...And a Father Runs Through It

Except for a brief and vivid interregnum composed collectively of the Bilandic (2 years), Byrne (4 years), Washington (4.5 awesome years), Orr (8 days) and Sawyer (1.5 years) administrations, for 42 out of the last 55 years, Chicago has seen a Daley on the Fifth Floor of City Hall. This is because the entire Chicago political apparatus has been set up to accomplish one goal; to keep someone named "Daley" on the Fifth Floor of City Hall until the Rapture.

That system has been ridiculously successful: The Daleys are wired into everything, up to and including Lollapalooza (from the indispensable Steve Rhodes):

"Ties between Lollapalooza promoters C3 Presents and attorney Mark Vanecko, a nephew of Mayor Richard M. Daley, run deeper than previously reported, and include a link to alcohol sales at the massive three-day music festival in Grant Park, according to public records and corporate filings," Jim DeRogatis reports for Vocalo.

"Although the liquor license for the concert is issued in the name of Parkways Foundation, the non-profit arm of the Chicago Park District, beer and hard liquor actually are sold to the crowd of as many as 95,000 daily by Lollapalooza Festival Services, a company co-owned by Kevin Killerman, a Wrigleyville bar owner with dozens of complaints for underage drinking on his record, and a friend and legal client of Vanecko."

Mark Vanecko is the brother of Robert Vanecko, whose dealings with the city have been an embarrassment to the mayor.

But...why? That is the first-order Chicago question, after which comes "What?" and "How?". Why, why, why? Why does it take this form? Why is it so fucking persistent? Whose interests are served by doing it this way?

And the answer is...the established business community, mostly. Not hippies. Not Commies. Not even run-of-the-mill Liberals. No, the people who make the wheels go 'round and 'round are mostly fiscally conservative men with white hair and $1,700 suits. Sure, a political ecosystem that stays hermetically sealed decade after decade breeds corruption like uncollected garbage and hot days breed maggots. But for all the yadda-yadda about the corrupt Democratic Party politics in Chicago, it is pure, raw Capitalism that makes it possible. Because the heads of the most powerful corporations, trade groups and civic institutions like the predictability of operating within the reign of a single monarch rather than the messiness that comes with either genuine reform or system-wide power struggles.

They're buying stability, and in that transaction the Daley family symbiotically serves the local business community and the Illinois Political Combine in exactly the same way Fulgencio Batista served Standard Oil and the Mob.

And one of the inevitable side effects of that much consolidated power squatting over the City for that long is that it has turned Chicago into a kind of frieze or political diorama. A very pretty diorama to be sure, but one in which all potentially destabilizing motion has been arrested, every angle has already been calculated and every sinecure and make-work snuff box already stuffed with somebody's aldermans's pal's brother-in-law with four more waiting in the wings for the revenue tides to rise again.

Everything has been routinized, and everyone has gotten...tired. Like stale air ever-so-slowly leaking out of very, very old balloons, the masters of Chicago's political Universe have gradually gotten flaccid.

The tiny, black hearts of ward bosses no longer race as they once did when election time rolls around. The formidable Daley political army has grown gray in the service of the Windy City Pharaoh, but their blood does not sing or sinews snap as it was in the days of old.

These days, except for the periodic rat fight over the occasional hole in the ranks created when yet another Chicago alderman is marched off to the House of Many Doors, there is no sense of the "sting of battle".

For all of Daley's well-known fetishization of the Private Sector and contempt for Evil Gummint (for which he has worked every day of this life) anyone who examines the way city government works in Chicago for more than five seconds knows that it already works exactly like a business.

And the business it works like is WalMart.

The Chicago Machine has brutally and efficiently exploited its superior market position -- its political monopsony

...a market form in which only one buyer faces many sellers. It is an example of imperfect competition, similar to a monopoly, in which only one seller faces many buyers. As the only purchaser of a good or service, the "monopsonist" may dictate terms to its suppliers in the same manner that a monopolist controls the market for its buyers.

-- to annihilate or co-opt any and all opposition.

Which is why none of this really matters (from the Chicago Tribune):

Daley poll numbers sag, but no major challenger looms

More than half of Chicago voters say they don't want to see Mayor Richard Daley re-elected next year should he decide to run for a record seventh term, a new Tribune/WGN poll shows.

The mayor has been buffeted by a spate of summer violence, a weak economy and a high-profile failure to land the 2016 Olympics. Dissatisfaction abounds, the survey found, over Daley's handling of the crime problem, his efforts to rein in government corruption and his backing of a controversial long-term parking meter system lease.

As a result, the poll found only 37 percent of city voters approve of the job Daley is doing as mayor, compared with 47 percent who disapprove. Moreover, a record-low 31 percent said they want to see Daley re-elected, compared with 53 percent who don't want him to win another term.
...

The poll shows Daley — always a formidable political force — to be vastly weakened entering a potential re-election campaign. In Tribune polling conducted since 1994, voter support for the mayor's re-election has tumbled dramatically, since peaking at 68 percent in 1999. A year prior to the 2007 election, a poll showed only 41 percent of voters backed Daley's re-election — what had been the record low until the current survey.
...

And why this (from the most recent Inspector General's Office, about which more here) will go on and on and on (emphasis added):

...
IGO Case # 08-1537

An IGO investigation determined that a supervisory employee of ACC used his/her position to avoid supervisory scrutiny concerning time usage, in particular to avoid swiping at KRONOS clocks. This employee also improperly utilized sick leave to attend secondary employment. The IGO recommended that this employee be suspended for 30 days. ACC suspended this employee for ten calendar days.

In addition, another ACC employee was found to be incompetent in his/her duties regarding timekeeping responsibilities, improperly accessing the KRONOS timekeeping system to edit his/her own records, and making false statements to IGO investigators during this investigation of time fraud. This employee had been the subject of a prior IGO investigation that likewise resulted in sustained findings of serious misconduct, including lying to IGO investigators, and a recommendation of significant discipline.

In that prior matter, IGO Case # 06-0702, the Department suspended the employee for 29 days, which was negotiated down to 15 days in settlement of the employees appeal to the Human Resources Board. For this latest round of serious infractions, the IGO recommended that the employee be terminated.

ACC suspended this employee for seven calendar days.
...

Because (from the same Trib article):

...Daley's overwhelming victory last time was another example of the old political axiom that you can't beat someone with no one. He scored 71 percent of the vote against Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown and African-American activist William "Dock" Walls. In 2003, Daley scored 79 percent.

A few aldermen are shopping themselves around as potential candidates, and some politicians with broader political bases have been glad to see their names tossed into the ring — but none has shown a willingness to challenge Daley.
...

Because in the absence of some sharp and fundamental disruption (which is exactly what the Machine was created to abolish) and an aggressive, relentless media (which the Machine long ago co-opted) even the possibility of substantive competition has been wiped out. Which is a terrible thing for democracies and markets, but terrific for established corporate interests.

Because it's all on automatic: steady, impregnable and safe.

Because, after half a century, it is not merely that we know nothing else: it is that, like the Death Row inmate who orders Cheez Doodles and a Kit Kat bar for their last meal, we are no longer able to imagine anything better.