TEN MANIFESTATIONS OF THE GLOOM AND DOOM THAT PERVADES OUR WORLD

7/30/14

Lest you have been enjoying your summer too much, here are some reasons to justify the gloom and doom approach to the world that characterizes many sage observers, including yours truly. Some of these have been very much in the headlines, some have been buried in the bowels of the news.  They are listed in no particular order:

1. The heat is being turned up on the Russians under the theory that we should have a bigger say concerning what happens on its borders than should Russia.  The Russians, and their leader, Vladimir Putin, are being backed into a corner with this newest round of economic and financial sanctions.  The major impact of these shrewd diplomatic moves has been to enhance Mr. Putin’s popularity at home (All governments, and especially authoritarian governments, like that of Mr. Putin, find foreign crises useful in rallying support among their populaces.) and to increasingly make the Russians see the entire Ukraine situation as evolving into a fight not for Ukraine but for Russia itself.   What could the consequences be?   One can think of many, but none of them is good.

2. The Israelis and the Palestinians in Gaza (for now) continue to go at it, with Hamas militants continuing to dig tunnels for sorties against Israeli civilians and military personnel and Israel bearing down militarily on Hamas military strongholds with predictable consequences for the civilian populations of Gaza.  Yesterday, the Israelis knocked out the only power plant on the Gaza Strip, eliminating electricity and water service for the entire area.   The situation is getting more desperate and the conflict threatens to spread at least to the West Bank and probably beyond.

3. An ebola outbreak is spreading through West Africa, having already claimed thousands of lives and probably destined to kill many more.

4. Western states in the Colorado River valley are tapping into groundwater at unprecedented rates.  Already, ground water levels are dangerously low and Lake Mead is at its lowest levels since it was built in the ‘30s.   Meanwhile, larges sections of California remain mired in drought.

5. Farm prices are down sharply, with December corn trading at $3.70 per bushel as I write this, far below the $4.00 widely regarded as the breakeven price for farmers who raise this most vital commodity.   That $4.00, of course, is a nebulous number and varies from farm to farm, but it’s still a pretty good indicator of the shape of farm finances…currently not good.   Not only does this hurt farm incomes, which would a bad enough outcome, but weakness in farm incomes quickly ripples throughout the entire agricultural economy…ag equipment manufacturers, seed and fertilizer companies, rural banks, etc.  And sometimes, but not always, weakness on the farm is a precursor of general economic malaise.

6. According to USA Today (not a good source, I know), one-third of Americans have debt in collection.  So much for Americans’ cleaning up their balance sheets; we just can’t stop spending money we don’t have for things we don’t need to impress people we don’t like.  This is not a formula for economic success, as much as the learned observers in the financial media cheer every indication of increased spending and lament every indication of financial prudence on the part of the American consumer.

7. There seem to be the makings of a shake-up in China’s leadership as Zhou Yongkang, former domestic security chief (a BIG job in China) comes under investigation for “serious disciplinary violations.”   China is a big, important place; what happens in China doesn’t stay in China any more.

8. The United States is seemingly under invasion by legions of illegal immigrants from Central America and doesn’t seem to know what to do with these new arrivals.   Our sense of humanity paralyzes us, perhaps understandably, making us a helpless giant in the face of this wave of new arrivals.

9. The Islamic State (“TIS”), a Sunni group I have described as Al Qaeda on steroids, continues to press for a caliphate spreading from Lebanon to the Iraq’s border with Iran.  Alawite (a branch of the Shia branch of Islam) President Bashar Assad continues fighting with Sunni rebels, including the TIS, in his country.  The United States is on both sides of this growing religious war that threatens to engulf the Middle East, supporting TIS in Syria and supporting the Iraqi government in its battle with TIS.

10. Terrorist attacks continue incessantly in China’s Xinjiang Province.  The Chinese government fights back with increasing, and understandable, ferocity.   Again, China is a big, important place; what happens in China doesn’t stay in China any more.

Yours truly does not make these observations in his occasional role as a financial/economic/stock market observer; our economy, if you believe the numbers, grew at a 4% pace in the second quarter and nothing seems to make this stock market go down.   I simply offer these trouble spots in my usual role as a curmudgeonly commentator who manages to find the cloud inside every silver lining.

There are several possible reactions to the above list of troubling developments.  One is to point out that things have looked bad at many points in history; 1929, 1933, 1940, and 1968 come immediately to mind as recent examples of low points on the world’s timeline.  And the world somehow survived and eventually prospered.  Another reaction is to say something like “This time it’s different” and conclude that the world runs inexorably and speedily toward hell in a hand basket.   While, given my general downbeat approach to life, I favor the latter, history teaches us that the former approach will not only probably prove more beneficial, both personally and generally, but will probably prove correct.  We somehow will get out of this…I suppose.

Meanwhile, yours truly continues to pray for another Great Awakening, this time on a worldwide scale.  This seems to be the only development that would save our nation, and the world, from the generalized suicide it seems bent on committing.

ALDERMAN AUSTIN PRESENTS YOURS TRULY WITH AN OUTSTANDING BUSINESS OPPORTUNITY!

7/30/14

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 911 phone tax (CHICAGO’S PROPOSED PHONE TAX INCREASE:  RAHM EMANUEL’S IDEA OF “CONSTITUENT SERVICE”, Rant Finance, 6/26/14), which all but the most shamelessly disingenuous admit is a way around a property tax hike in an election year, advanced out of the City Council Finance Committee yesterday in a unanimous vote.   Dick Daley is probably looking down in awe on Mayor Emanuel’s control of his bleating sheep council, but I digress.

So how did the sycophants in the Finance Committee sweep aside the fact that a family of relatively modest means will pay more with the proposed phone tax increase than it would have under the property tax increase the phone tax is designed to obviate?  Or how do they get around the fact that the wealthier a family is, or at least the more expensive home a family has, the more money it will save under the 911 phone tax vs. the now delayed property tax?   How do the aldermen, most of whom represent constituents of more modest means, go along so obediently with a tax scheme that clearly favors Rahm Emanuel’s much more well-heeled core constituency?

Here was the answer from Budget Committee Chair Alderman Carrie Austin of the 34^th Ward:

“Even though it may cost more because you have more lines with phones, I’d rather come up with an additional $5 or $10 than to come up with $150.  It may not be as much pain monthly as it would be at one time.” (sic)

Yours truly would have to agree; I, too, would rather come up with $5 or $10 per month than $150 annually, mostly because $10 per month is only $120 annually while $5 per month is only $60 annually.  

Okay, okay, so Alderman Austin is a bit arithmetically challenged; who can expect the Chair of the Budget Committee to be able to perform such complicated calculations as multiplying by twelve?   Further, we have no idea where the Alderman got the figures she cites.   But let’s forgive her lack of dexterity with the numbers, look at the Alderman’s logic, and apply it to realistic numbers. 

Say a family of four lives in a $250,000 house.  They have a land line and four cellular phone lines.  These are far from outrageous assumptions on either point.   Under the original property tax increase proposal, they would have seen a $50 increase in their annual property tax bill.  The 911 tax increase comes to $1.40 per month per line.  For the five lines, that’s $7.00 per month.  That’s $84 per year.   $84, for Alderman Austin’s benefit, is $34, or 68%, more than $50.

Using the Alderman’s logic, a family should be happy to pay the additional 68% because they’d be able to pay $7 “monthly” rather than $50 “at one time.”

Hmm…

Perhaps it isn’t Alderman Austin’s job to do arithmetic, but it is her job to know her constituents.  (At least theoretically; apparently, she, and just about every alderman, sees his or her  primary job to be pleasing Mayor Emanuel, but I digress.)  If she is correct and her constituents and, indeed, all Chicagoans, would rather pay $7 per month than $50 per year, I am going to start a business:

I will collect $7 per month from each of Alderman Austin’s constituents, and everyone in Chicago, who would see a $50 annual increase in his or her property tax liability.   In exchange for this $7 per month, I will pay the $50 annual increase in the tax liability.   I will then pocket the additional $34 per year I will collect from the payers, earning a return in excess of 68%.  I get a great return, and, if Alderman Austin is right, the people of her ward, and of Chicago, will be delighted because of the convenience of being able to pay “monthly” instead of “at one time.”  I wouldn’t have to limit this service to increased property tax bills; I could apply this “easy payment” plan to any liability of anybody who lives anywhere and, at a 68%+ return, I would be delighted to do so.

If you think people are as financially obtuse as Alderman Austin presumes they are, this plan should work.  I think I’ll try to get on Shark Tank with this one!

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

INCENTIVES, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, AND HUMAN NATURE

7/16/14

While some Republicans are pushing to expedite the return of these latest waves of young illegal immigrants to their home countries in Central America, most Democrats object.  Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, a state a safe distance from our southern border, opined yesterday

“They shouldn’t be brought to our borders to start with, and that’s not going to change just because we expedite their return to their host country or protective services.”

It’s interesting how Senator Cardin uses the passive case “be brought,” as if this new group of immigrants was somehow whisked to our borders against their will, but I digress.  The major point is that yes, Senator, things will change if illegal aliens are quickly returned to their home countries.

The reason that this newest waves of immigrants are coming here is because word is out in Central America that if they make it here they stay here.  The Obama Administration, and congresspersons in both parties, says that we have to eradicate that mistaken impression.  But there is nothing mistaken about that impression.   When (and if) these young entrants are apprehended, they get a preliminary hearing and then are released to a sponsor somewhere in the United States, or to a holding facility pending finding a sponsor, and told to return for a follow-up hearing.   Those follow-up hearings, however, may take years to commence and are often ignored by the offender in any case.   So while the law says that an illegal immigrant who makes it here may ultimately be sent back, in practice s/he indeed can stay here if s/he makes it here; s/he simply disappears after the preliminary hearing and if further proceedings are ever scheduled s/he just doesn’t show up.   As much as we would like to disabuse people of the notion that making it here is the same as staying here, that notion is indeed true in practice.

So, despite what Senator Cardin says, if we do quickly get people back to Guatemala, Honduras, or El Salvador, they, and those who aspire to replicate their actions, will quickly get the idea that making it to the United States does not equate to staying in the United States.  All they will get for their dangerous and expensive efforts is a quick trip back to where they started.  This will have a dampening impact on their enthusiasm for trekking across Mexico, at great risk to themselves, to the southern border of the United States.

The key point here is that, as difficult as it is for virtually all Democrats and most Republicans to understand, people do respond to incentives.  When the incentives to come here are eliminated through quick repatriation, people will stop coming to our borders.

Speaking of incentives, it would be nice if not only the incentive to come here were eliminated but also that the incentive to leave Central America would at least be decreased.  Unfortunately, though, improving the living conditions in Central America is a task for the governments and people of those countries.  As much as we’d like to think that we can have a dramatic impact on conditions to our south through vast applications of aid, and as much as we do have a moral obligation to help where we can, only the governments and the people in the affected areas can improve things down there and thus reduce the incentive to leave.  You can’t help when certain parties have incentives to keep the people of Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador in near wretched living conditions.

TONI PRECKWINKLE RULES OUT A RUN FOR MAYOR OF CHICAGO…MY READERS YAWN

7/15/14

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle today ruled out a run for mayor OF Chicago against Rahm Emanuel in 2015.   She disappointed some and surprised many.  But regular readers of yours truly merely yawned and said something like “Yeah, I knew that…a long time ago.”

Ms. Preckwinkle said she didn’t run because she had unfinished business with the County.  But readers of yours truly know the real reason she didn’t run.  As I said on 3/20/14: (TONI PRECKWINKLE AND THE RAHM EMANUEL JUGGERNAUT, Rant Lifestyle)

Toni Preckwinkle is a smart woman.  She knows all of the above. (i.e., that she had no chance against Rahm Emanuel and the Harold Washington analogies were silly and showed no knowledge of Chicago political history.  Read the whole post for details.).  So one doubts that she will run.  If Chicago Teachers’ Union President Karen Lewis wants to lie down on the tracks in front of the Rahm locomotive, Ms. Preckwinkle will be happy to oblige her and may even lend some tepid support with notably muted enthusiasm; Ms. Preckwinkle knows with whom she will be dealing for the next four years. 

Given the supposed surge of Ms. Lewis in the polls, isn’t that comment about her especially prescient?  But I digress.

And as I said on 4/10/14:  (THE 2015 CHICAGO MAYOR’S RACE:  TONI, TONI, PLEASE BACK DOWN, YOU’LL NEVER BEAT RAHM IN THIS TOWN, Rant Lifestyle)

Toni Preckwinkle has no chance against Rahm Emanuel and she knows it.  (Again, read the whole post for details.

If you want to understand Chicago politics, you have to read my posts.  This latest development in Toni Preckwinkle’s plans is only further evidence of what has always been clear to my readers.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

RICK PERRY BASHES RAND PAUL: IGNORANCE OR MERETRICIOUSNESS?

7/14/14

On Face the Nation this weekend, Texas Governor Rick Perry took his limited air time to bash fellow Republican, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul.  Governor Perry accused Mr. Paul of being an “isolationist,” and wanting to draw a “red line around the United States” because Mr. Paul urges us to stay out of the religious battles and internecine conflicts that now characterize much of the Middle East.  Governor Perry accused Mr. Paul of having his head in the sand because the Islamic State is a dangerous terrorist group that will not be satisfied in establishing a caliphate in large swaths of Iraq and Syria but also doubtless wants to inflict great harm on the United States itself.  How, Mr. Perry asked, can Mr. Paul ignore this threat?

Mr. Perry apparently made all these accusations with a straight face.   That he was able to do so is remarkable given that it was Mr. Perry and those of his ilk who were, just a few short months ago, urging us to join the conflict in Syria on the side of what is now called the Islamic State, the very terror group he (in all likelihood correctly) accuses of wanting to inflict great harm on the U.S. homeland.   It was Mr. Perry (and John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and all the other usual suspects) who was urging us to bomb Bashar Assad’s forces, which are fighting the forces of the Islamic State.   Messrs. Perry, McCain, and Graham deny that they wanted to help out the Islamic State…no sir, they wanted to help the “moderates” in Syria.   That defense for their militaristic impulse is laughable.  Even assuming that these “moderates” are genuine and are not, as are so many of our “friends” in the Middle East, merely striking a pose in order to get access to American money and start numbered offshore bank accounts, the real force behind the opposition to Bashar Assad is provided by the most radical elements of his opposition, most saliently the Islamic State.  Any action against Mr. Assad is de facto support for the Islamic State that Mr. Perry and his pals purport to oppose.

We can draw one of two conclusions about the inherent contradictions behind the Perry/McCain/Graham approach to the Islamic State, professing to be so opposed to the State while urging action to fight its battles for it.

First, Messrs. McCain, Perry and Graham are completely ignorant of the Middle East and/or are completely delusional about the array of forces in the area.  They are either complete dullards and/or they simply cannot fathom a Syria or Iraq in which the U.S. has no visible support among anyone who is not on its payroll.   These pols seem to think that there are legions of people in the Middle East who are absolutely delighted that we have inflicted massive casualties on them and their families in Iraq and Afghanistan and thus have been rendered “moderate” and “pro-Western,” ready to vanquish dictators and establish Arab versions of Jeffersonian democracy at our mere request.

Second, Messrs. McCain, Perry, and Graham are no fools and are completely aware that we have few friends in the Middle East.  Further, they know that they are being completely self-contradictory in urging action against both the Islamic State and its most salient enemy, the regime of Bashar Assad.   But Messrs. McCain, Perry, and Graham simply don’t care.  They want American involvement in every conflict in which such involvement is possible.   They have to make good IOUs to the “defense contractors” who finance their positions of power and prestige, who enable them to remain in jobs in which their most urgent and constant task is to have their hindquarters smooched.   So if going to war anywhere with anyone will make the “defense” contractors happy, the money flowing, and thus the likes of Messrs. McCain, Perry, and Graham comfortably ensconced in the lifelong sinecures they call careers, going to war anywhere with anyone must be a very good thing.

Which one is it, Messrs. Perry, McCain, and Graham?   Are you ignorant or merely servicing the people who keep you in your cushy jobs that would make a Middle Eastern suzerain envious?

RAHM EMANUEL IS NOT GOING TO BE THE MAYOR WHO “LOST THE CUBS.”

7/11/14

As a result of yesterday’s decision by the Emanuel rubber stamp Chicago Commission on Landmarks, the Ricketts family and the Chicago Cubs they control will get all they want…and more.  Now it’s seven signs in the outfield, more seats, more suites, new bullpens, new light towers, etc.   Assuming that the revised proposal that was approved was not a mere bargaining chip to get the original smaller scale plan the Cubs first proposed, and it probably wasn’t, Wrigley Field will finally enter the 21^st Century while probably retaining much of its charm, the Cubs will stay in Chicago, and the rooftop club owners and those in the Lakeview neighborhood who don’t like the new plan will just have to deal with it.

None of this should come as a surprise, certainly not to my readers; see, inter alia, THE CUBS,WRIGLEY FIELD, RAHM EMANUEL, AND CHICAGO POLITICS:  PLAY BALL!, Rant Lifestyle, 5/30/14.   Just look at the plusses for Rahm Emanuel in the new plan:   the Cubs stay here, Wrigley Field becomes an even more attractive “entertainment venue” (Note that “entertainment venues” form the core of every “economic development” plan that seems to come down the pike in our town; see THOSE HORRIBLE SOUTH WORKS AND RAHM EMANUEL’S CORE CONSTITUENCY of a few days ago.), the taxpayers are more or less protected, and the Ricketts, who know how to express their gratitude financially, become an annuity for the Mayor’s boundless political ambitions.  Then consider the downside:   a few yuppies around in the Lakeview neighborhood get upset.  Ouch.   They, and those like them, form the core of the Mayor’s base. Where are they going to go on election day? 

Rahm Emanuel was not going to be the mayor who lost the Cubs; if anything had the potential to even partially sour his dazzling urbanite suburban import base on him, it would have been losing the Cubs, the darling of that oh so chic set.   Don’t get yours truly wrong; the Cubs have some true baseball fans among their loyalists; many of them read my musings.  But, for the most part, the Cubs exist to provide a bizarre twist on urban street cred for kids from the North Shore who have decided that they are now hardened, die-hard Chicago residents.   So not only are the Cubs good for Chicago’s economy (though probably not as good as the “consultants” they and those in their corner hire would have you believe), they are an important part of the fragile self-image of the core of Mr. Emanuel’s constituency.  Though Mr. Emanuel’s chances of losing in 2015 are about as remote of those of the Cubs winning the World Series any time in the foreseeable future (See TONI PRECKWINKLE ANDTHE RAHM EMANUEL JUGGERNAUT, Rant Lifestyle, 3/20/14), why would he take the chance of losing the Cubs to, say, Rosemont?  And why would the Ricketts kids take the chance of abandoning Wrigley and having to fall back on the Cubs as the main attraction of the multi-million dollar toy their father’s wealth has acquired for them?

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics. 

THOSE HORRIBLE SOUTH WORKS AND RAHM EMANUEL’S CORE CONSTITUENCY

7/9/14

Earlier this week, in a story by veteran political reporter Lynn Sweet, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that developer Dan McCaffery has proposed placing the Obama Presidential Library on the site of the old U.S. Steel South Works along the shores of Lake Michigan on Chicago’s south side.

Whether the plan to place the Obama Library on the South Works site, or anywhere in our financially strained city, makes sense is grist for another mill.  More interesting to yours truly were the juxtaposed pictures of the old South Works site and the new Obama Library the Sun-Times ran with the story.  The old South Works are portrayed as belching out fumes, dumping detritus into the lake, and just being an environmentally obtuse corporate citizen in a number of ways.  The Obama Library, on the other hand, is, in the artist’s renderings featured by the Sun-Times, is a glowing architectural marvel, adding even further to our lake front’s breathtaking beauty.

The impression the Sun-Times, and other proponents of the South Works site for the Library, wish to convey is obvious:   the Obama Library is very, very good, a symbol of the new Chicago that will further blot out the bad old days of Chicago’s industrial history.  This is the narrative, by the way, that defines the worldview of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the dazzling young urbanites who form the core of his constituency:   Chicago is the new Emerald City, a town of “entertainment venues,” bicycle paths, high tech crapshoots, and Potemkin prosperity, not the bad old sooty industrial town on which we should close the history books.

The U.S. Steel South Works--in a busier (better?) time

You can see why such a narrative defines the typical Emanuel supporter’s view of the world; after all, s/he, having grown up in the suburbs and having no roots in the city, and certainly no recent roots in the city’s working class, care not a whit about what made Chicago Chicago but care very much about imposing their vision of a hip, chic, trendy new age city on all of us. 

But think about this for awhile.

Yes, the old South Works complex was dirty and the neighborhoods it spawned were gritty, tough, and bereft of fern bars, yogurt stores, cutesy-pie “coffee shops” (as currently defined, i.e., trendy Starbucks places, not diners by another name), jazz bars, trendy boutiques, and other necessities of newly urban life.   But the Works, and thousands of factories like it on a smaller scale, provided a decent living for thousands of families, good paying jobs for guys (very few women worked in such environments) trying to grab the first rung on the ladder to the American Dream despite their lack of education or family or political connections.   The Works generated tax revenues for the city and spawned innumerable businesses, mostly small, on its periphery.  The Works, while dirty and sooty and smelly, made some people rich and a lot of people well off enough to buy a small home and maybe send the kids to college.

On the other hand, the Obama Library will surely be environmentally pristine.  It will provide a few jobs for academics who want to further navel gaze about the momentous accomplishments of Barack Obama in addition to maybe a few hundred minimum wage jobs for docents, janitors, security people, greeters, etc.  It will not pay property or other taxes to the city and its wage base will be so small as to provide no meaningful income tax revenue to the state.  Its inevitable gift shop will provide a pittance of sales taxes.   Rather than generate appreciable revenue like, say, a factory, it will require massive subsidies ($100 million, at this early stage) from an already bankrupt state, and maybe city, to build and run.  It will make a very few people (like the politically connected Dan McCaffery and other friends of and contributors to Rahm Emanuel and Barack Obama) rich and place an only slightly larger number just barely above water.

This is progress, according to the Sun-Times, the Emanuel Administration, and others with their own imported vision of what constitutes a great city.

Of course the South Works specifically, and steel and other heavy manufacturing, will never come back to Chicago along with their high paying jobs and other economic stimulation; natural economic evolution, plus trade policies seemingly designed to further widen the income and wealth gaps in this country, have ordained such activities on the new urban landscape to a permanent death.   Rahm Emanuel’s supporters cheer the death of industrial Chicago from the comfort of their climate controlled and oh, so immaculate offices and the trendy bars and restaurants they, like the obedient sheep they are, must frequent if they are to be part of the acceptable crowd.

But would it be such a bad thing if Chicago still had an industrial base?   Think about the good paying blue collar jobs huge, and not so huge, industrial complexes like the South Works provided to people with little education but a lot of desire to work to get on that first rung on the inter-generational climb to a comfortable middle class lifestyle.   What if those jobs were still around?   Would we be having the crime problems we are having in Chicago right now if there were jobs around that would afford people throughout our city the opportunity to buy and stay in homes, form families and communities and support those families and communities?  What if men and women, despite a lack of aptitude for high tech jobs, the legal and banking gigs, and other jobs Mr. Emanueland his “better” base deem acceptable, were able to go to work right out of high school, support families, and build some degree of wealth?   Would that be such a bad thing?

Oh, I forgot; giving people at the bottom real economic and financial opportunity would involve making a few yuppies “uncomfortable” with the condition of the environment and the possible spread of blue collar communities into the chic urban habitats Mr. Emanuel and his supporters deem acceptable for people of their lofty stature.   And so the response of the near north upscale crowd to the very notion of an industrial revival must be

“Let them get law degrees and MBAs!”

The Emanuel core need not worry, though; Chicago will never reindustrialize and the lower classes in this town will have to consign themselves to menial, low wage jobs at the “entertainment venues” that seem to form the core of every one of the Mayor’s economic revival proposals…if they can get jobs at all.  And the consequent urban blight will never reach those communities around the core of downtown, with their trendy bars and hipster hangouts and stupid restaurants at which the bill is in inverse proportion to the quantities served, that these bleating sheep inhabit.

 See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.