Chicago - A message from the station manager

Primary 2014 Notebook 1

By Steve Rhodes

Those of you who are longtime Beachwood readers know I won’t be voting today because I don’t believe journalists should participate in the internal activities of political parties. And that’s what a primary is: The parties are deciding their nominees for the fall.
That doesn’t mean there aren’t some folks I’m pulling for – Will Guzzardi and Jay Travis come to mind.
But I’m not a Democrat, so those choices aren’t mine to make.
Those of you who are longtime Beachwood readers also know that I don’t believe voting is the end-all, be-all of democracy. In fact, it’s nothing more than fig leaf on the real, anti-democratic machinery that wants you to think you chose your political representatives when in fact your political leaders gamed the system to leave you with few real choices – especially in Chicago, Illinois.


So, no, you won’t be reading here that you should “Vote Or Blame Yourself.”
Cue Russell Brand.

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Third World Way
“Several Chicago polling places opened hours late Tuesday because doors were locked or poll workers were missing, and many others were delayed because of confusion over the new electronic poll books, elections officials said,” the Tribune reports.

“We have one polling place where we had to force the door open” three hours after it was supposed to be up and running, said James Allen, spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections. “We could not find the proprietor to open the door.”

Allen told the Sun-Times that “It’s an indication that there are some people who are forgetting that it’s Election Day.”
By “some people,” he means election judges.
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“We don’t believe it’s anything nefarious,” Allen said.
Just get into town, Jim?
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“One polling station in the Logan Square neighborhood opened almost three hours late, said Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd), who is also the committeemen for the ward.”
So Rahm is behind it.
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“They only sent one judge for the . . . precinct,” said poll watcher Mario Mondane, stationed in the 41st Ward’s Fourth Precinct in the 7100 block of North Harlem. “He doesn’t know how to operate the machines.”
But the Machine knows how to operate.
Trib Board Taxed
“Several times in recent weeks, we’ve stressed that punishing tax policies (and many politicians’ punishing attitudes toward employers) have left Illinois hostile to job creation,” the Tribune edit board says. “We could change the direction of a state government that sees employers as fat cats to be plundered for ever more tax revenue.”
If only!
Two-thirds of corporations in Illinois don’t pay income taxes. It’s been in all the papers.
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“We wish smugness, self-satisfaction, didn’t keep so many people from voting this Election Day.”
Well, it’s not stopping you, Trib edit board!
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Bruce Rauner as change agent.
News In Reverse
“Rauner Faces Union Grief Downstate.”
Um, a dozen folks with signs hardly indicates grief; I’d say it’s a good sign for Rauner.
Back To School
“This state needs a more urgent push for choice and innovation,” the Trib edit page says.
“It’s one of the reasons this page has endorsed Bruce Rauner in the Republican primary for governor. He has enthusiastically supported more education options for children. Want evidence? Visit Rauner College Prep in Chicago, where 83 percent of the class of 2013 enrolled in a four-year college.”
Yes, let’s visit.
“On TV, Bruce Rauner has barraged voters with a commercial in which he boasts that he ‘helped start charter schools’ to fight failing educational programs,” the Sun-Times reports.
“Other than giving millions of dollars, though, the Republican candidate for governor doesn’t have much to do with running the Noble Network of Charter Schools, which includes a school that bears his name, according to the head of Noble.
“Rauner has ‘very little’ involvement in running Noble’s 14 high schools, which include Rauner College Prep on the near West Side and one middle school, says Michael Milkie, the former Chicago Public Schools math teacher who founded Noble and is now its superintendent and chief executive officer.
“Rauner, a venture capitalist and member of Noble’s 20-member board, says: ‘I’ve never had a role in day-to-day operations at Noble or, frankly, in almost anything I get involved with. My role is generally as a board member or kind of an adviser providing overall strategic advice or feedback. . . . I go to the campus that they named after our family once a year, maybe twice a year, to talk to students and the principal, things like that.'”
In other words, Rauner threw money at the problem.
Maybe He Was Getting His Carhartts Dry-Cleaned
Rauner refused to meet with the editorial boards of the Springfield and Peoria newspapers.
“We would have liked to sit down with Rauner to discuss his ideas, but he did not respond to an invitation to interview or to answer the questions we sent his way,” the Journal-Star says. “Evidently we were not alone in that regard.”
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Posted on March 18, 2014