Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Tuesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Progressive small-business owners in Chicago voiced their support Monday for raising the minimum wage, but most said the move would still cost them,” the Sun-Times reports.
“They agreed that neither they nor their employees can live on minimum wage, especially if they live in Chicago, and that it’s essential to have ‘happy’ employees. Satisfied employees are productive, more loyal, stay on the job longer and have no need to report to work exhausted because they’re working second and third jobs to pay the bills, said the seven small-business owners who spoke Monday at Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s invitation during a roundtable at Dimo’s Pizza in the Wicker Park neighborhood.”
Oh. So instead of the headline “Small-Business Owners Tell Emanuel They Back Minimum-Wage Hike,” the headline should have read “Seven Small-Business Owners Invited By Rahm Emanuel To Staged Media Event Tell Rahm Emanuel In Front Of The Media That They Agree With Rahm Emanuel.”


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“Emanuel set the stage to rally support for his proposed ordinance, to be introduced to City Council on Wednesday, to boost the city’s minimum wage to $13 an hour by 2018.”
Set the stage is right, but let me fix the rest of it:
“Emanuel set the stage to “rally support” for his proposed ordinance by casting the always-willing Sun-Times in the role of disinterested media observer in order to create extra publicity for passage of a plan that is already foreordained.”
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By comparison, this mayoral roundtable was held in secret, perhaps because Rahm couldn’t control the narrative.
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Unasked so I’ll answer:
Why have this “roundtable” now when passage of the ordinance is assured?
“Because we get images of the mayor showing how much he cares about small-business owners – and their workers – that should soften the blow of (very slowly) raising the minimum wage in an election year, which is necessary because Rahm is very unpopular among the poor and working class, which is disproportionately filled with people of color. This can win back some support there. So we have this roundtable now to squeeze some extra publicity out of the move. Meanwhile, though, we move slowly, at the behest of a task force, to reassure business owners at-large that we’re still on their side and who knows what the future will bring. Nothing’s etched in stone – not even the law!”
How were the seven business owners chosen?
Their names were picked out of a hat. As if! We chose a diverse set of small-business owners on friendly terms with the city one way or another whom we knew wouldn’t embarrass the mayor. We could only find seven.
Was any other media invited?
We picked the Sun-Times out of a hat. Ha! We chose an outlet offering a value-added package including Sneedlings and anonymous quotes from mayoral aides to Fran Spielman about how great the mayor is.
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Make no mistake, I support raising the minimum wage. I wanna raise it super-high! I just abhor phony politics, regardless of the issue.
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There’s never an egg timer around when you need one . . .
“Gov. Pat Quinn agreed on Sunday to briefly live on the equivalent of a minimum-wage salary as he rallies support for a Nov. 4 Illinois ballot measure on the issue,” AP reports.
“The Democrat made the pledge at a campaign event focused on the nonbinding ballot question, which asks voters if the minimum wage should be raised for people over age 18 from $8.25 to $10 by 2015.

“There’s a principle as old as the Bible,” Quinn told supporters at the Federal Plaza in Chicago. “If you work 40 hours a week, if you’re doing your job, you shouldn’t have to live in poverty.”

Um, I’m not sure that’s in the Bible. Wasn’t that the one where a black man was only 3/5 of a person?
Anyway, I’m not quite sure how this works. Is Quinn allowed to wear clothes previously purchased on his lieutenant governor’s salary? Is he allowed to sleep in a governor’s mansion he didn’t have to purchase, quite possibly for the first time? Or is it just about food, which in instructive, but barely begins to touch the surface of the problem.
Take U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky, for example. Schakowsky is the one who issued – or was asked to issue – the challenge to Quinn, explaining that she recently lived on $77 one week.
“There’s no way that you can stop into a Starbucks, that’s for sure,” she said, according to AP.
Not while you leave your car running outside! You can’t fill up the tank for a whole week!
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Now, Bruce Rauner trying to live a week on minimum wage would be something I’d pay to see.
So, $18 for the watch, that leaves $59 . . .
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The Cub Factor: Top Reasons To Keep Watching
Including spite.
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BeachBook
* Chicago The Murder Capital? Let’s Get Real.
The media continues to perpetuate a falsehood.
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TweetWood


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The Beachwood Tip Line: #tipsaredown.

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Posted on July 29, 2014