The Chicago Machine: It never left

By Dennis Byrne
The Chicago Daily Observer

It’s time to bring back the Chicago Machine. Or the Democratic Machine. Or Machine Politics.

For those of you who are thinking, “the Chicago Machine has never left, so what’s to bring back?” you’re quite right. We’ve still got the Chicago Machine. But some time ago, use of the expression “Chicago Machine” fell out of favor.

But the continued omission of references to the Machine insults reality, disserves the reading public and permits the Machine to go its happy way as if it doesn’t exist. Maintaining this pretense has national implications, allowing Democratic presidential candidate and Chicago favorite son Barack Obama to continue the fiction that he ain’t no scion of no stinking Machine.

Read more in the Chicago Daily Observer

Evanston, Precious Evanston

Bags get sacked -- chicagotribune.com

Where else other than politically correct Evanston (well, maybe Wilmette or Oak Park) would an argument erupt over whether customers at a farmer's market (its presence being one more sure sign of correctness) have to pay 25 cents for four plastic bags to haul away their purchases of organic arugula and bok choy?

Farmer Harry Brockman started charging for the bags used at his booth because he thought it would reduce the use of the bags and thereby help improve the environment. But, the charge caused OFFENSE--the greatest of all politically incorrect sins. Said the Tribune story:

Brockman got an e-mail from Chicago attorney and longtime customer Joan Ferraro: "While I admire your dedication to trying to change the environment for the better, I have to tell you I find your plastic bag policy offensive. You are in the business of selling produce. If you don't provide something for the people to take your produce home with, you are not good businesspeople." [Emphasis added]

She later told the reporter:

"I think his true motive is he wants to make it difficult to not bring your own container; he wants to penalize people if they don't," Ferraro said. "I personally don't need him or anyone else to impose penalties on me. He doesn't know that I recycle those bags. He has no idea what I do with those bags."

Others folks protested and nearly half of the respondents to an informal Tribune poll said they would not spent a quarter to buy the bags. Use of the plastic bags plunged 90 percent, demonstrating either the deep environmental sensitivity of Evanstonians, and a really cheap streak. People, it's 25 cents for crying out loud.

Is Obama tripping over his ego?

Read The audacity of ego in, of all places, the Boston Globe.

A hat tip to Newsalert