Rahm Emanuel Puts A Smile on the Face of “The Chicago Squid”

Thomas F. Roeser

Last week the white-run Squid…the peculiar living organism formed to elect Democrats (misnamed an inanimate “machine”) which has multi-quivering tentacles into business, labor, academe, media and the Roman Catholic chancery, a thousand eyes, sucks up nutrients, nurtures wastrels and discharges idealists as effluent…found three great reasons to celebrate the undeniable highest point of its 80-year existence.

I’ll start the way late-night comic David Letterman does—with the third reason and lead up to the first.

Three Big Reasons The Squid is Overjoyed.

3rd Biggest Reason: A Returned (Slightly) White Chicago Majority.

Despite its exploitation of blacks and Hispanics for massive vote turnout since the 1930s and giving them little in return, the Caucasian-led Squid has been worrying for decades about the day when blacks take over city control in perpetuity. What the media don’t report is: The Squid isn’t an equal opportunity outfit. Never has been.

The second lowest point for it was in 1983 when Harold Washington, the city’s first African American mayor, won election…although it was stalled from running things due to the Vrdolyak 29. The absolute lowest was when Washington won reelection in 1987 picking up enough council allies to turn back the Vrdolyak 29. A sub-highpoint for it was shortly after reelection at the point where he was supreme, when Washington slumped over his desk, dead of a massive heart attack. The white-dominated inter-regnum lasting two years paved the way for the coronation of Richard M. Daley aka Richard II.

Richard M. Daley gave the city bread and circuses, higher taxes, a massive park in its front yard and flower pots lining the boulevards and privatized parking meters that hit hard at the middle class. He spent the moon. With no interference from his Squid council he plunged the city into a financial abyss with its nearly $15 billion IOU to its pension fund dwarfing its $6 billion annual budget. From 2005-09 city expenses grew at a clip more than double the rate of inflation—with the gap bridged by one-time revenue sources such as the privatization of the Chicago Skyway (17% of day-to-day operations will be paid that way in 2011).

Property taxes are sky-high; yet not a penny of its nearly $800 million revenue the city will reap this year is earmarked for police, fire and other cash-starved day-to-day operations.

High taxes caused many blacks to flee the city. Daley II also demolished much of public housing which his father, Richard I had created, causing the Old Man’s enemies to charge they were nothing less than filing cabinets for the black poor. Under Daley II, Chicago’s phenomenally high property taxes coupled with housing vouchers induced the poor to move to blue-collar suburbs where costs are much lower. Result: The black population fell 11% since 2000; number of whites tripled; whites slightly edge blacks for the first time since 1980 (a smidgen over a third white, a smidgen under a third black and the balance Latinos most of whom either can’t or don’t vote…which The
Squid hopes will stay that dormant, Asians etc)..

Other middle class blacks moved back to their ancestral South which has a much more hospitable climate for diversity, an improved tax climate and job opportunities. This produced census figures showing that for the first time since 1980 the city has a white majority—richer, yuppies, affluent singles, gays. Hispanics mark a 7% growth but not much to worry about, . Asians making up the total. Thus the outlook is good for The Squid to keep white leadership with the Irish dominant…while still relying, plantation-style, on the remaining black poor to do the political grunt work and get absolutely no power in reward.

2nd Biggest Reason: No Serious Alternative to Rahm Emanuel. .


This would have been a golden chance for the black community to loft up some extraordinary qualified candidates, such as John Clark, president of ComEd and the brilliant Terry Peterson, senior veep of Rush Medical Center who was an outstanding boss of mass transit. But these talented African American managers and others like them aren’t interested in running because the city’s financials are a can of worms. Nor are they close to the city’s oracular, media-celebrated real black messiah, the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Jackson, whose own kids even call him “Reverend Jackson,” not Dad or Pop, sought to challenge The Squid with a creature of his own.

After a well-publicized caucus he and his surrogates came out with endorsement for Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman U. S. Senator. Most serious observers—not in the major media here, however said “you can’t be serious!” On the surface okay but when she grudgingly complied with the rule to reveal past income tax forms, it was clear she is in dreadful personal financial shape, owing $250,000 to a backer and the possessor of a Hyde Park house that is barely afloat with four mortgages. When the Teamsters union ran a poll last week, Rahm Emanuel, was far ahead of Moseley Braun—so far ahead that it looks like he’ll win going away on Feb. 22 with no need of a runoff.

The Gray Wolves, the resurrected 1920s-style venal white Squid aldermen who don’t mind seeing the city go to rack-and-ruin if they can make money out of it—and who have subtly opposed Emanuel….largely funding the residency suits against him… now are cautiously coming to his. Because Emanuel has no moral core he is ideal for the mayoralty and co-leadership of The Squid (with Speaker Michael Madigan) and neither can he be rolled by the Gray Wolves for the pure and simple reason his reputation for the future (he wants to ride a tough-bitten mayoralty ala Andrew Cuomo as NY governor to become the first Jewish president)… would be irreparably damaged—so he is the best in a lousy selection.

1st Reason: At Last—A Daley in the White House!

The Squid doesn’t really doesn’t give a rat’s eyelash about Barack Obama believing (rightly) he’s an amateur who couldn’t even beat the lazy mumbling, inept Bobby Rush for Congress, an inexperienced, Harvard-University of Chicago radical dreamer, flaky and undependable without the street-sense of a ward committeeman (his ability to wreak harm on the country being of no consequence to it since The Squid regards patriotism as irrelevant to its existence). But it’s ecstatic about the ascension of Richie Daley’s kid brother to become chief of staff. Why?

Remember The Squid has no ideology. And Bill Daley has none either…but he has the swashbuckling buccaneer qualities on money-raising and strategy it loves. He was (1) born in Bridgeport, ancestral home of the Daleys; (2) has been a bank president; (3) at the highest point earned $5 million a year; (4) came to the White House fresh from supervising the Washington lobbying efforts of the nation’s second largest bank, JPMorgan/Chase. The Squid adores lobbyists except the goo-goo kind and Bill Daley’s certainly not one of those.

He’s been (5) a director of Chicago-based Boeing the giant military contractor which can only do well if we’re either waging war or preparing to wage one…(6) a director of Abbott Laboratories, the huge global drug outfit that has a massive stake in cutting a deal with ObamaCare which has used Billy Daley up until the minute of his White House appointment to kill the tax on medical devices that would save it $20 billion.

Up until last week Daley (7) tried to weaken the structure of the newly-passed Consumer Financial Protection program and jiggle around with suggestions of a more malleable agency head…which earns The Squid’s admiration. He’s been (8) a lobbyist for foreign corporations (Nestle and a Canadian oil company)…the one who (9) until last week was seeking to influence the payback terms of TARP, making it easier for his bank to pay back the money, a prodigious political fund-raiser. And last if not least, (10) his appointment has been lavishly praised by Obama’s most skilled enemies—the U. S. Chamber of Commerce and the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal!

But the icing on the cake is (11) he’s a bona fide Squid operator conscience-exempt from queasiness which by itself…without any birthright at all…puts him at the table with Eddie Burke, Dick Mell. In his spare time he had the idea some years ago in creating the HDO, the Hispanic Democratic Organization as a brilliant vehicle to enlist Latinos. Chicago Streets and San commissioner, Al Sanchez, its leader just got 20 years for rigging personnel records to reward loyal Hispanics while Billy’s big brother the mayor said “everybody who knows me knows I had nothin’ to do with it.” Of course he didn’t. It was Billy.

That’s all that’s needed: The Squid is in love.

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Tom Roeser is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer

http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/rahm-emanuel-put-a-smile-on-the-face-of-the-chicago-squid/