School proximity restrictions about politics more than public safety

The political reporter-type person in me always found humorous the laws that were meant to restrict proximity to a school or church – usually based on the concept that certain individuals or businesses have no business locating hear the youthful or the overly-holy amongst us.

BERRIOS: Name in news despite himself

No strip clubs or dive taverns across the street from a church or convent (remember that bar in west suburban Stone Park that ultimately lost its liquor license because the nuns nearby didn’t appreciate the drunken neighbors?).

THEY ALWAYS STRUCK me as something overly simplistic, and not always easy to enforce. Particularly if they come down to issues of “How close is too close?”

So I was intrigued by a pair of stories I stumbled across Friday.

One involved Gov. Bruce Rauner signing off on a long-standing change to state law that requires the General Assembly to approve amendments to the state’s Liquor Control Law for every instance for every instance where alcohol is served within 100 feet of a church or school.

Now, municipal officials will have the authority to issue exemptions. No more having to get the legislative types who, theoretically, ought to be preoccupied with bigger issues instead of worrying about where taverns are located in the neighborhoods.

THERE ALSO WAS a Chicago Sun-Times report about the company that oversees parking of cars for various public events at privately-owned lots.

In the instance that has the newspaper all worked up, people attending ballgames at Wrigley Field are parking their cars in, amongst other places, a lot that is part of the Inter-American School property two blocks away on Waveland Avenue.

The “controversial” part is that the Blk & Wht Valet LLC employed an individual to work at that lot who has a criminal record for sex offenses – and part of his penalty is that he is required to list himself as a sex offender, which limits the places where he can be.

RAUNER: Giving local officials more control

And as the Sun-Times chose to phrase it, their reporters found the employee in question at work, “with kids swinging on the monkey bars behind him.”

FOR THE RECORD, that employee has since been fired from his job, although it seems the company may wind up losing its contract for claims they didn’t do an adequate background check on their employee.

Although the Sun-Times reports the company saying the worker in question didn’t indicate his criminal record on his job application. Which would put this incident in the category of a person with a record hoping it wouldn’t catch up with him.

In short, an incident where such restrictions aren’t the easiest thing to enforce. I suspect, however, this particular worker is going to think he’s the victim – yet another incident of “the system” working to keep him unemployed.

One thing that caught my attention is the political connections of the company that, basically, is using other peoples’ property to park cars near Wrigley, along with Guaranteed Rate Field and the United Center.

ONE OWNER IS the son-in-law of soon-to-be former Cook County Assessor Joseph Berrios (he’s married to former state Rep. Toni Berrios) and also is a grandson of a former Chicago Public Schools official with ties to the 11^th Ward Democratic Organization (a.k.a., the Daley family).

How tame is parking nearby?

By comparison, Rauner indicated his support of the state law change is meant to create greater local control, since he told the Chicago Tribune that many state legislators used the law to maintain a sense of local influence in their home neighborhoods.

After all, getting the legislator to support your measure would require a campaign contribution to the appropriate authority, with other legislators across the state sticking up for their colleagues even though they often knew nothing of the local situation.

So no matter how much people spew rhetoric about these laws somehow benefitting children and the public safety, in the end, they all come down to political concerns.

  -30-

Harvey needs to figure out how to continue offering public safety services

It will be interesting to see how suburban Harvey manages to keep its public safety services – as in police and fire – operating at a time when it can’t even pretend to have the money needed to pay for them.

Is Harvey really 'rising?'

Many of the financially-challenged municipalities that comprise the greater Chicago area have budgets that are primarily police and fire departments, with little else left for any of the amenities that might make for an interesting community in which a person would want to live, by choice.

BUT HARVEY HAS delved down to a lower level. It really doesn’t have money left to juggle around its budget so as to keep things running as usual.

That is why the south Cook County municipality is facing layoffs – some 18 firefighters and 13 police officers already have been let go, with more cuts likely to be made in coming days. That’s about half of the existing police and fire departments – which I’m sure already felt like they were understaffed.

Now I’m sure some people are going to think, “Who cares?” They don’t live in Harvey and may not know anyone who ever has. They may think this has little or no effect on them.

But on one level, it does. The reality is that suburban fire departments are all tied into each other. They offer assistance to each other.

Fewer officers will be wearing ...

MEANING ANY SHORTFALL in Harvey means that fire departments in surrounding areas will wind up picking up the slack. They’ll have to answer the calls for assistance that come out of Harvey, which could detract personnel who otherwise would be focusing on protecting their home communities.

I’ve already heard officials in those surrounding towns and villages say how they’re having their attorneys check into the law to see how obligated they are to respond to Harvey. Because I wouldn’t be surprised to learn Harvey figures its neighbors will fill the gap in providing firefighting services.

Meaning we’re bound to hear some accusations of selfish suburbs refusing to fulfill their end of public safety agreements. Although there are those who think it is Harvey refusing to meet its financial obligations that have brought its financial problems on itself.

... these emblems

For it seems that Illinois state government, in the form of state Comptroller Susana Mendoza, has withheld nearly $1.5 million in assorted state funds that Harvey theoretically was entitled to.

THE HARVEY POLICE Pension Fund filed a lawsuit, and a court ordered money withheld, because the city hasn’t been making the payments that ensure its future police retirees will have their retirement plans covered.

The suburb’s Fire Pension Fund is planning to take similar legal action to ensure that the city eventually provides the funding it was supposed to do.

Which, of course, means that people aligned with long-time Mayor Eric Kellogg are now more than willing to blame Mendoza for the problem, while others will say it is Kellogg who’s to blame for Harvey’s financial struggles.

If you get the impression that a situation has evolved in which everybody is blaming everybody else, and that nobody is willing to take responsibility for the very real problem that has developed, that would be the one absolute truth.

This vision of Harvey is a long-distant memory, if not fantasy for modern residents

SO WHAT’S GOING to become of this situation? I fear it will be nothing.

Because Harvey has become one of those communities that many people are more than willing to pay little attention to. They may think of it solely as the place where the one-time Dixie Square mall sat vacant for some three decades before it was finally torn down – and may be better remembered for being used in a scene from The Blues Brothers that made it look better on film than it ever did in real life.

Harvey has become a community where some people can talk about a history in which it was an intriguing blue-collar community, but one that has devolved in recent decades to the point where modern-day residents have no recollection of “the good ol’ days.”

They think a community lacking in the basic services that usually define “quality of life” is the norm. In which case, they may think the lack of police and fire is somehow acceptable. Which is the saddest commentary of all.

  -30-

Armed school teachers – a warped idea whose time has arrived? Let’s hope not!

As one who follows political debate, one of the realities is that ideas once considered absolutely ludicrous can eventually become a part of law. Which is why people opposing nonsense have to be vigilant and never presume they’ve “won” a fight.

Nonsense image is some peoples' reality

That is the thought popping into my head as I hear the continued debate in the wake of the school shooting in Florida that left 17 dead.

BECAUSE SOME OF the people feeling the need to argue against sensible regulation of firearms are pushing a line of thought that strikes me as blatantly absurd – arming the school teachers.

The premise being that when someone comes into a classroom or other situation in the presence of school children to pose a threat, the teacher can whip out their pistol and kill the s-o-b. Thereby saving children’s lives.

The part that amazes me are those individuals who think this is some new concept – an original idea that must now be imposed for our overall protection.

Which, of course, it isn’t. This idea gets brought up following every incident involving school children; as thought its proponents are hoping we’ll now be inclined to see life in their own loopy way of viewing things.

PERSONALLY, THE FIRST time I ever recall someone suggesting the arming of school children was nearly 30 years ago.

It was following the 1988 incident in the North Shore suburbs involving Laurie Dann, a mentally unstable woman who had her own little rampage that included – at one point – entering an elementary school classroom while armed with a pistol.

The crackpots of three decades ago argued that Dann’s rampage could have been brought to a quicker end if the teacher had been armed and merely shot her dead.

Armed faculty idea as old as Laurie Dann

Actually, the teacher in that particular incident did try to defend her students, and in fact managed to disarm Dann of one of her weapons – which may have lessened the eventual body count (one dead, five wounded). The idea of a gunfight involving a teacher wasn’t necessary.

PERSONALLY, I WISH I hadn’t had to recall the Dann debacle – which later was found to include attempts to poison people across the North Shore. She was a mentally disturbed person in her own right.

Although I wonder if the people who seriously talk about wanting to provide school teachers with firearms are even more twisted.

That includes President Donald J. Trump, who this week said he would want teachers with military or special training backgrounds to be armed and prepared to shoot back in such incidents.

I think all that would accomplish is having even more bullets flying through the air in a crisis situation – and the likelihood that one of the teacher’s stray bullets would wind up taking out a student.

TRUMP TRIES ARGUING that “sicko shooters” would be deterred from attacking school situations because they’re “cowards.”

I’d argue that anybody inclined to bring a firearm into such a situation most likely is mentally unstable and isn’t going to be deterred by anything or anyone. Which means they’re situations where the “cowboy” mentality is the one most likely to cause a situation to escalate into a bloodbath.

TRUMP: Probably thinks he originated idea

But this idea is one that doesn’t seem to want to go away. The knuckleheads amongst the ideologues in our society seem determined to cling to this concept of a pistol-packing school teacher hoping the day comes when they’ll be capable of pushing it through from a fantasy into reality.

Those of us with sense need to maintain a vigilance against the idea; if we’re going to truly maintain a semblance of a safe and sane society.

  -30-

How important is your employment? Did you bear the brunt of the cold?

I was among the masses Monday, or so it seems. I got to work from home because of the frigid weather.


Frosty view of the neighborhood

I didn’t venture any farther than half-a-block from my humble abode, and even that was just for a few minutes so I could take a few photographs to document the conditions – which are hard to illustrate since the snowfall is past and the story of the day on Monday was the temperature that you felt – not saw!

NOW I DO some work for a daily newspaper. Although it turned out that all of the assignments I thought I was going to chase were for events that wound up being cancelled due to the cold.

I spent a significant chunk of my day working the telephone and talking to an assortment of police and fire officials, Public Works crews and various elected officials to figure out how people were reacting.

The consensus seems to be that people were so thoroughly warned about the weather that they were prepared. And in many cases, they didn’t even bother to go to work.

Which means most of those who were working were literally those police officers and firefighters who HAD to be on hand in the event of an emergency. That, and the Public Works crews who were on call throughout the weekend in order to keep streets passable.

ALTHOUGH THOSE WHO got a glimpse of the part of the Chicago area that lies on the other side of the Illinois-Indiana border got to see images of impassable roads, and word that the commuter trains to the Loop didn’t run at all.

Some of us worked Monday, and some of us didn’t.

My snow-encrusted car that didn't run properly before

Technically, I did some work. Although I was fortunate to be able to do it from within the confines of my humble abode.

As opposed to my brother, Chris, who works at a Home Depot store and wound up having to put in an eight-hour shift as the store was open for business.

 

Neighbors won't picnic anytime soon

I’D LIKE TO think that people interested in a home remodeling project could have put it off.

I wonder how much of the business was from people who didn’t think ahead of time and suddenly found themselves in need of a specific tool in order to make an emergency repair that otherwise would have caused their lives to be unbearable.

And for what it's worth, my brother did wind up having to spent part of his working day outdoors. "It's cold as (a certain municipality in Michigan that some also equate with eternal damnation) out here," is what he told me when I spoke to him briefly in mid-day.

Somebody lost a glove!

Although I do know he has said in the past that the store itself is kept so warm (even in the summer months) that he can build up a sweat in winter-time when he works indoors.

MY SYMPATHIES GO out to those who got stuck having to work outside, and where no amount of tuques, face masks, heavy mittens or gloves, along with layers of sweatshirts underneath a down jacket will keep them warm.

Particularly if their employment duties aren’t so much to keep us safe as to keep some chain corporation’s financial bottom line up to a certain level deemed necessary for a CEO somewhere to have an adequate profit WITHOUT having to lay off more people.

Yes, the chill of an Arctic-type winter (supposedly, the wind chill factor made Monday feel like a 45-below day) has put me in a sarcastic mood. I’d probably be even worse if I had actually had to deal with a chill in my fingers as I tried to take notes of the sayings of our U.S. senators – who were supposed to gather in the Pullman neighborhood to breathe life into now-former Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s desire to turn the one-time railcar factory and surrounding neighborhood into a national park.

Envision the hazards when those icicles start falling

 

But they cancelled (as did a few other assignments), and I got to stay indoors (and yes, I literally am wearing a particularly comfortable pair of pajamas as I write this commentary).

MY SYMPATHIES EXTEND to those who had to work regardless of the weather conditions.

Except for, perhaps, the U.S. Postal Service worker who was supposed to make the trip to my residence on Monday. As far as I can tell, he never showed up -- despite all the rhetoric about "Neither snow nor rain nor heat" keeping postal workers "from their appointed rounds."

Which was an issue for me, since there literally was supposed to be a "check in the mail" that I hoped to get Monday.

  -30-

Baseball coming back, even if it's not quite in the same form as we’d like

The Caribbean Series stoked the fire in my belly for baseball, and the fact that workouts are taking place now is keeping the flame a smoulderin’ to the point where I can say I can’t wait for April to come about.

I can't wait to see the scoreboard again live, even if its fireworks and lights display isn't anywhere near as intimidating as the old ballpark's scoreboard was. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Forget “March Madness.” I want to get out to the ballpark this season to see live baseball being played professionally.

AND I’M NOT up to waiting ‘til July or August (the latter of which is when the New York Yankees will make their annual visit to Chicago). A part of me wants to sit in the chill of April and see a ballgame. People who live in the south or west don’t know what their unnatural weather cycles are depriving them of.

All of this has me scouring any information source I can find for any tidbits of information about what 2013 and beyond will be like.

Which is how I happened on Monday to stumble on a pair of stories that make me realize just how much times change, even if certain elements remain in some form.

Coasters may be completely obsolete next year

Take the Chicago Cubs, who in the minds of so many Chicagoans are aligned with WGN, both television and radio, to the point that whenever a Chicago White Sox game airs on Channel 9, I know of some people who rant and rage that the Sox should go find their own station and stay off the Cubs’ station.

SO HOW ARE those people going to react come next season, IF it turns out that the Chicago Tribune got it right on Monday when they reported there’s a chance that the Cubs will not renew a contract that goes back to 1948. You’ll probably have to have some form of pay television in order to see the Cubs bumble their way through another season.

I wouldn’t pay good money for it, but I know many people who would.

The Tribune report indicates that Cubs ownership is being vague and refusing to say much of anything, other than hints about how they’d like to have their own station to broadcast their games and market their product and bleed dry for as much money as they could get.

Heck, when Tribune Co. owned the Cubs, they turned them into the big programming source that they made so much money off of – no matter how bad the ball club played.

NOW WE’RE LIKELY to get a Chicago Cubs’ channel, similar to the Yankees and their YES Network that gives people all the baseball-related programming they could ever dream of.

So no more bothering with Channel 9, which may well revert back to what it once was – a place where you could watch all those “Andy Griffith Show” reruns – except that in the modern era of television programming, there are many channels broadcasting Don Knotts’ “Barney Fife” character carrying his lone bullet.

Not that this is the only change. It seems some fans don’t have a clue that being at a ballgame can be a risky adventure.

For the Times of Northwest Indiana newspaper reported Monday about an Indiana Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the Gary Southshore Railcats (the ball club owned by the family of one-time Republican politico Al Salvi) – who were being sued by a fan who on Opening Day in 2009 was hit in the face by a foul ball that went into the stands.

MOST FANS I have ever known are aware of that tiny print on the ticket that says you should be wary of foul balls – which are rarely softly arching pop ups that you can catch barehanded.

While I sympathize with the fan who had several bones in her face fractured and also suffered some vision loss, I’m not surprised to learn that the Hoosier court rejected the lawsuit, saying that baseball fans ought to know enough about the game to protect themselves.

Although it has me wondering if the day will come eventually when some ballclub is going to feel compelled to extend the backstop screen from just behind home plate to all the way around the foul lines.

I was once in a minor league ballpark in Peoria (not their current stadium, but the old one) where there was such a screen, and it gave me the sense that the fans were somehow being caged in away from the playing field.

CERTAINLY NOT THE ideal for someone who has shelled out good money (and significant amounts, if it is a major league ballgame) for the live experience.

Perhaps the people who want such an environment are the ones who ought to stay home and watch the ballgames on television. Although they’d probably wind up filing a lawsuit claiming they can’t find the new Cubs’ television channel amongst the hundreds of channels that already are out there.

  -30-

Are rigidly-secure schools really safer?

It never fails to amaze me just what has become of our school facilities these days.

The layers of security that are in place to ensure that all movement in the building is monitored and that no one who doesn’t have to be there is in there for any longer than necessary creates such an oppressive atmosphere.

IT REALLY MAKES me thankful that I don’t have to go to school any longer (I’m coming up on 30 years since high school come May). Because I wonder how current students manage to cope with the nonsense.

Except that they’re all so young they don’t know anything different. They probably presume that this is the way things are supposed to be. It all makes me wonder what view of life we’re giving them!

Just this week (in my duties for one of the suburban daily newspapers) I had to visit a high school, where I managed to create a minor security scare.

For a school board session that was scheduled to have the doors open at 6 p.m., I arrived at 5:50 p.m. I asked one security officer exactly which building on the campus the session was being held in, and when I went there, I found one unlocked door (out of six).

SO I WENT in.

But it seems that another security guard (it was a private security firm hired by that high school district) wasn’t aware that the one door was unlocked.

So I wound up having to explain myself, and ultimately had to go back outside for a few minutes UNTIL the hour of 6 O’Clock (as they’d say in the Illinois Legislature) actually arrived according to that guard’s watch.

I have been in enough school buildings to know the “check-in” procedures – which usually involve letting the principal’s staff know you’re there. Although sometimes, schools want to make it a little tougher to conduct business with them on their grounds.

I KNOW THE two high schools I attended (I transferred when my family moved after my first year) have all these checkpoints for outside visitors. One literally has to keep following the path of security people in order to get to where one needs to go.

It’s almost enough to make me detest school buildings in a way that I never did when I was actually a student. Perhaps all this is meant to make me more thankful that portion of my life is complete.

Now I know some people are going to argue with me that all this is somehow essential – and perhaps should have been in place when I was a student some four decades ago – in order to ensure safety.

They’re going to cite the sporadic incidents where someone manages to get a weapon (or a few) into a school building and manages to inflict significant amounts of bodily harm.

ALTHOUGH THOSE INCIDENTS usually turn into events where flaws in other laws manage to come out into the open. Whether it is too-easy access to the firearms or too-loose monitoring of people with potential mental health problems, the idea of a school building as a fortress is usually a secondary (if not irrelevant) factor.

It would almost be like saying that the Chicago White Sox failed as an organization on the field because the quality of the pizza they serve at concessions stands is mediocre-to-lousy. True enough, but not the reason they played so badly the last month of the season.

Although having stated that, I must recall one moment from when I was in high school.

It was my final year and I was in the “newsroom” of the student newspaper along with other “staffers” when an adult male showed up, sat down at a desk and refused to say much of anything – except to tell us to mind our own business.

SOMEONE MANAGED TO call for security, and a guard did come to take him away – only for him to return shortly with a pass from the principal allowing him to be with us. The image I have of a guy with hair in a mullet and disco-like clothes – about six years after they were stylish – ought to be enough to give anybody the creeps.

It took about an hour for us to find out what he wanted – to place advertising in the paper for his “product,” a hollowed-out tube meant to look like a pen. The theory was that you could hide your “crib notes” in the tube while cheating on tests.

When we wouldn’t take his money (if I recall correctly, the ad would have cost about $10), he got huffy, but left without further incident.

An awkward moment, to be sure. But I’m really not sure that having all the modern-day checkpoints would have prevented it from happening, or made me any safer on a daily basis back then.

  -30-

What is safety? What is politicking?

I have no objection to regulatory measures meant to protect the public safety. There are times when it takes the presence of government to ensure that things are done properly because a business might merely want to believe that measures cut into their profit margin.

Yet learning that Gov. Pat Quinn earlier this week signed a bill into law that some want to think will make youth soccer programs safer makes me think that not all measures mean much.

THIS PARTICULAR MEASURE, which has taken on the name “Zach’s Law,” isn’t likely to change a thing. I don’t believe we’re any safer now than we were before.

Yet some politicians were able to use the death of a boy to drum up a controversy that they then used to score political points for themselves.

This particular law says that soccer goals now sold in Illinois must be designed in ways that make them tip-resistant. Or else they have to be anchored to the ground upon which they sit during matches.

Considering that many soccer programs are using open fields that serve multiple purposes (not all of which are athletic), it is just a reality of life that the goalposts are not permanently mounted onto the field.

THE “HOME” TEAMS often bring the goals with them, carry them out onto the field prior to the match – then have to remove them once the match is over. Some might say that this merely adds a little more time to the preparation and cleanup for a match. I’m skeptical.

I also can’t help but notice that the new law will only apply to goals sold once the law takes effect – which is on Aug. 2, 2012. Does this mean athletic programs need to hold off on purchasing a pair of goals for the next year?

Because the idea of tip-resistant goalposts won’t apply until then.

Maybe sporting goods suppliers will have to hold significant markdowns to sell off the goals they now have in stock. What I suspect will happen is that there will remain for quite some time goalposts in use in Illinois to which the new law will simply not apply.

IT’S NOT A legal loophole. It’s more like a sieve!

Yet political people were eager to vote for this measure when it came before the General Assembly during this spring session. All because it had a sad story attached to it.

The story of Zach.

Zachary Tran was a 6-year-old from suburban Vernon Hills who died in 2003 after a goal tipped over during a team practice and landed on top of him. Considering that I remember how small my own nephew and his teammates were when they were six-year-olds playing youth soccer, I can easily comprehend how severe the injuries can be.

THE 186-POUND goal most definitely weighed more than the boy.

Yet I can’t help but think of what happened to Zach as being the ultimate fluke accident that cannot truly be anticipated, and to which no amount of legislation could ever protect us from.

What happened to Zach actually reminds me of a death over a decade ago in the central Illinois town of Towanda. It was during a youth baseball game in which a boy was hit by a pitched ball in the chest.

It was something about the exact moment the ball hit him, combined with the rhythm of his heartbeat, that caused the heart to stop beating when the ball hit his chest. Had either the ball or the heartbeat been off by a fraction of a second, the beaning in the chest wouldn’t have been fatal.

I GUESS WE’RE lucky that no political person tried to use that incident to push for laws regulating youth baseball equipment even further than the regulations already call for.

Any politician who thinks that we are significantly safer now that “Zach’s Law” is in place (including the sponsoring state Rep. Carol Sente, D-Vernon Hills, and state Sen. Terry Link, D-Waukegan) is delusional. Or, they’re lying.

It bothers me when the images of cute kids get used by political people to try to create legislation to make themselves look more favorable.

Perhaps Link thinks that giving us “Zach’s Law” this spring overcomes the fact that he sponsored the casino expansion measure that, among its many provisions, ever-so-conveniently puts a casino in the 2,000-population town of Park City – which is little more than a couple of mobile home communities located in Link’s Senate district.

DON’T GET ME wrong. I don’t have a hang-up about Zach. I usually get offended anytime a bill takes on some child’s name – as though we’re supposed to feel guilty and ashamed of ourselves if we don’t back their overbearing bill that usually does little to change the practical reality of the law.

Such as down in Florida, where the people who demonize Casey Anthony are pushing for a bill known as “Caylee’s Law” – which would allow for felony charges against a parent if police believe the parent is not sufficiently cooperative with investigations into their missing children.

As though there aren’t already enough laws police can use to seek charges against those who don’t cooperate with their investigations. But voting for Caylee will be something that the Casey opponents will use to shame political people.

I’d like to think that somewhere, Zach and Caylee and every other child who has had his (or her) name appropriated for political purposes is looking down upon us, shaking their heads in disgust at the scene we have created.

  -30-

O’Hare still a focal point for nation, and the lessons we learn as a society

O'Hare International Airport has experienced physical changes since this 1960's postcard image. Yet it remains a place with an impact on the soul of the nation -- even when things occur at other airports.

It always seems to be about Chicago whenever airports get involved, even if it happens in some other city.

Chicago has always been a focal point for the nation’s aviation system, regardless of the mode of transportation. To this day, there are many of those hundreds of thousands of flights each year at O’Hare International Airport that involve people headed from one place to another – who make their connection here.

SO SHOULD IT be any shock that when controversial incidents occur involving airplanes, somehow Chicago will be involved.

One such incident took place at Reagan Airport near Washington, D.C. (I’ll bet the ideologues are wishing today that it were still known as National Airport), where it seems that an air traffic controller fell asleep on the job.

At least two flights headed for Reagan Airport wound up having to land without the assistance of someone in the control tower.

On the one hand, it means those were incredibly skilled pilots who managed to bring down their airplanes without causing commotion, a collision with another flight, or some other form of catastrophe.

BUT IT ALSO means that the people whose job it is to keep the various incoming flights under control were literally “asleep” at the wheel. And yes, one of those flights was one that originated from Chicago and was carrying 63 passengers to the nation’s capital.

I’m sure those people are now feeling a bit queasy to learn the lone control tower staffer wasn’t alert at the moment they were trying to land, and wound up having to contact Federal Aviation Administration officials at a facility about 40 miles from the airport, in order to receive any assistance whatsoever in trying to land.

That facility usually exists to keep small aircraft from getting anywhere near close to Reagan Airport, so as to make it easier for the control tower to guide aircraft in and out of the major airport for our nation’s capital.

For the record, the FAA is acting very offended by all this behavior. At least one person has been suspended, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has ordered at least two people to work at all times in the Reagan Airport control tower – including the overnight shfit.

NOW I’M NOT one who flies very often. Not that I have a fear of flying (I actually see it as being safer than riding in a car, since it is a lot easier for some seriously incompetent people to get driver’s licenses than to get a pilot’s license).

But I have to admit this moment makes me wary of the whole process. It’s like driving an automobile and not being sure if the traffic signals are going to be working properly. All it would have taken was one seriously incompetent pilot and this whole situation would have become a mess.

It would have been one that would have entangled our own city’s flights. Because just as much as the Internet makes us all one big world and shows how arbitrary our local boundaries are, aviation has just as much of an effect.

Another aviation story cropped up into the news on Thursday, and it too had a Chicago angle – even though the dateline for this particular incident was “DETROIT –.”

A MAN WITH sympathies to al-Qaida had a desire to make his political/religious/social statement by causing an explosion on board an airplane – specifically a commercial flight.

Yes, he considered pulling his devastating and deadly action on a flight out of Chicago – perhaps envisioning us getting all emotional over the sight of an airplane exploding in the skies just moments after leaving O’Hare. It sounds too similar to the explosion some 25 years ago of the Challenger space shuttle – the one that caused schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe’s name to be placed on school buildings across the country as a tribute in the years since.

But this particular activist/radical/terrorist (personally, a prefer the word “nutcase”) ran into a very real practicality in trying to pull off this scam. Flights involving Chicago were just too expensive.

He couldn’t’ afford the tickets that would have gained him access to the aircraft. So, he shifted his attention to Detroit, according to the Associated Press newswire service.

NOT THAT THE people of Michigan should be expecting to see this happen any time soon. The plot got thwarted. The individuals involved are now trying to figure out how to cope with federal criminal charges, while also achieving their ultimate goal of spiritual perfection over a nation of “infidels.”

And we are left trying to figure out where the next batch of nutcases who use religion as a disguise for the reactionary thought against western world society will try to strike next.

So perhaps we in Chicago should not relax too much. Maybe the next batch of people seeking to make a statement with violence will have a little bit more money to afford an airline ticket originating at O’Hare International or Midway airports.

  -30-

Supreme Court issues ruling against Chicago in legal case (no, not THAT one)

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled against Chicago city government in a case that will have national impact with the way local governments conduct themselves.

No, the high court did not rule on the case challenging the ban on firearms ownership within the city limits. Monday’s unanimous ruling relates to the fire department, which was sued by several African-American firefighters who took the written examination to qualify for promotions – only to have the city suddenly try to impose a higher score on the exam to actually qualify.

THAT RESULTED IN most of the firefighters who got promotions during the 1990s being white people.

Those black firefighters had filed their lawsuit in U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, and along the way it was tossed out by the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago on the grounds that the firefighters waited too long before beginning their legal fight. The law says such a lawsuit must be filed within 300 days of the act alleged to be improper.

Attorneys for the city argue that the first legal action was filed 430 days after the test results were announced. In short, the merits of the case were ignored because of a technicality – which is common in court fights.

But in issuing a unanimous ruling on Monday, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the high court that the lawsuit could be heard on its merits. They said that each promotion that relied on the test results extended the time period.

WHICH BASICALLY MEANS that Scalia found a technicality that allows the lawsuit to be resurrected from its death due to legal technicalities.

The end result is not that anybody is going to get promoted now. It merely means that the lawsuit can be brought up again in the courts at the Dirksen Building. Which means it will be years before anyone actually gets anything resembling financial compensation because they were denied a promotion.

It also means many more years of legal bills being incurred as the city has to resume its defense of the fire department’s decade-old conduct.

Now a part of me is discouraged that my home city is going to get hit with legal bills estimated to run into many millions of dollars. I’m sure that some politically-partisan people will find it hilarious that a Democratic-leaning city such as Chicago gets whacked with such high legal bills.

BUT I DO derive some pleasure out of the fact that this court ruling by the Supreme Court helps to ensure that a ruling eventually is made on the merits of the issue – which is just how relevant those written examinations ought to be when it comes to these public safety agency promotions.

Monday’s court ruling wasn’t a surprise, since reports from a few months ago when arguments were heard by the high court indicated that the justices publicly expressed their concerns about the city’s conduct.

What is involved in this case is the examination given to prospective fire department officers. Typically, anyone who scored 64 or better was considered to have “passed” the examination. But after the exam was given, city officials then imposed a higher standard of 89 – saying they were not likely to promote anyone who scored less than that, even though they techically passed the exam with a lower score.

The result of that change was that only 11 percent of firefighters who got promoted as a result of that examination were African-American (in a city where black people account for just over one-third of the total population).

TO MY SENSIBILITIES, this appears to be changing the rules in the middle of the process. So Scalia’s ruling that the lawsuit needs to be resurrected and heard in court would seem to be an obvious one.

But this case will tick off those people who were celebrating last year when the same Supreme Court ruled against New Haven, Conn., for the way in which they used test results to determine firefighter promotions.

In that city’s case, the fire department tried to ignore test results that would have resulted in a disproportionate share of white firefighters qualifying for promotion. The Supreme Court said that act was improper, and the kind of people who want to ignore racial and ethnic factors in hiring wanted to believe that they had achieved a major victory.

No more of this messing around with test results, which should be absolute – they say. If the end result is fewer black public safety officials, perhaps it is just evidence they weren’t qualified for the job.

THAT KIND OF narrow-minded logic is warped in that it ignores the harm that can be caused when a public safety agency doesn’t bear some resemblance to the people whom it is protecting.

Now, we have a case where black firefighters in Chicago are likely to have to receive some financial compensation (even though I’m sure the legal fees being wracked up will wind up consuming most of whatever financial judgment or settlement is ultimately approved to resolve this case).

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I don’t get it when it comes to motorcycle riders’ helmet opposition for kids

When I was about 13, I had an “uncle” (actually, my mother’s uncle, if you want to nitpick) who went through a phase of his life where he rode motorcycles.

There were times when my uncle would let me ride the bike. But the one “hard-and-fast” rule I recall was that my Uncle Sphinx was a stickler about was that I wore a helmet when I was on the bike.

CONSIDERING THE POTENTIAL power of a motorcycle and the fact that it is an “open-air” ride, I would have been too scared to get on board otherwise. Anybody who claims otherwise is either stupid, or lying.

Which is why I have a problem with the fact that the Illinois Senate on Thursday not only rejected a measure that would have required anybody under 18 who gets on board a motorcycle to wear a helmet, but that some legislators actually think that this is an issue of personal freedom being impinged upon – as though requiring a helmet to be worn by a minor is somehow evidence of a government telling its people what to do.

“This is the U.S.A., isn’t it,” asked state Sen. Gary Forby, a Democrat from Benton in Southern Illinois. “We do have a freedom, we do have a choice, don’t we?” Would the opponents of helmet laws change their stance if this helmet were mandated for all motorcycle riders?

I wish he were somehow kidding, but the fact is that such logic occasionally comes up during legislative debate when some rural legislator takes offense to a measure sponsored by someone from Chicago proper.

IN THIS PARTICULAR case, the bill was sponsored by state Sen. Donne Trotter, D-Chicago, who when he’s not a legislator works as an administrator at Stroger Hospital. His co-sponsors include state Sens. Kwame Raoul and Jacqueline Collins, all three of whom are from Chicago’s South Side.

Which means that this measure got caught up in the same rhetorical speel that occurs whenever a gun-related measure comes up.

It becomes the Chicago legislators against the rest of the state, with the lead of the opposition taken up by the rural legislators. It becomes one of the few bills of the spring session where rural Illinois will be predominant.

If it sounds like I’m saying the regional partisanship of Illinois manages to overcome common sense when it comes to the issue, you’d be correct.

TROTTER TRIED TO cite his experience working at a hospital in saying that increased helmet use would reduce the number of injuries caused in motorcycle accidents, which he said would ultimately save taxpayer dollars that have to be spent to provide medical treatment in cases where someone isn’t insured.

Not that anybody wanted to hear a cost-saving or lesser-tax argument. Regionalism was at stake. Personal pride for where someone comes from, which means this measure goes nowhere this year.

What I don’t get about this particular issue is the fact that we have many such laws that require people to impose restrictions on their children for their own good. I don’t see how this differs.

Should I have claimed my personal freedoms were being impinged upon every time I used my car to give my niece (who is now 7) a ride, and I had to comply with the state laws requiring that I strap her into a proper car seat (which now sits unused in the trunk of my car)?

FOR THAT MATTER, should I claim that it is “un-American” for someone to require me to wear a seat belt within my own automobile, and that it constitutes an illegal search every time that police decide to pull one of their surprise inspections and have a cop come over and stick his head inside to make sure that all seat belts are properly fastened?

I’m not going to argue those points, because I realize that I would sound downright stupid if I seriously tried to make those arguments. I’d be one of those knuckleheads with no clue about public safety who would deserve to be the butt of those jokes told by some people whose punch line is along the lines of motorcycle riders getting what they deserve when they are crippled because they didn’t have enough sense to wear a helmet.

This time, however, I don’t feel like turning the Illinois Senate’s boneheaded vote (19 for, 32 against) into some sort of morbid joke. This one manages to get under my skin to the point where I have to wonder what is wrong with a segment of our society.

I realize that part of the greatness of the personal freedoms offered by our society includes a “right” to be wrong. But there’s something about this particular version of “wrong” because it involves minors to the point where I wonder if it ought to be constituted as “un-American” in and of itself.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The Illinois Senate gave us yet another moment that we can analyze for years to come (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_d905047d-de0c-5d52-968f-27dfa197daec.html) when trying to figure out what kind of blank space exists between their ears.

The bill (http://ilga.gov/legislation/billstatus.asp?DocNum=2535&GAID=10&GA=96&DocTypeID=SB&LegID=49214&SessionID=76), and the vote (http://ilga.gov/legislation/votehistory/96/senate/09600SB2535_03182010_031000T.pdf).

Do the hard-core opponents of helmet laws think that Washington state officials are offering up (http://www.wsp.wa.gov/traveler/docs/equipmt/helmet.pdf) subversive information by telling us which helmets provide better safety features?

How will these tests be spun politically?

I’m sure there are some people who viewed the Supreme Court of the United States’ ruling last year concerning tests administered to firefighters trying to gain promotion as some sort of blow to the concept of “affirmative action.”

They want to believe that these tests are some sort of absolute that can be used. And if it turns out that these tests wind up producing higher ranks of firefighters and police officers that are more Anglo than the patrol ranks or of the population, that’s just the way it is.

AFTER ALL, THE best qualified are the ones who are passing these tests.

So I’m curious to see how these same people (the ones who deep down don’t want to have to acknowledge that the old way of picking public safety officials may very well be so flawed as to best be scrapped altogether) react to a court case now pending before the Supreme Court – one out of Chicago that could wind up costing our beloved home city millions of dollars.

All because the tests caused too many white people to get promoted, at the expense of “qualified” black firefighters.

The Chicago Tribune newspaper used its website Monday to report that hearings on the case appeared to indicate that the same Supreme Court that ruled 5-4 (with Justice Sonia Sotomayor on the losing end) in the case involving New Haven, Conn., firefighters had problems with the arguments being made by attorneys for Chicago who were trying to defend the use of the tests.

WHILE THIS IS just a reportorial observation and nothing will be definite until the high court actually issues a ruling, it would seem there are cases where the courts are willing to admit there are problems with the tests.

What is at stake in this new case is a test for Fire Department promotions given during the late 1990s. After some 26,000 people took that test, department officials said they would only consider hiring people who scored “89” or better – a much higher standard than had ever been applied before.

As it turned out, that produced a group of people who got promotions who were primarily white. Many of the black firefighters (about 6,000) who got scores that usually would have resulted in consideration for promotions wound up getting passed over.

The U.S. Solicitor General office had attorneys arguing on behalf of those who were challenging the test results, saying that Chicago city officials knew their handling of the test was discriminatory. NAACP attorneys were in agreement with that argument.

THE CITY’S CORPORATION Counsel got its day in court, with attorneys arguing on behalf of Chicago government that the use of such tests is necessary and that there is a time limit for people who wish to file legal challenges to such tests – a limit they claim most of those complaining failed to observe.

Personally, I know that latter point is one that many judges take seriously. I have seen many legal battles in my two-plus decades as a reporter-type person that ended unsuccessfully for the challenger because their legal paperwork did not comply with the letter of the law.

There are cases where the courts are more than willing to ignore an otherwise legitimate challenge because of a missed deadline or improperly-filed document.

But the Tribune report noted that justices, particularly Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were more concerned about trying to get to the substance of the argument.

IT WILL BE interesting to see what happens if the Supreme Court ultimately rules in a way that implies the tests were flawed. For that would force the issue back to the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois, where one of our city’s federal judges ultimately would have to decide just how much in compensation all those black firefighters who might otherwise have qualified for promotions are entitled to.

Like I wrote earlier, I find this case intriguing just because I’m sure so many people were convinced that the Supreme Court’s ruling last year was somehow a victory for those people who don’t want to have to take racial composition or concerns into account in public safety, or any area of public policy, I would think.

In that case, city officials in New Haven tried in 2003 to overturn test results when they came back “too white” (although some like to claim it is a “big deal” that one of those firefighters denied was Latino).

I would interpret this activity thus far as saying that it is simple-minded to think that race is no longer a factor in the way in which our society’s institutions operate. For those who want to think.

THOSE PEOPLE (MANY of whom probably thought Sarah Palin was downright hilarious earlier this month when she mocked Barack Obama’s “hope-y, change-y stuff” campaign theme of 2008) thought they had a “victory” that could allow their limited view of our society and racial balance to prevail.

I personally would find it hilarious if Chicago, in its legal defeat, wound up socking an uppercut to their view of how our society should operate.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Could Chicago’s legal defeat turn into a “victory” for people whose sensible view (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2010/02/supreme-court-chicago-black-firefighters-hiring-test-civil-rights.html) of our society should prevail?

People are still quibbling over (http://www.helium.com/debates/251643-did-the-supreme-court-rule-correctly-in-the-new-haven-firefighters-case/side_by_side) what significance should dominate in the New Haven, Conn., firefighters ruling by the Supreme Court.