Hit and Run

Okay, I admit it. My trip south last month wasn't exactly the Shackleton Expedition to Antarctica, was it? There was some way cool stuff. But still. When the final portion of something—the ending—goes badly or is disappointing, that frequently becomes the lingering, lasting image.

The taste that remains on the tongue after the sweet has washed away.

Is it an outgrowth of that portion of us which reacts more-powerfully to negative news than positive? Is it tied in some remote way to our survival instincts? To better enable the survival of the species?

I wonder as I wander, people.

A carton of Trader Joe's Carne Asada burritos to Brooklyn Nets owner Joseph Tsai for calling out his point guard, Kyrie Irving.

I mean, kudos to Kyrie for landing in a profession where he can say and do pretty much whatever he wants—for as long as he can dribble and shoot a basketball, anyway. And for the generational wealth he's accruing.

Nice.

But to put it mildly, Kyrie is a flake. Selfish. And a knee-jerk contrarian. And yes, he gets to do that. Just like I do. Or you. I get it. But sabotaging the efforts of your teammates and the man who is paying you prodigious sums of money because you're a self-appointed medical expert and don't “believe” in vaccines?

That is messed up.

You want to make socio-political statements? Fine. But do it when you're the only one suffering the consequences. Do it on your time—not the company's.

You conceivably cost the Nets and their fans a title. How do you feel about that? Do you feel anything at all? Your behavior is the equivalent of a player ignoring two open teammates as he forces a three-on-one in the paint.

Please don't ever play for Chicago, okay?

On August 9, 2020 James Massey got on Facebook and posted this: ATTENTION ATTENTION LOTTING (sic) START AT 12am. DOWNTOWN AREA AND UP NORTH AREA ONLY BRING YA TOOLS SKI MASK AND GLOVES.

Falls a little short of “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country” but there you go. Exploiting the simmering social unrest in the wake of George Floyd's death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer, the would-be entrepreneur orchestrated a mass smash-and-grab on social media that proved catastrophic for the city.

Lost in the shattered glass and the police lights and the burglar alarms was the irony: it was a physical manifestation of what the Republican-enabled one-percent have been doing to the country for years.

Not so ironic is that only one group faces consequences.

And while Massey's 15-month sentence for inciting that rioting in Chicago is more than Donald Trump will ever see for January 6th, I still have to feel it falls a little short. Keep in mind that with time off for good behavior, that gets halved.

Not sure how hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage and irreparable damage to the city translates to fifteen-months, but what do I know?

What I do know is that twenty-one months after the looting, the city still hasn't healed.

Ah. The world is such an imperfect place.

Sigh.

 

Crushing on Rahimi

Maybe it's because I'm a music nut. I enjoy it because I'm sensitive to sound, and the variety of sounds found in music push my buttons in a very pleasing and engaging way. So it follows that certain human voices would resonate with me as well.

This is reason number-one I'm crushing on Leila Rahimi. I love her voice.

On the surface, this appears to be a rather flimsy foundation on which to base a crush. Tradition requires that it be rooted in some aspect of their personality or physical appearance, and yet with no actual contact with Ms. Rahimi to speak of, I must content myself with the radio show she shares with Dan Bernstein.

And it is there that I am alternately delighted, enchanted and yes—seduced by the dulcet tones of her voice.

There's a trace of a rasp which connotes authenticity and genuineness. Inflections that suggest engagement and passion. Together, they are indicative of a buoyant personality deeply connected to the world (or at least the sports) around her.

Is this not someone you'd love to watch a Bulls' game with?

Which isn't to overlook her expansive vocabulary. It bespeaks a powerful and agile intellect able to articulate any thought passing through her cerebellum. For better or for worse, she is as opinionated as you are.

There's definitely some acuity going on here.

And finally there is the laugh. Ebullient. Hearty. All-in. It is a truly great laugh. It's the sort you can't hear without smiling.

Sigh.

Alas, I am a faceless listener. A number in a ratings report. And it must be said that to some extent, she is a performer, performing.

How does she sound calling in an order to her favorite pizzeria? Or reporting a cable outage to her provider? Or telling her (presumed) significant other to stop finishing-off the Cheetos? Or letting wet laundry to molder in the washing machine?

Ah, but real life doesn't intrude upon crushes, does it? Crushes exist in a theoretical world of romantic perfection. There are no fumbled words. No awkward silences. No missed cues. No disagreement.

All concerned get everything they want. And everything they need. All the time. Does it get any better than that?

No.

And yet, I long for the opportunity to find out. What fools we mortals be.

 

Truth Decay

I only wish the most detestable thing I ever had to do for a job was get a shot. Or share my vaccination status. Or get tested for COVID twice a week.

Apparently it is for Chicago police officers and many of the city's municipal employees. Even with their lavish pensions and hearty salaries, they are outraged by Mayor Lightfoot's COVID vaccine mandate and have filed suit against the city.

Gulp.

I had to take all manner of shit while employed as a cashier for Home Depot during the Great Recession. While the lowest-paid employees in the store, the position also featured its most-demanding metrics. They were a circular firing squad of contradictory and mutually-exclusive demands.

For instance, the 'Security' metric required me to root through a contractor's flatbed cart to search for saw blades and silver solder hidden between bags of cement mix and boxes of shingles while simultaneously delighting them with radiant customer service.

Oh, and this needed to be done very quickly. Because beyond meeting the 'Friendly and courteous' metric I needed to fulfill the 'Speed of checkout' one, too. Since they were already put-off by the assumption of theft we certainly didn't want them hanging around any longer than necessary, did we?

“Thank you for shopping at Home Depot and have a great day!”

One example of the surly gentlemen who frequented our store were the pair who commented “Wish I could stand around with my hands in my pockets all day” as they passed my register.

First off, my hands weren't in my pockets. And secondly, store policy required me to stand at the head of the aisle when I wasn't actively processing a customer and could theoretically flag down anyone ready to check-out.

As an inveterate customer service professional and an endlessly helpful soul, I couldn't let this customer's wish go unfulfilled. Which is why I responded “You can! At Home Depot dot com slash jobs!”

My insouciance wasn't taken in the spirit in which it was offered and the toxic twins leveled a complaint about me to persons unknown. Not only did I hear from my department manager but the store manager as well.

After listening to their spiels about the importance of our customers, I told them I didn't care who the complainants were—I wasn't going to be a punching bag for our customers merely because I had a Home Depot apron on.

Mystifyingly, I neglected to thank them for their support.

The memory smolders, still.

You'll excuse me if I can't quite recall the details of my pension and other benefits because there weren't any. I did mention I earned $8.40 an hour, right? And that my hours were strictly limited to spare Home Depot the ruinous financials presented by full-time employees?

Yeah.

But at least I wasn't required to get a shot.

So yes, my heart bleeds for Chicago's cops and the scores of municipal employees being made to bear the outrage of having to inoculate oneself during a pandemic. It's like being made to exit a burning building, is it not?

Lead Fraternal Order of Police troll John Catanzara, whose sole talent in life is intransigence, is threatening a massive call-in by Chicago's finest should Mayor Lightfoot follow through on the expectations outlined in her mandate.

Catanzara's mental acuity is on display when, after his predecessor's death from COVID last week, he refused to acknowledge the existence of the virus or the threat it presents to the members of his union.

(It is interesting to note that despite his public anti-vaxxer stance, Catanzara is vaccinated. And exactly what do the chumps who elected him think of that?)

It is again on display when the fact is made public that more cops have died from COVID than from all Black Lives Matter protests combined. (It isn't even close.) But is COVID a threat? Should cops vaccinate? Nope.

I'm reminded of Monty Python's Argument Clinic, wherein Terry Jones attempts to explain to John Cleese that “...an argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition”, to which Cleese answers “Not it isn't.”

Exasperated, Jones goes on to complain that this isn't an argument—it's contradiction. Cleese's response? “No it isn't.”

But in the end this isn't really about masks and vaccines, is it?

Nope. It's the same dynamic playing out between President Biden and Mitch McConnell in Washington DC. It's about control. Republicans created this power-at-all-costs dynamic and it's about nothing more than resisting Democrats.

Slit your throat. Or the public's. We don't care. But don't ever accede to a Democrat!

With things like the greater good and public health thrown under the bus for a prolonged sibling rivalry more appropriate for the sandbox than our halls of government, it's tempting to feel the looming global warming cataclysm couldn't have come at a better time.

Sorry for the misanthropic streak, but there you go.

Black Privilege? (Number-two)

Dear Black Lives Matter,

I want to stand with you. March with you. And wear your t-shirts. But I just can't. It is because you so frequently act as wantonly and as recklessly as the white power structures you deride.

Last Sunday afternoon, yet-another police shooting occurred on the south side of Chicago. Typically, before a single element of the event had been proven or disproven, social media was ablaze with rumors and threats.

That evening, a caravan of cars, trucks and vans converged on Michigan Avenue, which if you're not familiar with Chicago, is our version of New York City's Park Avenue. It is awash with high-end retailers of clothing, jewelry and anything else people with unbridled amounts of money and time need to fill the hollowness they feel after chasing—and getting—it all.

At any rate, the mob smashed windows and emptied those boutiques and shops of every piece of merchandise within.

Judging by your tone-deaf and anonymous press release the morning after, the looting was an entirely-justified response to what Black Lives Matter assumes is another racist and unwarranted police shooting.

Furthermore, since when do “protesters” (as you refer to them) come to a protest with glass cutters and hammers and rental trucks? Sunday night's looting was as spontaneous as sunrise—an entitlement its participants felt was justified because the Chicago Police Department—wrongly or rightly—shot a Black man.

Do I dare call it Black Privilege?

As with our current president, facts don't matter. Just your knee-jerk indignation does.

And while I'm questioning you, may I ask another?

I confess to not keeping tabs on every event you stage, but I am unaware of Black Lives Matter ever mounting a protest at the corner of say, Lake and Cicero, and calling out the scores and scores of Black gang-members who indiscriminately kill their own in service of the drug trade.

Don't those black lives matter? Or is it because there is no established (i.e. white) authority you can threaten/berate/criticize? You'll have to excuse me, but from my vantage point Black lives matter only when taken by white hands.

If I am uninformed as to the depth and breadth of your efforts, please set me straight. In all seriousness, I would be delighted to be wrong.

A French philosopher once observed that we become what we hate. And in the case of too many of Black Lives Matter's responses to serious events crying out for fact-based clarity, you are as assumptive and presumptuous as the police you loathe.

Again, like the police you say need to be defunded, re-organized, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, you are better at escalating conflict than you are at de-escalating it. And if that is your goal, congratulations.

But if you seek to educate and reform public and law enforcement perceptions, you are cutting off your nose to spite your face. Take it from a long-time viewer of Botched: nasal reconstructive surgery sucks.

Best of luck to you.

Signed,

An Old White Guy

After Growing up in Illinois, How the Hell Did I Become a Democrat? (pt. 1)

When you look back on it, it's quite remarkable, really. That I could come of age in a place dominated by a single political party and despite the decades of corruption emanating from that party, grow-up to embrace them on a national level.

How the hell did that happen?

Some backstory:

First there was Richard J. Daley: The Boss. His iron-clad tenure was earmarked by the slogan “Chicago: The city that works”—at long as you followed the dictates of your precinct captain and voted the right way.

You see, Daley developed a system of patronage that would have been the envy of medieval kings and queens. You either voted for Daley or discovered your garbage wasn't being picked-up in a timely fashion. Or that the burned-out streetlight in front of your house stayed that way for months. Or even years.

Maybe the police paid unusual attention to your car and the state of its registration. Or meticulously observed local parking ordinances as they pertained to your conveyance.

It went on and on and on.

Like all good crime bosses, Daley inserted layers and layers of bureaucracy between him and his functionaries, ensuring it would be difficult to draw a line between him and these civic punishments for non-compliance.

Only death could stop him. And in December of 1976, it did.

Then there was Paul Powell, the Illinois Secretary of State who died in office in 1970. In the time-honored tradition of Illinois Democrats, shoeboxes (shoeboxes!) stuffed with cash were found in his office and the hotel where he lived.

The haul amounted to $750,000 (nearly five-million in 2020 dollars), which was an entirely natural consequence for a civil servant bringing home 30k per.

But Daley and Powell are just the tip of the iceberg. I would be remiss if I didn't name-check George W. Dunne, who as a politically-oriented friend of mine noted bitterly, was the first man to become a millionaire after being elected to public office.

I can't substantiate this claim, but you get the idea. Crooked as a pubic hair.

Then there's Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, who, as his nickname implies, could talk his way out of a sunburn. As an alderman, Fast Eddie had a profound ability for making slimy deals and vanishing before the slime even had a chance to dry.

To insert a particularly-relevant feather in Fast Eddie's cap, he unashamedly led the anti-Washington contingent against Chicago's first black mayor, repeatedly stymieing him as he sought to enact municipal policy.

When being an alderman wasn't enough, he ran for mayor as a Republican—twice. But being a Republican candidate for mayor in the city of Chicago is like being the drummer for the fictional heavy-metal band Spinal Tap. The future is not so bright one requires shades.

While death or political miscalculation ended all of the notable careers above, Edward M. Burke has persisted for over half a century.

He was initially elected to the Chicago City Council in 1969 and has served (for lack of a better word) ever since. He has amassed considerable power, and like the businessmen-slash-pols above, it's difficult to tell where his business ends and his position as an alderman begins.

And vice versa.

Until recently, Burke considered himself a very important person, hence the chauffeur-driven limousine and bodyguards. But a federal probe has put the kabosh on his high falutin' ways, and presently Ed and his legal team are sweating out the details on how to beat the charges stacking up against him.

Fifty-years on, you could argue that ship sailed a long time ago. But I'm fine with the idea of Burke enjoying an uncomfortable retirement.

Manners prohibit me from neglecting the fine quartet of Illinois governors who selflessly blazed a trail from the cushy Governor's mansion in Springfield to federal prison. Yep. Otto Kerner, Dan Walker, George Ryan and Rod Blagojevich all did time.

So there you have it. The Elite Eight of Illinois Infamy. A handy and compact guide to the Illinois politicians who have distinguished themselves while answering the call of public service.

Thing is, the were unusually adept at reversing the charges. (For those of you too young to know what that means, Google it.)

Join us here at The Square Peg next time as we take a look the career of the Babe Ruth of Illinois politics.

Ta ta for now.

Wondering Aloud

Serving the adrenaline demographic (and the attendant ratings and advertising revenue spike) has led to a profound change in the way nature is presented to TV audiences.

No more illuminating programming typically juxtaposed against the change in seasons. Nope. Instead of a feature with an animal mom raising her young and shepherding them to adulthood, or a fascinating profile of a blue whale, we see conflict. Fights. Carnage.

At the head of the class is Animal Fight Night, trotted out by the one-time educator of all things natural—the National Geographic Society, which seeks to answer not how a specific animal develops the skills with which to survive in its environment, but more pressing scientific queries along the lines of can a hippo beat-up an Australian salt-water crocodile?

Sigh. Looking for a cultural snapshot? There it is.

(Naturally, this follows a re-organization of the National Geographic board which saw a decided rise in “input” from conservative sources.)

In addition to portraying the designated lifeform as a one-dimensional machine devoid of any impulse but the urge to fight, it certainly makes it easier to justify their extinction, doesn't it? They're dangerous!

I recall a middle school field trip to Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, one which sought to educate young minds and expand their intellectual horizons.

At one exhibit, there was a question posed next to a wooden door. “What is the world's most-dangerous predator?”

When opened, it revealed a mirror.

Mission accomplished.

Sadly, it was eventually removed. But the lesson endures.

Non-human lifeforms have never been more endangered. Outright extinctions and projected extinctions are off the charts as mankind's relentless spread crowds out thousands upon thousands of species.

The combined effects of habitat destruction and global warming are as lethal as a poacher's gun.

Is it really wise to consume television wherein they're characterized as one-dimensional killers? Couldn't it be argued that if anything should be projected as lethal threats to whatever may be around it is us?

At a time when an unimaginable number of species are perched on the edge of extinction, portraying them this way seems like piling on. Never mind the corrosive effect on preservation efforts.

We like to imagine grand and glorious things about ourselves. Understanding that we share the planet with these species and owe them a measure of consideration before we erect yet-another Sunglasses Hut and carelessly breed might be one way of inching closer to that.

Mystery Train

It's tough to be a monopoly.

Without having to craft marketing campaigns that sway consumers to your brand or sussing out new and better ways of doing things that keep you one step ahead of the competition or monitoring expenses to ensure that you remain lean and mean, what the hell do you do all day?

Calculate the extent of your monopoly? 

With obesity at epidemic proportions, shouldn't you be concerned that the sedentary lifestyle afforded you by your monopoly places you at risk? 

And so it is for METRA, the government-created railroad which operates Chicago's commuter trains.

In ways that would make Karl Marx proud, METRA is routinely unable to convert a rail monopoly in the nation's third-largest metropolitan area into profit. Despite the fact that 300,000 people pack their trains every day, it is not enough.

Students of history may recall the struggles of Cecil Rhodes and John D. Rockefeller to make their monopolies profitable.

I guess this monopoly business isn't all it's cracked up to be.

With its feckless brain trust unable to conceive of any other option, METRA looks to the private sector for inspiration. Like them, it takes the path of least-resistance: for the fourth time in four years METRA has raised the cost of a ticket. And cut service.

The fourth time is always the charm, isn't it? Or something like that. (When you operate a public sector monopoly, close is good enough. Precision and accuracy are not required.)

Besides, what are commuters going to do? Ride the competition's trains?

Back in 2011, METRA tried to get out of its own way. It hired a two-hundred seventy-five dollar an hour consultant to observe its operation and draw a conclusion or two. The consultant reported that scores of riders were riding for free, with METRA's very well-paid conductors more interested in newspapers than in the inconvenience of collecting fares.

Four fare-hikes later, I wonder if anything has changed.

As a bus driver who delivers riders to METRA stations five days a week, I am told that riding under radar still isn't the anomaly paying riders would hope. It certainly seems fair to ask what portion of these incessant increases cover conductor ineptness?

And if not that, what do they cover?

With unemployment at a twenty-first century low, ridership should be booming. METRA's cash flow should resemble the torrential flash floods seen in California. And yet it does not. Again, for the fourth time in four years METRA has its hand out.

Four times. Four years. You can't turn a profit with a monopoly? Seriously?

Having only its long-term health at heart, we the people should be demanding that METRA be placed on a low-fat diet; one rich in transparency and accountability and low in avoiding potentially unpleasant face-offs with employees and board members.

As an ardent believer in unions and mass transportation, I wince at the damage METRA does to the public perception of both.

The fraud at METRA must stop. Without the demands private sector businesses face, god knows they have the time.

Something Different on Memorial Day

In 1991 I went to Memphis. It was a stop on a larger trip whose eventual destination was Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In the city famed for Elvis and barbeque, I was struck by a high-contrast example of the disparity between black and white in the United States of America.

On one side of town, there was no detail of Elvis Presley's life too trivial to memorialize. I could have bought a laminated reproduction of his driver's license from one of the half-dozen gift shops across the street from Graceland.

On another side of town, the spot where Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and Eddie Floyd had recorded some of the most resonant and indelible soul music ever conceived was an overgrown vacant lot, with only a U.S. historical marker near the curb.

The converted movie theater that had served as the recording studio for Stax Records was long gone; the undeniable truth being it had been torn down to make way for a vacant lot. There were no opportunities to purchase a reproduction of Otis Redding's driver's license, much less see the building where he and the M.G.s had recorded Otis Blue.

It hit me. Hard.

Let me be clear: the intent isn't to slam Memphis. My mate and I enjoyed an otherwise wonderful visit, topped-off by the elderly gentleman who escorted us from a McLemore Avenue convenience store to the nearby Interstate entrance I had somehow been unable to locate.

But with the exception of Detroit and its Motown museum, this is a story repeated in any city that once served as mecca for black music. My hometown of Chicago has its own woeful record of neglect.

To wit, 2120 S. Michigan Ave. is a parking lot. Record Row, the home to Vee-Jay and Brunswick Records (among others) was reduced by the mid-nineties to a handful of faded, hand-painted company logos in second story windows.

With the wholesale gentrification of the South Loop, I doubt even those exist today.

These locales were the purveyors of what was essentially under the counter music for an under the counter culture. If the pop music consumed by white teenagers was considered disposable, you can imagine the status accorded the latest J.B. Lenoir forty-five.

It is ironic then, that this music could end up aiding and abetting the entity known as the City of Chicago.

As it seeks desperately to avoid being flushed down the toilet with the remainder of Illinois, Chicago is in dire need of revenue. And what better way to lure tourists from points all over the globe than by recognizing its musical heritage?

Sam Cooke, Benny Goodman and Herbie Hancock are just three of the luminous talents birthed by the city. Chuck Berry, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley recorded the music that set an entire generation of English youth aflame here.

And yet their connections to Chicago are virtually invisible.

Cities as far-flung as Vienna, Austria and Kansas City, Missouri have acknowledged their musical heritage and acted not only to preserve it, but use it as a lure which simultaneously educates and creates revenue streams.

Even beyond these practical applications, this serves—in many cases—to pay homage to the profound contribution African-American culture has made to the broader culture of the United States, and on a good day might even encourage a rethink of our racial stereotypes.

Given the junk status of its bonds and the tautness of its racial tensions, it is high time Chicago did the same.

What Gets Protected

We've all seen the cop movie where the line between the lawful and the lawless is practically indistinguishable. The kind which illuminate just how thin the veneer of civilization can be. 

Former Chicago police commander Jon Burge, if he didn't inspire such movies, certainly lived them.

Burge was a detective who repeatedly crossed that line when he employed torture as a means of extracting confessions from suspects, padding his district's statistics and speeding his presumed ascent to the top of the tree. 

Burge and his henchmen weren't picky: electrical cords, phone books, rubber hoses, guns. Anything would do. Machiavelli would have been proud. 

But a funny thing happened in the midst of Burge's two-decade reign of blood-soaked lawlessness. He got caught. He got convicted. And eventually he went to jail.

Mind you, it wasn't a regular jail full of regular bad guys. It was a minimum security one in beautiful North Carolina, full of white-collar guys who cooked the books and wrote bad checks. It seems the powers that be just couldn't bear the thought of Jon running into some former acquaintances.

And despite the prosecution demanding a sentence of thirty years, Jon received just four and-a-half (of which he served three and-a-half) for his wholesale and violent abuse of authority.

If that isn't offensive enough, know that Burge is currently living the good life in Florida, courtesy of a $36,000 dollar a year pension despite costing the cash-strapped City of Chicago one-hundred million-dollars in reparations, legal fees and court costs, with many millions more to come.

Despite the cruelty and lawlessness Burge showered his victims with, the Illinois Supreme Court declared it illegal to withhold Burge's pension, saying that to do so would constitute a “fundamental change” of the state's pension code.

And who wants that?

Chicago is desperately seeking revenue enhancements, and has closed four-dozen public schools to cut costs. Aid for the mentally ill, the poor, the elderly, kids with autism and public transportation subsidies—among other things—has been terminated in Illinois.

But Jon Burge's pension? God forbid.

It's good to know that something is sacrosanct in Illinois.

Nickel and Dimed

Traditionally, Illinois has been known as the Land of Lincoln. And while the association with a revered public official is certainly laudable, one has to wonder how representative it is nearly one-hundred-fifty years after his death.

To provide a more appropriate picture of twenty-first century Illinois, I propose a new slogan. Call it The Kama Sutra State. Or Land of Kama Sutra. Does the sexy tingle of State of Kama Sutra do anything for you?

OK. You might wonder what the Kama Sutra has to do with Illinois, especially since the former is an ancient Indian sex manual and the latter is smack dab in the middle of the Midwest.

Let me explain.

Within the Kama Sutra are a staggering variety of male-female couplings in all manner of positions. Many of them require an almost inhuman degree of flexibility.

As a resident of Illinois, it’s only natural I would be reminded of the Kama Sutra when I see the torturous contortions citizens attempt in order to meet the needs of state and municipal agencies.

Let me share two small, everyday examples.

Example number-one is our state lottery, which was recently privatized in the belief that the golden hand of business would reduce costs, increase efficiency and send profits soaring.

Of course, the only people who believe business has a golden hand are those who have never been employed by one.

Our new and improved lottery has mostly succeeded in missing revenue targets and failing to pay agreed-upon penalties. As of this writing, Northstar Lottery Group owes the state of Illinois roughly twenty-million dollars for not boosting lottery sales to the heights promised.

As a result, Northstar has taken the path all businesses take when they need to increase revenue. With no appreciable payroll to cut, they have raised the price of their product.

They didn't devise an irresistible lottery game that has Illinoisans lining-up to play. Or initiate a clever and attention-grabbing marketing campaign that has us seeing the lottery in a fresh new light.

No. They just doubled the cost of a lottery ticket.

This is the inspired business acumen for which the state ponied up one hundred twenty-five million dollars.

For those who play the lottery, this means ten bucks now buys half as many numbers as it did before privatization. Or ten instead of twenty. Five instead of ten. You get the idea.

I’m guessing you’ve been waiting as anxiously as I for just the right opportunity to cut your chances of winning the lottery in half.

What I really want to know is how long it’s going to take for Northstar to cough-up the twenty mil it owes the state. According to my calculations, it should be half as long as it was before the increase.

But that’s just me. And this, after all, is Illinois.

And then there’s the Chicago Transit Authority and their no-change ticket dispensers, which pocket surfeit cash from hapless riders unarmed with exact change.

But even the retention of unearned money hasn’t kept the CTA from declaring yet-another cash shortfall, necessitating yet-another round of talk about service cuts and rate hikes.

You’re already keeping my change! What more do you want? My socks?

We could always drive, but after the giveaway of the city’s parking meter revenue in a seventy-five year contract to Chicago Parking Meter LLC, the CTA is definitely the lesser of two evils.

(Unless of course you take some kind of perverse pleasure in paying the nation’s highest parking rates.)

None of this would be so irksome if Illinois didn’t boast the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation. Or if Chicago’s wasn’t stuck at ten percent.

Or if our thirty-dollar-an-hour bus drivers were occasionally a tad more polite and understanding of those who don’t ride their bus five days a week.

But it is. And they aren’t.

So yes, the comparisons are apt. We are the Land of Kama Sutra.

Because like the figures in that text, we invariably get fucked.

Continuity

In a world that becomes more unrecognizable every day, there is a certain comfort in the realization that some things are as eternal as sunrise and Lego. I speak of the recently-announced Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) fare-hikes and service cuts (the latter of which was cunningly announced after the fare-hikes were approved).

One of the things I relished most about Chicago was its largely-functional network of buses and trains, which allowed you to navigate the city without the hassle and expense of finding a place to put your car at the end of a trip.

Even in the eighties and early-nineties, parking a car was an expensive and time-consuming proposition. The uncluttered ease of arriving at a destination sans automobile was one of life’s small joys. As was catching up on reading and sleep on the way home.

Sadly, the CTA is probably the best argument against government-run health care in the nation.

Here is a government entity with a virtual monopoly on public transportation in a metropolitan area of eight million people, yet one which seemingly needs an inhaler at the mere mention of black ink.

In the hyphen-happy language of the digital age, the CTA is profit-averse.

Unless you’re one of the unfortunate folks waiting at a slushy bus stop on a grey morning with a wind chill index of about ten, it’s almost the stuff of a Coen Brothers movie, with red ink replacing the blood.

It would be understandable if their monopoly were on curling equipment rentals. Or concert appearances by nineties boy-band 98 Degrees. But public transportation? In a metropolitan area recently named the third-most congested in the nation? Please.

I suspect the CTA is top-heavy, encrusted with dozens and dozen of politically-expedient appointees who draw six-figure salaries for being able to show up at the same address five days in a row and not much more.

And like our domestic automobile manufacturers, the CTA has perhaps been a tad too generous to its unionized employees.

The CTA rolls out its bi-annual argument that ridership is declining. But to anyone who’s ever waited on a subway platform or stood in line at a bus stop only to find standing room only on both, this argument is unconvincing.

More likely, the CTA is one of the city’s few remaining profit centers, and CTA patrons are paying-off Mayor Daley’s civic excesses, which include his bungled (and very expensive) Olympic bid.

Just when it's needed most, Chicago's public transportation is disappearing. And like so much else, this impacts the poor disproportionately. At the current rate, you have to wonder how much CTA riders will be paying to go nowhere at all.

Which, when you think about it, sounds like the CTA itself.