Hizzoner Declares New Golden Age

Of Crappy Jobs for Marginal People!

(h/t Frank Chow for breaking in on my debauchery to tip me to the story)

From the Tribune:

Daley calls ending impasse on Wal-Mart a 'priority'
Mayor wants retailer, unions and aldermen to find common ground

By John Byrne and Hal Dardick

Tribune reporters

December 17, 2009

Wal-Mart stores offer a rare opportunity to create jobs in a city desperate for work, Mayor Richard Daley said Wednesday, turning up the heat in the fight over expanding the retailer's presence in Chicago.

Union leaders have met privately with aldermen in recent days to try to agree on what wages and benefits Wal-Mart would have to offer for organized labor to stop its fight against the company. Aldermen sensitive to the union case have refused to pave the way for new stores after approving just one in 2004 for the West Side. Ending the Wal-Mart impasse is "a priority coming up," Daley said.

After the City Council meeting, Daley called on aldermen, the community, the unions and Wal-Mart "to sit down and come up with some common ground as quickly as possible."

But significant obstacles remain.

Chicago Federation of Labor President Dennis Gannon expressed frustration that Wal-Mart executives have not participated in the talks. Wal-Mart spokesman John Bisio said the company won't negotiate on wages and benefits.
...

Up until October 2, 2009, Da Mare had one-and-only-one, big-time jobs program.

It was called "The Olympics".

He went 100% all-in on it, going so far as to declare that, if we didn't get it, there was nothing that could save the Great City from collapsing into a vast hobo jungle hell ruled by knife-wielding gangs of superrats. Or something. Da ‘Lympics were gonna make all of his friends crazy-pirate-rich, with enough overflow dribbling out of that Deep Tunnel-sized hog-trough to hire a bunch of people and buy a lot of forgiveness.

But it was not to be.

Of course there are other, viable paths back to rebuilding Chicago's middle class, but they’re all boring, requiring years of plodding patience and consisting of a lot of invisible, unglamorous battles won in little rooms and factory floors, over bad coffee and stale donuts. None of them are big, whiz-bangy and sexy enough to attract Da Mare's jaded, imperial attention.

A mistake Chicago voters and reporters make over and over again is that Hizzoner is not a man of the middle class; he is, at heart, a feudal lord and plutocrat.

And a damned petulant, tantrum-prone one at that.

He is a True Believer in the Chicago School/Radical Downsizing/Bubble Economics cult of the last 20 years, and his long-term vision for the City always looked far too much like a Dubai By The Lake, ruled by real estate and banking moguls and built on the shifting sands of a hotel, convention, barista and money-manager-driven "service" economy.

If he can't cut a Big Ribbon in front of it or put fireworks, a hundred teevee cameras and a ten-mile-long parade behind it, he ain't interested. And so when the Big Shiny Thing fails, we've got nothing in reserve. And instead of a coherent industrial and urban policy,

we get WalMart. (h/t Blue Gal for the timely graphic awesomeness)


Of course, to be fair, WalMart is succeeding because it is targeting neighborhoods that haven't had any serious money or political capital spent on their grave economic and social problems in at least the last 20 years. Neighborhoods that have been cheated. So while Liberals like me may whine righteously about the predations of WalMart, if I'm living in an economic wasteland that offers me no genuine alternatives other than real-albeit-crappy jobs and another generation of empty promises...I'll be taking the jobs. Every fucking time.

To be even more fair, perhaps someone other than cranky, little bloggers might want to take note of the fact that you-know-who

-- friend to CEOs, Presidents and Princes of Industry -- has been the undisputed Overboss of Chicago for those 20 years during which economic foundation of Chicago was being replaced with cotton candy, and the neighborhoods that WalMart is now targeting were being systematically screwed.