Chicagoania

The CTA

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A few weeks ago I was riding a bus to work (usually I walk, but sometimes I take the bus if it is right there). The bus had a canned announcement saying that if the CTA didn’t get a funding increase, the CTA was going to discontinue this route.

There were a large number of routes at risk. Most of the routes that only run during rush hours, like the 125, were “on the block” to be cut.

As I looked around the full bus, it really hit me what the CTA’s problem is – they can’t figure out if they are trying to make money or if they are trying to provide a public service.

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Cook County – An Amazing Quote

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A couple of years ago I thought I had heard the most ridiculous quotation when Putin said that the collapse of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

While activities in Cook County, Illinois, have little historical importance compared to the end of the USSR that quote was what leaped to mind when recently, the County Board President Todd Stroger was discussing the county’s huge deficit of $307 million and said:

“Do I think that there could be fat somewhere… there could be up to a million dollars worth of fat, maybe.”

Only the Putin quote rivaled Mr. Stroger’s quote for sheer banality.

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Over the Air

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A few threads connected…

Recently I was at a dinner party with some friends. A young teenager from the East coast was at the dinner and I asked him the question “Do you know anyone who doesn’t have cable TV?” He thought for a few seconds and said “Yes, one friend has satellite.” He didn’t even think to consider that anyone would just get over-the-air TV.

A couple of months ago I helped my parents pick out a digital TV and surround sound system. My parents are “old school” and don’t even want to consider paying every month for television, so we just plugged in the over-the-air antenna to the one on his roof and we were in business with digital television. The picture quality is very high – over the air digital TV broadcasts in higher quality than over cable or satellite because it is uncompressed.

Today they announced that the Cubs playoff games were going to be broadcast on TBS only. If you don’t have cable or satellite, you won’t be able to watch the game. This situation is compounded by the fact that the games start at 9pm central time; if you are older it isn’t reasonable to expect that they’d go out to a bar or restaurant until midnight when the game is done. Of course, lots of them have cable, but probably the majority of the people that DON’T have cable would be older than average. I imagine that WGN TV, which has broadcast the Cubs for years, will be flooded with calls from irate viewers.

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Chicago Sales Tax Hike Proposed

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It is sad when two of my more depressing prophecy-type posts intersect…

Cook County is the vast county within which the city of Chicago resides, along with a large number of affluent suburbs. Cook County has a population of over 5 million and is the 2nd largest county in terms of population in the United States.

In this post from March of 2007 I discussed how a succession movement could be in the future of Cook County. Specifically, I noted how the huge expenses of maintaining hospitals was burdening the county and killing their ability to live within a balanced budget.

In this post from December 2006 I went through sales taxes, which are among the most regressive taxes in the arsenal of tax tools and the fact that Cook County and the City of Chicago have one of the highest and most unfavorable sales tax regimes in the country.

Now, in a single article in the Chicago Tribune titled “County Urged To Boost Sales Tax – City Total Would be 11% Under Plan” dated September 25, 2007 shows the likely intersection of these negative trends. Todd Stroger, the epitome of political nepotism, who campaigned on a plan to streamline the bloated Cook County work force, has done nothing of the sort and is now looking about for a revenue boost to cover the inevitable annual increases in expense growth.

The line from Mayor Daley says it all – “A sales tax is a hard pill, but how do we fund three hospitals?”

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