How many of you Daily Kos readers say to yourselves that if you got rid of the Republicans, at least as an effective voice in government, then everything would be wonderful. Don't deny it... I have read enough of your postings not to come to that conclusion.
I'm sure you also remember that saying, "Be careful what you wish for, because it might come true." Well, in the case of wishing the GOP was nothing more than an afterthought, that happens to be a reality here in Chicago, where you will be meeting at YearlyKos later this summer.
But rest assured, that reality is not the dream you might have thought it would be. Let me tell you more about it.
The Republicans as a whole have been dead politically in Chicago for decades. There is only one professed Republican in our 50-member Chicago City Council (and he is a loyal follower of whatever Mayor Richard M. Daley does). The Cook County Board, which covers Chicago and its once-heavily Republican suburbs, has a 12-5 Democratic Majority. In the November elections the GOP lost the nearly all-suburban seat on the three-member Cook County Board of Review (which reviews property tax appeals and thus a place where its commissioners can become VERY powerful; Board of Review Commissioner Joseph Berrios is expected to be selected the next Chairman of the Democratic Party of Cook County on February 1). The nine-member Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Board (it takes care of water treatment after you flush, but it has the fourth largest governmental budget in the state) hasn't elected a Republican in 40 years.
Add to that the fact that the Democrats have control of every statewide elective office, a 67-51 nargin in the Illinois House, a 37-22 margin in the Illinois Senate and a majority on the Illinois Supreme Court. Not to mention that every countywide office holder in Cook County is a Democrat. It would seem to be some pretty heady stuff.
But not if you are a rank-and-file Cook County employee.
The new Cook County Board President is Todd Stroger, the son of three-term Board President John H. Stroger, Jr., who had been a loyal follower of the Daley family for more than four decades. The elder Stroger was a relic of an older era of African-American politics, the era of the Silent Six of the 1960s (when the six blacks then on the Chicago City Council were absolute loyalists to Mayor Richard J. Daley, even to the determent of the interests of their own communities; one of these aldermen could be counted on to stand up at some point of every Council meeting to declare, "God bless Mayor Daley, the greatest mayor in the history of the world").
For his part John Stroger supported the Daleys and their white allies time and time again over capable African-American candidates (including backing Richard M. Daley over Harold Washington in the 1983 Democratic Mayoral Primary, and State Comptroller Dan Hynes for the US Senate over Barack Obama in the 2004 Democratic Senate Primary) Stroger also gave the Daleys and their home base (the 11th Ward) a huge chunk of the top-paying administrative jobs (after reserving a big nunk of them for his own family and other members of Stroger's 8th Ward organization, where he has served as ward committeeman since 1968). In return, Mayor Richard M. Daley and his brother John (the current 11th Ward Democratic committeeman, a County Commissioner and the powerful Chairman of the Board's Finance Committee) helped insure party reslating of Stroger for a fourth term as Board President in 2006.
When John Stroger was felled by a stroke a week before the March 21 Primary (he has not been seen by the public since), the Daleys helped Stroger win renomination in a close primary contest. But Stroger really owed his victory to the African-American community, who blissfully ignored Stroger's past political transgressions (see above) and the wastefulness of county services designed for their use, and acted like it was still 1963 and Boss Daley needed their help to carry the day at the polls. (It was in 1963 when Richard J. Daley had his closest call in a mayoral general election, when Republican Benjamin Adamowski actually edged Daley among white voters 51%-49%. However, Daley carried the African-American wards by margins of 5-1 or higher to win the third of his six terms.)
Over the next few months John Stroger's family, aides and political cohorts maintained the front that Stroger would soon recover until after the deadline for filing a third party candidacy in the General Election. But shortly after that deadline passed in late June, the story was dropped, and John Stroger resigned from the ticket (and from office), allowing the party leaders (instead of the voters) to replace him on the ticket with his son Todd, who was his Alderman and before that an undistinguished member of the Illinois House.
To say Todd is a lightweight as a candidate or elected official is putting it mildly. (I worked in a government office with Todd for two years, and while he is a likable man personally, he has about as much business being County board President as George W. Bush seeking membership in MENSA.) He was put in for his dad because he could be controlled. He barely won the general election (winning his race by 95,000 votes while other Democrats on the ticket carried Cook County by as many as 900,000 votes). Is it any wonder that his detractors call the new Board President "Toddler"?
The interim administration of Acting Board President Bobbie Steele left young Stroger with a serious budget deficit (Steele being more concerned with resigning herself before she could begin her sixth term as a Commissioner, a move that doubled her pension, and to insure the appointment of her son to replace her on the Board to attend to such trivial matters as balancing the county's budget).
Stroger has proposed a budget that cuts spending by 17%. But some agencies the cuts are even more absolute, like mine. I work for the county court system (and have since 1979), and for the past nine years I have been assigned to the Hearing Officer Section in Juvenile Court as a support staffer.
The Hearing Officers conduct permanency hearings for the judges in the Child Abuse and Neglect Division of Juvenile Court and make recommendations as to the permanency goal that is in the best interest of those minors. During my tenure there these fine Hearing Officers have worked hard to reduce the backlog of cases and helping find an appropriate goal for these minors (mostly from minority families, primarily from the African-American community that gave Todd Stroger his narrow victory in November). In some cases these minors are reunified with their parent or parents; in others, goals such as adopiton, private guardianship, etc., are advanced so that these minors do not spend their entire childhoods in uncertainty.
What do these Hearing Officers get for their dedication and hard work in Stroger's budget? A 17% cut? No... they get whacked entirely!
What about the kids and their best interests? You just might want to ask Todd and the County Board that during the four public hearings on the budget, which begin on Tuesday evening (opposite the President's State of the Union address, which I suspect was picked to reduce media attention). That hearing will begin at 6:30 pm at the Markham Courthouse, located at 16501 S. Kedzie Parkway in south suburban Markham.
The other hearings will be held at the Skokie Courthouse on Thursday evening, at the County Building in Downtown Chicago on the morning of January 29 and at the Maybrook Courthouse on the evening of January 30.
I suspect many of the witnesses may note or refer to the remarks made by Chicago Sun-Times columnist Carol Marin in Sunday's newspaper. Even while this propsed budget eliminates all of the Hearing Officers (my clerical job remains intact, but I could get transferred to who knows where in the aftermath) and would close 18 of the 28 County Health Clinics, Marin noted that some people would benefit from the new budget, namely political cronies and relatives such as:
• • David Fagus (49th Ward Democratic committeeman) -- was earning $87,479 as executive assistant at Cermak Hospital, now the COO earning $113,703.
• • Matt Deleon (pal of the finally fired Gerald Nichols, unofficial county patronage chief whose records were raided by the FBI) -- jumped from $87,478 as an administrative analyst to a whopping $141,725 as secretary to the Board of Commissioners).
• • Cedric Giles (son of a convicted alderman, relative of a former state rep) -- leaped from a $62,052 accountant to fill a two-year vacancy in the comptroller's office, an arguably non-essential job, with a huge pay boost to $103,187.
Marin also mentioned that Todd's cousin, Donna Dunnings, stays on as budget director at over $142,000 a year, while his sister-in-law Monique Martin will be getting roughly double my salary (remember I have been working for Cook county since 1979) as his personal secretary. If you want to figure out how much I have been underpaid (asa graduate of Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism) please read Marin's entire column at:
http://www.suntimes.com/...
The people being screwed by this budget are poor minority Democrats, as well as the rank-and-file county workers, the ones who actually do trhe work while the politically-connected thrive on no-work jobs at the taxpayers' expense. The people giving them the shaft are also Democrats.
If this budget is enacted as is, what incentive is there for those hard-working Cook County employees to continue to do so? Hard work and dedication to duty are being punished, while waste and criminal mismanagement are being rewarded.
I apologize for the length of this diary. It had to be lengthy in order to be able to explain to all of you just what is going on here, and to see what can happen when Democrats have nobody to fear (other than the US Attorney). I am also reminded of another old saying, which applies here:
"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."