The Daily Parker

While we in Ravenswood continue to wait for tile deliveries or whatever so Metra and the UPRR can finish replacing the platform they tore down in 2011, the a priori Peterson/Ridge station that broke ground 18 months ago is almost done:

Work on the station is slated to wrap up this fall, when the long-awaited station will open to the public, project managers said at the community meeting.

Announced in 2012, the Peterson-Ridge station has been the victim of the state’s years-long budget impasse and then permitting issues with the city.

After finally securing funding in 2019, the project’s groundbreaking was pushed back to spring 2021. The project was stalled once again when the Department of Water Management rejected Metra’s plans for environmentally friendly permeable pavers, saying such plans could jeopardize water main pipes below the site.

The groundwater plan was altered and the station project broke ground in November 2021.

So, which station will open first? Given the railroad's track record (ah, ha ha, ha), it's even odds as far as I can see.

Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) took the oath of office this morning, along with the 50-member Chicago City Council:

Thousands of spectators watched as Johnson was sworn in by Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans at the Credit Union 1 Arena at the University of Illinois at Chicago on the city’s Near West Side. He was sworn in alongside the new City Council — which includes 13 freshman members, many of whom campaigned on pushing the body further to the left, and who also will increase the racial and LGBTQ+ diversity of the council.

“People of Chicago are counting on us to work together,” Johnson said, after turning around to applaud the new council. That gesture was in stark contrast to former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who in 2019 sarcastically turned to the council when speaking about her intentions to root out corruption in Chicago politics during her inaugural speech.

Lightfoot welcomed the crowd “to a peaceful transfer of power” as she called the inauguration ceremony, which doubles as a formal City Council meeting, to order. She watched as Johnson took the oath of office, as is customary for inaugural ceremonies. Over the weekend former Mayor Rahm Emanuel sent Johnson well wishes from his outpost in Tokyo, where he serves as U.S. ambassador to Japan.

The Tribune charted his rise to power:

To get here, Johnson took an unconventional route compared with previous mayors. Having cut his teeth politically as a top Chicago Teachers Union organizer a decade ago, Johnson brings with him a labor-friendly resume that has galvanized the city’s political left. That coalition of progressive unions and grassroots organizations propelled Johnson to victory after their chosen candidates suffered mayoral runoff losses in 2015 and 2019.

When Johnson first announced his run, his candidacy was often dismissed. He polled in the single digits while rivals such as the CTU’s former endorsed candidate in the 2015 mayor’s race, U.S. Rep. Jesús “Chuy” García, jockeyed for the progressive vote.

Johnson’s campaign themes of racial justice and taxing the rich ultimately caught fire, however. Buoyed by cash from CTU and like-minded unions, he surged months later to knock out incumbent Lightfoot in the initial round of voting — the first time a sitting Chicago mayor had lost reelection since Harold Washington beat Jane Byrne to become the city’s first Black mayor in 1983. Johnson will be the fourth.

As a CTU organizer, Johnson had been an instrumental force in crafting the union’s reputation as a progressive powerhouse, but election opponents countered that Chicago doesn’t need a mayor beholden to the teachers union. He also faced frequent fire for his past support of the “defund the police” movement, or the activist-backed calls to reallocate law enforcement budgets and send the funds to other social services in the wake of the 2020 Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd.

In his inaugural address, Johnson pledged to reopen Chicago's closed mental-health clinics and to tackle the crisis caused by Southern Republican governors shipping asylum-seekers to the city:

“I want to make sure that no one ever has to suffer because they do not have access to mental health services,” Johnson said in his speech. 

Johnson repeatedly mentioned the migrant crisis unfolding across Chicago. Thousands of people have arrived in the city in recent weeks from the southern border, overwhelming the city’s shelters and forcing hundreds of migrants, including children, to sleep on the floors of police stations. 

“We don’t want the story to be told that we were unable to house the unhoused or provide safe harbor for those who are seeking refuge here, because there is enough room for everyone in the city of Chicago,” Johnson said.

The new mayor also emphasized the need to revitalize neighborhoods that have lost people and resources by “rerouting the rivers of prosperity to the banks of disinvestment.” He rejected the “zero-sum game” of pitting the needs of migrant families against the needs of longtime residents to live in “a fully funded neighborhood.”

Johnson narrowly beat former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas (D?) in the runoff election on April 4th.

I think I wrote software and read a lot. You know, just what I do today. Stuff like this:

• Josh Marshall sums up the current Republican majority on the Supreme Court as a "casual mix of sweetheart deals and billionaire gifting [that] just stems from the same arrogance and corruption at the heart of the Federalist Society project," which sounds correct to me.
• On the same front, Pema Levy argues that "the Dobbs leak didn't wreck the Supreme Court—the justices' scandals did," which also sounds correct to me.
• Oddly, here in Chicago, anti-corruption forces just won a major victory as a jury today convicted four Commonwealth Edison lobbyists of bribery and conspiracy in a set of deals with former Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan (D) that made my electricity needlessly expensive.
• Alex Shephard thinks he may have solved the mystery of US Senator Kristen Sinema's (WTF?-AZ) politics.
• Rebecca Mead wonders, can King Charles learn to shut up and be king, or will he continue making republicans' arguments for them?
• Illinois had a warmer and drier April than normal, even though the first two days of May have been dreary and cold.
• A dust storm in central Illinois contributed to a pile-up on Interstate 55 that killed 2 and injured dozens.

This afternoon we concluded Sprint 84 with a boring deployment, which makes me happy. We've had only one moderately-exciting deployment this year, and even that one didn't take long to fix, so I'm doing something right.

We had four completely-overcast days in a row, including one with some blowing snow, so I'm happy today has been completely clear. Tomorrow might even get above 10°C—which would at least get into normal March temperatures. This whole winter has been weird, as the next few will likely be until temperature increases start leveling out.

In other news:

• ICANN's blog has a brief post from Kim Davies, who regularly contributes to the Time Zone Database, on how the TZDB actually works.
• US Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) squarely blames the XPOTUS for repealing parts of the Dodd-Frank Act that she says would have prevented the Silicon Valley Bank collapse this past weekend.
• Lia Russell outlines how the nightmare "Silicon Valley economy" makes just getting by harder for more people every day.
• In yet another instance of former Chicago mayor Richard J Daley negotiating a really bad contract for the city (but probably a great one for his pals), we still have to pay tens of millions of dollars per year in interest on the 2003 destruction renovation of Soldier Field.
• Helaine Olen bemoans the disappearance of human beings in customer service.

Finally, Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders explain how AI could write our laws in the future.

Chicago mayoral candidate Brandon Johnson got a big nod this week:

Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts senator and former presidential candidate, is backing Brandon Johnson in the Chicago mayor’s race.

“Commissioner Brandon Johnson and I are both former public school teachers, and I can tell you that he understands what it takes to build a stronger Chicago for everyone. From education to public safety to housing, Brandon has a bold, forward-looking, progressive plan to move Chicago forward, and he has the experience to make those plans real,” Warren said in a statement.

I didn't catch Wednesday's debate, but given how close the race is, I expect they'll have more.

The storm predicted to drop 100 mm of snow on Chicago yesterday missed us completely. That made my Brews & Choos research a lot more pleasant, though I did tromp all over the place in heavy boots that I apparently didn't need. Of course, had I not worn them, I would now be writing about my cold, wet socks.

So while I'm getting two reviews together for later this week, go ahead and read this:

• Illinois had the 18th warmest and 17th wettest winter on record, including the state's 6th warmest January, with temperatures well over 3°C above normal.
• The warm winter has kept ice formation in the Great Lakes at record-low levels, increasing the chances of a warm summer.
• Madison Savedra digs into how US Rep. Jesús Garcia (D-Ill.) dropped from first to fourth place in Tuesday's election between early polling and the vote.
• An agreement between the Chicago and Illinois Departments of Transportation will let Chicago add pedestrian and cyclist safety features on state roads that the car-loving state engineers would otherwise not allow—the first set in my own ward.
• Xochitl Gonzalez fears that the proposed New York City Rat Czar has already lost the war—even before being hired. But as David A. Graham points out in the same magazine, big cities are ungovernable.
• Molly White posted 24-minute video presentation debunking the central claims of cryptocurrency advocates.
• Aging barrels of Jack Daniel's whiskey are feeding a dark fungal growth throughout Lincoln County, Tenn.

Finally, author John Scalzi celebrates the 25th anniversary of his domain name scalzi.com, exactly one month before I registered my own. But as I will point out again in a couple of posts later this spring, The Daily Parker started (as braverman.org) well before his blog. Still, 25 years is a long time for a domain to have a single owner.

A couple of updates. First, Paul Vallas picked up a key endorsement, which may bring over some of Lori Lightfoot's voters:

Newly-retired Jesse White, the first African-American elected as Illinois Secretary of State, is endorsing Paul Vallas, giving Vallas a leg up in his quest to claim the 20% share of the Black vote he needs to win the April 4 mayoral runoff against Brandon Johnson.

White, 88, retired in January after a record six terms as secretary of state. In four of those elections, he was the leading vote-getter statewide. He endorsed City Clerk Anna Valencia as his replacement, but she lost handily to former Illinois Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias.

Vallas can only hope White’s endorsement in the mayoral runoff has more weight — and gives other establishment Black elected officials sanction to join him, starting with White’s political protégé, Ald. Walter Burnett (27th).

Block Club Chicago maps out how that might work:

If you’re a local politics geek like us, you’re probably poring over the data to see who won big where, how Chicagoans voted — and what exactly could happen during that runoff.

We pulled together maps and charts to help you understand this latest election...

And Charles Blow sees Lori Lightfoot's decline and fall as typical of other Black mayors, but concedes that her personality probably had a lot to do with it:

[T]wo things can be true simultaneously: There can be legitimate concerns about rising crime, and crime can be used as a political wedge issue, particularly against elected officials of color, which has happened often.

In this moment, when the country has still not come to grips with the wide-ranging societal trauma that the pandemic exacerbated and unleashed, mayors are being held responsible for that crime. If all politics is local, crime and safety are the most local. And when the perception of crime collides with ingrained societal concepts of race and gender, politicians, particularly Black women, can pay the price.

I disagree with Blow; I know crime in Chicago has fallen by more than half since I lived here in the 1990s, and that Lightfoot doesn't have much responsibility for its uptick in the pandemic. I voted for Brandon Johnson because I thought Lightfoot was a bad administrator and didn't know how to get things done without bullying.

We'll see what happens on April 4th.

Perhaps the first day of spring brings encourages some spring cleaning? Or at least, revisiting stories of the recent and more distant past:

• The Navy has revisited how it names ships, deciding that naming United States vessels after events or people from a failed rebellion doesn't quite work. As a consequence, the guided missile cruiser USS Chancellorsville (CG-62, named after a Confederate victory) will become the USS Robert Smalls, named after the former slave who stole the CSS Planter right from Charleston Harbor in 1862.
• Author John Scalzi revisited whether to stay on Twitter, given its "hot racist right-wing trash" owner, and decides why not? It's not like Musk will ever benefit financially from the app.
• Charles Blow revisited the (long overdue) defenestration of cartoonist Scott Adams, deciding it doesn't matter whether Adams was lazy or stupid, throwing him out the window was appropriate.
• Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul revisited the Equal Rights Amendment, but the DC Circuit Court of Appeals decided yesterday not to.
• WBEZ revisited the only other two Chicago Mayors who lost their re-election bids in the past century, Michael Bilandic and Jane Byrne.
• A group of US intelligence agencies revisited Havana Syndrome, without finding sufficient evidence to blame either an adversary government or an energy weapon.

Finally, here's a delightful clip of US Representative Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) patiently explaining to Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) and her banana-republican party the difference between an adjective and a noun:

For the first time since 1983, a sitting Chicago mayor failed to win re-election*, sadly keeping the total proportion of women not being re-elected at 100%. So the April 4th runoff will see the Chicago Public Schools candidate face off against the Chicago Teachers Union candidate:

Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson are headed to an April 4 runoff for mayor of Chicago after Mayor Lori Lightfoot conceded defeat Tuesday night, sealing her fate as a one-term mayor.

With 98 percent of precincts reporting, Vallas secured 34 percent of the vote, followed by Johnson with 20 percent and Lightfoot with 17 percent. Under city election rules, if no one candidate gets more than 50 percent of the vote, the race will go to a runoff.

Although opponents attacked Vallas as a conservative during the campaign, he affirmed his support for abortion rights during his speech, and pledged to be a mayor for “all Chicago.”

“I am a lifelong Democrat,” Vallas said. 

(Sure, for a very forgiving value of "Democrat.")

Johnson, a Cook County commissioner representing the county’s 1st District on the West Side, thanked the unions that buoyed his campaign in his speech, including the powerful, progressive Chicago Teachers Union. He said he would work to level out Chicago’s historic inequities, and spoke in personal terms about his background and his progressive vision for the city.

“I know what it’s like to have a long orange extension cord from our window to our neighbor’s window,” Johnson said. “We are finally going to retire this tale of two cities, and usher in a much better, stronger, safer Chicago.”

The race marks the third consecutive mayoral runoff, after [US Representative Chuy García faced off against incumbent Rahm Emanuel in 2015 and Lightfoot defeated Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle in 2019. The city switched to non-partisan elections in 1999, allowing for runoffs if no candidate receives 50 percent of the vote.

My guess is that Vallas' 34% represents almost all of the support he's going to get, so I believe (and hope) Johnson will win. As one of my readers pointed out, both CPS and CTU are awful, but I have a strong enough bias in favor of teachers and against school  district administration that I'd rather have the CTU guy than the CPS guy. Oh, and Vallas got an endorsement from our unhinged police union, so there's that.

* Michael Bilandic (1979) and Eugene Sawyer (1993) both lost their first elections, not re-election.

At my day job, we just ended our 80th sprint on the project, with a lot of small but useful features that will make our side of the app easier to maintain. I like productive days like this. I even voted! And now I will rest on my laurels for a bit and read these stories:

• If you don't worry that the entire US Supreme Court has the technical expertise of your 99-year-old great uncle, perhaps you should?
• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen explains how giving economic aid to Ukraine benefits the West.
• In part because Republicans in Congress have no interest in actually legislating, some 700,000 Illinois residents will lose their Medicaid coverage soon.
• Giving loyalty to an unhinged, narcissistic man-child does not get you loyalty in return. And no, this isn't about the XPOTUS.
• O'Hare Terminal 3—the one I use most often—will soon get $50 million in FAA funds for upgrades.
• State schools, which exist so that everyone in the state has a shot at a solid education, have seen the steepest declines in liberal-arts degrees in the past 10 years.
• Jill Bearup updated her earlier video about the Netflix corset mini-scandal, finding her initial surmise was correct.
• Not-racist cartoonists want to know why it took so long for Scott Adams to get his comeuppance.
• WHY IS IT SNOWING IN MALLORCA? I'm vaguely alarmed here...

Finally, the European Space Agency wants to establish a standard time zone for the moon. Since one day on the moon is 29.4 days here, I don't quite know what that will look like.