Pension revelation and Rahm’s dishing perfect time to begin a real assessment of his legacy instead of the pansy ass ones (weepy elegiac hagiographical) that appeared in the media as he left office.
So far this stands as the most concise assessment . . .
TimeOUT: (images) Mayor Culpa isn’t just Weinberg acting as the snarky kid in the back of the classroom reading National Lampoon and throwing spitballs. The intro to every chapter–one for each of Richie’s six campaigns–lays out a tight, incisive history of who ran, the margin of victory and the political climate surrounding the election.
http://timeoutchicago.com/things-to-do/this-week-in-chicago/14765879/%E2%80%9Cmayor-culpa%E2%80%9D
Sun-Time: a searing anti-tribute: http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/6511865-418/mark-weinbergs-mayor-culpa-a-searing-funny-anti-tribute-to-daley.html
WBBM: http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/07/25/new-book-slams-mocks-retired-mayor-daley/
They all take it as a joke but not as an actually acccurate assemsent, more tan tehir own.
buy here: http://mayorculpa.com/products-page/books/mayor-culpa-gone-but-not-forgiven/
First the intro, favorite images.
This book is the culmination of years of bitching and moaning about Mayor Daley’s corruptions, arrogance and anti-democratic tendencies. You don’t want to know how many hours have been spent complaining about Daley and his policies. Indeed, in a way, I have made a career seeking to expose and rectify policies and practices promulgated by Daley, having spent the past 10 years suing the city for civil rights violations via class-action lawsuits. After all these years, I thought, “Hey, a final, futile gesture is required to commemorate the end of an era of political chicanery and malfeasance.” The result is this book.
Hopefully, the book will serve as a sort of corrective to all the love that exists for Daley…and there’s plenty of it. Soon enough, you can be sure that our public officials will start naming buildings and parks and schools after Daley. And when that happens, perhaps this book will act as a humorous reminder of aspects of Daley’s mayorship that others seek to dismiss or ignore, serving in a sense as a Rremembrance of Corruptions Past.
What’s my quarrel with Mayor Daley? Iit is undeniable that he had many accomplishments–the Loop looks beautiful, Millennium Park is wonderful, and there’s been lasting economic development in selected areas of the City. At the same time, however, it is also undeniable that he left his friends rich and the City broke, and that his 22 years were marked by a long list of shameful scandals. Iin the end, though, my quarrel with Daley isn’t about any particular policy, poor management decision or scandal; it’s with his overall political morality.
Far too often there was only the illusion of democracy in this town–stacked boards, rigged hiring, insider-friendly deal-making, political favoritism, the oh-so-clever flouting of laws, a lack of transparency, the avoidance of accountability, a disparagement of public dialogue–all against the backdrop of a crude, clout-centered politics, where, as often as not, who you knew was more important than anything else. Iin both his actions and words, Daley showed little regard for important democratic values like opennnes and fairness, as exhibited by his response to a reporter who asked him about his friendships with principals of three companies that won big city contracts. “Wha! Wha! Wha! Wha! Wha! Wha!,” Daley cried mockingly. Oor as exhibited by the story told by the Tribune’s Bblair Kamin who tells of the time he interviewed Daley and asked him about his unwillingness to open up city development issues to allow for more democratic consensus. “You want referendums?” Daley said. “Go to California.” His disparagement of basic values isn’t a policy issue that can be weighed against other policy issues. There’s plenty of room for reasonable disagreement about particular policies, like, say, the virtues of selling off city assets or the responsible use of Tif funds, but there should be no disagreement about the need for mature governance that seeks to foster values like fairness, openness and public dialogue when making such policy decisions. Democratic values are fragile, and they need to be nourished, or else they are weakened. Yes, getting things done is important, but playing fair is also important.
People ask, “Do you hate Mayor Daley?” My answer is, “No, I regret him.” Ultimately, a persistent lack of respect for basic democratic values as displayed by Daley erodes people’s faith in government and leads to public cynicism and apathy. A mere policy disagreement makes someone an opponent; a disregard for democratic values turns someone into a threat to the integrity of the process itself. Can anyone, even his loudest defenders, seriously suggest that Mayor Daley’s manner and mode of leadership did not deepen suspicion and public cynicism towards government and the fairness of its operations?
Ironically, Daley has defended his political ethics on democratic grounds, saying that if the voters wanted to, they could vote him out of office, which is, of course, true. But this is an extremely narrow definition of democracy. Elections are essential to a democracy, but they are not the be-all and end-all. Democracy is more than its formal processes; it demands a certain ethics of leadership. Simply put, Daley played too fast and loose with his political powers and acted incautiously in the exercise of his abundant privileges, and in so doing he diminished public trust in our democratic institutions.
Image links –
Posted on May 14, 2012