Someone Out There Gets It

You would think that with all the intelligent advisers in the West Wing they would be telling Obama this every day.  But then again, they're all inside the Beltway, and if we know anything about the Beltway it is that it's were the dumbest, most stupid idiots in America move to and live.  It took someone outside the Beltway to tell Obama what everyone in the country feels:

"I'm scared out of my mind talking to you here," Joe from Philly blurted out as he was connected to President Barack Obama during a talk radio call-in show devoted to health care Thursday. But when it came to his comment, however, Joe did not hold back.

"I'm getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are buckling a little bit," the caller declared, suggesting the president had begun to wobble in the face of pressure from conservative critics.

"You have an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate, and you own the whole shooting match. ... It's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with a lot of these people who aren't willing to compromise with you."

I love how giving common sense advise to the President is headline news.  But that's how fucked up the Beltway is.  They live in this bubble that no one else in America lives in.  These people think they know America, but the fact is they know nothing about America.  That's why you get fuck ups like Obama's Health Care "plan".  

Kudos to Joe from Philly.  I couldn't have said it better myself.  Maybe Obama will take his advise to heart and tell the GOP to fuck off.  Health care isn't going to get done with their help and the Democrats don't need their help.  Why Obama wanted their help even after the GOP has told Obama to fuck off since the moment he took office is beyond me.  

The Tribune Takes a Stand!

It's been a long time coming, but the Trib devoted it's editorial page to the Olympics yesterday.  

So imagine my pleasure as I read all the questions they raise:

Will the taxpayer be on the hook?  

Will this just be the all time greatest Chicago corruption, who gets the contract corruption shit fest of all time?  

How about all those small 'details' that everyone always seems to 'forget' and end up cost just as much as the original price tag?  

The Trib, thankfully, raises all these questions.

But where do they stand?  Do they want the Olympics?  Do they not want the Olympics?  Do they think it's a good idea for Chicago?

DRUM ROLL............................................

Mr. Ryan, you and yours would do yourselves a great favor by voluntarily making your committee, and the successor Chicago Organizing Committee, subject to the provisions of Illinois' freedom-of-information law. That would allay the fear that, once you have the City Council on board, Chicago citizens will lose their leverage to protect the huge commitment you're asking of them.

What.  The.  Fuck.  That's it?  You want FOIAs on the Olympics?  You have to be kidding me. Way to take a stand there Chicago Tribune.  You want the most obvious, necessary, no fucking shit, of course guys, demand.  Freedom of information.

Why didn't the Trib talk about how Daley has sold the city down the river for the chance to get the Olympics?  Why didn't they talk about the soring crime rate, which is due in part, to chasing after the Olympics?  Or how the schools are out of money... again because TIF money has been shifted to Olympic wining and dining?

What does it take to get some one, anyone, in this city to raise some tough questions AND dish out some tough opinions?  Yeah, we have the Reader.  But that's it.  No wonder the city is a mess.

Things to read

- Second City Cop with a good read taking apart Mary Mitchell of the Sun-Times:

The trouble is we're stretched too thin now and what used to be "normal" deployment is more of a stopgap or "reactionary" and doesn't prevent a thing. Not only that, the Uptown eruptions are a direct result of manpower being shifted to higher crime areas and less pressure being placed on the local hood rats who figure out very quickly that they can act out with less repercussions.

- I've been giving newspapers a hard time, but the New York Times has been doing what I suggested for a while.  Only, they get actual economists to write about policy and economics.  This piece on high speed trains is worth the read:

A second economic argument for high speed rail is that it will revitalize troubled regions of the United States. This argument would never be made about Dallas or Houston, which are booming, but some argue that high-speed rail can save Buffalo, Detroit and Cleveland. Transportation can have a significant impact on urban growth. Josh Gottlieb and I estimated that counties with access to a rail line in 1850 grew 20 percent more over the next 40 years. Gilles Duranton and Matthew Turner found that a 10 percent increase in a metropolitan area’s stock of highways in 1980 caused a 2 percent increase in population growth over the next 20 years.

This logic has led some to think that high-speed rail will do wonders transforming Buffalo into a back office for Manhattan. Buffalo is 376 miles from Manhattan, so a 150-mile-an-hour rail line will take two and a half hours, which is not going to be significantly faster than air. Moreover, vast amounts of low-cost space are closer to Manhattan than the shores of Lake Erie. Faster connections between Buffalo and Toronto might do more, but in that case speed is hampered by the burdens of border crossing.

Remember people will do anything for their pet projects, even if they don't make any sense... Buffalo to New York City?  REALLY?!?!?!

- And on the bright side, Illinois is a bit more transparent:

The new law tightens many of the loopholes exploited by public officials to keep taxpayers from prying into their own affairs. It shortens the deadlines for responding to records requests and prohibits governments from charging outrageous fees to produce public documents.

Most significant, it comes with teeth. The law authorizes a public access counselor to mediate disputes over records and issue binding opinions. It provides penalties of up to $5,000 for governments that don't follow the law, and it requires them to pay legal costs if a citizen has to go to court to force the release of a public record.

When it's broke don't blame yourself

From the Reader:

The vow. Global media mogul Rupert Murdoch this month: "Quality journalism is not cheap. The digital revolution has opened many new and inexpensive distribution channels but it has not made content free. We intend to charge for all our news websites."

That will work for the Wall Street Journal, but will it for more local newspapers?  

No matter, as Miner outlines here, newspapers keep telling themselves that there is a problem and then offer up a million ways to fix it. The problems are always the same: Craigslist, giving away their product for free on the Internet, blogs... all these problems are sort of right, but mostly wrong. Yes, Craigslist eliminates the guy looking for a job or the girl looking for an apartment, but this couldn't have been a large percentage of readership (a free weekly like the Reader probably is hurt more by Craigslist than the dailies). True, newspapers give away their product away for free on the Internet, but that's also not totally true since most papers make money from Internet advertisements. Sure, blogs link and copy parts of stories... but blogs need newspapers more than newspapers need blogs. If anything blogs should only help newspapers.

And then there are the ways to fix newspapers: better copyright laws, payment to read content... but those aren't going to solve the major problem that newspapers have but they refuse to admit to themselves: It's themselves.

As I wrote -- there is little context to far too many stories that are written and reported. The problem with newspapers is that they hire journalists. The journalists who are smart and can give context to a story end up at the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the paper's editorial board, or go off and do their own thing (magazine writing, columnist, write movies, etc). The average journalist keeps chasing fire trucks or hits up a press conference and then just tells us what happened. That's not enough. In grade school, when asked to write an essay, what do they teach you?  

Who? What? Where? When? Why?  

Newspapers can do the who and the what and the where and the when... but they never seem to get the why right. The day to day journalist always seems to never quite understand the why.

And why is that?

Well, in the complex world we live it, with specialists and fine print and everything else, the journalist, who is really a generalist, is going to be far behind the person who was educated in economics, biology or law. However, the journalist is required to some how take what happened and then combine them with the complex ideas of a specific study.  If a newspaper can't give context to the story or what happened, then why would I, the reader, want to buy the newspaper?  Why would I want to go to their website when I know that the stories on the site won't give me the context I'm looking for?  The days of telling us what happened are long gone -- newspapers need to realize that covering a press conference is not enough because the reader now has many options.  Chicago is called a two newspaper town, but that's false, it's a hundreds newspaper town because there a blogs out there that give context to the stories I want to read.  And if you don't believe me, find someone under the age of 30 who still reads a sports section to a local paper -- they don't -- because the coverage is so much better on the blogs.  SouthSideSox does a better job analyzing than the Sun-Times or Trib.  The same can be said for pretty much every economic or policy story (and I assume most science stories).

I am not saying that over the years a journalist cannot become an expert him/herself. They can and do so. But remember, the good ones leave for another paper or another gig (season Five of the Wire highlighted this problem).

The question newspapers should be asking themselves is why aren't they hiring young lawyers or economists or scientists out of grad school or college? Sure they'll have to offer more money for such people, but they would get better context in their stories. Newspapers need to realize that the Watergate scandal is only part of their job -- uncovering graft is just part of what we, the buying public, wants.  The other part of the story we'd like to read about?  How about someone being able to explain how property taxes and schools are interconnected...

Newspapers, the Trib, and the Problem with Newspapers

This article in the Tribune last week isn't bad, but it's everything that is wrong with newspapers these days.  The reporting is fine, the writing is clear, but there is absolutely no context to the story itself.  I read this and was dumbfounded. After the first line, one can stop reading: "Chicago Public Schools leaders want a 1.5 percent property tax increase to balance this year's budget -- a hike they estimate would cost an extra $18 a year for the owner of a $262,000 home."

So with that in mind, let me fill in the gaps -- either where the story lacks context or doesn't go far enough.

Huberman listed increasing employee pension costs and the state's money woes as leading pressures on the district's spending plans...

The most under reported story over the last few years has been the rises cost of public pensions.  It is the major reason why the State of Illinois is in debt.  And in education the way pensions often work for teachers is that you work for years, then when it comes close to retirement, the principal starts bumping up your salary.  Why?  Because you get a percentage of that salary in retirement (these are career teachers).  Also, the state itself under funds education because of the state tax system -- read about it here -- and there's more on that below.

City school officials for months have been warning of a budget gap of $475 million or more in their $5.33 billion budget. The $475 million is the largest dollar deficit since Mayor Richard Daley took over the district in 1995. Next year, Huberman is projecting a budget hole close to $1 billion...

Why the budget hole?  In part because of the stock market drop over the last year (they'll get to that in a second) but also because property tax revenues are expected to either go down or stay about the same.  And since the state of Illinois doesn't really spend any money on public education, most of CPS' money has to come from property taxes.  Would part of this hole be filled if Daley's Great TIFS Giveaway wasn't happening?  Yes.  Does the Tribune mention this?  No.  Why?  I'm not sure.

Last year, the district avoided a property tax increase by dipping into its reserves. That decision followed the biggest property tax hike of Daley's tenure in late 2007 and two sales tax increases approved in 2008.

Again, not to beat a dead horse, but these actions were taken because:

1) The State of Illinois doesn't support public education.

2) Daley's giving TIFS to developers in areas like the Loop -- one of the last places in the City that needs a TIF.

The pension issue looms large. The district is required to fund 90 percent of the pension, which previously had not been a major issue, Msall said. But when the stock market crashed, the value of pension investments dipped and the school district was required to begin making up the difference. That meant $130 million extra this year and an estimated $300 million more next year.

"I think the Chicago Public Schools system faces an enormous financial challenge this year and even more so in the coming years," Msall said. "Basically, it's a pension time bomb."

Oh and the crazy, stupid contract they've worked out with the unorganized organization that is filled with petty infighting yet is some how powerful -- the Teachers Union.  Why not point out that the deals that CPS signed with the Teachers Union are much like the deals that GM, Ford, and the steel companies signed with their workers years ago and those pension and health care promises are, in part, what is killing these companies today?  

Again, the story itself is fine -- there is nothing wrong with it from a reporting stand point.  But if you were grading it what would you give it?  Something like a C+?  Maybe a B because it has some good information, isn't poorly written?  However, there is so much context to this story -- from how pensions work to the State constitution to property taxes -- that it's easy to see why newspapers are failing.  Journalists are taught in school on how to chase a fire truck or cover a press conference.  That's what was done here.  And we have, as a public, moved beyond that in part because of TV news but also because of the Internet.  If this story was (and part of it were) posted right after the press conference that's how newspapers should use the Internet get breaking news up there quick and make it easy to find.  But the next day in print?  Why not file a story with more context, explaining more about what is going on and why CPS is in this bind and wants to raise taxes?  Then I (and we) might actually buy your newspaper, but stories like this give me (and us) no reason to do so.

A Year On -- What's the Point of Huffington Post Chicago?

Out of boredom I ended up clicking on the Chicago Huffington Post page--something I admittedly have looked at twice since they fired that up a year ago--and I realized why I never go there.

It sucks. It totally sucks. It isn't interesting and it says the same freaking things that the Trib and Sun-Times say. There is no point to this site. None. There are posts and headlines on Ozzie saying that the Sox will go after teams that throw at them. There is a Patrick Kane update. There is even a headline... no wait, two headlines, on the U of I Clout story, along with a section on how to make peach donuts and someone praising Italian wines.

So what's the point of this page again? Wasn't Huffington going to some how bring "attitude" to Chicago? Instead, it seems like it's just a rehashing of Tribune/Sun-Times stories, and has little to no actual opinion or counter arguments/reporting to what those two newspapers do. The site is totally uninteresting and pretty much fails at what it set out to do:

"Transferring The Huffington Post's blend of news, opinion, and community -- delivered with our familiar look and attitude -- to a local level, HuffPost Chicago is part local news source, part resource guide, and part virtual soap box -- featuring a collection of bloggers who know and love Chicago, and are looking to share their takes on everything from the Cubs to City Hall to the hot new local band to the best place for Greek food (and I can testify that there is a lot of that in Chicago!)."

However, the site never actually set out to do this. John Cusack talking about how much he loves Chicago doesn't cut it because he doesn't really live here any more and lost all his Chicago cred when he showed up at the Cell in 2005 cheering on the White Sox – this after years of being a Cubs fan. From what I can/could tell Huffington Chicago was supposed to be about Chicago for people not in Chicago... only why would anyone read that?

A year later, they haven't added anything to the conversation. They haven't broken any stories -- not even a clout story -- instead they've just linked to what we already knew. They could have gone the route of the Reader and just hammered home how local media is all over the place or how TIFs are being misused by Daley and his pals. But instead it's just a shittier version of the Trib and Sun-Times, repeating their stories instead of going after new stories or offering up opinion on things like why Chicago shouldn't get the Olympics, or hammering the Tribune for flying 2016 flags when the IOC was in town in the winter. I'm not sure what the point of HuffPost Chicago ever really was – posing as an edgy alternative in a city that hates phony attitude was never going to fly. And it lacks the snark of Gawker... or the off-the-front-page stories of Chicagoist.

I think it's safe to add it to the FAIL Blog.

Kass Points Out What No One Else Will

Maybe Kass reads there fine little blog, I don't think so, but hey, we seem to be on the same page. At least someone in Chicago knows what's up:

"The details of the crimes have been repeated endlessly in the news.
Unsuspecting taxpayers walking in high-end neighborhoods are approached
by thugs, who punch the taxpayers in the face, beat the tar out of
them, humiliate them further and take their money. It happens in other neighborhoods. But in other neighborhoods,
unfortunately, this wouldn't lead the local newscasts. It would be
police blotter stuff, next to the motor vehicle break-ins and petty
thefts and bleak, one-paragraph accounts of murder...
They'll catch them. Police have made one arrest and cut the suspect
loose for lack of evidence, but sooner or later, the marauders will be
caught. And we'll be treated to another dog and pony show. Politicians
who rule from on high will thump their chests and pronounce Chicago
safe. The real police will snicker and wonder when they'll ever get a
contract."