It’s almost time for Gov. Pat Quinn to run for re-election and his most likely opponent will be Chicagoan Bruce Rauner. Now Gov. Quinn will be the “progressive” Democrat in the race and Bruce will be the “conservative” businessman in the race. Progressive currently means that you work to destroy worker protections and pensions. Conservative currently means that if the free market can’t or won’t solve a problem by creating huge profits, then setting the weak, old, poor, young and sick adrift on ice floes is not a moral failing it’s just a consequence of market forces and therefore okay. Sadly, our job as voters will be desperately trying to tell them apart, which will be really hard because it will be a matter of degrees and not a question of difference.

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If you are interested in ideas like context and connection the recent trials and travails of the Emanuel Administration are riveting. Before anything else gets said let’s get a couple of things and words properly defined. Change and reform are not the same word for a reason. Change means that something was working one way and now it works another way. Reform means that something was not working properly and the new thing being done makes it work more properly.

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And so we bid a not- so- fond farewell to the bow of another large unwieldy year as it sinks slowly over the horizon wobbling unsteadily towards the graveyard of memory. And cheers erupt from we folks on shore waving the double- handed “L for loser” sign above our heads. “So long. See ya. Don’t let the door slam you in the butt on the way out. And if you got any brothers or sisters, don’t give them this address.”

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The Presidential Election been over for six weeks and the media is chronicling the GOP’s “attempts” to change as it grapples with defeat. The truth is that GOP and its’ base have evolved into the clenched, irrational fist of plutonomy intent on protecting the prerogatives of organized money and limiting if not eliminating the power of organized people to resist it. The GOP and its’ base has completed a truly terrifying apotheosis from a movement standing athwart history yelling STOP to one actively killing it both literally and figuratively. The GOP doesn’t have a problem democracy does.

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Last time President Obama won there was a honeymoon and the assumption that he had progressive values so progressives gave him time to “play chess” and find common ground… reality check my friends… it will not happen this time. Right from jump-street we’ve rejected the Grand Bargain and if the Democratic Party wants to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory all they have to do is go along with this nonsense. Context is everything and this time progressive forces are already not being quiet from Keystone to the Grand Bargain we are in the streets. We remember how in 2010 the President came out and helped blue dogs and corporate Dems beat progressives in the primaries and it won’t happen this time.

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Holey moley catfish. Well, thank god that’s finally over. Further thanks that the climax was quick and clean. Almost surgical. Not as long a night as many first thought it might be. Except for Karl Rove that is, who for all we know is still scribbling numbers to prove the call on Clinton’s re- election win in 1996 was premature. And as usual, Florida did all it could to gum things up, but was eventually rendered irrelevant. And long may it remain so.

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Whenever a politician wins an election their victory speech is always equal parts empty patriotic rhetoric, thank you notes, spin and announcements. The announcements mean something and President Obama made four. He will be reducing our deficit, reforming our tax code, fixing our immigration system and freeing us from foreign oil and he will be doing this by seeking bipartisan support with the people who gridlocked the entire government for four years. This is not a promising start to his second term. More disturbingly though he has informed us that this will require both difficult compromises and shared sacrifice. Let me clue you in on who that compromise is going to sacrifice and how much sharing is about to break out in regards to reducing the deficit and reforming the tax code.

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My grandmother told a story about a brick thrown threw her window. Half of the words on the note tied to it were misspelled but one wasn’t… nigger. Good to know that even then conservative “activists” were displaying the depth of hardcore ignorance that has come to define say the Tea Party. After all one of their core values is tradition. The rock wasn’t meant for my grandmother though it was meant for an activist neighbor but then again… of course it was. As my grandmother said: “It didn’t matter to asses that threw it which one of us got this message hatred’s blind boy… don’t let them take anything from you. Fight them, vote.”

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Another election is upon us and Tutorial staffers have been arguing with each other for weeks to bring you our considered guidance. You will notice that we’re not recommending you vote for any particular candidate but have a lot to say about the referenda and judges. As the Front Man I am going to “pull rank” and say a few things about candidates… Sorry staff but I promise I will not endorse anyone. That said if you feel the need to vote for a guy on Team Elephant the resulting karma is likely to kill you. I will also let you in on a disturbing possibility in the General Election.

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A surprisingly large segment of America tuned into the first Presidential debate, but for some odd reason, President Obama did not appear among them. Who was in charge of his debate prep, Clint Eastwood? Even an empty chair would have provided a sturdier obstinacy. The Committee to Re- Elect the President will obviously try to convince us that, like the economy, the Commander- in- Chief’s sub- par debate performance can be traced back to the Bush Administration, but darker forces may be at work here. The Ghosts of Debaters Past.

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Its time to start worrying about Mitt Romney. Seriously. The guy may just be running the worst campaign ever. And yes, that includes the McDLT, print ads for organic hemp underwear and France in 39. Not to mention McCain/ Palin in 08. Which currently holds the gold standard for lousy campaigns. Sure to be a Hall of Fame inductee in a couple years.

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Let’s speak about The Bounce, shall we? The Bounce being the jump that a three- day, red- white- and blue infomercial is expected to produce on a candidate’s polling. The idea is to use The Bounce as a slingshot of momentum to whip you down the campaign straightaway directly into the swivel seat behind the desk of the Oval Office. Or close enough to let the Supreme Court appoint you. One or the other.

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And now a few words about the Republican National Convention. AKA: Women with Big Hair and the Men in White Shoes Who Love Them. And white certainly was the operable word in Tampa. Mashed potatoes on paper plates with a side of leeks white.Had to feel bad for the one black guy the networks kept cutting to during the speeches. They tried everything to make him look like a crowd. Different camera angles. Probably had his own wardrobe assistant. “Now put on the cowboy hat. Okay. Okay. Let’s try a handlebar mustache.” Must have been someone’s driver.

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Who knows why Mitt Romney doesn’t release his old tax records. Maybe he’s stubborn. Nobody likes being told what to do. Could be an incredibly simple explanation like he lost them and is embarrassed. For all we know the accordion file of old returns fell off a shelf in the garage and is buried under a pile of old bikes and unopened anniversary gifts. Promised to release his 2011 tax records when he files on or around October 15th. Wrong way, Mitt. We don’t care about the five years you’ve been running for president. We want to know what you did before the national spotlights were trained on you. Who are you in the dark? Do you change into tights and a cape? Or is the King of Bain really Bane? You’re so Bane, you probably think this column is about you.

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You might say it was a turbulent week for Mitt Romney. You could also say a light lemon sugar wash makes for ineffective mosquito repellent. He claims to have totally left Bain Capital to run the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics even though his company handed the government multiple signed documents stating otherwise and now financial questions plague his campaign like a swarm of dive- bombing bees in a bathroom stall.

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All of America should drop to its knees and thank the GOP for providing us with replacement fireworks. As you undoubtedly are aware, cities all over the country this year were forced to cancel Fourth of July festivities due to fear of fire, glitchy computers and twitchy bureaucrats. Like there’s another kind. The Republican House took great pains to salve our sensory deprived souls by trying to set off enough indoor fireworks to make the San Diego Big Bay Bust look like a fluttering votive candle. It was designed to be a spectacular explosion fueled by ego, obstinacy and behavior so self- absorbed, the casual bystander might assume we were in the middle of an election year.

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All of America should drop to its knees and thank the GOP for providing us with replacement fireworks. As you undoubtedly are aware, cities all over the country this year were forced to cancel Fourth of July festivities due to fear of fire, glitchy computers and twitchy bureaucrats. Like there’s another kind. The Republican House took great pains to salve our sensory deprived souls by trying to set off enough indoor fireworks to make the San Diego Big Bay Bust look like a fluttering votive candle. It was designed to be a spectacular explosion fueled by ego, obstinacy and behavior so self- absorbed, the casual bystander might assume we were in the middle of an election year.

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From out of the green mist enveloping the campaign doldrums they come. Relentlessly. Doggedly. Cattedly. Trudging blank- faced and soulless. Armies of cash hungry zombies brandishing partisan pickaxes, shovels and crowbars, with only one goal rattling around their feverish brains. Campaign booty. Pieces of 8. Entire 8s. Eight figured 8s.

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On June 5th there were three elections that people are not talking about as exactly connected to each other and no one but me is talking about how they are all directly connected to Chicago and the machinations of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. You see in Wisconsin, San Jose California and San Diego California two Republicans and one Democrat demonstrated that it doesn’t matter which party a politician belongs to it matters if they have campaign investors and if their moral compass is on loan from Dick Cheney or Jamie Diamond. With apologies to Mark Twain history doesn’t repeat it rhymes and the tune Mayor Emanuel is whistling is the same one that just knocked the hopes, aspirations and possibilities of ordinary people half way back to the 18th century. Which side are you on boy, now means you are either with organized people, human beings or organized money… corporate monsters.

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Permanently capitalizing the P in Presumptive Nominee, the Texas primary shoved Mitt Romney right over the delegate precipice, and now with the nomination locked up tighter than a rusted pickle jar 20,000 leagues beneath the sea, the campaign has taken a sudden turn towards the nebulous. Ambiguous Ville. Candidates don’t make mistakes in the murky bog of summer. Even when they do, the atmosphere is too hazy to notice.

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Since Governor Romney has sewed up the nomination tighter than one of Chris Christie’s old suits, the only remaining Republican election drama is which name the Bairn of Bain Capital intends to place on the bottom of his bumper sticker. Yes, friends, it’s once again time to play that quadrennial game sensation sweeping the nation: Let’s Guess Mitt’s Vice Presidential Pick!

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Some small- minded pundits are guaranteed to grouchily opine this is neither the time nor the place to be re-circulating unfounded conspiracy theories. Then again, mightn’t it be more imprudent to ignore the latest rumors and dark mutterings concerning something as important as the nomination of a presidential candidate? Of course we’re talking about the uncanny similarities between the 2012 Republican primary race and a game of Angry Birds.

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No. It’s not over. Well, okay, it’s kind of over. But the Republican nomination is not totally- otally over. As it very well should be. How over? So over, the fat lady not only sang, she should be back in her hotel room kicking off her shoes easing into a recliner with the remote in one hand and digging deep into a three pound box of marzipan with the other. Yes, that over.

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For the past three months the Tutorial staff has been running all over the Chicagoland area getting Dangerously Informed so that we could provide you with endorsements. Because you might be inclined to trust us we should tell you how we decided who we are endorsing and we suggest that as a Dangerously Informed citizen that you pick up some of the Tutorials bad habits and practice them on a legislator or judge of your choice.

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And now your eagerly awaited Super Tuesday Report. Named for the quantity of contests and not the quality of participants. Perhaps it would be more apt to say Not So Super Tuesday Report. More of a Frenetic and Confusing but Ultimately Unsatisfying with a Slight Aftertaste of Desperation Tuesday Report.  The biggest complaint is lack of resolution. No dragons slain. No damsels rescued. Not even a castle breached. Although there was that bit of swordplay in Ohio. And you can never discount the romantic poetry that is a Rick Santorum victory celebration in Steubenville.

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Odd week for Mitt Romney. The roller coaster candidate was on the receiving end of more mixed messages than a basement bulletin board at the United Nations on Take Your Schizophrenic to Work Day. While cruising to an easy victory in the Arizona primary he barely eeked out a squeaker in Michigan. That’s the problem with running around 12 different home states, eventually you’re bound to trip and stumble up some familiar front steps.

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As rare and mythical as the unicorn, it too cavorts amongst the clouds with double rainbows birthing from its unfathomable depths. But instead of worshipful 12 year- old girls, it is conservative politicians who tack drawings of this inamorata on walls above their beds. We’re talking about the legendary… Mainstream. The message is relatively straightforward. Inside the Mainstream, you will rub elbows with everything that is good and right and true and just about America. Families have 2.4 children, none of whom sport barbed wire piercings or dragon neck tattoos or ever talk smack back. Lawns are broad and green and crabgrass free. And children are cheerfully shuttled to school in orderly processions of grey and beige Minivans. The place to be.

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Obama’s inevitable base-confusing, enemy-inspiring, high-rhetoric, plea for civility and tone-deaf collection of tested campaign slogans is about to amuse, bemuse and possibly upset you. Will Durst gives you something more wholesome to do than shake your head and wonder when you will be detained.

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Surely you’re longing to hear some scathingly humorous remarks concerning the New Hampshire Primary. And it would be our honor to relate a few pithily amusing jibes about 2012’s primary Primary. Only, sorry. Not going to happen. Can’t be done. NH is so… over and done with. Day before yesterday. Such archaic news, you probably read about it in some ancient medium like a broadsheet gazette with sepia toned daguerreotypes.

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Another year is almost in the books. We’ve almost made it all the way around the sun again and a lot has happened, some good, some bad and some so ugly that Medusa herself would fall down dead from terror if she were face to face with them. But we’re not Medusa; we’re citizens so it’s our responsibility, pleasure, honor and calling to do just that. We are obligated to stand up to the powerful and for principle in the face of civic violence and evil. We are charged with that most sacred of things in a democratic state. That we hold the powerful accountable and make what is just and right practical. It was not practical to end slavery or give women the vote. It was not practical to stop children from working in sweatshops or pass the New Deal. It was not practical to wage the Civil War or finance the Marshall Plan. It was simply just and light will prevail.

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The mad mud tossing between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney, the last two Republicans still standing, is quickly ramping up to levels not seen since the Agincourt catapults. The candidates and their surrogates are busy dredging up dirt with fleets of front loaders, personally wetting it down with outraged spittle and other anatomical fluids and its getting ugly out there folks. Not to mention- moist.

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It’s not every day when you get to see radically bad public policy run headlong into an epic media fail. When it does happen, the resultant collision leaves the general public looking like it went ten rounds with world’s best heavy weight and ends with in guys in neat Armani suits leaving with a bagful of the public’s money. That’s what’s happening in Springfield right now, where the CME Group and Sears are orchestrating a multi-million dollar armed robbery of the state.

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Two days ago there was another “historic” election. Progressive candidates did well; progressive movements stopped an anti-labor law in Ohio that stripped people of collective bargaining and an ironically named Personhood law that makes women, actual people slaves of the state to defend zygotes, who suddenly would become people just like corporations. The Anti-Immigrant firebrand Russell Pearce was recalled for his extremism. Pundits are already parsing like a politician caught in a sexual harassment scandal about what this means.

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One of the worst things about existing under the heel of a corporate mafia boss who longs to become a super-villain is the shocking regularity that he attempts to drive wedges between people who are really in the same sinking boat he’s setting on fire. Yesterday our angry marmoset of a Mayor gave a press conference where he once again made it clear that he is an enemy of all working people in the City of Chicago with pensions and healthcare. That starts with all union workers, who have been told that there will be no living wages and if he can help it, no union jobs at O’Hare or Midway. This war on workers also includes city workers that were reminded by our doll-like Mayor that he was elected to look after the interests of taxpayers not city workers. Huh, here I was thinking that City workers were taxpayers and that if they became unemployed that they would become an additional burden on the system… or is the idea that the Mayor defunds the system so they just become destitute and willing to work for the sor

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From the start Mayor Emanuel has made it clear that his take on public policy is likely to take the “public” right out of the title. He’s also shown an uncanny knack for picking people who truly make you believe that he is a mob boss who desperately wants to metastasize into a super villain. That being the case our job is to stop him making that transformation and casting the Earth into the Sun. His transition team featured a legislator turned lobbyist who had to leave for ethical/legal reasons, the front guy for the worst Daley Administration corruption, a corrupt bureaucrat at the CHA, an investment banker who still thinks that commoditized mortgages aren’t necessarily a bad idea and a police officer-chef whose best quality is clearly loyalty. This led to a financial team reads like a who’s who of the brilliant financial mindset that ran the country off the fiscal cliff and the education team looks like the kind of folks that are on board with the movie Waiting for Superman…

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We have a Mayor who is perpetually running for office by offering up under-powered, sometimes union-busting and always substance light ideas while always reducing the capacity of the targeted city agency to deliver its services and as a bad as all that sounds it gets worse when you realize that one of the casualties are Chicago’s children. One of the Mayor’s favorite bogey men is the unnamed bureaucrat who is holding down a pension, sucking up resources and not delivering services. So when I read that the Chicago Public School (CPS) bureaucracy is eliminating 200 jobs it made me wonder where those jobs were coming from and how would those cuts impact the capacity of the CPS to deliver education to the city’s children. I figured someone should be worried about how cuts hurt education because to paraphrase the Mayor: My kids are not going to Chicago schools because that would not be the best thing for their education.

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If you’ve been following diminutive Mayor around town you’ve seen him stand up in front of some huge piece of cardboard with check marks on it. The Mayor then claims victory on some campaign promise or incredible reform, engages in some gratuitous union bashing, typically of the sort where he is actively lying about something and then disappears into a phalanx of bodyguards. Since our crack Chicago Stenographer Corps rarely ever investigates or actually challenge the checked off boxes and God forbid give us any kind of context for what sort of public policy the checked box might mean; I think it high time we stop treating Mayor Emanuel’s activities in the city like he’s coaching a football team and start acting like he’s making public policy.

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The talks between the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Teacher’s Union (CTU) have broken down. If you have been paying any attention to the news this should not surprise you because the Mayor has been acting like a rabid marmoset in a silk suit in regards to teachers attacking them at every turn. Do not be misled by the fact that media is fixated on pay raises and budget numbers. If we had a surplus and Mayor Emanuel could be advocating for public policies that would create one, he would be doing exactly the same thing. He would because this isn’t about a paltry 4% pay raise. Mayor Emanuel is a corporate guy. Corporations are top down entities where the CEO is a king, his officers are nobles and their employees have no power but the power to obey.

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The Emanuel Administration has not been on the job six months yet and there have been is three polls done either on behalf of his Administration or done by his administration. Predictably the media is either seizing on or brushing aside how much the poll costs or thinking that the poll reads like tea leaves as to what the Emanuel Administration has in mind for the city. Both approaches are patently wrong. It doesn’t matter how much it costs because Mayor Emanuel still remains the man with more money than God and more connections than Satan. The questions in the poll do not tell us anything new about what the Emanuel Administration plans to do. Same old plan. Slash city services. Put the hammerlock on unions to reduce their capacity to protect workers or demand wages. Privatize public assets. Pave the way for multi-national corporations to act more freely. Reduce the capacity of public city departments to provide city services to make it more possible to privatize their functions. Nothing to see here folks, mo

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One of the hallmarks of the Emanuel Administration is that it can only exist by pitting ordinary citizens against each other so that we never realize that everything he does transfers more of our money and public resources to his campaign investors in the private sector. First he was focused on getting parents to turn on teachers and if you want to get a sense of where the Mayor’s heart lies in regards to the little people… us, here’s mindset. http://preaprez.wordpress.com/2011/07/09/heres-the-juicy-part/. Listen to how Jonah Edelman sounds and what he’s saying and understand that a guy who thinks exactly like that guy is now in charge of the whole city and that he worked with this guy to kick your kid’s teacher right in face and plans to keep kicking them in the faces until they are working for who can say how much less if there are even any of them on the city payroll in twenty years.

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