Political Miscellania

A Taxing Issue (update): The Cook County Board of Commissioners once again failed to overturn the odious, economically crippling 1% sales tax pushed through by County Board President Todd Stroger. This time, the effort to override Stroger's veto of the rollback was defeated because one commissioner, Deborah Sims, who had voted in favor of the repeal the last time it came up, changed her vote at the last minute. (Bet her constituents just love that.) I just hope the voters of Cook County remember all this--how Stroger and his enablers raised our taxes while not making necessary cuts in our bloated county government. They are stealing from us. The voters need to stop helping them do so.

Oprah-Sized Traffic Jam: On behalf of the many people (including several coworkers) who will be inconvenienced by the massive traffic entanglement to be caused by the taping of the season premiere of The Oprah Winfrey Show, for which the city is closing several blocks of the ordinarily very busy Michigan Avenue for two days, I'd like to thank Oprah for not caring how much she inconveniences the average people just trying to get their hourly wage. (Couldn't you have just had your premiere in a park? Or a theater? Or on the South or West Sides, which could badly use some attention from someone, anyone?) I'd also like to thank Mayor Richard M. Daley for telling everyone what a great idea he thinks this is, how he wishes we could do stuff like this more often and how he's sure the people understand why this is necessary. Uh huh.

Olympics Decision Day: Speaking of our mayor, he can't be too thrilled with the latest poll results regarding his bid for the 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be approved or denied in a matter of weeks. According to the latest Chicago Tribune poll, respondents were nearly evenly split on whether they wanted the Olympics here or not--hardly a ringing civic endorsement for the idea--and they clearly don't want taxpayers to foot the bill for it (by an 80-20 margin). We don't have the money. We don't have the transportation. We don't have the infrastructure. Recent city endeavors, like Millennium Park (which is beautiful, but ran four years and hundreds of millions of dollars over what it should have) and the massively screwed-up parking meter lease deal. So, naturally, the mayor thinks it's a GREAT idea! (And we keep re-electing this guy why, exactly?)