Feds cause downtown delirium

OK, first I gotta get this off my chest. What are they smokin' up there in the Trib editorial board room? Do they have an oak panelled room with grow lights? The city finally agrees to constraints on their hiring practices and a 12 mill pool of money to take care of their past hiring screw ups and the best the Trib editorial writer can come up with is "Wednesday's agreement on a new protocol for enforcing rules against illicit patronage hiring and promotion at City Hall is an upbeat chapter in a decades-long legal drama " Upbeat chapter (I can almost hear the champagne bubbles tickling their noses)! Then they go on to list a labored litany of new tasks that the city appointed inspector general will have to address to create this new upbeat chapter. In essence we have a shadow city hall that now hires, make sure inspections are proper, making sure contracts are on the up and up and so on and so on. Doesn't that sound odd? Is anyone awake down...oh....oh no no... UP there at the Trib? It's depressing and maddening to think how much work, effort and MONEY will go into policing city government. So we have the Mayor, also known as the inspector general, who is supposed to protect the citizenry and the Olympian Mayor who continues to wheel and deal. Phew! Thank God everythings settled.

It's as though John Kass were writing for another paper entirely. And the author of today's editorial at the Trib is gazing out through a THC haze at the river saying "That inspector general dude is awesome mannn!"

As long as we have this two tiered system of governance we will not be moving "Toward an honest City Hall". To do that would require massive electoral and judicial (as in US Attorney Fitzgerald prosecutes Scooter Degnan) regime change, not just of the fifth floor but of the City Council (getting there almost..) Cook County Board President, Chair and structure of the Cook County Democratic party and a few hundred or so of the weasels that feed at the trough downtown.

So how can the Trib editorial board do this. First they could take the advice of one of their columnists and CONNECT THE DOTS. There are twelve aldermanic races coming up for run offs and some one should ask them what as a city council member they are going to fight for so that it is no longer necessary to have an inspector general with such an extensive workload. Part of the problem of corruption in Chicago is the tepid if not privileged response of the Trib. This concludes the rant for the day.