A Clueless Metropolis is about to get Fairness

Having solved all the other problems of the city during his long tenure as king of Chicago, the retiring monarch Richard Daley II returned from a taxpayer sponsored vacation in China to unveil his latest "vision" for solving one last problem. This time it's one which doesn't exist. That terrible problem is that it takes too long on government transportation to travel from downtown Chicago to O'Hare airport.

And what vision the king has! From the control tower at one of the worlds busiest airports, it's the only thing which doesn't show up at all on the radar. But king Richie can see it as plain as day. Quite an accomplishment for a guy who couldn't see the corruption in his own cabinet even though it was sitting right next to him for decades.

So now that the city has all its finances in order, has sold all the assets it can, has a wonderful education system and a trouble free police department, Daley retires with only one unfulfilled dream, a seven minute commute to O'Hare on a Chinese high speed rail system. According to him, it's the answer to many problems besides the speed issue. The Chicago Tribune reported this morning that he told reporters last week that it would "rebuild our commercial market and our hospitality industry." (No word on what caused those markets and industries to need rebuilding.)

Most people know this thing will never get built, but changing the subject from actual problems to grand visions has become an art form for those who run Chicago and this nonsense is just one more example of how clueless newspapers and even more clueless citizens take the bait time after time and talk about this stuff instead of talking about what is actually happening. Seemingly, it never occurs to them that before building an un-needed high speed rail system, Daley might ponder why he needs citizens of Topeka or San Jose to pay $34.7 million (as reported in the paper this very day) to help maintain the current CTA buses via a federal grant. Or maybe he should try to imagine how he would have run the city all these years if the people who live there had to pay for what they needed instead of it being financed by a stream of federal money taken from people in cities who actually solve their own problems and live within their means.

One Chicago Tribune commentator who is a regular apologist for liberal politics opined in today's paper that "Chicago is going to miss Daley."  Essentially, he says we will pine for him after he is gone because he remembers how bad it was before Daley was king.

But look on the bright side, if you are a progressive in Chicago, you are about to get the fairness you crave  because the answer to all the problems Daley leaves behind apparently is..... Rahm Emmanuel. 

And if so, it will prove that in the end you get what you deserve in this town even if they don't in Topeka or San Jose.