Chicago

A Long Range Vision For The Future Of American Transportation: Bullet Trains

Ronald 2 Comments

As America continues to grow in population and become more congested on the coastlines, in Texas, and in the Midwest around Chicago, there needs to be a long range vision for the future of American transportation.

In the past, we had the transcontinental railroad system, promoted by Abraham Lincoln and others in the 1860s.

We also had the interstate highway system, originally promoted by Dwight D. Eisenhower in the 1950s.

Now we need other Republicans, which Lincoln and Eisenhower were, to join hands with Democrats, and people of good will, to recognize the need to commit funding to the long range vision of bullet trains in key areas of the nation, highly congested areas, which are already being strangled by traffic jams, no matter how fast road building and expansion go on.

It is also an issue of the automobile never going down in cost, and the gasoline utilized going sky high in price, and unlikely to go down very much in the long term future.

More and more young people are seeing the cost of automobiles, and fewer are buying cars and using cars, preferring to use modern technology and live closer to urban areas, as the great suburban expansion is winding down.

Therefore, for the reason of costs of automobiles and oil, plus the desire to live closer to metropolitan areas, and the traffic congestion which is exasperating to millions, the future is in bullet trains that will travel between major cities all over America.

Florida Governor Rick Scott made a mistake in rejecting the idea of a bullet train between Tampa and Orlando, with connections down to Miami, and Florida will suffer for it in the long term future.

But there are other areas that really need to plan ahead for bullet trains, including:

The Northeast Corridor between Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington DC.

The Midwest Corridor, centered around Chicago, but including Detroit, Milwaukee, Cleveland and St Louis at a minimum.

The Texas Corridor, connecting major cities in this gigantic state, including El Paso, Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston.

The California Corridor, connecting the state capital of Sacramento with San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego.

If we do not recognize the value of these bullet train projects, and the environmental and transportation advantages, we will pay for it in the long run. We cannot afford to be ostriches with our heads in the sand, but instead need a long range vision, as Lincoln and Eisenhower had!

A Sad Development: Hull House (Chicago), Jane Addams’s Settlement House, Goes Into History!

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Hull House, the original “Settlement House” founded by Jane Addams in Chicago in 1889, is “biting the dust” in difficult economic times.

Founded as a model for others, Hull House had middle class and wealthier people operating and contributing to a place where immigrants and the poor could come and receive services, much of it gained by private contributions, but also with the growing involvement of government as a commitment to those less fortunate.

With the Great Recession doing its damage, even when the Great Depression of the 1930s did not impede its work seventy years ago, Hull House becomes another victim of the lack of commitment to the poor and deprived, at the same time that the wealthy become wealthier than ever before.

Instead of spending millions of dollars on trying to “fix” political results in the White House or Congress or the states, as Sheldon Adelson and the Koch Brothers and innumerable others are doing, as a result of the Citizens United Case of the Supreme Court two years ago, it would be so much more productive if wealthy people gave aid to what today would be called “community or neighborhood centers”.

But, of course, the fact that Barack Obama was a “community organizer” in Chicago is portrayed as if the future President was a Marxist, a Socialist, a radical, or a much maligned follower of Saul Alinsky, who has been demonized so much by Newt Gingrich, that if Alinsky was alive, he would have grounds to sue Gingrich for defamation of character.

In the midst of great deprivation, we seem to have no time to consider what poverty in America is like, what it is like to be an immigrant, what it is like to be stereotyped.

So Hull House’s demise is only a symptom of the crisis we face in an America that supposedly believes in equal opportunity and the “American Dream”, but does not practice it! Social Justice is the loser!

The Privatization Of America Will Lead To Plutocracy, Instead Of Democracy!

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A very disturbing trend emerging in America is the growing privatization of government functions on the local and state levels in many municipalities and states.

An example is Chicago, which sold control of its parking meters and parking lots to private interests, and the result has been rising costs for travelers, consumers, and businessmen, making the cost of living much higher for the average resident or visitor to Chicago–all this for a quick fix on budgeting, but affecting parking for the next 75 years!

This is a horrible development, and it must be prevented, simply by people taking responsibility for higher taxes and lower services, but not just lower services!

If we continue to allow our infrastructure, as a state road in Indiana as an example, to be sold to private banks and corporations, it means that eventually all or most public services will be under the control of private business, which basically will be able to “blackmail” all of us, and destroy our democracy!

Many think already our country has become a plutocracy–rule of, by, and for the few–and this MUST stop, or else we risk a massive public uprising and riots on the level of what is going on in the Middle East!

Progressives want a return to democracy and the goals of progressivism, originally enunciated a century ago by Robert La Follette, Sr. and many others–political democracy, social justice, and economic regulation and intervention in the public interest!

What is going on today is the antithesis of everything this country is supposed to represent, and the movement to privatize everything must be halted dead in its tracks, as it is private corporations and banks and financial interests on Wall Street who have put us in the mess we are in, and now wish to finish the job of strangling American democracy!

New Chief Of Staff William Daley A Good Choice By President Obama?

Ronald 1 Comment

The appointment of William Daley as Chief of Staff to President Obama is a very controversial selection.

Certainly, Daley has the smarts and the contacts that a Chief of Staff should have.

He is a friend of the business community, and his appointment has been applauded by Republican leaders and the Chambers of Commerce, ironically two groups which worked to overcome the Obama agenda and put the GOP in control of the House of Representatives and state governorships and legislatures.

The brother of outgoing Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, and the son of former Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley, the new Chief of Staff brings a background as former Secretary of Commerce for President Clinton, and also opposition to the Obama Health Care legislation and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headed by his rival, Professor Elizabeth Warren of Harvard University.

It is hard for progressives and liberals to accept and tolerate such an appointment, as it seems to contradict the Obama agenda, and it makes one wonder if Obama is truly becoming another Bill Clinton, moving toward the center, and trying to make friends with those who have bitterly opposed him.

Is such a strategy going to work? It just might, and could help secure Obama a second term in the White House.

But will it lead to more progressive legislation in the next two to six years, or will Obama disappoint those on the left who expected more aggressive pursuit of major progressive goals based on Obama’s 2008 campaign?

Is Obama selling out his supporters to be re-elected, or is this just the reality of American politics, that too much change cannot be accomplished under our system of government?

Do we have to be happy for what has been gained, and be satisfied, or should we be skeptics and be concerned about the direction of the Obama Presidency?

The feelings of the author are confusion and concern, as so much more needs to be pursued, but the re-election campaign gets in the way of such goals.

Of course, if Obama fails to win re-election, then none of the goals of the progressives will be attainable, so it leaves progressives in a “no man’s land”! What alternatives do progressives have but hope for the best from Obama? Probably none, sad to say! 🙁

The Future Presidential Library Of Barack Obama: Chicago Or Hawaii? A Solution!

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With only two years down in the Obama Presidency, the debate is beginning as to where the future Obama Presidential Library should be located.

The alternatives are Honolulu, Hawaii, where Obama was born and lived in his early childhood years, or Chicago, where he he has spent the majority of his adult life, met his wife, married, had his two daughters, taught for 12 years as a adjunct law professor at the University of Chicago, and pursued his political career, and still has a home.

It is clearcut which location should be the choice, and that is Chicago by a massive margin!

Chicago is also in the middle of the country, and would be a major boon to scholars and tourists who will wish, in the future, to honor and commemorate the 44th President of the United States.

Hawaii may be the choice of Obama for vacations with his children, and his boyhood home may be there, but it is so out of the way that very few tourists or scholars would prefer it as the primary location for an Obama Presidential Library.

But a compromise to please everyone could be adopted, which would be to have the major Presidential Library in Chicago, and to have an Obama Museum and Birthplace in Hawaii.

This would be the similar compromise reached for the Gerald Ford Presidency, with his Library being at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where attended college, and the Gerald Ford Museum being in Grand Rapids, where he lived most of his life and represented the area in the United States House of Representatives.

That way, tourists who travel to Hawaii could visit the Obama Museum, but many more tourists, as well as scholars, would have the opportunity to be educated by the Obama Library in the Chicago area!

No decision will be made until a few more years pass, but the discussion and debate over the issue has unofficially begun, and the proposed solution of the author seems to be the best solution!

The Chicago Daleys Soon To Be Part Of History: Their Legacy!

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An era is coming to an end in Chicago: Mayor Richard M. Daley, the son the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, has decided to retire next April at the end of his term, having by then broken the record of his father for time in office!

On Christmas Eve this year, the younger Daley will tie his father for 21 years and 8 months in office, so by the time he leaves, he will have finished 22 complete years as Mayor!

His father served from 1955 to 1976, dying in office with the reputation of being the last of the political bosses that for a long time influenced the Democratic Party! Daley was behind the nomination of John F. Kennedy in 1960, and it is believed helped Kennedy win Illinois by having the “cemetery vote” come out in Chicago early and often! 🙂

Daley was also behind the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, but also called out the police then to beat up anti Vietnam War demonstrators at the Chicago Democratic convention, which ultimately doomed Humphrey’s Presidential candidacy, which was already burdened by the war, and the candidacy of George Wallace on a third party line, leading up to the loss to Richard Nixon!

Son Richard M. has been Mayor for what will be 22 years when he leaves office, the longest lasting mayor of any city, much hailed as his father was for what was said to be “efficiency” in running the third largest city in America, and yet, as with his father, always a tone of corruption and malfeasance which never, somehow, came to the door of the Mayor, but led to criminal prosecutions for people around both Mayors!

So the Daleys leave a mixed legacy, with the son presiding over a city which has seen record numbers of black youths murdered, more in one month this summer than in Iraq over eight months of 2010! 🙁

Overall, it is good to see change coming to Chicago, as the Daley Era soon is truly part of American history, and will be much researched and written about in future years! It will also have an effect on the history of the Obama Presidency, since Obama came from Chicago politics!

The Supreme Court And Gun Rights: An Activist Conservative Court! :(

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The Supreme Court yesterday, in its final day of decisions before the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens, dealt a blow to sanity by extending gun rights beyond the Washington DC case of two years ago to Chicago, and by implication, to other big cities where gun violence is widespread and frequent!

The National Rifle Association hailed the ruling as a winner for gun owners, but it is actually a victory for more extensive death by gun fire than it is a victory for individual rights to own a gun! 🙁

This activist conservative Supreme Court has distorted the meaning of the Second Amendment which was meant to cover militias in the states, not the right of citizens to own an unlimited number of handguns, leading now to over 275 million handguns in private hands!

With the growing diversity of our population, and the tensions that grow between people based on race, ethnicity and religion, gun violence will grow! 🙁

One of the biggest groups that will suffer from this are the youth of America in the cities, with Chicago an excellent example of the dangers of being minority youth in that city, with 258 shot last year, and 32 dying! 🙁

Chief Justice John Roberts led the traditional 5-4 majority, including Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Anthony Kennedy. It is ironic that Roberts, in his confirmation hearings five years ago, talked about a Justice being an “umpire” calling balls and strikes, rather than hitting or pitching, and yet this Court has become the most activist in a conservative direction since the 1920s and early 1930s! They are doing extremist things, of the kind that if activist liberals did so, the Republicans in the Senate would condemn them!

Conservatives love to talk against activism on the Court, but it is conservative activism that is harming democracy and stability in this nation!

This is important to consider as the Republicans set out to attack nominee Elena Kagan as too activist! If Kagan’s record is called activist, then we need more of that to balance off the extremists in charge of the Supreme Court in a very difficult economic time, too reminiscent of the Great Depression! 🙁