Chicago blues again
Did I miss something? Isn’t DeJoy still running the Post Office? I checked online. That crooked right-wing S.O.B is still here. So then this must be some kind of mistake. I actually got some mail yesterday. Mostly bills and Christmas cards, but still…
Biden could easily remove DeJoy with another appointment to the Post Office Board. So why is he still there? The same reason Donald Trump and his grifter family have not yet been indicted in New York or anywhere else. In a nutshell, Democrats are afraid of retribution from Republicans and their riled-up MAGA base. Republicans have made it clear that if Dems mess with their boy, DeJoy, they will kill Build Back Better and any other of Biden’s “bipartisan” dreams.
Windy City Blues
My usual pandemic-winter-in-Chicago blues lifted temporarily yesterday as temperatures soared above 60°. Then last night, my beloved windy city fell back into character. The number 60 turned into 60 mph winds blowing in, splitting trees in half, causing power outages and ushering in more frigid temps.
Ten Bulls players are down with COVID, hundreds of staffers and 10,000 CPS students are in quarantine and things are looking bleak for holiday get-togethers.
The Democrats’ $2T heath care, education, and climate change package is still held hostage by Republicrat Joe Manchin and Biden’s child tax credit, which was supposed to lift millions of children out of poverty, is expiring.
And to top it off, scientists say that climate change has destabilized the Earth’s poles, putting the rest of the planet in peril. YIKES!
So now I’m back in my winter pandemic doldrums again. But we fight on.
There’s an old Chinese proverb that goes: ‘The trees want peace but the winds won’t subside.” Or as we say it: No justice, no peace!
Some good things happened…
After a personal plea from Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a divided City Council on Wednesday approved a zoning change that “makes a statement” about affordable housing and aldermanic prerogative over zoning. — Sun-Times
Yesterday’s Chicago’s City Council meeting began by honoring my late friend and Chicago civil rights movement icon, Professor Timuel Black. A moment of unity before the next political storm hit.
Then Mayor Lori Lightfoot delivered, in the words of the Tribune Editorial, “a win for affordable housing and a defeat for segregation.”
A bill to create more affordable housing, backed by Lightfoot, passed by a vote of 33-13. The press is calling it, a victory for Lightfoot in her fight against aldermanic prerogative which gives individual alders the ability to kill any attempt and to desegregate housing in their own ward. So naturally, Eddie Burke’s name popped up among the 13 No votes.
The Trib offered us the best definition yet of aldermanic prerogative:
Chicago’s wards double as fiefdoms. That’s made abundantly evident by the primary tool aldermen rely on to lord over their wards. They wield a long-standing, off-the-books power known as aldermanic privilege, which gives them unfettered say over everything from zoning decisions to liquor licenses to parking permits.
There’s no law that codifies aldermanic privilege — it’s simply an “understanding” within the City Council.
Yes, feudal fiefdoms in the middle of an advanced capitalist society. What a contradiction! It’s growing sharper each day in a city where old machine bosses like Eddie Burke and Mike Madigan are still operating freely in Chicago politics.
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