Since I moved to Chicago in 2001, our mayor has:
- wrecked an airport;
- overseen the raising of the sales tax to the highest level in the country;(and yes, I know this was Toad Stoger's work, and a county issue rather than a city issue, but the Dickhead could've at least protested.)
- overseen the jacking up of property taxes;
- gradually turned downtown Chicago into a forest of luxury condos;
- ruined Soldier Field;
- now wants to make it "two strikes and you're out" for traffic violators. Two parking tickets, dude, and you get the boot. (Remember folks, in 2001 it was five traffic violations.)
Sure, we all would like safer streets, and Chicago has always struck me as "The City Where Red Lights are Merely a Recommendation." But like all Dickhead's little plans, the new booting recommendations effect mostly those least able to pay.
Let's just say you got a couple of parking tickets (of course, as many Chicago drivers are painfully aware, traffic enforcement in Chicago is a study in capriciousness), and under the new rules, you're booted. Let's say you were in Wisconsin for a vacation, so you were away for a week. You come back home, and your car is not merely booted, but gone. You make the necessary calls, and you find out this: Friday: car booted. Price for de-booting: $60 Saturday: car towed after 24 hours. Towing fee: $150 Sunday-Friday: $10/day for 1st five days, $35/day after that. Fee: $85 Total: $295.
And that doesn't even include the original parking tickets. And this assumes your car hasn't vanished into the ether, a not-uncommon fate for Chicago drivers. Most of us can pay off that fine with some annoyance but little difficulty; we learn our lesson and go on with our lives. But for poorer folks, coughing up four hundred, five hundred dollars based on a couple of traffic violations means they may never see their vehicle again. Some people, upon seeing their cars booted and despairing of ever getting their car back, might do what some homeowners have done in the wake of the housing collapse: trash their own property, take everything remotely valuable, and leave a useless shell in their wake. Given the state of the economy, the parts of the car may be more valuable than the car itself.
But that's old hat for the Dickhead. He loves Chicago, but only his own vision of the city. And that vision is disturbed by the sight of poor or working-class citizens trying to make a living here. So down comes affordable housing, up comes seven-digit condos. Rich people can afford a 10.25% percent sales tax, rapidly escalating property taxes, a crappy mass transit system, and a booted Hummer or two. Poor people can't, and in Dickhead's mind, if they can't afford it, they can move to the 'burbs. After all, we're not his kind.
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