Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“With exquisitely strange timing, the Department of Homeland Security [Tuesday] unveiled a ‘Northern Border Strategy‘ to protect the United States against threats originating in Canada,” Secrecy News reports.


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There’s never an egg-timer around when you need one.


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Nothing to not like about this:
“Get a FREE large coffee when you buy any two fresh burritos and scan your 7‑Eleven® app with purchase.”
I know the coffee’s not really “free,” and I know the burritos aren’t really “fresh,” but dammit, give me this one. Some delusions we need to get by.
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From the office of the Chicago inspector general:
“OIG found one or more problems in 99 of the 228 (43.4%) change orders it reviewed, including proposals that lacked the necessary detail and instances where contractors overbilled PBC clients.”
If only OIG stood for Office of Inspector Gadget. That’d be the kind of city I’d like to live in.
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PBC, of course, is the city’s Public Building Commission. If only it was Public Burrito Commission. That’d be the kind of city I’d like to live in.
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“The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is proposing to spend $10.8 million of its Volkswagen settlement money on electric school buses, a larger carve-out than any other state,” Midwest Energy News reports.
But:
“An Illinois state judge [last week] tossed a lawsuit brought by the state of Illinois seeking more than $1 billion from Volkswagen AG for installing devices and software that cheated emissions tests, finding that the state claims are preempted by the federal Clean Air Act,” Law360 reports.
Plus:
“Illinois is scheduled to get $108 million as part of the Volkswagen diesel scandal settlement, but critics of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, who are preparing to disburse the funds, say Illinoisans are not getting enough input on how to apply the funds,” the Tribune reported in May.

“They purported for over a year on their website that they were going to have public meetings, public hearings to decide the best way to spend this money,” said John Walton, chair of Chicago Area Clean Cities, a group of government and corporate organizations that works toward reducing pollution. “There have been zero public meetings. There have been zero public hearings.”

Adding: “Illinois EPA’s process has been much less than was promised,” said Susan Mudd, senior policy advocate at the Chicago-based Environmental Law & Policy Center. “The process the Illinois EPA has used has not been inclusive. If one knew enough to ask, and was persistent enough, one could get a private meeting with the IEPA to discuss what IEPA might do in terms of planning for the $108 million Illinois might receive.”
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How are other states planning to spend their VW settlement money? Look it up yourself! But here’s one I came across quite painlessly:
“Rhode Island plans to use the $14.4 million it’s getting from the national Volkswagen emissions cheating scandal settlement to replace public buses that run on diesel fuel with electric vehicles, and to install high-speed electric vehicle charging stations,” AP reported in May.
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From Dan Morain’s CALMatters newsletter:

The opposing campaign managers in the race for head of California schools gave a preview of the campaign at a panel I moderated that was hosted by the California Target Book.
Bill Burton, representing Marshall Tuck, a former aide to then LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and charter school executive: “Education in this state is not great . . . Unless you get leaders in place who can help lead on some of these issues and [say], ‘The status quo isn’t good enough,’ you’re not going to get change.”
Sean Clegg, representing labor-backed Tony Thurmond, a Democratic Assemblyman from Richmond: “The worst thing that happened to Marshall Tuck is the election of Donald Trump, and the appointment of Betsy DeVos” as education secretary. “He is now running in the face of an education reform movement that is now somewhat brand damaged.”
Backstory: Burton was press secretary for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and worked in the Obama White House. Obama’s education department embraced charter schools. That didn’t endear itself to public school unions.
Burton managed the successful 2017 school board campaigns for two charter school supporters who won seats on the Los Angeles school board in the most expensive school board race in U.S. history.

Extrapolate from this what you will.
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I thought IHOB was going to be International House of Beachwood. But that’s not the world we live in.
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I actually thought it would be International House of Breakfast. For real. Like, a real change, not just a gimmick.
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I secretly hoped it would be International House of Beer, but that too is not the world we live in.
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International House of Bullshit is the world we live in, and in fact the new name of the United States of America. Without the International part.
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Local angle:


I propose CapitolFacts. We can still keep saying it (virtually) the same way, but it eliminates the reference to outdated technology.
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On the other hand, I don’t mind the reference to outdated technology. It’s part of the site’s story.
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From The National Affairs Desk:


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ChicagoGram


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ChicagoTube
“Chicago (That Toddling Town)” by Jazz-Bo’s Carolina Serenaders 1922 played on an Edison C-150.

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BeachBook
How ‘Implicit Bias’ Works.

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Hip-Hop’s Cross-Stitch Gawd.

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A New Company That Calls Itself The “Indie Party” Is Trying To Crash Texas’s U.S. Senate Race.

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Shane Campbell Looks To File $15 Million Class Action Lawsuit Against Frieze For “Unbearable” Heat.

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TweetWood
A sampling.


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The Beachwood Tronc Line: Stately.

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Posted on June 13, 2018