Daley Mon Nov 17 2008

Day By Daley, Monday 17 November

Sigh. Like sands through the hour glass, this is the Daley of our lives...

Labor, Mayor May Reduce Layoffs. Americans are still getting over the many side effects that a generation-long Free Market Fundamentalist infection has caused, and one of them is the insanity of hostility to the unionized workforces that provide them services and raise the prevailing wage in a given community (not to mention spend those wages to raise aggregate demand). WBBM Reporting:

Union leaders have agreed to work-rule changes to reduce the city's overtime costs, the sources said. They have also agreed to drop their opposition to a partial shutdown of city government around the holidays.

In exchange, Daley has agreed to offer cash incentives -- at least $5,000 and as high as $15,000 -- for members of Laborers Local 1001 to induce retirements by eligible union members.

Chicago: The Murder Capital of the Big Three. How long will Mayor Daley's TIF slush fund stay inaccessible in the face of mounting murders? Of the nation's most populous cities, Chicago has suffered the most homicides. With an economic catastrophe around the corner, it will get worse. Much, much worse. It could make the crack wars of the late '80s and early '90s many of us remember very well look like childish horseplay.

Among the most populous cities in the United States, Chicago ranks at number three with a population of just under three million. New York City has approximately eight million citizens, while Los Angeles has fewer than four million.

Chicago made headlines in 1998, surpassing both New York and Los Angeles in homicides. Over the past decade, Chicago's murder rate declined with the exception of 2001 and 2006, when homicides were higher than the preceding year.

KassWatch: John Kass Actually Readable Today! So, phony tough guy John "Everyone's an Idiot but Me" Kass of the Chicago Tribune is usually unreadable through paragraphs of self-congratulatory and smug prose, but that doesn't mean he isn't often right, or isn't often turning in good reporting -- and he does both today. Read him -- here's a bonus: count how many times his mirror-gazing makes your eyes roll!

The Combine wants Fitzgerald promoted out of town. But President-elect Barack Obama has promised newspaper editorial boards he would keep Fitzgerald in Chicago to fight political corruption...That's the same President-elect Obama with Mayor Daley's guy Rahm Emanuel as his chief of staff, and another Daley guy, David Axelrod*, as Obama's chief strategist. The mayor's brother Billy is one of Obama's chief economic advisers. Whew!

*Hmm...why don't you think Kass chose to refer to Axelrod as "Harold Washington's guy," considering Axelrod was a key consultant for the people's Mayor, as well as for Daley?

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