Well, you can’t say I don’t know when to Be There. What an entertaining week it’s been for me, here in the old hometown. CD got her Chitown on, and it’s just got my brains a-stirrin. Heh, there haven’t been any riots between supporters of the two hometown candidates now that it’s all over (nevermind that ’convention’ thingee) and for the most part, people seem genial and happy that One of Ours is going to go all the way. Seriously- outside of these evil, hateful wars we have in the blogosphere, Dems I spoke with this week seemed pretty happy and satisfied; some even hopeful that the “Dream Ticket” is still possible, some happy that the SB finally Q (which I guess I missed, but anyway). Heh, I kept my cards close to the vest all week; I wanted to listen and perceive. Biggest thing I noticed: even here, in the Windy City for which Da Mayor has slaughtered many enemies to economically buttress and protect, the Recession is here. That’s one thing I really hate about our gummint today: you just can’t trust anything they tell us about “the economy” and are often reduced to anecdotes and personal impressions. So let’s reduce.
There weren’t really signs that the Little People are all a-twitter over ’the decision.’ I guess that’s to be expected, the news cycle filters so horribly and is also days and weeks behind the developments in smoke filled back rooms; mostly I heard from people who think the convention is going to mean something even as they are sure that it will mean an Obama nomination.
It was very interesting to speak with one friend, a PhD rocket scientist type with not too much “sophistication” in politics but a deep and desperate interest mainly due to his lack of funding over the last few years under the Chimp occupation. He spouted, almost verbatim, the SCLM
line about Hillary. Which interested me mainly because it speaks to the sad and remaining truth that the blogosphere still has yet to seriously challenge them for dominance in the formation of American political opinion. I don’t think he would even read this blog, simply because there are Hillary defenders here and “she’s responsible” for the entire set of problems facing every Democratic voter in America. It was sort of eerie and strange. And I say this as someone who got some ugly truths about some stuff she did way back fully explained in detail to me recently; I’m still not a fan and never will be, but it hurts my feminist heart to think of all those women and feminists who got stuck with someone who seemed to follow Thatcher more than Emma Goldberg in her later years as a pol. Yes, the SCLM would’ve lied and misrepresented Goldberg too, but at least people like me would’ve been there to defend her. Not so for pro-war voters.
Warning to Obama: don’t underestimate the degree of disappointment of HRC supporters, or how important they will be to you in the fall. You’re a ladies man*, it’s time to unruffle some feathers, friend.
More interesting to me were my nights out with the Crew. We had an important development; from now one we’ll have to call another one of our own “Dr.” Dissertation defenses are….not exciting. I’ll leave it at that. His was good, and afterwards we used that excuse to go and massively stimulate the local food and beverage economy. To my mind, what I observed at many an old haunt and new was much, much scarier than fear and loathing on the IL/prez election campaign trail.
First off: where is everybody? Seriously! I know- it’s the weekend after a holiday weekend. But even subtracting the tourist population, it was Dead all over. Places that were packed, even as recently as last year, had open tables, half-filled bars, empty dance floors. Fewer people of all classes in almost every consumerist palace I went in or passed by. Traffic: shockingly light. There are even empty storefronts in some ’hoods that just a few years ago were commanding serious rent and fighting off prospective tenants. One East Coast friend joined us for the celebration, and I’ll give you her summation: “this town is Over.” Ouch. I’m not that attached to this city for various reasons, but as a native Flatlander and mourner for the lost glory that was Olde Detroit, it pains me to think that Chicago could be headed down that same road. I hope it is not, and that it remains the one viable economic and social center for this region. But it was very clear to me that the sheen of loose money is gone from here right now.
Everyone at the restaurants and clubs we went to seemed to be ordering less, or less expensively. I also noticed a lot more “beater” cars on the road than there used to be. Not only fewer gas guzzling, chi-chi/imported super-SUVs (which used to utterly dominate the road here), but more people willingly driving slowly, despite the wide-open feel to the freeways and tollways. Chitown used to be Hell to drive; not LA but still extra-suck behind the wheel if you had to cross town in any direction. But I made it out to the burbs and back in record time this week. I was frankly amazed; in going on 20 years of motoring this town I’ve never had it so easy driving here. I also noticed a lot more (white) folk on the buses during the day. Previously, some of the routes seemed practically unused; those days are no more. I remember the fairly recent outcry over the CTA raising (or trying, I forget) their rates. I doubt people are complaining so much now- it’s still way cheaper than a tank of gas.
Prices and selection are cramping as well. I paid less of more for less, over and over again this week. I’ve become a hyper anti-consumerist since leaving DC and greatly enjoy the freedom to not spend a lot on high-fashion brands and trendy-spendy-shiny-tiny. So I had planned to shed blood to do things like dance, eat and park while here. And I did, relative to my budget, but nowhere nearly as badly as I had planned. Service was also interesting to experience. Lots of obviously ’lowest pay scale’ type workers where previously service standards were at least a tad higher. Younger, dumber and cheaper seems to be a theme. That was also true out in the burbs, where I had to do some business stuff and was a little surprised in the lower quality experience. Supposedly, that’s why people live out there instead of living in the Big City- “you still get ’old fashioned’ kind of Midwestern service and friendliness in the burbs,” they say. Not this week, I dinnit. Hint to the corporate chains that run these burbs: you can’t make friends with salad, and you can’t get return business at business-class prices unless there’s a reason. Just sayin. Train your people better, or I’ll just say fuck it next time and stay at the Rattail-6. Seriously, why spend the money if there’s nothing to distinguish them from you, in terms of service and selection?
As if to be contrarian, the City was booming in other ways, ways that I interpret to reflect the truth of 4-5$/gal gas. Lots of burbanites going into the city and outer burbs for things like ’close’ shopping and the game and the beach. When I lived here, the Kids and Family types preferred to take their bratwagons to WI or some other ’clean’ place on the weekends. It seems that they can’t afford to do that anymore; they were all over the parks and city beaches during the weekend daytime. /Praises the FSM they haven’t discovered Boystown/A’ville yet/ Also, “twink” culture has taken a turn to the dark, the gritty. Twinks are early adopters in culture and fashion (and sugar-daddy hunting, but never mind that) and I find that telling. It’s now OK to affect the “angry” look over the happier one, and that’s a huge change for that vapid, fashion obsessed crowd. Zeitgeist-speaking, I think the Kidz understand that they aren’t going to afford The Pretty much longer, and it makes sense to return to something that conceals that fact with ’fashion.’ Blue-eyes with the ratty pants, I’m smiling at you and your brave bitches. I hope you snag Him.
Not a whole lot of new business in the City or the central and western burbs. Even Wheaton (I know, ack!) has a bunch of fairly new looking ’vacant’ and ’for sale’ signs. I feel as if living in the land of the Long Depression (MI) has really opened my eyes to the signs of decay, and I wonder if people who live here in IL can see its beginnings too. Another thing I noticed: people are Angry. A lot. There seems to be a permanent conflict writ upon so many faces I passed this week, and it reminds me of the permanent sadness/hopelessness I see constantly in MI and The D. One preceeds another, methinks, if certain economic trends continue.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that No Place is Safe. For a time, I had hoped that the economic model we were headed towards would still allow several large economic centers to thrive, as crony money concentrated into the hands of a few. I suppose DC is still as glittery as ever; certainly the people there have no fucking idea what it’s like for us Little People as we suffer the predations of their fuckups and misappropriations of our money. But I’m sad to report that my impression of Chicago is not a ’hopeful for the future’ one. The signs are all here, and much Real Money seems to mostly have flown, or at least decided to treat their holdings here as vacation-purposed. The yatchs are just not as flashy as they used to be, for example.
I still believe that the Mayoral Royalty, mob(s) and other local playahs can keep it real, but the signs are all around that they can’t, at least not fully, and certainly not up to the majestic ’world class’ standards they were all aiming for in the 90s and earlier part of this decade. Hunker down, America. There’s still a lot of fat to trim, and our foriegn creditors and their political cronies that you “elect” are going to take every last pound of it from you. Unless you stop them.
*Don’t even go there. I’m speaking of things that have nothing to do with his “race” and if you even think I’m trying to start a Big Black Cock mess on this blog, I’ll ban you. He’s a Leo. Need I say more? And anyway, America loves her Big Dogs. That’s one racist sterotype that if the Republicans think they can employ to success, they’ll find out how utterly wrong they are. His appeal to people on the basis of his good looks is a big reason for his popularity. Only nasty, racist Republicans think a big, brown smile like his is a ’turn-off.’
pss- i hope this is satisfactory to explain why i’ve not had time to blog much this week. despite plenty of wifi connections, i just haven’t been able to sit down and write. i’ll try harder to do so in the coming weeks, lb.
Front page
Oh please do share
“It was sort of eerie and strange. And I say this as someone who got some ugly truths about some stuff she did way back fully explained in detail to me recently; I’m still not a fan and never will be, but it hurts my feminist heart to think of all those women and feminists who got stuck with someone who seemed to follow Thatcher more than Emma Goldberg in her later years as a pol. Yes, the SCLM
would’ve lied and misrepresented Goldberg too, but at least people like me would’ve been there to defend her. Not so for pro-war voters.”
Since it hurts your heart so, please do share all these ugly truths. Free yourself from that awful burden that you must so suffer to carry.
This is just what I love: the drive-by, irrefutable because no fact or specific is laid out. Well, we are not dainty little flowers, if you have something truthful to share, please share it. Otherwise, stow your “concern”.
Interesting observations in the rest of the post though.
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Good night and good riddance!
I'll say this
She eagerly became Joe Lieberman’s mini-me in the herpes-like recurring attempts to ban my sociopathic video games. (Her deliberately obtuse involvement in the Hot Coffee brouhaha was especially shameful.) I can’t really characterize her pandering, nannyish opposition to vehicular-hooker-homocide simulations as anti-feminist but the First Amendment is kind of a big deal, for me anyway.
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
Also
Looking back at old posts, I’m curious as to when Hillary morphed from the first half of Hilbama, a “union-busting” (by association) “triangular client of Mark Penn”, to the Most Perfect Politician Evar. You seem incredulous that anyone could possibly object to any moment of her entire career. She’s certainly running a more progressive campaign than Obama, but that doesn’t erase the past, eh?
(NB: Lambert, I’m not attacking you by any stretch of the imagination, there’s just a bit of selection bias when it comes to searching Corrente, if you know what I mean.)
(NB 2: Although I am being an archivist.)
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
Feh, SS
1. Last I checked, I never said I thought Hillary was “perfect.” If you can link to a post, that might help you make this argument something other than a straw man. (No fair cherrypicking comments!)
2. I’ve never thought that Hillary was anything other than a Centrist
, and that from a policy perspectice, her differences with Obama were marginal (though, as I keep saying, marginal is not insignificant, particularly on universal health care, where Hillary’s plan really is universal (see the Argus endorsement), and Obama demagogued the issue with Harry & Louise ads).
3. From a process perspective, Obama’s campaign is vile. From the baseless charges of racism to the leveraging of Hillary hatred to the constant misogyny to the RFK smear that pushed me over the edge from “holding my nose” to “making sure I keep my breakfast down” voting for him — there’s a big, big difference between the two campaigns, and Obama has just been scummy. And that’s before we even get to the vote theft in MI that the DNC just perpetrated on his behalf. Roses grow best in shit, but I’m not sure that goes for progressive policies.
4. As far as selection bias — This is an amazingly stupid argument, IMNHSO, though (and?) I hear it all the time. Somehow, the idea is that Corrente, in its content, must maintain a balance that exists in very, very few other places. If you want pro-Obama material and anti-Hillary material — or a complete Hillary blackout — then read our famously free press or check the A list. There’s plenty there, and why should we sing in chorus with them. Clue: Web content is not fractal.
So, how about we translate “seletion bias” to “supplying a demand that goes unmet elsewhere.” That would be why our readership is way up, yes?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Since the economic statistics are cooked...
…. details like this are very important.
A pawn shop just opened up in my small town. What next? Payday lending?
As far as the Democratic nominee, while you were out, CD, Obama smeared Hillary on the RFK thing. Makes me want to throw up. More important than video game policies, to me, at least. Whether the primary is “over,” or not, there are a lot of other things that are over as well…
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
no no no
By “selection bias” I just meant that I wasn’t trying to dredge up old Lambert posts, you just happen to be the most prolific poster from that time, for obvious reasons. More to the point, the “you” was referring to Herb, not Lambert. ’Twas shittily written.
Herb’s sarcastic response indicated that he thought the very notion that anyone could object to Hillary’s record was absurd. I mean, really, calling CD a concern troll? People seem to be forgetting a hell of a lot right about now.
“First they came for the video games…”
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
No evidence...
… deserves a callout of some sort. Comments can slide, Op-Eds can slide, but main posts making controversial and (to me) previously unknown points?
I don’t think so.
And as to “absurd…” People can read whatever they want into anything. As Obama’s RFK smear indicates, eh?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
SS you need to read more closely
I asked CD to put up or shut up with “ugly truths” she says she knows.
That is all.
I did not say Clinton was perfect, you read that in with your own little mind.
I did not say I agree with everything Clinton did or does, you read that in with your own little mind.
I did not say anything about your precious video games that apparently are more important to you than Universal Health Care, you read that in with your own little mind (and what a mind it must be to have such balance of concerns).
I was not sarcastic, I was direct, I think it is concern trolling to express remorse for those who “know no better”, not being privy to the horrible truths you cannot share about someone you think they wrongly idolize. Share, please do and we can make up our own minds, or cease with the whisper campaign.
Now SS you have felt the lash of my sarcasm, it stings like the butterfly!
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Good night and good riddance!
Ok, maybe it was sarcastic
But that don’t make it wrong.
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Good night and good riddance!
Thank you
Just trying to keep things Civil, yanno.
For the record, video games aren’t that big a deal to me, but if she’d been cosponsoring universal health care in 2005 instead of cosponsoring Joe Lieberman bills with “family” in the name I’d be more impressed.
I can’t claim to remember the Hillarycare era too well, as I was aged in the single digits at the time, but I’ve seen Michael Moore’s summary in Sicko and it’s pretty clear that she’s changed. It’s understandable, given the VRWC
’s relentless assault, but it seems like her commitment to healthcare isn’t what it could and should be. She’s a Senator. If she’s got a plan she should introduce it ( Same goes for Obama, natch). I think it would be good politics. I want something more specific than this. I hate to say she should Lead, but…
But I still believe
And I will rise up with fists!!
She is leading...
… by running for President with a truly universal health care plan as part of her platform. That’s why the Argus leader endorsed her.
Obama, on the other hand, is “leading” by demagoguing the issue with Harry & Louise ads, while his supporters in the “creative class” [cough] don’t even talk about it any more.
So, which’d you rather? I know Hillary’s not perfect, but she’s marginally better. As usual. And marginal does not mean insignificant.
NOTE I’ve heard the argument made that Obama’s disinterest in the matter is actually an advantage, because that means the grass roots can drive policy. Seems to me it’s always a good thing to have a President who’s out front about being on your side, as opposed to one who isn’t.
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Chicago Econ
Regarding Chi-town.
I grew up in Greater Chicagoland. I remember driving through dozens of miles of abject poverty and decay to a few square miles of wealth beyond imagination. I remember the injustice of it. I remember the guilt that I, even as a child was a part of a society that was so fundamentally unfair.
But I also saw the cohesion of neighborhoods, the diversity of experiences and lives (also with the unavoidable accompanied insularity}, the vibrancy that was possible due to just the mass of it all.
So that was the good part.
Then decades later, I saw the gentrification brought on by the super SUV crowd. No longer living their to see it drip, drip but coming to visit family (like your trip ChiDy) and seeing the incremental changes, like visiting a beach and seeing it grow or erode over the seasons.
Apparently now that was just all borrowed money. But I have faith in Chicago, all those people and communities didn’t just disappear, and the fundamental lack of economic diversity in Detroit just never existed in Chicago. Chicago still is a transportation hub and always will be and that will ultimately keep it from imploding like Detroit or Cincinatti or any of those other towns. The current credit crisis is bad, and going to get a helluva lot worse, but I think Chicago will weather it, just like we are apparently weathering it here in the Twin Cities.
Chicago is a tough, badass town, and it has seen worse. It’s the City that Worsk, in the immortal words of Mike Royko. Oh that he were with us today.
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Good night and good riddance!
I'm from Chicago too, not Chicago-land
And I can assure you that a lot of those communities have been and are being dispossessed and dispersed at an alarming rate, and that the process has been underway for a generation.
The part of the South Side I grew up in large parts of which are already standing vacant, even the park where I played ball and got my arm broken as a kid will be, if the municipal monarch Richard II gets his way, a venue for the next (or maybe the one after) Olympics, good for speculators, but always bad for neighborhood residents. It happened exactly that way here in Atlanta, where the 1996 Olympics were the excuse to “cleanse” a few square miles of prime real estate.
Bronzeville, they say back home, is already becoming blondesville.
Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com
I know that is true
They are being dispersed. I had a link to that I posted here a few weeks back where public housing was being dismantled and the residents were getting spread out to outer ring suburbs. I was working there at one point while the wrecking balls were smashing Cabrini.
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Good night and good riddance!
And as the gentrification happens....
.,.. does public transportation follow?
And where did the dispossessed move? Does anyone know?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
I will search again
The dispossessed were exactly that, dispossessed. What happened was no Sec. 8 housing was “available” within the city of Chicago so they were forced to go where that housing was available. That housing was spread out into surrounding areas all over even as far as Joliet. Basically entire communities were destroyed.
But that’s nothing new, the same thing happened all across the US when the interstate highway system was forced through the least politically powerful neighboorhoods (i.e. poor, minority, etc., etc.)
Oh and no, no mass transit and that is one of the primary issues, these people now have no way to get to a job.
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Good night and good riddance!
Nothing like a lesbian bitch-slap
to wake people up.
Thanks, cd. Nice writing, could feel the change in the town. Chicago’s tough, not folding up any time soon, but you are right the economic crunch is everywhere - even out here in La-La Land. Our Savior Ahnold, who kicked the Democrat Davis to the curb because he was struggling with the economics, has after six years in charge delivered up a crushing debt from borrowing to pay for the Davis mess and now we find that we have a huge new shortfall to cover. The new crisis is so big, nobody even knows how much cutting will be required.
The answer, of course, is to take money away from schools and the poor and healthcare. Tax the rich? Nah, that would never work.
Good to read you, even when you’re flat-out fucking wrong about nearly everything. (())
They even got a name for it
The Plan for Transformation
How deliciously Orwellian, wouldn’t you say?
It wasn’t ALL bad, after all, Cabrini was one of those injustices I mentioned above, so these would have been the salad days of the project (although beginnings of problems noted).
Now it’s more like this or this.
The term “fucked in the drivethrough” comes to mind, and we should bear in mind that some very close pals of someone we all are “hoping for very hard” were the fuckers.
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Good night and good riddance!
“fucked in the drivethrough”
Vivid phrase, but means what?
Look, I’m sure that property speculation in Chicago is, well, totally clean, and I’m especially sure that community activism — or the cessation thereof — has nothing to do with the price of anything. That your point?
[x] Any (D) in the general. [ ] ?????. [ ] Any mullah-sucking billionaire-teabagging torture-loving pus-encrusted spawn of Cthulhu, bless his (R) heart.
Lucy football
Maybe I should have compared it to Charlie Brown trying to kick a football. The bait and switch routine.
In a nutshell, we will tear down that nasty housing and promise, promise, promise we will replace it with something better.
We would never think to pull that ball away Charlie, come and kick it. Please!
Example.
This isn’t an anti-Obama thing, it is an anti-greedhead, anti-corruption thing and just one more example that just because you are a Democrat doesn’t mean you aren’t just as bad as Republicans. A corrupt Democrat corporate stooge is still just a corrupt corporate stooge.
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Good night and good riddance!
where the dispossessed go
In 1995 I worked for the Cook County Clerk’s office, responsible for elections in suburban Chicago. We got complaints from the white officials in Calumet City, Lansing and some other burbs alleging vote fraud in largely black Dolton, Harvey, Markham. A famously crooked and long established black state senator, friend of the Daley Machine was running for mayor of Dolton and was, they complained, registering dogs, cats, people from nonexistent addresses and whatnot.
We were the authority, we had to investigate. Municipal election day in November ’95 was a logical time to do it, since we would be deployed in that area anyway.
When people register to vote, we mailed out registration cards, non-forwardable. If they came back, the registrants had a certain time to let us know they still lived there, after which at our discretion, they were moved to an “inactive” list and eventually purged from the rolls.
There were indeed a suspiciously large number of returned registration cards in what we knew to be all-black areas. So we gathered them up, and sorted them by streets, and subsorted in numerical order, evens in one pile, odds in another so I could drive up a street, flip the cards and establish at a glance whether the registrations were from vacant lots.
I took a quarter-mile north-to south stretch of four or five streets in Harvey, I think it was, Marshfield, Paulina, Wood St., etc. The first thing I noticed was that these were all two story bungalows with a lot of subdivided apartments, a lot of rented out basements and side entrances —- high occupancy. Every block there was at least one for-rent sign, a sign of high neighborhood turnover. And most every two blocks there were the remains of some evicted family’s furniture — another sign of high occupancy/turnover combined with economic stress. In other words a neighborhood full of poor people. But no vacant lots.
Got out on foot, picked some buildings with multiple returned voter registration cards and knocked on doors. “Hello, I Bruce Dixon from the County Clerk’s office — we’re checking the voter registration rolls to see who lives here —- you Natalie Brown? Joe Brown? Tina Brown?…” Invariably the people who answered doors either told us the people mentioned had moved in and out over the last months, or that they themselves had arrived so recently they did not know these folks or much of anyone else yet.
So we found lots of people who no longer lived where they had registered, but no evidence of vote fraud which is always the allegation when too many black people sign up.
A longtime community organizer in Chicago’s housing projects, I knew what I was seeing here. This and other south suburban neighborhoods were ground zero for poor people being moved mostly out of the projects which were being torn down and the land given to politically connected developers down under the federal HOPE VI program. Hope VI, like NAFTA, is another gift-that-keeps-on-giving from the Clinton administration that Republicans have continued. I’ve been gone from Chicago seven years now, but I bet I can find neighborhoods like that in the near west and southern burbs of Chicago right now. But back to the story.
Since it was election day, and we were the election authority, we had to spend some time at the polling places, many of which were in public schools. So I went to the public school that served the neighborhood in which I was doing the investigation into potential vote fraud. I talked to the assistant principal who told me that her school was so overcrowded that for the last two years they’d had to institute double-shifts for grades k to 3 —- that means kids were getting only half a day’s school cause they only had that much space and teachers and budget allocation. A telltale symptom of a suddenly overcrowded neighborhood with little political clout.
Public transportation was far worse in the burbs than in the city, and although property taxes were far higher per 1000 bucks of assessed valuation, property values were actually lower, leaving schools in these depressed working-class burbs with far less money to run schools, pave streets, do police and fire and sewers and so on than was available for them in the city.
Does that answer your question lambert, about what happens to poor people who are gentrified? They are anonymously scattered to other poor neighborhoods with fewer health, transportation and other services than they had in the city. Their social support networks are busted up, and many have to make several moves in succession. The question seems not to be of interest to many researchers, with the exception of one Dr. Susan Greenbaum at the University of South Florida in Tampa. On this page you can find a very interesting half hour of audio — look for the 4-15 program of her talking about what happens to public housing residents who are displaced. She says there is a study indicating adverse health outcomes among the displaced.
Oh, and the same thing is happening here in Atlanta where I live now. We are struggling for a different kind of transit plan that at least routes new bus service to where the poor people land.
I hope there are not too many typos in the above, but I gotta get back to work right now.
Bruce Dixon
www.blackagendareport.com
oh, bruce! i should share my own "vote early, vote often" story
about chitown voting sometime. thanks again for stopping by. i need to call you, darnit. sorry, i suck.