By Steve Rhodes
A loyal reader asked me what I meant by my statement yesterday that a public option made no sense whatsoever, and the current leading bill without a public option made no sense whatsoever.
Here is my explanation.
1. What I mean is that I don’t think the public option makes sense – for a number of reasons. First, it’s pure speculation and wishful thinking to believe that this will “force insurance companies to be honest.” Obama likes to trot out the (bad) example of the U.S. Post Office competing with FedEx and UPS, but does anyone really believe the business practices of the Post Office have anything but minimal impact on FedEx and UPS? And there already is competition in the market. Beyond that, the CBO has made clear that a public plan will not save money. We all know that the public option is a half-measure on the way to single-payer, something Dems spoke freely about through the last campaign but deny now. Finally, I don’t like the idea of the government entering a private marketplace and playing along.

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Posted on August 21, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
1. Whet Moser is smarter than Mary Schmich. And a better writer. Think he gets paid nearly as much?
2. Some local businesses can’t figure out how to get stimulus money, Ald. Manny Flores tells Chicagoist. And the Green Exchange may seek TIF funds.
3. Sheryl Crow sells her catalog for $10 million. I hope to someone who was willing to pay that much so we wouldn’t have to hear any of her songs ever again.

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Posted on August 20, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
Reporters don’t like to hear it, but sometimes a graphic can tell a story better than an article can.
For example, “The Many Goodbyes of Brett Favre” in today’s Tribune.
I’d like to link to it, but it doesn’t appear to be online. So picture icons of Favre with the lettering “He’s Out?”; “He’s In”; He’s Out”, “He’s In?” assigned to dates, quotes and announcements. There’s 10 in all.
There’s your story.

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Posted on August 19, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
“Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) sent a recommendation letter to a principal last spring on behalf of a staffer’s relative who had been rejected entry to one of Chicago’s most elite public high schools,” the Tribune reports.
“Though the applicant’s score was well below the school’s average, the principal at Jones College Prep accepted the student through a channel that allows principals to handpick 5 percent of the incoming class. The student was one of 12 chosen under the provision, from a pool of more than 180 applications, Principal Joseph Powers said.”
And Durbin’s letter had nothing to do with it, right?

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Posted on August 18, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
Mayor Daley recently half-joked that the burgeoning CPS clout scandal at least showed that some Chicago schools had become so desirable during his tenure that parents and politicians were willing to cheat to get their kids admitted into them.
But Marj Halperin’s 1988 Chicago magazine article called “The Lottery” – which she recently shared with District 299 blogger Alexander Russo – shows that clout admissions and the controversial “principal picks” now under federal investigation pre-date the Richard M. Daley era.
Here’s how Halperin opened her piece:
“Governor Thompson got his kid in. So did state representatives Ellis Levin and Al Ronan. You’ll find the daughter of Alderman Patrick O’Connor, head of the City Council’s education committee, in a magnet classroom this year. Alderman Ed Smith’s, too.

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Posted on August 17, 2009

By Natasha Julius
We’ll keep working while you take a long weekend to consider the evidence.
Market Update
It was a tough week on the Parenting exchange, as Fathers suffered an historic collapse. Analysts took heart that, despite a disappointing showing, Mothers managed to exceed the Street’s rather modest expectations.

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Posted on August 15, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
1. Oracle sure gets what it pays for every year when the company gets free front page advertising in the dailies (as they do today) through purported news photos of the planes its sponsors in the Air & Water Show.
Similarly, this is why the media should refuse to refer to U.S. Cellular Field, for just one example. Naming rights, sponsorships and strategically placed advertising are insidious product placement strategies that otherwise wouldn’t be allowed by news organizations.
Either sell out or don’t, but don’t be outsmarted.

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Posted on August 14, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
Totally swamped; an abbreviated column today.
* It seems Ms. Britney Rowley was working with Michael Jackson when he deposited some funds in an account no one else knows about.
* Hey, if you’re going to be covering President Obama’s vacation at Martha’s Vineyard, you might want to ask him about the wind there.

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Posted on August 13, 2009

Editor’s Note: Today I hand the Papers column over to Mike Conklin. Also new on the site today: Dan O’Shea’s always excellent Fantasy Fix, and Takin’ Care of Schaumburg Plus, a Pritzker Pavilion treat below.
By Mike Conklin
Is it over? Are we done? At first, it seemed as if we were fed excessive Woodstock Music Festival goulash this year. Then, I did the math: The anniversary year is divisible by five. Whenever the media looks back on an event, it will not get excited or consider it significant unless the expired years are divisible by five or, better yet, ten – 15, 20, 25, or, in the case with Woodstock this time, 40. The 38th or 39th anniversary of Woodstock? Sorry, no way were those years as important as the 40th!!! Mark your calendars now for the 45th anniversary in 2014 and a really big blowout in 2019.
If an event is cataclysmic enough, say 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, and there was plenty of death and good art, there are annual retrospectives produced by the media. These will spike in size and volume whenever they hit a five-year mark. The stock market crash, the Bears’ Super Bowl win, the Watergate break-in, the ’68 Democratic convention, and the JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King assassinations pretty much have been relegated to 10-year retros.

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Posted on August 12, 2009

By Steve Rhodes
And in cabbie assault news not involving Patrick Kane . . .
“Chicago’s estimated 12,000 taxi drivers are calling for a day of prayer and meditation Tuesday to highlight hardships they face every day,” the Tribune reports.
“That includes Karl Clermont, 33, a driver who said he still doesn’t know which Chicago police officer refused to pay his $8 cab fare and pulled a gun on Clermont on April 23 at Armitage and Damen Avenues.”

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Posted on August 11, 2009