On Monday the "City in a Garden" gets a new gardener and he promises to do some weed-pulling. If current treads continue, however, Rahm will also be doing more share-cropping. To deal with the deficit, the transition team must be mulling over what chestnuts can be leased to anonymous international consortiums. Take the Spanish group who runs the Skyway and boosts the toll with alacrity.
But what did we expect? Tapas at the toll booth MacDonald's?
Daley was vehemently cursed for privatizing the sadly run parking meter bureau. Did that ruffle the five term mayor? Maybe in the same way Gaddafi or al-Assad were phased by early protests. But Daley would tell you that he has the city's bond rating to worry about. Everyone
knew that the only efficient parking crew was the Denver boot squad. That high-stakes operation worked like the movements of a Swiss watch. You pay and the boot was off your wheel exactly when they told you it would be. Any parking meter ticket could be blamed in a letter to be mechanical failure, a bag with BROKE on the meter's head, or epoxy in the coin slot, ad nauseum. Nobody checked downtown. They'd just let you slide. That's because election time would be coming around and the parker was usually a potential vote.
Daley, of course, no longer needs your vote. Rahm bought what votes he needed for $30 apiece in an election in which the " City of Big Shoulders" shrugged. The Chicago electorate greeted the first mayoral change in 20 years with the same enthusiasm as a Soviet citizen accepting a shakeup in the Politburo. You ask why, tovarich? Fine, I'll put on Moussorgsky, light the samovar and try to explain.
Chicago doesn't care about democracy. Hence what is preferred is orderly Soviet-style succession. Since the days when Hinky Dink and Bath House John ran the vice-ridden First Ward, cynicism trumps every ballot. Certainly, a leader like Daley can pick a successor, though he may deny it. The commuters who were greeted by Rahm Emmanuel could well have believed it was Vladimir Putin. They take a look at this guy and they don't see cuddly. He offers a handshake and then there's the stub.
The deli accident that lopped off half his middle finger created a weapon. He has poked it into the chest of many a shocked congressman who was reluctant to go along. Any old school Chicagoan eats that up. After all, weren't we " Hog Butcher to the World"? Working men didn't tap keyboards in the stockyards. They handled edged tools the sight of which might keep you up at night. Despite New Trier and the ballet stint, the stub gives Rahm the macho cred to cut it with a lot of voters. Give us someone who's tough enough to stand up to the ADVERSARY and who has connections, fer chrissakes.
Enough voters felt that way and so did nearly every major bank in the country. Oh, excuse me, is the United Bank of Switzerland in the country? I'll save that one for Davos.
