Chicagoania

An excellent method for wholesale job creation (please note the slight sarcasm)

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Instapundit linked to this Walter Russell Mead blog post, leading me to stumble across the following item (from the Chicago Journal):

The project has had a tumultuous ride to get to this point, Fioretti said. Lease negotiations between Costco and the Illinois Medical District (a state-controlled body that owns the Costco site) were rocky, but a deal was reached earlier this year.
 
“When negotiations began in earnest, the medical district wanted to make 982 changes to the lease — and I called the governor to intervene on it,” Fioretti said. “The governor’s office was very eager to assist. They understood what it meant to have almost 250 permanent jobs.”

Yes, you read that correctly. Go ahead: rub your eyes, read it again, do a Looney Tunes or Bugs Bunny-like double take, and then read it a third time. THIS is why some of us were so deeply skeptical about transporting greater Chicagoland and Illinoisian, er, “political concepts” to DC, however well-meaning….

Lollapalooza 2011

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Lollapalooza 2011 is happening now at Grant Park in Chicago. Friday was the first day and it was HOT during the day (and not too terrible late in the evening).

Lollapalooza always has interesting people to watch. Upper left – no idea why you’d want a tattoo of a sailor on one leg and a Hawaiian dancing girl on the other leg or what that might signify. Upper right – they have an amazing row of portable toilets, stretching as far as the eye can see. This is mid-set at Muse; around 8pm (when everyone was trying to get in before the headliners I heard the lines were 10 deep at every single one of them). While not related to this post my favorite porta-john links are right here. Lower left – the girl was very dedicated to her hula hoop. She “hooped” all afternoon and into the night, when it lit up. She didn’t seem to talk to anyone, this was her “gig”. Lower middle – trying to beat the heat and stay out of the sun on the slope by the south stage near the cabanas for the rich and famous. Lower right – monkey bus on the way out.

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Chicago Tea Party Meeting, August 3, 2011

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[As promised, here is my report.]

I was able to cram in two events. The first was a reception hosted by the Republican National Lawyers Association for Joe Birkett. It was a nice event, hosted by the same people who ran the election poll-watching project I wrote about previously. Judge Birkett gave an engaging talk. I was interested to see what he would say about current developments, but he said very little. He was carefully judicious in avoiding anything that could be construed as political in nature, as is appropriate and required by his new status as a judge. The gentleman who introduced him observed that he was “the captain of every football team he was ever on” which was believable, as was his youthful boxing championship. As a former prosecutor, he had the tough, cop-like demeanor you would expect. At one point he commented that the GOP needs to reach out to the Tea Party and work with them. It was rather vague. I mean nothing invidious about Judge Birkett when I observe that establishment GOP figures in Illinois seem puzzled by the Tea Party phenomenon. This perception would be reinforced later in the evening.

Also present at the Birkett event was conservative radio personality Dan Proft, who ran for governor last time, and recently got the 9 a.m. to 11 a.m. slot on WLS in Chicago. Dan gave a nice talk about a project he is supporting, Operation Homefront, which provides assistance to Illinois families of deployed service members, or wounded service members returning to civilian life.

I was able to get into a cab and dash over to the monthly Tea Party meeting and only missed the first few minutes. I was eager to hear a talk by Otis McDonald, plaintiff in the gun rights case McDonald v. City of Chicago. Unfortunately, Mr. McDonald cancelled at the last minute.

The meeting turned out to be the best one I have been to yet, anyway.

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Around Chicago July 2011 (more)

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Upper left – the state of Illinois building lit up at night.  I still remember the building in that movie “Running Scared“.  Upper right – glad we have inspectors on duty.  Nothing wrong with that shack in the car lot, is there?  This lot is on a super heavily trafficked street too.  Lower left – I like goodbye kitty.  Lower middle – we went to a fantastic Chinese restaurant in the North in the Uptown area and I ate so much I thought I’d explode; they had a great “lazy susan” and kept filling it with food.  Lower right – oh Lord, won’t you buy me, a Mercedes Benz…

Cross posted at LITGM

Booze and Minnesota

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A few times Dan and I have joked that Wisconsin has the highest per-capita drinking in the USA. I’m sure that Minnesota isn’t far behind, with winters just as brutal as those in Wisconsin and not too much sunlight during those dark days and nights.

It is summer now in Minnesota and the state is shut down. As it turns out, apparently that isn’t a big deal. They don’t let all the prisoners out of jail, they just shut down the inessential services such as the annoying bureaucracy that requires you to get innumerable permits and papers to conduct your daily business. These not-so-essential state workers total 22,000 in Minnesota; probably a great batch of employees to cut next.

The new Democratic governor in Minnesota, Mark Dayton (wealthy heir who turned into a stone-redistributionist Dem) actually ran on a platform of taxing the top 1%, which is literally the stupidest thing in the world from a state tax perspective, since THOSE ARE THE PEOPLE THAT CREATE ALL THE JOBS IN MINNESOTA. As it is, you’d have to be nearly out of your mind to live in the darkness, snow and miserable mosquitoes (in summer) of Minnesota in the first place; but to put dis-incentives for the rich to live there is even more insane (note – I worked in Minnesota for many years and long winters and met some of the nicest, smartest people in that hard working state. But they are still insane for living in that weather).

As in Illinois, with our governor Quinn, the Democrat eked out a win (with 43% of the vote in the case of Minnesota) and then took this as a “mandate” to implement all of their programs as if they were Roosevelt trying to get the country out of the great depression (although that didn’t work so well, either). In the case of Quinn he raised Illinois taxes 67%, abolished the death penalty, appointed his cronies to state positions, and didn’t cut any spending. Awesome. In the case of Dayton, his plan was to raise taxes on the richest to 13.95%, on top of the Federal rates. Unclear in his plan is WHY anyone wealthy would intentionally stay in Minnesota to have all of their income taxed away while many other states with better climates (Florida, Texas) don’t have any state income tax AT ALL.

I think Dayton was crazy enough to hold out forever, as a populist. Unfortunately for him, the state was running out of booze. Apparently bars need to fill out a permit for $20 or so in order to buy booze and as they expired the bars would have to shut. Miller was going to have to shut down their operations for a clerical snafu (they overpaid so the state sent their permit back) and not distribute booze at all.

I really do think that the impending stopping of alcohol in the state of Minnesota helped precipitate a resolution to this budget standoff, where the governor gave in on his plan to drive all job-creators from the state.

Hats off to the Minnesota legislature for standing firm. Unlike Illinois, where not only do the dems run our legislature but our red representatives aren’t creative enough to flee the state at the prospect of a giant tax increase, like they did in Wisconsin to attempt to block Walker’s reforms.

Cross posted at LITGM