Let’s catch up and follow up on some of the stories that have figured so prominently here over the years.
He got a what?
And the fact that the hapless Metra Board, where the members get 15 grand a year for attending 12 whole meetings, is something we won’t be letting go of anytime soon. Particularly when former state’s attorney Joe McMahon, a mediocre attorney with absolutely no transportation experience, is the Kane County representative.
To say the Metra agency is fraught with peril is a lot like saying Donald Trump is facing a couple of minor misdemeanors.
Though their numbers have rebounded somewhat, the predominant shift to a remote work dynamic sent ridership plummeting by 50 percent from those glorious pre-pandemic days. We all know the Illinois political powers that be aren’t likely to preside over Metra’s demise, but for comparison purposes, most businesses can’t survive losing half their business.
The only thing that’s keeping Metra functioning at the current service levels are those COVID relief funds. But they run out at the end of the year, a scenario that’ll provoke the kind of dead reckoning that likely means massive service cuts further diluting ridership.
And Metra has absolutely no contingency plan to cope with this rapidly encroaching reality. Well…there is their “Metra for errands” campaign because when I want to go from West Chicago to the middle of La Fox nowhere, Metra is always the first option that comes to mind.
Then the Ventra ticketing app was supposed to save Metra from themselves, but it didn’t. When it wasn’t crashing outright, it took passengers’ money without providing a ticket which could’ve been a fascinating short-term budget fix, but a bad long-term business model.
So, in light of this deepening dire predicament, the proactive Metra Board leapt into action, right? Well, not exactly. Oh c’mon! Please tell me they canned CEO Jim Derwinski in favor of someone who could actually do the job?
Nope!
Well then, they must have put him on double-secret probation with the understanding that one more fuckup and he was history.
Nope!
Did they send him to bed without supper?
Nope!
With but one board member voting “no,” they gave Derwinski a raise! And why not? When the agency is dangling on the edge of the abyss next summer, they’ll simply run down to Springfield with their tails between their legs begging those elected officials to save them from the cruel fates that destroyed their lives and those legislators will have no choice but to crack open OUR checkbooks because, despite their best efforts, Metra can’t be allowed to fail.
I should’ve worked for the government.
How do you make a small fortune in the shopping mall business?
Start with a large one.
I’m not sure how this one escaped the local press, but LaSalle Investment Management, the company that purchased the Geneva Commons for $124 million when the original-ish owners defaulted on a $75 million 2013 loan, just sold the mall to the Lamar Companies for $63.7 million. And that sale proves, beyond any reasonable doubt, there really is a sucker born every minute.
Talk about a foolproof way of losing half your money in one short decade!
Predicting this slow, gut-wrenching demise, as Larry Jones and I did back in our radio show days, wasn’t exactly the stuff of a Holmesian
deduction. And the fact that LaSalle was willing to take fifty cents on the dollar clearly indicates that things are much worse than anyone thinks.
The sad irony is many of those shops are doing well as the weekend parking lots will readily attest. The problem is, ignoring that Amazon enjoyed its first profitable quarter in 2001, Mayor Kevin Burns and the Geneva, Illinois, city council bought into this boondoggle at the 2002 height of the commercial rent market.
So, while a single store can still make money, persistently declining commercial rental possibilities mean the mall operators cannot. And unless D304 is willing to renegotiate their property tax levy – and there’s no chance of that – there isn’t much any mall owner can do to stem that slippery slope tide.
I’m not going to try and predict when that closure might take place because I suck at that kind of thing. But I will say the day will come when The Commons is razed in favor of apartment buildings and condos.
Geneva is desperately clinging to the notion that the city will somehow eclipse the 25,000-mark activating home rule and taxation without representation. There really is no happy ending to this story, is there?
And speaking of taxes…
Why did I just pay sales tax on a gently used pair of Levi’s 505 boot cut jeans purchased from ebay when the original owner already paid sales tax on his purchase? This double and triple governmental dipping doesn’t begin to pass the laugh test.
How to end your political career without really trying
This sad saga fits squarely into our post-pandemic theme of people, and particularly politicians, who fail to consider that whatever they’ve been thinking for the last five minutes may not be wise, helpful, or factually accurate.
God forbid those declarations might come along with some eminently predictable consequences, too.
Not only did South Dakota Governor and newest ASPCA spokesperson, Kristi Noem, fail to consider the fallout from publishing how she shot and killed her 14-month-old dog Cricket in the head in a gravel pit, but in an effort to double down on this rare form of rank brutality and stupidity, now she’s trying to deflect responsibility by calling Joe Biden derelict for failing to kill his dog.
Talk about your novel political approaches. Apparently, Uncle Joe can’t win on anything.
Noem’s theory is that Commander, the Biden’s German Shepherd, should’ve been put down long ago for biting an untoward number of Secret Service agents. First, considering their well-publicized failures, someone needs to keep the Secret Service in line and who better than a take-no-bullshit German Shepherd.
And second, how can Noem possibly believe that advocating for the untimely death of another dog will somehow un-hoist her from her own petard? Her political career is officially over, though that may have already been the case when you consider that South Dakota is more of a vacant lot than a state.
The kicker here is, Noem’s advisory team actually managed to convince her to omit the puppy murdering from her first book, but their similar efforts failed this round. Why? Because she wanted to appear to be “decisive” and “all business” like the Grand Cheeto. As that predatory moron Dr. Phil would say, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?
Here’s a thought Governor! If you want to be taken seriously, you might want to come up with an alternative to applying makeup with a paint scraper. Though to be fair, should we really expect that much from a grown woman who spells her name “Kristi?” That sank her IQ by 50 points right from the get go.
So, what do you say when “truth is stranger than fiction” doesn’t begin to do a story justice?
