. McDonald’s family was paid a $5mm settlement, even before a civil case was filed, to keep them quiet and to therefore tamp down, or at least delay, demands for a criminal case and accompanying release of the tapes.

That story fits nicely with the Chicago political narrative, but there are problems with the timeline.   More than seven months have passed since Mayor Emanuel’s reelection.   The award to Mr. McDonald’s family was made one week AFTER the Mayor’s reelection.

Hmm…

If the sole motivation for keeping the tapes away from the public eye was to assure the Mayor’s reelection, why did seven months pass between the Mayor’s reelection and the release of the tapes?   If the aim of the secrecy surrounding the tapes was to keep the Mayor in office, why the need to pay the McDonald family hush money after the Mayor was reelected?   If the characteristically compliant with the pols Anita Alvarez delayed prosecution to do the Mayor’s bidding, why did she wait until more than seven months after his reelection to file criminal charges against Jason Van Dyke?  

Could it be that Ms. Alvarez’s explanation for the long delay in bringing criminal charges, i.e., that this is a complicated process that involves not only the State’s Attorney’s office but also the U.S. Attorney’s office and the police civilian review board, is true?   Could the City’s, and the Mayor’s, resistance to releasing the tape of the McDonald shooting have arisen from a genuine concern about possibly violent reaction by opportunist groups, who never miss an opportunity to exploit a tragedy to further their demands for “more resources” and/or just to cause trouble?

Yours truly is among the most reluctant to believe any politician, and especially to believe any politician around this town.   I am even more hesitant to exonerate a pol of any accused misdeeds; rather, I am usually one of the first to suggest such misbehavior by members of the political class.   But this neat narrative surrounding purely political motivation behind the release of the McDonald tapes doesn’t fit the timeline.   Either the politicians’ stories hold up here…or there is more going on.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

NOTE TO THE ECONOMIC WISE MEN: HAIR OF THE DOG IS NOT A VIABLE FINANCIAL STRATEGY

11/23/15

This morning’s Wall Street Journal reports that, with housing prices continuing to recover and with their recovery’s broadening from a relative handful of metropolitan areas, home equity nationally has doubled from its 2011 bottom.   At $12.1 trillion, such equity is nearing pre-recession levels.

What would normally be considered good news has much of Wall Street and the economic community bemused.   Observers are sullen and down-in-the-mouth over reports that homeowners borrowed “only” $43.5 billion against their homes via home equity loans, “scarcely a quarter of the amount seen when equity was last as high in 2007.”   Moody’s Analytics estimates, much to the consternation of the nation’s economic wunderkinds, that every $1 increase in home equity in the fourth quarter of 2014 would translate into only 1.5 to 2.0 cents of increased consumer spending over the next 1 to 1 ½ years, about a third of the increase in spending per dollar of increased equity seen before the crash.   (Incidentally, don’t you love the precision such experts assign to their predictions, as if the future could somehow be foreseen with digital accuracy?    Yes, I digress, but at least I do so parenthetically.)

Those of us whose thinking is seemingly hopelessly dated would see indications of fiscal probity on the part of consumers as a good sign, maybe not for the short run but certainly for our hopes of putting together a sustainable recovery and a durable economy.   Wasn’t it the “Spend, spend, spend because we deserve it and, after all, tomorrow we may die” approach to personal finance that got us into the soup from which we are supposedly emerging?   Yet the financial experts are telling us the opposite; they seem to think that the path to economic nirvana lies in excreting money as if it were the detritus of a five-hour beer binge.

Perhaps the clearly misguided views of us old school financial l scolds are a severe misreading of the data anyway.   While home equity borrowing may be under control, other types of borrowing, chiefly auto debt and student loans (“But it’s for education!” we will hear.   Money is fungible, though, as people would know if they were truly being educated, as opposed to being reassured that their every half-baked thought is sacrosanct as long as it complies with the rigid tenets of political correctness.  Again I digress.), continue to grow at an alarming pace, largely, or completely, offsetting the progress made on keeping home equity debt under control.  One supposes, though, that, in the view of the experts who so disdain fiscal propriety, such expansion of student and car loans is good news.

The problem that has set monetary policy, and much of the economy, on its head had its origins in too much borrowing to finance too much witless spending.  This nation’s economic brain trust continues to insist that the best way to solve this problem is to borrow more and to spend more.  Yet the populace continues to wonder why things don’t seem to be getting much better.  My readers, however, suffer from no such befuddlement.

CHICAGO’S PROPOSED PRIVATIZATION ORDINANCE: YOU CAN SMELL THE MEAT A COOKIN’

11/18/15

The Chicago City Council is considering an ordinance that would establish certain ground rules and procedures for privatization of city assets and services.   Proposed in response to the 2008 parking meter privatization deal that was a financial disaster for the city, and which would have cost Mayor Richard M. Daley his job had he not quit before he was fired, the ordinance essentially establishes vetting procedures and review processes for privatizations valued at greater than $400mm and with terms of at least 20 years.   What will the outcome of these hearings be?   While one can’t be certain of the specifics, one can make at least one prediction about the ordinance:   given the historic lap dog nature of the Chicago City Council, the ordinance will be whatever Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants it to be.   So debating the finer aspects of this particular proposed ordinance is largely pointless in the sometimes benevolent dictatorship that Chicago has been for the last 80 or so years.   But the incipient debate on the ordinance provides an opportunity to examine the concept of municipal privatization.

The idea of privatization appeals to those, like yours truly, who believe in the efficacy and the efficiency of markets.   Generally, the private sector provides goods and services more efficiently and effectively than does the public sector, so it seems to make sense that privatization would serve the taxpayers and citizens well.   Upon examination, though, this glib supposition breaks down.  

While it’s true that the private sector is generally better at doing what it is charged with doing than is the public sector, the reason for such greater effectiveness is not inherent in the management or the employees of private sector businesses.   Public sector employees are, by and large, hardworking, dedicated, skilled people who take pride in their work, just like private sector employees. What makes the private sector so effective is that the private sector businesses are exposed to the rigors of competition, and competition makes us all better at whatever it is we are doing or trying to do.   The fear of losing business, and possibly one’s livelihood, to a competitor keeps us on our toes.   Businesses face this possibility every day.   Public agencies do not.

The problem with privatizing city services is that what the government does when it privatizes services, be they highways, parking garages, parking meters, garbage pickup, or whatever, is to reward monopolies to private sector businesses.   In providing these services, the winners in the privatization process face no competition; where, for example, the city was formerly the sole provider of garbage pickup services, in a post-privatization scenario, some private sector firm is the sole provider of garbage pickup services.    Where is the competition?   Sure, the contract might have to be rebid periodically, but not very often; in the case of the Chicago parking meters, in 99 years, for example.  While that is an extreme example, even when the contract is rebid more often, replacing vendors is cumbersome and, therefore, inertia, one of the strongest forces in the universe, is likely to prevail.   Barring some monumental flub-up on the part of the provider of privatized services, a privatization contract is likely to be renewed.

Even if one doesn’t buy the argument that the private sector without the pressure of competition is no more effective than the public sector, that a private sector monopoly is no better than a public sector monopoly, it is clear to see that even a theoretically good idea has been perverted by putrid politics, certainly in and around Chicago.   Smart politicians realize that, in our media driven political process, the financial support of grateful recipients of privatization contracts is far more valuable than the shoe leather of precinct captains.  Thus, one’s political lifespan is more effectively enhanced by rewarding multi-million dollar contracts than by keeping loyal soldiers on the public payroll.   This realization is probably why Rahm Emanuel and his mewing city council was so willing to reach a final settlement in the Shakman case.    Who cares about patronage when the real juice for reelection and entrenchment  no longer comes from the precinct level political armies, but, rather, from the cash provided by the recipients of huge contracts privatizing public services?   Is it any wonder that the public looks askance at these privatization deals when the political rewards for awarding the contracts to the “right” people are so abundant and obvious?  

Given the money that is at stake, and the power that money can buy, in the privatization process, does anyone expect that the Mayor and the City Council will enact an ordinance that will keep the process on the up and up?   Even if someone is so naïve as to think that the answer to that question is yes, one has to question the whole premise of privatization.   Is it truly a way to provide services more efficiently and thus spare overburdened taxpayers…or a way to more effectively keep politicians in their lifetime sinecures?

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.   The Chairman’s Challenge contains several episodes concerning the benefits of privatization to the entrenched power structure of a fictional (of course!) big city.

IT’S “DRACONIAN” TO KEEP TERRORISTS OUT OF THE COUNTRY?

11/17/15

The Wall Street Journal reported this (i.e., Tuesday, 11/17/15, page A9) morning that, in the wake of Friday’s terrorist attacks on Paris, French President Francois Hollande is preparing France for, as the Journal called them, “potentially draconian” policies, including “expelling foreigners considered a threat and stripping French nationality from dual nationals involved in terrorist activities.”

Expelling people who pose serious terrorist threats and taking citizenship away from people who are actually involved in terrorism are now considered “potentially draconian”?   O tempora, o mores!

Mr. Hollande is considering invoking France’s state of emergency statute in (maybe) calling for such “potentially draconian” measures.   Recall that the French state of emergency powers have their origin in the civil unrest that accompanied the 1955 Algerian war and allowed the French government to go so far as to ban travel in and to certain areas, to close shops and restaurants, to control the press, and even to order people to remain in their homes.   Talk about “potentially draconian”!    Thank God such measures have not been implemented.  But now even the Wall Street Journal, no panty waste on reacting swiftly and decisively to terrorism, calls such relatively mild measures as expelling and denying citizenship to foreigners who seriously intend harm and violence to one’s nation “potentially draconian.”  One would think that keeping out the bad guys would just be common sense.   But, in our lily-livered world, in which causing offense to even the most easily offended is to be as studiously avoided as contact with communicable fatal diseases, common sense routinely gets sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.   Thus, virtually any measure taken to protect society from those who mean to destroy it is considered “draconian.”  

Those of us who continue to harbor at least some libertarian tendencies are, of course, concerned about the potential implications of leaving to the mechanisms of state the determination of who is “considered a threat” and/or is “involved in terrorist activities.”   But there are times when ideology must yield to common sense and to the protection of the ultimate civil right, the freedom from imminent or actual bodily harm and from societal destruction.

DINING OUT SHOULD MEAN NEVER HAVING TO SAY YOU’RE HUNGRY: AN INADVERTENT REVIEW OF KEN’S ON WESTERN AVENUE

11/9/15

You should never leave a restaurant hungry.   No matter how good the food tastes or how good it looks (For some reason that defies explanation, the latter seems to be the criterion by which the culinarily sophisticated among us judge their cuisine.), if you don’t get enough of it, you shouldn’t return to that restaurant.   This would seem to be common sense, but, in this era in which the price of the fare favored by the foodies seems to display a distinctively negative correlation with its price, this lesson, seemingly as old as time, appears to have been lost on the more distinguished and trend-setting among us.   Of course, common sense seems to be sorely lacking among these types, who, in the spirit of setting trends, seem to define themselves by following trends, the goofier and more nonsensical the better, but I digress.

I bring this up because my son and I had dinner yesterday at a place that is far from the type of spot favored by trendy young professionals who will pay kings’ ransoms for enough food to fill one’s tooth as long as the cuisine is fashionable.  We ate at a neighborhood place known as Ken’s, on 105^th and Western in West Beverly.   It was my dad’s favorite restaurant and the last time I was there, I was with my dad.   Since Dad left his mortal coil more than eight years ago, it’s been awhile since I’ve been to Ken’s.   Mark and I were touring the neighborhood as part of a project he was doing for his Urban History class and I figured that eating at Ken’s would give him a feel for the neighborhood.  Though sitting at the bar at Ken’s would have been better for such purposes, that option was not available to us because I don’t drink and my son is only 17, so we sat in the dining room.

For those of you who have never been to Ken’s, I would describe it as a slightly more upscale version of Schaller’s on 37^th and Halsted.  If you’ve never been to Schaller’s, think a neighborhood bar/restaurant featuring chops, steaks, burgers, and the like.   Nothing fancy, complicated, or frou-frou, and certainly no place at which a so-called foodie would eat unless s/he were somehow trying to prove some sort of bizarre culinary street cred.   And, at least in the case of Schaller’s, nothing expensive, either.

The food at Ken’s was fine; in fact, it was very good.  Young Mark had a butt steak, a favorite at places like Ken’s and Schaller’s, and I had lake perch, which is probably my favorite food in the entire world, provided a certain fast food delicacy is left out of consideration.   Ken’s also even brings out an old fashioned relish tray; when was the last time you were at a restaurant outside Wisconsin (or that isn’t one of the two Petey’s Bungalows) that included a relish tray with your meal?   Ken’s also included some terrific pizza bread as an appetizer.   The soup, which came with the meal, was similarly terrific.  The service was pretty good…not great, but more than acceptable.   Everyone else in the place seemed to know our waitress (In these kinds of places, they still have waitresses, not “wait staffs” or “servers,” though Ken’s did provide the name of an “executive chef” on the menu, which made me nervous, thinking that I had inadvertently strayed to the north side.) and appeared to be a regular, always a good sign for both the place and the waitress.

As good as the perch was, I was still hungry after eating it, even after consuming the soup, the items on the relish tray, the pizza bread, etc.   In fact, I had to have some left-over meat loaf shortly after returning home.   While this may have something to do with the size of my appetite, there is something very wrong with being hungry after leaving a restaurant, regardless of how good the food was.  This was especially disheartening because, at least by Quinn standards, Ken’s wasn’t cheap; each of our entrées was about $20.   Schaller’s butt steak, for example, is about half the price…but includes no relish tray. The dazzling urbanites who will pay half a month’s rent for whatever was featured in the last issue of Chicago Magazine may think $20 is a reasonable price for an appetizer consisting of two strands of angel hair pasta and a leaf of something they had not heard of two weeks ago, but, in yours truly’s view of the world, $20 for an entrée borders on the outrageous, unless said price is for an all one can eat buffet…or at least for an entrée of a portion size that will leave one satisfied and perhaps asking for a doggie bag.

One would not think that one would actually have to write something like “You should never leave a restaurant hungry;” one would think that admonition to be a given.  But in today’s inane world, in which presentation, price, and pretentiousness seem to be the elements of an effective marketing plan directed toward today’s “trend setters” and “opinion leaders”  (God help this society, but, again, I digress.), such sense is not at all common.   That was meant to be the larger point of this post, but it seems to have morphed into a review of Ken’s, which is not at all the kind of place the trendy among us would favor and which is, all in all, quite good…unless, of course, you like to leave a restaurant full, satisfied, or at least with enough food in one’s system to not have to raid the fridge upon arriving home.