Wasted opportunities in Chicago

When I first learned that the red light, speeding, and school zone cameras were to be erected around Chicago I was in favor of the idea. What better way to plug the city’s budget deficit than fining people who were actually breaking the law. My thinking continued that it should force everyone to be more conscientious drivers. The fact that it wouldn’t affect driving records or insurance premiums made it seem all the more innocuous. Besides, as a good driver who has never had a ticket, I appreciated not being the target of a government revenue program for once.

And then I realized I was very much the target. It turns out that the city wasn’t after just the scofflaws that were driving recklessly, ignoring signs, and putting people’s lives in danger. They were after every penny they could squeeze from this new resource. In situations that would have generated no tickets in the past – like a pattern of traffic where everyone is driving a bit above the limit – the City can now efficiently issue a ticket to everyone. In school zones when no children are present, no real cop would ever pull a driver over, but robot cameras can facelessly issue tickets to everyone who passes through. As for the appeal process? There is one and you are encouraged to follow the process. A few weeks later, you will get a nondescript “NOPE!” (and an implied “HA HA!”)

No, the red light cameras were not erected to segregate taxation between the scofflaws and the lawful. They were erected with the assumption that every citizen is presumed guilty and any punishment the City chooses to heap upon them is deserved.

Interestingly, this revelation parallels the one I have gone through with Mayor Rahm Emanuel. I was a pretty big support of Rahm up front. I liked the idea of a guy waking up every morning with a list of whose ass he was going to kick that day. It struck me that there were a lot of bad guys in politics around here and on the City’s payroll and I was darned happy to have a fighter coming in to bop some of them in the nose, get rid of others, and ebb the tide of corruption.  Finally, a “my guy” I could vote for mayor.

But instead of putting his gumption to use to eliminate Madigan’s spending shenanigans he has used it to shove through a property tax that forces you and me to pay for more of them. He sort-of stood up to Karen Lewis, but lost to her PR machine and came out looking like a bully with no financial improvements to show for it. His hand-picked staff which should have been a Justice league of no-bullshit straight-shooters has been string of lightweights, buffoons, and hand-in-the-cookie-jar criminals.

Meanwhile, gun violence in four small south-side neighborhoods – Auburn Gresham, Grand Crossing, Chatam, and Englewood, approaches the level of countries at war. Four neighborhoods! Less than 5% of the City’s total area. How hard can it be to augment the police presence in such a small area to the point where the neighbors don’t shoot children? Certainly these are communities have many problems, but in the short-term, is there a reason why the Illinois National Guard can’t be used to stop the shooting?

I still think Rahm Emmanuel is a smart man, and I believe he wants Chicago to be a better place. But the voters need to be convinced that everything in between there and here is more than just a nuisance to him. A teacher’s strike, black people killing each other, and all us irritating citizens expecting something for our tax dollars need to be things he becomes passionate about. If he can’t do that, it’s going to be tough for any of us to see him as “my guy” next time around.

Question your elders. All of them.

The metaphorical work water cooler. Where ever it is in the office, it is the gathering place for criticizing our employer. We discuss how our fellow employees have been treated, how thing could be better, and even our relative salaries.

We also criticize our government leaders. We have ample candidates to choose from (well, except maybe in Chicago), and we are given the opportunity to toss out the stinky ones. We even have whole television stations dedicated to finding and highlighting the flaws of our President.

We criticize our community elders, our parents, the talking heads on TV, and we have even – just recently and in the wake of the priest sex scandals – begun scrutinizing and criticizing our religious leaders.

Yet why is it that any criticism of a union leaders is considered an attack on the working class or worse and attack against America. Why can’t criticizing union leaders be an active and accepted part of the American dialog?

It’s not because the middle class is made up of union members. In fact only 11% of all Americans are members of a union which breaks down to 4% of Americans are in private unions and 7% are government employees. So who is the working class? Well, it’s everyone above the poverty line and everyone below the so-rich-they-don’t-need-to-work line.

Looking at the bottom first, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty rate in this country has held pretty constant at 15% over the last 50 years. So the working class is above the bottom 15% of American wage earners. Looking at the top, we may have some debate. The 99%ers, or Occupy Movement stated that only the top 1% is richer than requiring work. However, we can be more conservative and say that everyone below the 90% line still gets up every morning, drives to work and puts in a full day.

So everyone in between that top 10% and the bottom 15%, or the middle 75% of Americans is working class. But again, only 11% is unionized. Let that sink in. The union is not the middle class, it is in fact less than 15% of the middle class. It is also very privileged, and it is supported by the greater middle class who pays for union benefits they do not receive through higher taxes, yet unfunded pensions, reduced government services, strikes, and over-billed government engineering projects.

The greater middle class, to which my family and likely your family belongs, has every right to criticize, scrutinize, and question the use of our tax dollars. And when one small slice of the group is getting disproportionate attention, we are all welcome at the discussion table.

Support your teachers – I do. But question their union leaders. I’d love to see our teachers better paid, but I’d also like to see nurses, doctors, musicians, scientists, curators, and baristas better paid. In fact I would like to see everyone who does a good job and is nice get a raise. However, in a world of limited resources, not everyone can get everything. Before you jump on the unconditional support for Karen Lewis band wagon, ask yourself, how much of what you love about Chicago are you willing to give up for it?

Criticizing the union and our union leaders, is not un-American. It is in fact what makes America strong. Find an opinion, learn to politely articulate it, and bravely join the discussion. In the mean time, I will be doing the same.

Editorial note…
The original headline of this piece was “Union criticism fits fairly into the civic dialog”. That headline was boring, pedantic and preachy and I was embarrassed . Believe me it happens. It is my job to make this blog both fun and thoughtful. Man, my apologies.

What do Chiraq and Paris have in common?

On Monday November 4th, Tyshawn Lee, a 9-year old child was lured into an alley and shot multiple times in the chest and head by a member of the Terror Dome faction of the P Stones. The killer apparently used some sort of bait, possibly candy, drew him around the corner, and then fired mercilessly, at point blank range, execution-style. Children are in general trusting of adults and the cold-hearted killer likely watched the boy’s eyes go wide with disbelief before going dark forever.

Poor Tyshawn was a pawn in a game the P Stones and their rival, the Gangster Disciples, are playing. The game-play is to terrorize rival gang members and the community while the goal is to force residents to take a side. If you pick the wrong side horrible things will happen. But if you refuse to fight, even worse things can happen.

As a parent of a child of similar age, this story brings me to tears. This can’t happen! When our children can be assassinated by gang insurgents, our way of life is under attack. As good-hearted Chicagoans who love our city, we must find the courage and fortitude to empower our law enforcement community to stop this violence before more children die. We need bravery from the men and women of the South Side. We need them to forego the code of silence and point law enforcement in the right direction as we bring these killers to justice and help all of us restore order to their community. We are all in this together.

Last Friday, eight Islamic extremists assisted by at least three others launched an attack killing nearly 150 innocents in beautiful and formerly peaceful Paris. This follows twin suicide bombings in Beirut the day before, a Russian passenger liner blown out of the air the week before, and a long list of other Islamic terrorists attacks against innocents. In all cases, the dead were regular people doing nothing but going about their daily business. If you want the whole list, here it is.

Paris was targeted because it is high profile and France is an easy target.   The refugee crisis has opened borders, the people are largely trusting, and they are relatively unsophisticated in terror intelligence compared to the UK and the US. Their “French culture is better” attitude and their laws against religious expression are irritating (not just to Muslim residents), and they have been designated “most hated country in Europe” by the Islamic State. But that’s still nothing compared their ISIS’s hatred of the leader of Western ideals: given the opportunity, they would prefer to spill blood on US soil more so than any other.

By whatever name, Islamic State, ISIS, ISIL, or Daesh, this organization is a gang. They are terrorizing innocents in an effort to oppress and control populations of innocent people.  Their enemy is all Western governments who believes it has a right to interfere with their ideology, in this case its calling to worship as they wish, exert ownership over their daughters and wives, kill their neighbors for worshiping the wrong god (or the right god wrongly), turn back the clock on technology, sell illegal heroine, and put an end to Israel. In many ways, this hatred of the West is their reason for being, and whatever we do, these radicals will  poke, kick, kill, and slaughter, begging for us to try to stop them. For – as they believe – when that war finally comes, their god will ensure a quick death to their enemies.

And as they continue their affront, America’s repeated response is to distance ourselves from the engagement. The single most empowering event in the history of ISIS was the American exit from Iraq. Just as ISIS was gaining regional relevance we gave them a terrific graduation present by refusing to come to the aid of the democracy-friendly Syrian rebels. Before a year passed, they had created one of the biggest states (caliphates) in The Middle East, and established beheading Westerners as the national sport.  Now we have Hillary Clinton saying in last night’s debate that “this is not our fight” and suggesting that the incompetent militaries in Iraq and Syria should be able to handle it with us offering little more than a pat on the back.  Although politically expedient, this strategy constitutes dangerous isolationism that will only put the US National Security at additional risk.

The majority of Middle East residents want peace and the removal of the gangs that threaten their lives. They also know that the only way to overcome these villains is collaboratively where they provide the intelligence and the US supports them with military force. Without our support, they cannot possibly defeat ISIS. Yet we continue to ignore their requests for help.

If we continue this course, ISIS will continue its attack on our allies in an effort to engage America. They will launch opportunistic attacks around the world as they continue to seek the chink in our armor. Innocents – and innocent children – will die with each attack, and the death toll will grow overseas. Eventually they will figure out how to hit us at home and we will pay a dear price. History will punish us for not acting earlier.

The victims of gang violence are too often targeted because they represent well-meaning intentions of their Chicago communities. In a similar way, the attacks of ISIS are intended to terrorize the family of nations that share western values and in particular the United States. We must protect the members of the besieged Chicago neighborhoods by eliminating the gangs who terrorize them. By the same token, we cannot sit on the sidelines as ISIS continues to attack the world and searches for an opportunity to deal real damage to the United States. We need our government to act forcibly and rapidly if we wish to stop the slaughter of innocents.

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With contributions from Dan Rice: President, Thayer Leader Development Group at West Point; Co-Author “West Point Leadership: Profiles of Courage”