Entries associated with the tag "Cta":

For years environmental advocates have been trying to get the coal-burning power plants in Pilsen and Little Village to close down or clean up, citing evidence that they produce enough toxic air pollution to cause at least 40 premature deaths and scores of trips to the emergency room each year.

But when two dozen activists—many wearing air filter masks for effect—gathered outside Mayor Daley’s office Wednesday morning, they delivered the message with a new, urgent twist: it’s about the Olympics.

“We’ve been fighting to shut them down for a long time, but the mayor hasn’t shut them down,” said Kimberly Wasserman Nieto, an organizer for the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, which was behind the event. “So we figured that if he won’t do it for the residents, maybe he’ll do it for all the Olympic visitors.” 

In other words, they’re trying to use the Olympics as leverage. The strategy should sound familiar: south- and west-siders have already started forming coalitions to demand funds for affordable housing, transportation, and parks before they agree to using chunks of their neighborhoods for Olympic facilities. 

And why not? The mayor does as much of what he wants as he can; banding together to pressure him may not work, but it’s certain that nothing else will. 

That said, it’s going to be tough to force the power plants to shut down. For starters, the mayor and his staffers have their defenses well-established by now. They say they don’t have the authority to force the plants to close or even curb emissions, even though they’d of course like cleaner air; and they say that jobs would be lost and electric rates might climb. All of these arguments are debatable, but since 2006 the Daley administration has also been able to point to a deal the state brokered with Midwest Generation, the owner of the plants, to cut most of their pollution within a decade. 

The LVEJO activists say that’s too long—the health of hundreds of Chicagoans will be imperiled over that time, and the plants won’t even be cleaned up before the 2016 games. They’d like to see the plants turned into training centers for renewable energy jobs. “We want to really be seen as the greenest city,” said Samuel Villansenor, another organizer. 

The group is also part of the growing chorus demanding public transit improvements as part of any Olympic package. Michael Pitula, LVEJO’s point man on transit, called on Daley to make a priority of securing more federal and state funding for the RTA, clean up the CTA’s bus fleet, and boost its maintenance staff. “Come on everybody and join me: No transit, no clean air, no Olympics!” he hollered. 

Of course, Mayor Daley was 1,000 miles away, and most of the media with him; the hallway outside his office was an echo chamber. But the LVEJO leaders said they’ve already sent him a letter asking for a community meeting. If they don’t hear anything back, they say they’ll show up outside his office again. Then they’ll start drafting a note to the International Olympic Committee. 

“We’ll tell them it’s not as pretty a picture as [Daley's] painted it,” said Wasserman Nieto. She added: “We’re not opposed to the Olympics per se, but we need to get the mayor’s attention.”

If Saint Paul didn’t convince us, Mayor Daley might: the latest converts often become the most aggressive evangelists.

I bring this up because the mayor has apparently realized that Chicago’s public transportation system needs some work, and he wants to make sure others are onto it as well. “You have to get this on people’s minds,” he said during a tour of Beijing’s system.

Actually, it’s been on our minds—those many thousands of us who rely on the CTA to get to work each day—for years.

But the mayor appears to have had his own blinding light experience earlier this year when the International Olympic Committee gave our system tepid reviews. The exposure of a major weakness in Chicago’s Olympic bid captured Daley’s attention in a way the frustrations of riders and a string of high-profile mishaps never could.

Now, the Trib reports, Daley would like to find a way to get CTA president Ron Huberman and others over to Beijing to check out their comfortable, high-tech transit network.

But some of his constituents are suggesting a far cheaper, more essential option: maybe the mayor should start taking public transit in his own city to see how it creaks along.

After all, if he continues to be inspired like this, the man who’s amassed the power and funding to “reform” the schools and “transform” public housing and “modernize” the airport can find a way to move buses and trains, if not mountains.

If you want to know why we're on the road to ecological destruction, head on out to Bensenville, only go there by CTA and bike.

I did it yesterday, along with Dave Glowacz, a freelance journalist also known as Mr. Bike. I was taking him to Bensenville to show him the Dead Zone for a segment of an Internet interview show we do together.

In his role as Mr. Bike--and, by the way, this guy has to know more about bicycling around Chicago than anyone alive--he had plotted our route with maps and the Internet.

As he explained it, Bensenville is about six miles directly west from Harlem Avenue along Irving Park Road. To ride there, we had a choice. We could pedal to Union Station, put our bikes on the train, and take Metra to downtown Bensenville. Or we could take the CTA to River Road and bike south around O'Hare Airport, slipping through Schiller Park and into Franklin Park before riding northwest into Bensenville.

I chose the scenic route.

So at about 10:45 in the morning we boarded the Blue Line at Irving and rode to River Road. In the good old days, when Harold Washington was mayor, it would have taken us, oh, I don't know, maybe ten minutes. This time it took us almost 20--I was timing it on a stop watch--because the tracks are falling apart and there are slow zones galore.

We got off at River Road, then biked south to Bryn Mawr, west to Milton Parkway, south to Balmoral and then--well, after that I didn't know where we were. I was just following Mr. Bike, who had the map. It seemed there were construction crews tearing everything up, like they were constantly rebuilding the same parking lot.

We hooked up with Franklin Avenue at its intersection with Scott Street and headed off on the last leg of our journey.

Remind me never to do it again. Franklin was hardly the warm, fuzzy bike-friendly road I foolishly thought it would be. It was like traveling through an industrial hell: a two-lane, potholed road bounded by a gravel-filled shoulder that's really rough on bike tires.

Cars and trucks whizzed by. Jets zoomed over our heads.

"There's got to be a better way to bike from Franklin Park to Bensenville," I gasped.

"This is pretty much it," said Mr. Bike. "Obviously, they weren't thinking of bike riders when they built these suburbs."

We stopped for water at Wolf's, a restaurant at the corner of Wolf and Franklin. The joint was packed with factory workers waiting in line for hot dogs, burgers, and fries. 

Five minutes later, we crossed some railroad tracks and rode into Bensenville.

Ah, Bensenville, glorious Bensenville--it's become my home away from home since I realized that Mayor Daley intended to plow over about 15 percent of it to make way for another one of his Great Ideas, in this case the O'Hare Modernization Program. Before our green mayor is done he will have spent well over $15 billion expanding O'Hare just in time for the collapse of the airline industry. Hey, how's that for planning?

We rode York to Roosevelt and then entered the Dead Zone, passing one boarded-up, abandoned house after another. Not surprising, it was the most bike friendly area we'd passed through all day. I could just imagine what it must have been like before Mayor Daley intruded--little kids riding their tricycles along tree-lined sidewalks and that sort of thing.

Driving by in his car was a grumpy guy from the real-estate management company that has a contract with Chicago to keep an eye on the area. He warned us that we'd better stay on the sidewalks and street because the property belonged to Chicago and we could get a trespassing ticket.

I was going to tell him that I was a taxpaying resident of Chicago so that, you know, technically, the lawns and homes belonged to me. But he didn't look like he was in the mood for conversation.

After about an hour, rain clouds were moving in and we decided to head home. I told Mr. Bike that I'd rather not deal with Franklin, so we took our chances with Irving Park. Man, it was like biking on the interstate--the cars and trucks were pushing sixty. At least it had a pretty decent shoulder to ride along.

At River Road we joined a line of sweaty, anguished-looking travelers getting off the buses from O'Hare. The CTA maps promised them door-to-door service from the airport to the Loop. But, of course, the final leg of the Blue Line is down, while workers repair the tracks.

On the train back to Chicago we sat across the aisle from a lady out of Syracuse, New York, who was in town for a teachers' convention. She said she wanted to make sure her stop in the Loop had an elevator or escalator because she had a bad back and she didn't want to carry her suitcase up the stairs.

Mr. Bike explained that the map on the wall showed which stops had elevators, but there was no way of knowing if these elevators were malfunctioning. It was pretty much a crap shoot.

As the train crawled along, she asked how much time she should give herself if she wanted to take the Blue Line back to O'Hare for her return flight on Monday. "I don't like to take cabs," she said. "But if the service is always like this, you know..."

For no apparent reason, the train stopped just outside Montrose, where we had the pleasant view of the expressway clotted with bumper-to-bumper traffic spewing exhaust.

We got back to Irving Park about 3:30. There's no elevator or escalator so we carried our bikes down the stairs.

There was no exit for bike riders--we obviously couldn't get our bikes through the revolving gate. But a CTA employee was nice enough to unlock another gate to let us out. If he hadn't been there, I don't know what we would have done--probably called the police.

"It's big cars, big airports, big highways," said Mr. Bike. "Just gas `em up `n go."

But, hey, at least we're not Detroit ...

I used to stick with the train for my commute to and from downtown, but I’ve given up because construction makes it so erratic—sometimes my trip takes less than 30 minutes, other times twice as long, and after a certain point in the evening I can’t even catch the Red Line north from the stop nearest the office. Instead, I’ve started taking the 147 Outer Drive Express bus. While it often gets crowded with people who've apparently reached similar conclusions [go about a minute in], I’ve come to enjoy the ride home along the lakefront.

So after working dangerously close to the start of last evening’s NBA Finals game, I hurried to the bus stop and immediately concluded I was lucky. The 147 rolled right up—no wait for a change.

My luck continued as we cruised up Michigan Avenue far more quickly than usual. Suddenly we were through the light at Oak Street and dipping into the tunnel that leads to Lake Shore Drive.

We were already going about 50 miles an hour.

I don’t know if the driver thought he too might have a chance to see the Celtics practice shooting threes over a team once known as the Lakers, but he was gunning it. We shot onto Lake Shore Drive and veered into the next lane. We whizzed past cars, steered suddenly back into the right lane, then back over again. People around me cast each other looks combining thrill and terror. Air whistled through gaps where the windows were open slightly. We were still accelerating. We hit one of the many potholes on the drive, seemed to go airborne, and slammed down again with a crash that left some wondering if the bus might possibly break in two. Then we did it again. Since the driver managed not to crash, it was a blast.

The bus coasted off the drive at Foster, turned onto Sheridan, made a stop next to the Dominick’s, and suddenlyputtered to a complete stop. The lights and vents went off and an alarm began to beep. The driver stood up calmly and opened the front door as the couple next to me began to talk in low, concerned tones: What’s going on? Is something wrong? Is he just getting off the bus? Maybe we should get out of here. Somebody find out what's going on . . .

The driver moved casually toward the back of the bus. “I guess it overheated,” he said over his shoulder to someone sitting up front. “You guys can get the next one.”

Nice of him to wish us well, but there wasn’t a next one—at least not for quite a while. Fortunately for my sake, I didn't wait around for it. I joined the caravan of people hoofing it up Sheridan Road, and by the time I’d covered the last mile there still hadn’t been another bus.

I hope the International Olympic Committee saw Greg Hinz's recent story in Crain's Chicago Business about the latest development in the ongoing debacle of Mayor Daley's dream to build a superstation below Block 37.

According to Hinz, the project is so far behind schedule and over budget that the city's going to have to spend another $20 million in TIF funds just to pay off existing debt.

Again, this $20 million is just to pay back off existing debt. It isn't to complete the project -- the city still hasn't figured out how they're going to pay for that. With the new expenditures, the project -- originally budgeted at $213 million -- will have consumed about $320 million.

"Until even more money is found," Hinz writes, "the semi-completed station will be mothballed, much like an unfinished basement in a home whose owners has poured the concrete but can't afford to install carpeting, paneling and other finishing touches."

And even when -- or if -- the city figures out how to complete the project they still can't use it because it doesn't have any tracks to run on. The line is intended to provide high-priced express service for tourists, business execs, and other high rollers zipping between the Loop and Midway and O'Hare. But there are no tracks on which to run the express service. Eventually the city plans to seek bids from private companies looking to build the tracks and operate the line. Either that or the express service will have to share existing Blue and Orange line tracks so the high rollers save a few extra minutes on the ride downtown.

I remember when the City Council passed the funding for this project back in 2005. A few aldermen told me they voted for it because they had no choice--it was one of the mayor's pet projects. Keep in mind, the Olympics is another one of Mayor Daley's pet projects -- which everyone, including Barack Obama -- feels compelled to endorse.

Let's hope the IOC gives the games to Rio. It will be a miracle if this bunch gets through the games without driving us bankrupt. 

When Mayor Daley says, "Ours is a 1920s system. It's costly and inefficient," you'd be excused for thinking he's talking about local government.

Instead, it's the CTA, which the mayor has suddenly realized is a mess.

This afternoon he announced that the agency will borrow and bond its way to improving service. This will be welcome news to riders who have watched the transit system deteriorate dramatically over the two decades Daley has been in office, and perplexing news to everyone wondering why Daley has been unable to find a management team interested in doing this before now.

For all practical purposes, Daley has had control of the CTA since he was elected mayor in 1989, since he picks its executive and the majority of its board members, including the chairman. He's probably right in saying, as he has repeatedly, that the federal and state governments haven't kicked in enough--but it's also true that management is a huge reason why this operation is in rotten shape.

What do I mean? I was recently headed north on the 147, an express bus that makes no stops from the end of the Mag Mile until getting off Lake Shore Drive at Foster. As usual, the bus was packed with far-north-siders eager to get home from work. But after we pulled up next to the Dominick's at Foster and Sheridan, about halfway to the end of the route at the Howard Red Line station, the bus sat for a minute. And then another, and then another. The driver unfastened his seat belt, stood up, and stepped off.

No one knew what was going on; the people unlucky enough to have to stand were particularly displeased.

After about tenminutes, the driver appeared again. "There's another bus coming, and you may want to get on it, 'cuz I don't know when this one's moving again," he said.

The other, equally packed bus stopped beside ours, and people poured into it, some professing their disgust, others their disbelief. A few heaped curses upon the driver and his progeny.

It wasn't his fault, though.

Turns out his shift had ended--right there, in the middle of the route. And his replacement was apparently late for work.

"I'm trying to go home, just like you guys," he said.

First he had to catch a west-bound bus to his home base, a CTA garage on Kedzie. And since he couldn't leave the bus he'd been driving, he'd just missed the one he needed to get there.

Why would his shift end before his route did? "I have no idea," he said with a shrug. "You'd have to ask the people downtown."

The second 147 bus drove off, so full it looked like it would sink to the ground before getting another block. About five minutes later our replacement driver hopped off an eastbound bus and hurried over to ours, and not long after that the four of us still left on it continued our ride homeward.

I've never been a fan of Governor Rod Blagojevich. Back when he was first running for state rep, Blago pretended to be a reformer even as his father-in-law, alderman Richard Mell, ushered him to the head of the line of wannabe northwest-side politicians. Once elected governor, in 2002, Blago cut Mell out of patronage deals and tangled with him in a very public family feud. So on top of everything else  (Rezko, federal indictments, the Public Official A hoohaw), he isn't very loyal.

Still, I have to admit I have a soft spot in my heart for the governor's proposal to let senior citizens ride the CTA for free. Back when Harold Washington was mayor, I knew a city planner who had an idea for making the CTA's trains and buses free for everyone. Dreaming big, he planned to enlist the help of then-powerhouse congressmen Dan Rostenkowski and William Lipinski to pay for it with a hike in the federal income tax -- a progressive tax hike. He claimed Mayor Washington supported his idea, even if it didn't stand a chance. Man, those days are gone.

In contrast, the CTA bailout plan will be paid for with hikes in the sales tax -- the most regressive of taxes -- and the real estate transfer tax, one last slap in the face of beleaguered home owners.

Almost as soon as Blagojevich announced his plan, the powers that be ripped into it, probably because they can't stand the governor either. The Chicago Tribune even found a nice little old lady -- 87-year-old Marion Cheney  -- who said she didn't want the break if it meant service had to be cut. "I'm not going to turn down a free ride," Cheney told a Tribune reporter, who interviewed her while she was writing the Belmont bus. "But if it costs too much money for the CTA, they can have my dollar. I don't want them to have to cut routes because I'm getting a free ride."

Words to live by. I hope Sam Zell was reading as he pushes on with his plan to duck out of paying property taxes by selling Wrigley Field to the state.

Mayor Daley was among those who promptly blasted Blagojevich's plan. "Any politician can give things for free, but there's no such thing as a free lunch," Daley lectured reporters over the weekend. "Someone has to pay for it."

Amen, brother. Though I have to say the mayor's fiscal restraint caught me by surprise. By coincidence, I'd attended the party-down scene at the January 8 meeting of his Community Development Commission, where city officials were throwing around property tax dollars like confetti: $75 million to Rush University Medical Center, $8.5 million to Grossinger Auto, and a to-be-announced TIF handout to a consortium of developers led by former First Ward alderman Ted Mazola to build a bunch of town houses in a swamp down by Wolf Lake, on the city's southeast side. And that's just one CDC get-together -- they meet once a month.

So on the city pushes with its massive transformation, tearing down public housing, closing schools, selling off property on the south and west sides, moving out the poor people, and driving up the cost of living with higher fines, fees, and taxes. Then free rides for seniors get condemned as a waste.

It's a great day to be a zoning lawyer, or a lawyer working on commercial property tax appeals, or a developer, or an alderman-turned-developer, or a Daley-administration-aide-turned-lobbyist, all merrily riding the gravy train. But it's not such a great day for old ladies riding the bus.   

2008 could be the year of Tony Rezko's redemption in court, or progressive tax relief for area voters. But we don't think so. Here's a few more likely scenarios:

Olympics In June, the International Olympic Committee will select Chicago as one of its four finalists for the 2016 games (the final finalist will be chosen in 2009). Mayor Daley will prepare to spend two more years explaining how the games will be financed without public tax dollars and why we need Frank Kruesi to carry the Olympic torch into Soldier Field.

TIFs TIFs, which collected $500 million in property taxes in 2006, will take in at least $600 million in 2007 and $800 million more in ’08. Mayor Daley and the aldermen who help decide how to spend the money will continue to insist it isn't a tax hike while creating new TIF districts for "blighted" sections of the Mag Mile.

Police misconduct After working through the final legal snags, loopholes, and kinks, the city will finally agree to settle the lawsuits accusing police of torture under former commander Jon Burge. Aldermen will be relieved to put this issue behind them so they only have to approve payouts for routine police beatings and shootings.

CTA bailout State leaders will find money to let the CTA avoid cutting all but a few bus routes on the city’s south and west sides while continuing to employ former aldermen, ousted mayoral aides, and other middle managers sent over from City Hall.

Cook County Board President Todd Stroger will remain the favorite scapegoat for anyone interested in playing reformer while providing jobs for his friends, cousins, in-laws, nieces, and nephews.

Council progressives Reform-minded aldermen will realize they need some help organizing an independent caucus in the City Council and decide Mayor Daley is exactly the guy who can get it done.

New taxes The city will consider taxing residents 5 cents per toilet flush to raise money for the legal defense of alleged Shakman Decree violators. 

New lease arrangements Having worked out a deal to lease Midway Airport for an infusion of cash into the city’s coffers, Mayor Daley will propose to lease Lake Michigan to DuPage County.

The other night a couple of coworkers and I were headed north for drinks with Reader proofreaders past, present, and soon-to-be history. There we stood in the Red Line subway station at Grand, next to a corroded metal support with a shallow brown puddle of mystery fluid beside it. The train arrived with a screech.

My colleague Jerome is kind of claustrophobic, and he doesn't much enjoy traveling underground. As we stopped and the doors went through their routine of closing, opening, closing, then opening again while the canned CTA message about how improvements are under way blared, he grumbled, "Man, just get us out of this tunnel," then alluded to the National Transportation Safety Board's scathing recent report on last year's Blue Line derailment. "Makes you feel really safe, doesn't it?" he said.

Finally, we reached Fullerton where the night sky surrounded us rather than rust-streaked walls, and who should board the car but Ron Huberman, the former Daley chief of staff who replaced the much-hated Frank Kruesi earlier this year as president of the CTA (the mayor, by the way, continues to defend Kruesi). Huberman's a lot more buff than he looks in a suit, and his fierce expression gave him the look of a Guardian Angel. He prowled the length of the car, made some notes on his Blackberry, stalked back, and sat down by the door. Some people go crazy sighting Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Me, I haven't been so psyched since I saw Lisa Madigan eating lunch with her family at Los Nopales. (She looked tired and a little crabby.)

Jerome approached Huberman, confirmed that it was he, and remarked that as a long-suffering rider he appreciated the CTA head checking things out for himself. Huberman's job can't be much fun right now, what with the failure of the state legislature to pass Julie Hamos's transportation bill and the prospect of doomsday cuts, averted only through November. "Does it look cleaner to you?" Huberman asked.

Well, no. My stop at Morse still smells like piss, and I will never understand why they paint the stations white--as my colleague Whet noted this morning, it's asking for grime, like putting white carpet in your living room. Last Wednesday, after waiting more than 30 minutes at Morse as five north-bound trains passed, I had to pay $25 to cab to work on time. But at least Huberman was on the job--the mayor almost never rides public transport. We wished him luck.

If looks could kill, a few state legislators might be considered ex-state legislators, and the governor (yesterday's last-minute twitch to action aside) might be considered an ex-Blagojevich.

Looked at from the other side, if looks could solve a public transit budget crisis, the CTA would be in for some smooth sailing.

That's at least the opinion of one fan of CTA President Ron Huberman who prefers to be known as "Lovin You In Lakeview :)."

Yesterday, after Huberman announced that he was hoping to put off the CTA's doomsday cuts after to a last-minute cash advance from the governor, Lovin You in Lakeview :) put the following post on the Missed Connections page on the Chicago Craigslist site:

"I have no idea if you are gay or straight, married or single. That isnt the point. I just wanted to say that you are totally adorable and I enjoy seeing you on the news all the time lately. You looked hot in your red tie today on tv :)"

"Missed connections" is the spot where people typically post messages to lost loves or instant attractions they passed by on the train, at the bar, or in the laundry room. The post to Huberman was followed by a note that read "I'm M & if this is AR than yes, things might have been .... Heaven...if you had only taken that "Leap of Faith". But should have beens, could have beens and what might have beens are now like whispers in the nite...gone."

The post before was addressed to "Marielle" and said simply, "If only.."

A spokeswoman with the CTA's media relations department sounded weary and downbeat until I asked her if Mr. Huberman would like to reply to this in any way. She asked me to e-mail her a copy of the post. "I don't know if we'll have any response," she said. "But I know we could all use a laugh here." 

I was enjoying my beer the other night, and my friend's friend appeared to be enjoying his, until Mayor Daley's name came up. While I kept drinking, he seemed to taper off.... And maybe that's why my arguments seemed to get louder--and altogether more powerful--as the conversation rolled on.

My inspiration, shall we say, didn't come from the fact that this smart, polite guy really likes the mayor; to me, liking or disliking the mayor is beside the point. My issue is that I just can't buy into the "Chicago isn't Detroit; therefore, Richard M. Daley is a great mayor" line of thinking, and I hear it all the time. In fact, I'm guessing Daley could get reelected on that platform alone: "I was the mayor when Chicago continued not becoming Detroit!"

It's undeniable that over the last 20 years Chicago has fared far better in most ways than Detroit and the rest of the rust belt. And as its leader over that time, Daley can take credit for some of Chicago's successes. Large swaths of the city, including downtown and the north lakefront, do look better than ever. Millennium Park, the flower beds, the reconstruction/gentrification of the South and West Loop, the thriving arts and tourism districts--if you like all of this, you can rightly point to the mayor as contributing to your happiness in ways small and perhaps great. And I have to give the mayor props for his passion for the environment, bicycling, and the lives of ex-offenders, even if the accompanying programs are often modest at this point.

On the other hand, I don't think Daley is responsible for the fact that the auto industry was centered in another state and ran itself into the ground there, or that Chicago is so much bigger than Flint or Gary that white people here could flee from their incoming black neighbors and still find homes (and pay taxes) inside the city limits. 

My gripe with Daley supporters, like my friend at the bar, is the implication that what's happened here is as good as it gets, and that no one needs to challenge this administration with new ideas or modes of governing. 

The other day the mayor had an op-ed piece in the Sun-Times that declared it's "time for Springfield to do its part and enact long-term funding reform" to ensure we continue to have have public schools, public transportation, sane tax policies, and an aggressive response to gun violence.

But in outlining the ways his administration has supposedly "taken responsibility" and "acted to keep Chicago moving forward," Daley (or whoever on his team wrote the piece in his name), once again chose to play politics and throw out misleading campaign rhetoric.

School test scores have inched up, which is good. But Chicago has become a national model for creating a multitiered, inequitable system of public education, and Daley's pet tax increment financing districts have sucked millions from local schools' coffers. 

The mayor expressed confidence in the CTA's new management team, but smartly avoided explaining why he watched the city's transit system erode for years under the leadership of his pal Frank Kruesi, who wasn't sacked until May. Daley rightly condemned gun violence, but didn't touch the fact that many children who grow up in the city--away from the thriving neighborhoods along the lakefront--are at least as afraid of the police who patrol their neighborhoods as they are of gangs, while the mayor has repeatedly failed to act to weed out even the worst cops. The mayor had the nerve to boast of his administration's fiscal discipline as taxpayers cover millions of dollars in legal fees stemming from bad police officers and illegal patronage hires.

And if you've bothered to travel the length and width of the city recently, you'll find it harder to claim that Chicago is wholly different from the rest of the rust belt.

If you think I'm ranting, fair enough; this time I can't even blame it on the beer. Just prove your point by telling me specifically how and where we're wrong to ask why a mayor who's spent 18 years in office belittling the ideas of opponents shouldn't produce even more.

I'm not surprised that Senator Barack Obama endorsed Mayor Daley's reelection. We're used to the sight of erstwhile reformers scrambling to board the mayor's gravy train before it leaves the station--look at Congressman Bobby Rush and new city clerk Miguel des Valles Miguel del Valle. I'm just a little surprised at the reason Obama gives.

"Even [Daley's] detractors acknowledge that the city has been well-managed and has performed in all respects in ways that are the envy of a lot of other cities across the country," Obama said at his press conference with the mayor yesterday.

Well managed? Daley's public transportation system is literally falling apart even as it squanders millions on projects it doesn't need and, in the case of the express lines to O'Hare and Midway, may never even use. Property taxes are skyrocketing as the city plays games of deception with its off-the-books TIF program. Just about every significant public works project--from the O'Hare expansion to the construction of Millennium Park to the Brown Line  renovation--has come in late and overbudget. About the only thing the city does right is clear the streets of snow--and there they overdo it, so fearful are they of repeating Mayor Michael Bilandic's fatal mistake.

Actually, I don't know why Obama even bothered. Sure, there's a quid pro quo, but it's not as if Daley has a choice: how would it look for the state's top Democrat to back someone other than the state's favorite son? And if Daley didn't support Obama, so what? The mayor has no strings when it comes to national elections. He supported Al Gore in 2000 and did next to nothing for John Kerry in 2004; Gore and Kerry still did about the same in Chicago.

Now that I think about it, endorsing Daley was a boneheaded move. He gave it all away and got next to nothing in return.

Mayor Daley had a “Heck of a job, Brownie” moment yesterday. During the City Council meeting aldermen Ric Munoz and Joe Moore had introduced a resolution (PDF) calling for CTA board president Frank Kruesi and board chairman Carole Brown to appear before the council and address the "ongoing crisis" that threatens to turn the CTA into a "third-world transit system." At a press conference after the council session I asked the mayor what he thought of the aldermen's claim that the CTA's management is plagued by “gross incompetence.”

“By them?” Daley asked—meaning, I guess, the aldermen. No one got the joke, so he quickly moved onto something funnier: “When you take the number of people coming in and out of the CTA, they do a tremendous job,” he said. I assume he was referring to the number of train riders every day, not to turnover among CTA employees.

Daley went on to express full confidence in Kruesi and blamed breakdowns and delays in the rail system on decreased funding from the state and opponents of big-box stores, which he said would bring in more sales taxes and thus boost the CTA’s budget. “And unfortunately, it’s an old system,” the mayor said with a shrug.

I asked him when he’d last ridden a CTA train. “About a year ago. Thank you.”

The press conference was over.