The Daily Parker

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.

After standing on the Ravenswood Metra platform for 10 minutes in 40 km/h winds and blowing rain, I hearby sentence former Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner to 100 days of standing on said platform without an umbrella or waterproof shoes for the offense cutting off funding to all Illinois transportation projects for 3 years in a fit of ideological pique and general lack of empathy for anyone else.

Each instance of Rauner's prickishness causing suffering and inconvenience to the citizens of Illinois shall be a separate and distinct offense.

Basically, I want him to live out the remainder his life stuck in traffic, getting soaked on "temporary" train platforms, and failing to find shelter for the night because so many homeless shelters closed for lack of funds on his watch.

Chicago Transit Authority president Dorval Carter, Jr., blamed "extremely higher-than-normal call-offs" (i.e., a blue flu) for the New Year's Eve failures that left The Daily Parker waiting on a platform 35 minutes for the El:

It’s not unusual for CTA workers to “call off” on holidays, but the CTA has in the past been ready to replace them. But this year, with a shortage of train operators in the ranks, the CTA couldn’t deliver the number of free trains it promised.

The CTA promoted increased service on the Blue and Red lines on New Year’s Eve, advertising free train rides sponsored by Miller Lite. Carter did not say how many workers called off, and CTA officials did not provide a number after Friday’s meeting.

CTA worker unions, represented by Local 308 and Local 241, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Carter said he would work with the unions and employees to come up with better ways to incentivize staff to come to work. Disciplinary measures could only go so far, considering the worker shortage, he said.

“We are operating very close to the margins,” Carter said. “I am trying to both put out a level of service that is within the constraints of the workforce that I have, but recognizing that in order for that to work, my workforce has to show up.”

One factor possibly limiting the available workforce: wages that have not kept up with inflation. If you want more people to work for you, pay more; QED. But even Chicago, with one of the best transport networks in the world, still struggles to see public transit as a public service rather than a profit-making enterprise. So who should pay more for the CTA? All of us in Chicago, perhaps by taking back some of the Federal money we send to Oklahoma for their useless freeway projects.

At least I didn't get too cold on the Brown Line platform on New Year's Eve. I still would have liked to see my friends earlier than I did.

Because I moved, I had to change my drivers license in-person at an Illinois Secretary of State Drivers Services Office (our DMV). Let me tell you how hard that was:

1. I went online yesterday morning and, after a few clicks, got to "Same-Day Appointments."
2. I found that the facility closest to me (about 5 km away) had appointment times in the late afternoon, so I signed up.
3. The sign-up process took me to a checklist that helped me figure out what documents I needed to bring. It took me about 15 minutes to assemble those documents in a folder.
4. Half an hour before my appointment, I drove to the facility, and found a parking space right away.
5. I went into the Vehicle Services Office next door, and got redirected to the correct building.
6. There was no line. I went right to the first station, showed him my documents, and was directed to the photo area.
7. There was no line, so I got my photo taken, and was directed to the to the document verification window.
8. After waiting 30 seconds in line, the nice lady at the documentation window went over all my documents, verified and scanned them, signed me up for Motor Voter registration, and sent me to the cashier.
9. There was no line, so I paid my $5, waited for a few seconds while my temporary license printed out, and that was it. Total time: 22 minutes.
10. Since I was right there anyway, I went next door to Vehicle Services and updated and renewed my car registration. Total time: 6 minutes.

It took me longer to drive to the facility than to update my drivers license, apply for a Real ID, update my auto registration, and renew the same.

I love living in a state where we care about government enough to fund it properly!