By Kiljoong Kim

A Chicago morning radio show host recently wondered whether seeing billboards in Spanish was good or bad for our society, insinuating that we as Americans should strive to have a common language – English.
Some of his callers said they were appalled by Spanish billboards and could not understand why Spanish-speaking immigrants would not learn English. Others phoned in to say that it is simply freedom of expression and billboards can be displayed in any language. While a great intellectual debate about our society is to be had, the true answer may not be based on what it means to be an American, the First Amendment, or even an official language, but rather, through better understanding of our history.
Similar to the rapid increase in racial and ethnic diversity we have experienced for the past several decades, language has also been exceptionally diverse. Data collected in 2000 and 2008 by the U.S. Census Bureau captured about 95 non-English languages spoken each year in the Chicago metropolitan area. Non-English speakers increased from 24.7% of the total population in 2000 to 27.7% in 2008, with Spanish being the most dominant language (Table 1).

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Posted on May 26, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

Last week the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform released its annual lobbying survey, reporting that taxpayers paid lobbyists hired by cities, counties and public agencies nearly $6.4 million to influence their own state government last year.
In researching the report, though, the ICPR experienced a more fundamental problem with our political culture: The widespread disregard of the Freedom of Information Act.
“Relying on the Freedom of Information Act to get government lobbying contract information was time-consuming and too often produced partial records or none at all,” the ICPR said.
The problem, it seems, is that public officials in Chicago act like it’s their money – and their government. Aside from relying on your money to fund them, you are incidental at best and a treacherous obstacle at worst.
Let’s take a look at what ICPR experienced in Chicago alone.

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Posted on May 25, 2010

By The Beachwood’s Special Queeglings Correspondent

You heard these here first!!:
QUEEGLINGS / The Canine Scrootening / GunButt Diplomacy
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DaleyTube 1.
DaleyTube2.
“If I put this up your butt, you’ll find out how effective it is. Let me put a round up your, you know . . . Maybe they’ll see the light of day . . . Maybe one of them (the Supreme Court Justices) will have an incident, and they’ll change their mind overnight, going to and from work.” Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley / May 20, 2010
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Daley Apologizes, Second City Cop:
“Have you ever seen the look on some dork’s face when he sees the bra advertisements in the Sears catalog? Or Butthead from Beavis & Butt-head grinning and chanting ‘fire, fire fire!'”

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Posted on May 24, 2010

By The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform

Public Bodies Spent Nearly $6.4 Million Lobbying State Government; CTA topped the list in spending, but private sector spending is a secret
Taxpayers paid lobbyists nearly $6.4 million to influence their own state government last year, but the money spent by cities, counties and other public bodies is just a fraction of the total spending on lobbying by the public and private sectors.
The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform’s (ICPR) annual survey of local governments and public agencies found 119 units of government contracted with 85 lobbyists or multi-member lobbying firms and paid them a total of $6,364,860.08 in FY 2009. The total is nearly the same as the FY 08 spending and is up 23.6 percent in comparison to the $5 million identified in the FY 07 survey.

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Posted on May 21, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

One thing I learned this week – well, I re-learned, I’ve faced it before – is that sexist coverage of female politicians is an awful thing unless the pol is Sarah Palin. Then it’s perfectly acceptable to at least a certain number of progressive feminists in and out of the media.
Why? Because if you despise someone’s politics, they apparently no longer can be defended on any other grounds. Apparently it was always about politics, not principle.
So when I posted Reporting Palin, I shouldn’t have been surprised by the depressing responses I got from some quarters.
As I’ve written before, the whole of America seems to need a civics lesson in how to carry on political discourse, decipher the media, and learn to think for themselves like the actual, independent citizens that democracy calls for.
And much of the media still needs lessons in how to do their jobs.

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Posted on May 19, 2010

By The Beachwood Chicago Way Affairs Desk

From dolphins with mops to a series of nuclear explosions, everyone seems to have a solution for cleaning up the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico except BP. Here are ours, straight outta Chicago.
* Bribe the oil spill. It’s the Chicago Way.
* Threaten the oil spill with an opponent in the next election. It’s the Chicago Way.
* Offer the oil spill a place in the Daley administration – or perhaps on the bench – in exchange for dropping out of the Gulf. It’s the Chicago Way.
* Whack it. It’s the Chicago Way.

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Posted on May 18, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

Readers of this site know that I have always had a great deal of respect and admiration for Sun-Times reporter Abdon Pallasch. He’s one of the city’s best reporters and I’ve stated before that he could be even better if his employer was a bit more savvy about its operation. But I’m going to have to go ahead and disagree with Pallasch about his defense on Sunday of his account last week about Sarah Palin.
In a vacuum, some of what Pallasch wrote would be true. But he’s missing, in my view, the context in which his reporting appeared. And in some cases, I just think he’s wrong.
Let’s take a look.

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Posted on May 17, 2010

By Steve Rhodes

“District 113 administrators hunkered down, refusing to address the firestorm of debate – except through e-mail statements about why they canceled the trip,” the Tribune reports.
In other words, Highland Park school officials are now boycotting the media and the public along with Arizona, their own students and the parents of their students.
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I’d call for a boycott of Highland Park but we’d have to pretend there was a reason to go there in the first place.

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Posted on May 14, 2010

By The Sunlight Foundation

We’re really moving.
Seriously.
We spend a lot of time talking about what government should do to become more open and transparent, and in this past week there’s real movement in Congress on one of the things that we need to happen.
It’s an easy fix to our current system which would simply make government work better.
Specifically, Senator Jon Tester has introduced the Senate version of the Public Online Information Act, which would revolutionize how the public can gain access to government information. And though we’re going to have to build much more clout to actually pass the bill in the House and Senate, the introduction of this bill is a big step.

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Posted on May 12, 2010

By The Beachwood Fourth of July Affairs Desk

“To reduce costs, the McPier reform legislation includes a ‘bill of rights’ that lets convention exhibitors . . . ”
* Under-the-table payments to electricians no longer need to be made in unmarked bills.
* The right of exhibitors to bear arms shall not be infringed.
* Bills to exhibitors will now include details such as how much everything costs.
* Rounding up bills to make contributions to the Find Jimmy Hoffa Fund will now be “optional.”

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Posted on May 11, 2010