The esteemed magazine "The Economist" is out with a chart showing how Chicago ranks in an all-important category.
In fact. we're at the very top of the list for our workers being able to work the least amount of time but still be able to buy a Big Mac at McDonald's.
A report examined the price of a Big Mac in 73 cities worldwide, along with the average net wage, and workers in Chicago, Toronto and Toyko fared the best, having to work 12 minutes to score Big Mac.
On Wednesday, two of nine University of Illinois trustees got to remain on the board.
Several weeks ago, the Sun-Times editorial board argued it was shortsighted to dump the entire U of I board, despite the admissions clout scandal uncovered this summer. The most culpable board members must go, but throwing away the full board robs the university of their expertise, institional knowledge and experience.
The bad news:
The two members are staying because they forced Quinn into it, not because he chose them.
For weeks, Quinn insisted that all board members should resign, clearing the way for him to decide which resignations to accept. On Wednesday Quinn reversed, leaving himself looking like an indecisive, weak leader. These two trustees are good choices to stay on the board but Quinn should have stood firm in his demand that he pick the board members.
Quinn justified the move by saying he didn't want to put the state through a long legal battle with trustees James Montgomery and Frances Carroll.
But Quinn is the one who boxed himself into this corner. This is just the latest example of Quinn making a proclamation and failing to stick with it.
We like the outcome here. But, once again, we're disappointed in how Quinn got us here.
Is there any connection between the Cash for Clunkers program and a proposed government-run health insurance option?
Let's hope not.
The hugely popular car allowance rebate program blew through $3 billion in promises of government money in just four weeks, helping to sell an estimated 700,000 cars. But most dealers haven't gotten a cent from the government, threatening dealerships that desperately need cash to stay open.
The Obama Administration last week responded to complaints -- in some ways, a victim of its success -- by tripling the number of workers handling reimbursement claims.
Let's hope the government doesn't make the same mistake when it launches a public insurance option, a plan to which millions of Americans are likely to flock.
It makes you wonder.
Is a clunky government bureaucracy really prepared to run an efficient health care system?
Ald. Bernard Stone didn't do so well the other night when he appeared on WTTW's Chicago Tonight to discuss the city's much criticized deal to lease its parking meters for 75 years.
Stone claimed he had done his homework on the deal, but when a reporter for the Chicago Reader, Mick Dumke, an expert on the deal, asked him what that entailed, Stone replied, "it's none of your damn business."
We're not in the business of giving aldermen advice on how to conduct themselves on television, but Stone might want to rethink his strategy.
The fireworks start around the 11 minute mark, but it's worth watching the whole video.
I am not normally one to cry "lock 'em up." Judges and juries can get carried away. Prison sentences can be too long.
But when a man kills 270 people by blowing up a plane, all to make a political point, and is sentenced to a mere 27 years in prison for his horrific crime, that sounds like a sweet deal to me. At the very least, he should serve every minute of that 27 years.
But as you no doubt know by now, that didn't happen on Thursday.
Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted of blowing up a Pan Am flight over the little Scottish town of Lockerbie in 1988, was set free by a Scottish court and put aboard a flight to his native Libya.
Al-Megrahi is dying of prostate cancer, probably has about three months to live, and Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill felt sorry for him.
"I am conscious that there are deeply held feelings, and that many will disagree whatever my decision," MacAskill said. "However, al-Megrahi now faces a sentence imposed by a higher power. It is terminal, final and irrevocable."
Scotland originally dealt with their terrorist the right way -- treat him like a criminal, not a soldier. Put him on trial, like you would any alleged criminal. If he's found guilty, lock him up.
Being a big believer in civil liberties and such, I prefer that approach to the George W. Bush school of counter-terrorism: Lock people up without charge, without trial, without respect for basic human rights.
But then that fellow in Scotland, MacAskill, goes and blows it. He lets a killer of 270 innocent people walk free.
Who cares if Al-Megrahi is almost on his death bed.
Ald. Manny Flores and Scott Waguespack had a good idea a few months ago: require the city to post more information on TIF districts on the Internet.
TIF stand for tax increment financing. In brief, TIF districts are legal ways for Mayor Daley to siphon off property tax money that would usually go to schools and parks and other government bodies and use it effectively as his own private slush fund with little oversight. If you'd like a more detailed explanation, check it out here.
So it makes sense, you, as the taxpayer, might like to know where millions of dollars in property tax money is going.
The two aldermen got their idea for greater TIF transparency passed, and now the city administration has taken its first shot at providing more TIF data on the Internet.
Like much of what the city does in term of providing public information, it's not so hot.
Cook County Commissioner Tony Peraica has put up his latest searchable list of what every Cook County employee makes, and it's prompted some debate.
Peraica has long been for transparency in government, but his actions raise a question:
What's the data really worth?
A lot of county employees hate it, seeing it as an invasion of their privacy. Some observers say the salaries don't mean much without context. In other words, if you don't know the extremely highly paid janitor is the committeeman's brother-in-law, the salary number itself doesn't explain much.
One commentator suggests posting the data "almost feels hostile." (TOH to Gaper's Block).
Of course, Peraica gets some political mileage out of posting the data and draping himself in the banner of good government, but he's doing the right thing.
Sometimes the news comes together for me in unexpected ways. I see a connection between two stories in the paper today.
It's a connection that has me wondering -- who are the real freaks in this world?
The first story is that Eunice Kennedy Shriver has died. Shriver's most notable achievement was to take the beautiful creation of a Chicago Park District employee -- the Special Olympics -- and go national with it. The park district employee was future Illinois Supreme Court Justice Anne McGlone Burke.
This got me to thinking about a column I wrote three years ago about the Cusack family of West Beverly, whose son Michael, then 50, had Down syndrome. Michael had been a star Special Olympics athlete.
What I will always remember is that the Cusacks were true pioneers back when Michael was born in the 1950s. Against a doctor's advice, they refused to institutionalize him. Against the advice of well-meaning friends, they also refused to hide him away at home.
Instead, Esther and John Cusack took Michael everywhere, like they would any other child. But back then, that was not the norm. Back then, that took a little courage. Back then, people foolishly stared -- even more than they do today.
The second story in the news is about this strange fellow in New York, John Strong, who runs a Coney Island carnival show featuring disfigured animals -- two-nosed cows, two-headed snakes, that sort of thing. Strong, according to an AP story, will be going on one of those TV court shows to argue that a certain five-legged dog belongs to him.
Now here's the connection: People go to shows like that to look at the freaks. Today they look at freak animals, but it wasn't so long ago that the freaks were as likely to be people -- people who were very small, people who had three arms, that sort of thing.
The message to kids, of course, was "go ahead and stare." The message was "people who look different are not wholly human."
And this was the world Michael Cusack was born into, the world people like John Strong still promote to this day. If you teach a kid to stare at an unfortunate five-legged dog, the staring won't stop there.
Our dialing fingers won't fall off. Our identities won't be irrevocably damaged.
Like the plagues we've survived before this, Chicago can handle a new area code.
In case you missed it (unlikely since it was big scary news Monday and Tuesday),
Chicago is getting a new area code, 872, starting in November.
You don't have to give up 773 or 312 if you already have it. The new code, 872, will be an alternative.
I'm most interested in the news that 872 won't be tied to a particular part of town.
If you get a call from 872, it won't be clear where the caller is from -- a far-flung neighborhood or a potentially tony downtown address? We love to label, so that's a loss.
But, precisely because we like to label and judge, I rank it as mostly a plus.
In this age of Caller ID and Google -- when we can know everything about a person before we even pick up the phone -- we could all use a little more anonymity.
Our former embattled governor, Rod Blagojevich, writes, he does radio, and apparently he sings.
He sings Elvis, to be precise, at this recent Chicago block party, captured on video.
The tune is "Treat Me Nice," which contains the suggestion that a woman "run your pretty fingers through my hair," which seems quite appropriate for our hair-obsessed governor.
Chicago's homicide rate dropped 11 percent in the first seven months of this year, when compared to the same seven months of last year. This has Police Supt. Jody Weis feeling "very encouraged" that his department's efforts are working.
But who really knows.
Crime rates dart up and down from year to to year for countless reasons -- the economy, the size of the population, the average age of the population, the weather, gangs, the supply line of drugs, the demand for drugs, the throw of the dice, whatever. The only numbers that really matter are those over time, such as ten-year and 20-year crime trends.
Veteran police officers, by the way, are always reluctant to take credit when crime rates drop.
Because they'll have to accept blame when crime rates jump.
Even the experts, says social scientist James Q. Wilson in the Los Angeles Times, admit to frustration in trying to nail down all the variables that explain why crime rates go up and down. He's looking for suggestions.
I still love getting mail. Real mail, the kind that comes in a stamped envelope, the kind that wraps you in old-fashioned anticipation as you rip it open.
It sounds goofy, but opening my mail box (like pulling my newspaper out of its sleeve each morning) remains one of my simplest pleasures.
But that doesn't mean I'm crying over the prospect of losing 24 post offices in Chicago. I also don't care that mail service may be reduced to five days a week.
The world has changed and the Postal Service better change with it -- or else snail mail could be gone for good.
In the past year, the Postal Service saw its largest drop in mail volume in its history. It's looking at a $7 billion deficit for this year.
The recession, it seems, has only accelerated an already major drop off in mail usage prompted by the shift to email.
The sooner the Postal Service comes to grips with reality, the better.
Maybe this shake up also will shake out the surly post office clerks we've all had the
misfortune of being served by (not all, mind you, just a select few).
Long live the Postal Service -- and long live life's simple pleasures.
In case you haven't seen it, this video below pretty much sums up the substance of the birther movement. The confrontation occurred at a town hall meeting held recently by Congressman Mike Castle (R-Del.).
There's something charming about an ex-governor hanging out at the public library in his small town, picking up DVDs and books on history. That would be Jim Edgar, who recently gave the Mahomet Public Library a check for $25,000 from his old campaign fund.
It kind of reminds us -- in a more modest way -- of how Harry Truman returned to Independence, Mo., after leaving the White House and walked down the street to a diner every morning to have bacon and eggs with friends.
Just plain folks.
What we like more is how Edgar is spending that campaign slush fund. Because he's grandfathered in under rules that were in place when he raised the money -- before reforms imposed in 1998 -- he can spend every dime ($2.8 million when he left office) pretty much on anything he wants. He's free to gamble it away in Vegas, buy an Italian sports car, give it to his grandchildren, sail the seven seas on a yacht -- whatever. This, in fact, has been the Illinois Way.
But as Sun-Times Springfield Bureau Chief Dave McKinney reports in Monday's paper, Edgar has given much of it to good causes.
He gave $1 million to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. He gave another $150,000 to Eastern Illinois University, his alma mater.
He's still got $680,000, so let's hope he keeps up the class act.
How strange it is to pat a pol on the back. This must be what it's like living in Minnesota.
This blog brought to you by the Sun-Times editorial board (click on names to read bios):
