The Daily Parker

Cassie and I ran the last block of our first walk of the day because I underestimated how fast a squall line was moving. You know what comes after a squall line? A cold front:

Because who doesn't love a 10°C temperature drop in 2 hours?

The forecast for the rest of the week is for gradually warming temperatures and dry skies.

I thought that the two most important races near my house would take days to resolve because so many people voted by mail, but it turns out, people I like won both.

First, in Chicago, Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson defeated Republican former Chicago Public Schools chief Paul Vallas for mayor:

“Chicago, tonight is just the beginning,” Johnson said as he kicked off a emphatic victory speech, which aimed to strike a conciliatory and upbeat tone after a polarizing campaign against former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas to lead the nation’s third-largest city.

Johnson, a 47-year-old longtime Chicago Teachers Union leader, announced his candidacy for mayor in October by the Jenner Academy school building, where he started his career in education at the mostly Black elementary school that had served children who lived in the Cabrini-Green public housing complex next door.

The affable but gutsy Johnson first won public office in 2018 when he defeated Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin, who earned the ire of organized labor by voting against Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s so-called pop tax. There, Johnson largely heeded Preckwinkle’s direction while passing some legislation of his own that focused on criminal justice. None of that work earned him substantial name recognition among Chicagoans during the early months of the race.

Tuesday, with roughly 99% of the city’s precincts reporting, Johnson was ahead with 51% of the unofficial vote to 49% for Vallas, who came close as ever but failed to shake off his history of never winning elected office.

Literally, the teacher beat the school administrator. Beautiful. I voted for Johnson in the February 28th primary election, and I'm happy to go 2-for-2 this cycle.

Just north of us, Milwaukee County judge Janet Protasiewicz beat former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly for the open seat on the same Court:

Protasiewicz, 60, defeated conservative former state Supreme Court Justice Daniel Kelly, who has now mounted two unsuccessful bids for a full term on the court. Kelly, 58, was appointed by Republican former Gov. Walker in 2016 to fill a seat vacated by a retirement, but was defeated by Jill Karofsky, the liberal candidate, in 2020.

Protasiewicz’s victory could be the start of a period of political upheaval in Wisconsin. In the weeks and months after she is sworn in, a flurry of lawsuits about highly contentious topics could be filed and work their way before the new liberal majority. That includes potential challenges to Wisconsin’s voting maps, the state law (Act 10) limiting the influence of public-sector labor unions and the decision outlawing unstaffed absentee ballot drop boxes.

A lawsuit already filed in Dane County challenging the enforcement of Wisconsin’s 1849 abortion ban is also expected to work its way before the Wisconsin Supreme Court. While Protasiewicz has said she hasn’t reviewed the case, she campaigned as an outspoken supporter of abortion rights, and her presence on the court makes the lawsuit, filed by Attorney General Josh Kaul and Gov. Tony Evers — both Democrats — more likely to succeed.

Kelly had the backing of several prominent anti-abortion groups, but said those endorsements were based on his judicial philosophy, not any commitment to rule a particular way.

Kelly said a lot of things like that during the campaign: "Oh, sure, never mind all the stuff I've written off the bench; I pinky-promise to remain totally impartial if you elect me. And the first thing I'll do is totally impartially criminalize women's health decisions."

Kelly also threw a tantrum in his concession speech, no doubt comforting the independent voters who might sympathize with some of his views but think he's another entitled, arrogant, old White guy who has never gotten elected to anything.

Imagine if we elected the US Supreme Court? Maybe not. But limiting them to a single 18-year term would reduce the pressure on the country, I think.

Stuff read while waiting for code to compile:

• Alex Shephard rolls his eyes at the Republican Party's unhinged response to the XPOTUS's indictment.
• California's Tulare Lake used to be the largest freshwater body west of the Mississippi, until agriculture drained it. Thanks to record rainfall, it has returned.
• Stanford Law 3L Tess Winston writes that 10% of her class generates 95% of the noise, but the 1L and 2L classes are worse.
• The head of Chicago-area concert promoter Jam Productions testified to the US Senate last week that the Ticketmaster monopoly has driven Jam's revenues down 80% since 2010.
• As the head of state of the first group of colonies to forcibly separate from the British Empire, President Biden will continue the American Presidency's tradition of not attending British coronations.
• UK blogger Alex Murrell bemoans the sameness of everything.

Finally, Chicago Tribune food critic Louisa Chu says I should take a 45-minute drive down to Bridgeview to try some Halal fried chicken—just, maybe, after Ramadan ends.

The City of Lights has done a mitzvah for its citroyens, essentially banning cars from the city center in part by providing real alternatives:

French planners got a later start than their American counterparts. Before Paris could be carved up by expressways, resistance mounted over the familiar objections that also characterized highway revolts in the United States: destruction, displacement, pollution, the oil crisis. These protests were nested in a trio of nascent trends: the rise of environmentalism, the historic preservation movement, and the early waves of gentrification.

By the 1990s, anti-car forces were playing offense. In 1996 came Paris Breathes, a series of periodic street closures on Sundays and holidays. In 1998 the city opened Métro Line 14—the first new subway in more than 60 years, and the first of a blitz of transit investments concentrated in and around the suburbs. In 2007 the city rolled out the bike-share program Vélib’, which now offers 20,000 bicycles over 1,400 stations in and around the city. Car ownership in the region peaked in 1990 and has been declining since, even as the metro area population has grown by 10 percent.

Hidalgo’s Green Party deputy mayor for transportation, David Belliard, is even more strident: “The redistribution of public space is a policy of social redistribution,” he told me in 2021. “Fifty percent of public space is occupied by private cars, which are used mostly by the richest, and mostly by men, because it’s mostly men who drive, and so in total, the richest men are using half the public space. So if we give the space to walking, biking, and public transit, you give back public space to the categories of people who today are deprived.”

A top official in New York or Chicago would never. But in Paris, this is how City Hall talks.

Sad but true. I mean, it's taken us 13 years to replace a single Metra station, for example. I believe we'll see a car ban from the Loop someday, and I hope I'm still alive when it happens.

I'm taking a quiet day after our annual fundraiser. I should find out by next week exactly what our fundraising haul was. I do know that one of my friends outbid me for something I'd stored at my house since our 2019 fundraiser, which means I'll have to store it at my house again for a couple of weeks until they pick it up.

Otherwise, a really fun evening, with something like 800 photos that I have to go through now at some point soon.

Once again, I have too much to read:

• After Florida governor Ron DeSantis (R) tried to end Disney's control over the municipal area around Disneyworld, the outgoing board added a series of restrictive covenants completely neutering DeSantis' hand-picked replacements, including a rule-against-perpetuities clause tying the covenants to the last living descendant of King Charles III.
• Robert Wright observed ChatGPT expressing cognitive empathy.
• An anonymous source provided a German reporter with 5,000 pages of documents from NTC Vulkan, a Russian disinformation and espionage group, showing the extent of the Russian government's involvement in disrupting Western political systems.
• "No way to prevent this," says only nation where this regularly happens, because it has a Supreme Court that wants it to happen.
• The Chicago and Illinois Departments of Transportation have gotten closer to redesigning the Oak Street curve.
• Pamela Smart, the inspiration for the 1995 dark comedy To Die For, lost her final appeal for parole for hiring her teenage lover to kill her husband in 1990.

Finally, it was 20 years ago tonight that Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley had city workers vandalize Meigs Field so that he could sell the land to his pals. The Tribune has a photo history.

I've had a bunch of tasks and a mid-afternoon meeting, so I didn't get a chance to read all of these yet:

• Fifty years ago today, United States combat troops left South Vietnam.
• The DC foreign policy elite have grown impatient for President Biden to articulate a clearer policy on Ukraine.
• The Post has a fascinating story of a Russian spy who posed as a Brazilian student to get into Johns Hopkins, but got arrested when he tried to take a new job at the International Criminal Court using his fake identity.
• James Fallows points to the Washington Post article on the damage that 5.56mm ammunition does to a child's body by once again imploring Congress to keep the AR-15 out of civilian hands.
• The US Dept of Transportation pledged $1 billion to remove useless highways that cut cities into unwalkable pieces, just as they dismissed an action to stop a useless $9 billion extension of a Houston highway no one but the Texas DOT wants. CityLab has more about the highway removal program.
• The Niles, Ill., public library board has spent $137,000 on legal fees even as they have cut staff by 37%—including thousands in fees when one board member sued to get another board member removed.
• You can see all five major planets just after sunset this week, so go look.
• IFL Science explains how modern fitness trackers work.

Finally, close to me, after the lovely Grafton Pub closed last August, the Old Town School of Folk Music stepped in to buy the space. But that plan has hit a snag after a higher bidder emerged.

Today is the 25th anniversary of the US Food and Drug Administration signing off on Pfizer's miracle drug, Sildenafil. The drug helped raise Pfizer's profits and keep them up for years, until competitors like tadalafil and vardenafil popped up and made significant market penetration.

And on the 5th of next month, WGN-TV in Chicago will turn 75. The eponymous World's Greatest Newspaper that owned WGN radio and TV for most of their lives, the Chicago Tribune, reminds us that WGN's biggest star for decades was a clown.

At my day job, I go into our downtown office at least once a week, which turns out to be about once a week longer than almost everyone else. I like the change of scene, and Cassie gets to spend those days at day camp, so it's a win for everyone.

The 90%-or-so remote work that people have elected also means we have tons of empty offices while our multi-year leases run their courses. So, after waiting almost a year for the furniture upgrade that never came, the office manager today said "just go take the office next door to yours." Cool. Better furniture, a (very slightly) different view, and...that's about it.

While I move my stuff 4 meters to the west, you can read these:

• Someone at the Chicago Park District really doesn't want the local press to know why Taste of Chicago doesn't appear on the Grant Park schedule this summer.
• If having all your data erased by ransomware doesn't scare you enough, Bruce Schneier gives us an even better reason not to stick random USB devices into your laptop.
• Dana Milbank watches with a box of popcorn as the XPOTUS once again pwns the Republican Party by making things up and watching them fall in line.
• The Commune of Paris has won an administrative decision declaring "dark" grocery stores warehouses, allowing the city to get them out of residential areas.

Finally, in keeping with me schlepping my books and laptop next door, Salesforce and Meta have put 22,000 m² of downtown Chicago office space on the secondary market, terrifying commercial real estate owners everywhere.

After having the 4th-mildest winter in 70 years, the weather hasn't really changed. Abnormally-warm February temperatures have hung around to become abnormally-cool March temperatures. I'm ready for real spring, thank you.

Meanwhile...

• ProPublica reports on the bafflement inside the New York City Council about how to stop paying multi-million-dollar settlements when the NYPD violates people's civil rights—a problem we have in Chicago, for identical reasons—but haven't figured out that police oversight might help. (One Daily Parker reader suggested taking the money out of the police pension fund.)
• A bill moving through Florida's legislature would address suburban sprawl by redefining it. (Want to bet a real-estate developer lobbied for this one?)
• A ransomware attack a few weeks ago has affected up to 130 organizations, according to researchers and online boasts from the attackers.
• United Airlines wants to start air-taxi service between the Loop and O'Hare by 2025, using electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) airplanes.

Finally, I laughed out loud at the YouGov survey that found 46% of American men who have never flown an airplane think they could land an air transport with only some help from Air Traffic Control. I laughed because I do know how to fly a plane, and I don't think I could land a 787 well enough to use the plane again under any circumstances without a few dozen simulator hours. In fact, I would probably spend several crucial minutes trying to figure out how to change the radio to 121.5 and the transponder to 7700. But hey, the United States put Dunning and Kruger on the map, so this seems about right to me.