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1 April 2003
Today’s the day to make fun of the Cheneys, or maybe to point out the obvious: that Chicagoans live in an imperial banana republic, complete with “tanks rumbling down the main street of a Third World capital on their way to a pre-dawn coup.” (RedEye actually had the most amusing take: “Daley uses his super powers to shut down Meigs.”)

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27 March 2003
Have a death wish out there? Try ObitMessenger and make sure you know exactly when you’ve outlived your rivals! (The little graphic of someone’s Outlook inbox piled up with death notices is particularly odd.)

It’s all we know how to do

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Robert Kagan’s hypothesis of irreconcilable differences between the EU and USA has merit, says Stephen Holmes, but only because it cuts both ways: well-policed Europe only conceives of civil solutions to conflict, whereas militarized America only thinks of bombs. (Or maybe just West Texas only thinks of bombs.) On another note, war proponents often claim that Hussein is “like Hitler.” But not even Texans have yet suggested war as a way to liberate the people of Zimbabwe from a dictator who just declared himself “Hitler ten-fold.”

States slash, feds pork it up

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The administration just asked for $75 billion for just one month of war. States are in crisis: Oregon hacked a month off its school year, turned thousands of felons out onto the streets, and cut off lifesaving medication to heart patients and schizophrenics; California state officials are seriously considering shuttering universities; Illinois and Massachusetts schools have laid off teachers. The House budget resolution cuts, over the next nine years, over $100 billion for healthcare for poor Americans, nearly $20 billion in food aid for poor Americans, and even $14 billion from veterans’ benefits. And yet the Senate might approve George W. Bush’s budget resolution tomorrow, slashing the average millionaire’s taxes by $100,000 a year while doing nothing (nothing! I would get

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20 March 2003
“There are many good reasons to get rid of Saddam,” Mr. Randall said. “But when did the events of Sept. 11 get transformed into going to war with Iraq? Why war with this one country, right now? I can’t figure out how we got to this point.” NYT. There are more ruthless, more evil, more heavily armed, more America-hating, more Islamist dictators. So why this? Why us? Why now?

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19 March 2003
“the developers need to pay attention to design. Their consulting architect is James Loewenberg, whose work is now in the city’s cross-hairs because of negative reactions to his new buildings in River North. The project will test City Hall’s stated will to hold developers to higher architectural standards.” Sun-Times

SUVs steal public space

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From the Project for Public Spaces. Critical Mass steals that public space back.

Guest Editorial
SUVs: Stealing the Public Wealth

by David Burwell

“SUVs are so over!” shouts a recent car ad. This is a remarkable claim, especially from a competing car company. Yet, it rings true. With Arianna Huffington linking SUVs to the financing of terrorists in her Detroit Project; evangelical Christians linking them to ecological destruction in their “What Would Jesus Drive?” campaign; and even the U.S. Department of Transportation after them for being more (not less) dangerous than average cars due to their tendency to rollover, these are not good times for Detroit’s biggest money-maker.

Roads should honor and dignify people, not diminish them.

What’s going on? It is possible that a subtle but hugely significant shift in America’s collective unconscious is underway fostered by Detroit’s own ad campaigns. These ads imply that SUV purchasers actually own the road, something all of us pay for through our taxes and which are clearly part of the public realm.
Continue reading →

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12 March 2003
HOPE VI was an idea with much promise, but it, like most other redevelopment programs, was doomed by underfunding and cynical implementation. Case in point: the wholesale relocation and abandonment of Chicago’s public housing families, driven by the politically expedient need to sweep deep-seated social ills under the rug. Of course, those same expediencies got us into this mess in the first place.

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10 March 2003
No, one cannot buy happiness on an individual basis (at least without reducing overall happiness), but it may be possible for societies to collectively decide upon policies that promote overall happiness.