By Steve Rhodes

“Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday denied that development of the Old Main Post Office and a long-dormant site at Roosevelt and Clark was more evidence of downtown-centric development that leaves Chicago neighborhoods behind,” the Sun-Times reports.
Well, I’d deny it too if you’re going to frame it like that. Both those sites are long overdue for development. Neither somehow supplants needed neighborhood projects. Neither is optional, like, say, the siting of the Lucas museum, which would have been a better example to put to the mayor.

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Posted on May 14, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

Well, I’ve stuck to my promise/threat to take a week off from the column, but I wanted to point out all the great stuff we’ve still featured on the site the last few days, so here goes.

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Posted on May 12, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

For completists, there was no column on Friday.
I know I said this last week but muddled through anyway, but I might take a week off. We’ll see. I’m torn between competing impulses of how to spend my time at the moment.

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Posted on May 7, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“Even as the Chicago Teachers Union reduced the threat of a strike, the group unveiled a long list of potential taxes that it said would raise $500 million for the cash-strapped public schools, Crain’s Greg Hinz reports.

“Let’s just say that anyone who buys gasoline, owns commercial property, rides on Uber or Lyft, stays in a hotel or operates a business that employs people will not be happy,” Hinz says.

That’s a weird formulation. Plenty of people who buy gas, own commercial property, use Uber and/or Lyft, and operate businesses that employ people also have kids in Chicago schools. There’s no reason to assume they don’t want to see those schools properly funded.
(As far as people who stay in hotels, they aren’t likely to notice or care if they have to pony up a few extra bucks they can put on their expense account or tack onto their vacation budget.)

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Posted on May 5, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

This isn’t going to happen today. You can find some real-time commentary about the latest George Lucas museum developments at @BeachwoodReport.

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Posted on May 4, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“Very few police misconduct complaints see the light of day. Only about 7 percent are sustained, and only 2 percent result in officer discipline, according to the City of Chicago’s own data. What most troubles people looking to enhance police accountability, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked task force, is that the majority of the complaints never get investigated,” Eleanore Catalico writes for the Chicago Reporter.
“Of the 17,700 civilian complaints filed from 2011 to 2014, investigators didn’t open cases on 58 percent of them. Why? They were marked ‘no affidavit.’ Due to a state law and police union contract rules, civilians must sign sworn affidavits to accompany their official complaints.”
To understand why that’s a problem, click through.

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Posted on May 3, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

“[Chicago’s] political donor class is disproportionately and overwhelmingly made up of rich, white men with a penchant for austerity and budget cuts, according to the first-ever municipal-level study of race, class and gender disparities in buying elections,” Sarah Lazare writes for AlterNet.
“Sean McElwee of the public policy organization Demos found that, during the 2015 mayoral race, candidates received ‘more than 92% of their funds from donors giving $1,000 or more.’ A stunning 88 percent of these big donors were white, in a city where white people comprise just 39 percent of the population. It is worth noting that big donors to the widely-reviled Rahm Emanuel skewed very white – at 94 percent. This compares with 61 percent for his unsuccessful rival Chuy Garcia.
“Not shockingly, big donors are far richer than the average city resident. ‘Though only 15% of Chicagoans make more than $100,000, 63% of donors did and 74% of those giving more than $1,000 did,’ McElwee notes.”

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Posted on May 2, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

For completists, there wasn’t a column on Friday.
“A newly published study from Oxford’s Jon Penney provides empirical evidence for a key argument long made by privacy advocates: that the mere existence of a surveillance state breeds fear and conformity and stifles free expression. Reporting on the study, the Washington Post [Thursday] described this phenomenon: ‘If we think that authorities are watching our online actions, we might stop visiting certain websites or not say certain things just to avoid seeming suspicious,'” Glenn Greenwald writes for the Intercept.
“The new study documents how, in the wake of the 2013 Snowden revelations (of which 87% of Americans were aware), there was ‘a 20 percent decline in page views on Wikipedia articles related to terrorism, including those that mentioned al-Qaeda, car bomb or Taliban.’ People were afraid to read articles about those topics because of fear that doing so would bring them under a cloud of suspicion. The dangers of that dynamic were expressed well by Penney: ‘If people are spooked or deterred from learning about important policy matters like terrorism and national security, this is a real threat to proper democratic debate.’
“As the Post explains, several other studies have also demonstrated how mass surveillance crushes free expression and free thought.”

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Posted on May 1, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

The wheels are coming off here at Beachwood HQ!
I just ditched the Dennis Hastert column I was writing. I’ve been monumentally distracted this morning (and afternoon) and it just wasn’t my best work – or even rising to the level of mediocrity. I need to get some things together, so I might not write the Papers again until Monday; I might even take a week off, though I’ll still be posting other material to the site. We’ll see.

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Posted on April 28, 2016

By Steve Rhodes

I have some top secret government work to attend to today so there won’t be a proper column. The column has gotten short shrift in the last week or so due to various distractions and attempts at scheme-hatching, sorry! As always, I direct you, dear reader, to @BeachwoodReport for real-time commentary on various goings-ons. I know it’s not the same – for better and worse – but it’s the best I can do right now.

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Posted on April 27, 2016