the city coucil dog and pony show.

[mopinko]

cross posted from election reform.

first let me say what a pleasure it was to see jack blaine, ceo of sequoia usa, squirm in his seat, and be made fun of in the chicago city hall chambers last friday. the actual ownership, directorship, and control of the company was the source of the most pointed questions. including pointing out that all the directors of the parent corporate shell listed the same 2br boca raton house as their residence when they incorporated in delaware. blaine pretended ignorance so many times that one alderwoman said she thought he belonged to "the secret brotherhood of i don't know." he was under oath, and he lied his ass off.
second, let us all give a round of applause, as we politely did in the chamber, for alderman bernie stone, longest serving member of the council (iirc), who blasted the debacle of a primary, and said "we should go back to pencil and paper. i have seen some very long ballots, including the infamous 'bed sheet ballot' (me-'68? '72? something like that) which was counted by hand, and finished by 1 am. the more technical they make the process, the more cumbersome it becomes. i say, just go back to pencil and paper." go bernie.
other than that, tho. there is not too much good to say. i think it is one of the first rules of politics that if you are serious about a hearing, you do not schedule it on friday. this is doubly true in chicago, where our alderman are technically only part time, and if they are at work on friday, it is usually in their home offices. nonetheless, about a dozen were there for at least part of the proceedings. only 3 stuck around until testimony from citizens at the end, 2 being the chairs of the committees that called the meeting. thank you to danny soliz, the one who stuck it out, and seemed to have some grip of what the problem is.
alderman told many tales of precincts STILL not reported, all were upset about having to stay up so late on election night. all heard many horror stories of machine malfunction, paper jams, all the usual complaints. 14% of precincts in the city did not report on election day. there was a lot of finger pointing, and blame on "human error" and "lack of training" bull crap.
blaine, especially, insisted that the machine were fine, it was lack of training.
really, the bottom line, tho, is this- this was about the city embarrassing/punishing the county. all politics is local, and in cook county, it goes like this- the city of chicago makes up the bulk of cook county. the city has a boe, which runs city elections, and is headed by langdon neal. the county clerk runs county elections. neal also testifies, and was raked over the coals for cooperating with the county. he explained the situation that they were in re hava. he said he was nostalgic for the days of pregnant chads, and had fought to keep the punch cards. but with a deadline looming both to comply with hava, and not loose the $25M that came with it, they chose what they felt was the lesser evil. there were repeated questions about lobbyists or "contacts" that were never answered.
all in all, no one was really asking the right questions, no one really played too much hardball, and everyone seemed to accept that it was "human error". it was a dog and pony show, it let the chicago media painted the tinfoil hat on us all. they had to do something, this was it, end of story, i fear.