Another collection of dispatches from Somebody Nobody Asked ™, America's pre-eminent unsolicited advice columnist.
Dear Gov. Pat Quinn:
Your posse, like every good posse, needs a "no" person — a man or woman deputized to speak skeptically about the whims that turn into notions that mutate into plans and programs in your administration.
Evidence suggests you don't have one. Exhibit A is Squeezy the Pension Python, the cartoon character you and your yes-people recently came up with to dramatize the need for lawmakers to reform the state's retirement systems.
Inevitably, critics mocked Squeezy as juvenile — a Walt Disney take on a Stephen King problem. But that's not what's wrong with the campaign
It's not an inherently bad idea to use imagery and metaphor to focus attention on an issue, particularly a complex issue such as the critical underfunding of our public pensions. But you have to pick the right images and proper metaphors.
Your "no" person, if you had one, would have told you that our pension system isn't at all like a huge, wicked snake that needs to be killed. It's much more like an emaciated barnyard animal that needs to be fed — Bossie the Starving Pension Cow.
Bossie's ribs are showing and she's about to go dry because for years, Farmer Madigan and a changing cast of hired hands have been taking the grain that was supposed to go in her trough and using it to bake extra loaves of bread for themselves.
But now the entire farm is broke, even the seed corn has been gobbled up, and there's no agreement on how to fatten up ol' Bossie so she'll be able to give enough milk again.
Tell the citizens how you want to feed the cow, governor, and maybe they'll fight for you instead of laugh at you. Even a "no" person would say yes to that plan.
Dear Ald. Sandi Jackson:
Don't even think about it.
Tend to your children and your husband, Jesse Jackson Jr., in this time of crisis, and ignore those urging you to run for the U.S. House seat from which he resigned Wednesday.
Not only does your family need a few months out of the spotlight to begin healing, but also the additional media scrutiny during a campaign isn't likely to be kind to you. If federal prosecutors end up formally alleging that your husband misused campaign funds, as news reports suggest they will, the questions will be relentless: What did you know and when did you know it? How, aside from the $5,000 a month the campaign paid you to be a "consultant," did you benefit from any of these supposed diversions?
You've been an absentee alderman for your constituents in the 7th Ward. Don't be an absentee spouse and parent.
Dear Chicago Transit Authority President Forrest Claypool:
Whether the proposed increases in the price of city bus and rail passes in your new budget amount to fare hikes, as riders will feel them, or simply "reductions in the discount" offered to those who purchases passes, as you like to put it, you should adjust them so they don't hit poor people the hardest.
The price of a 30-day pass is slated to increase to $100 from $86; to $3.33 per day from $2.87 — that's a 16 percent boost.
The price of a 7-day pass will increase to $28 from $23; to $4 per day from $3.28 — that's a 22 percent boost, or 72 cents more per day.
Now, who would buy a 7-day pass when a 30-day pass would save them 67 cents a day? The occasional tourist and short-timer, sure. But in most cases it will be those working folks who can't come up with $100 at one shot and so must pay in weekly installments that are becoming ever more costly (the current 14 percent penalty will become a 20 percent penalty under your plan).
