It is not Emanuel’s fault that Chicago’s three largest employers, after the federal government, are the public school system, the city government and Cook County’s government...Maybe it's Meade's fascination with George Will. I mean, "condign"... who talks like that?!
Emanuel’s task — condign punishment for any Democrat — is to salvage the blue model by making the private sector dynamic enough to generate tax revenues sufficient to fund improvident public contracts and their pension promises. ...
Later in Will's column:
The world is indeed wonderfully out of joint when Emanuel, the embodiment of pugnacious progressivism, is proud, and properly so, of the booming market for downtown residences.The man is poet.
"Out of joint" is a phrase from "Hamlet":
The time is out of joint—O cursèd spite,"Wonderfully" is used by Will — not Will Shakespeare, George Will — as just another intensifier like "very" or "really." I think! As in: My dislocated shoulder is wonderfully painful.
That ever I was born to set it right!
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41 comments:
I think Will must love heroic couplets.
Shakespeare said "condign" sometimes.
Maybe George means wonderful in the way rubbernecking a crash is full of wander.
In the way Malcolm Gladwell find it full of wander that "young men no longer need to be deeply disturbed to contemplate horrific acts."
I wonder why it's wondrous and not wonderous.
The books say it has to do with marvelous, a connection that I don't see.
A transitive wonder might need a yes means yes law.
I'm a big fan of George Will. Lots of younger online righties enjoy sneering at his perceived ideological impurity, but I like seeing a well-written case for limited government.
So he thinks blue jeans are vulgar. I still like him.
What a delight it is to read a George Will column! His expressive and stately use if the English language in written form is a welcome respite from the 90% that isn't - make that 98.9% that written in newsprint of blogged type face.
It doesn't appear -- from my perspective up here in Wisconsin, and I don't really pay attention -- that Emanuel is kicking the can down the road. So at least he's trying?
George Will wordsmithery is equaled by his buddy Charles Krauthammers. Charles likes to start paragraphs with "Nor" which I think is pretty badass.
Did Rahm's brother off himself yet?
I detect a theme this morning.
- affirmative consent during sex
- "the best sex I ever had"
- Rahm Emanuel is fucked.
I've always found Emmanuel intriguing. He's like Jerry Brown. For all of his statist tendencies, he sometimes (too rarely) comes across as a sensible populist. He tried to take on the teacher's unions, but chickened out. He could, if he wanted to shift his ideology, become a more effective Moynihan-style Democrat.
Will is celebrating "wonderfully" the fact that Emmanuel isn't sticking solely to the progressive playbook. It's out-of-joint, isn't it?
Left out of Will's column is that the divide is not just public/private, it's also a minority/white divide.
Local government jobs are considered plum positions in the black & Hispanic communities, where folks will take such a job, and then work their way up the system until they retire. For whatever reason, such jobs are not viewed as quite so attractive by whites. Thus, the jobs provided by "the public school system, the city government and Cook County’s government..." are disproportionately staffed by minorities.
However, the private sector, especially the entrepreneurial side of the private sector, is much whiter. So, what you end up with is an income redistribution machine that transfers money from the white wealthy & middle classes to the minority middle class. Needless to say, this arrangement has to balance on top of multiple fault lines, and it often falls flat on its face. One recent example was Mayor Emmanuel vs the black head of the teachers' union. It was monumental struggle between two angry & foul-mouthed politicos to see whose hubris would come out on top. What good the taxpayers or teachers got out of it remains to be seen.
Chicago just took hundreds of jobs from Omaha with the move of ConAgra's corporate HQ.
Crony capitalism.
I will never buy Hunt's.
And the State is so broke it won't pay Lotto winners in full. Bankrupt. Biggest Chapter 9 ever is coming.
Boyd Crowder, the character played by Walter Goggins in the television series Justified, is also a great wordsmith. He makes it worth watching.
"Shakespeare said "condign" sometimes."
Twice.
Rahm Emanuel is a "progressive?"
I don't think that word means what George Will would have it mean.
I will never buy Hunt's.
You're gonna buy Heinz instead?
'"Wonderfully" is used by Will — not Will Shakespeare, George Will — as just another intensifier like "very" or "really." I think! As in: My dislocated shoulder is wonderfully painful.'
Nonsense. Taken apart, the word "wonderful" means full of wonder. Its alternate dictionary definition is "of a sort that causes or arouses wonder; amazing; astonishing: The storm was wonderful to behold."
Put the word in context with the rest of the passage. Will's surprised that Emmanuel realizes that plenty of freely churning private sector money is the only way to save Emmanuel's underfunded public sector constituency. Describing the mismatch between Emmanuel's understanding and the progressive stereotype, Will writes -- with typical precision and more grace than I can muster - that such a world is "wonderfully out of joint." It took him a single word to say what just took me two paragraphs to explain. There's no need for you to stretch for excuses to criticize him by pretending that he meant anything other than exactly what he chose to say.
My dislocated shoulder is wonderfully painful.
The doctors refer to this type of pain as "exquisite" - so not too far off!
Egghead would refer to this type of pain as "eggsquisite".
"condign," what cool word.
"Local government jobs are considered plum positions in the black & Hispanic communities, where folks will take such a job, and then work their way up the system until they retire" misses the big picture. Local government jobs were kept out of the range of possibilities for black & Hispanic for a very long time. Getting the job was once a way of sticking it to the man, and then came the pressure to hire minorities from the gov't, just because. Many, many black (& I assume Hispanics) hold positions for which they have no interest in or aptitude for working for the public, but carry the baggage of holding protest positions.
The customers net condign service.
I especially enjoyed Will's use of the Kin Hubbard quote.
MadisonMan
HyVee store brand.
Become a Hy-Vee shopper. I saw one in Madison.
MadisonMan
HyVee store brand.
Become a Hy-Vee shopper. I saw one in Madison.
How long before Chicago and IL debt will be nationalized?
There are at least two.
I find Hy-Vee's normal prices a little excessive -- compared to, say, Sentry.
But I'm self-trained to shop at Sentry and only buy things on sale. I've not done that yet at Hy-Vee, though I might because the reconstruction at Hilldale has made the parking lot really full all the time.
What I'll say for Rahm is that I admire the guts of taking on a thankless, near impossible task of being Chicago mayor when he easily could have gone for a cushy unaccountable job (like Senator). He strikes me as a pragmatist Democrat, and has found that the corrupt interests running Chicago are far too powerful for him to bowl over, and unlike say a Guiliani type, he's dependent on the Democratic party for his support and so cannot easily take on those interests. I would have been genuinely surprised if he could have done much to improve that mess of a city.
The word that caught my eye was "improvident".
I don't know if I would describe a $98.7 trillion federal shortfall as "spendthrift" but if one wanted to minimize the impact, it might be a good word.
Emmanuel had the guts to take on a tough job that involved direct accountability for results. That is exactly the kind of person who does not get to be President these days. Bill Clinton and Bush at least were in charge of something somewhat difficult before they became president. Obama avoided all accountable jobs prior to running for President, as has Hillary.
Ford to Chicago: Drop dead.
Re: "condign"
At a startup company pitch meeting this week, a colleague leaned over to whisper to me that "This CEO just said 'nascent'. Now I feel like we HAVE to invest."
EMD writes "I've always found Emmanuel intriguing. He's like Jerry Brown. For all of his statist tendencies, ..."
Probably he's a tyrant, like Brown. Brown did fine as Oakland's mayor, where he had the power (by city charter) to command. As CA governor, he did not and does not have that power, and so is ineffectual compared to the legislature.
Since this is CA, he rarely has any significant differences of opinion with the Dem dominated legislature to negotiate over, so his inability to negotiate is basically irrelevant.
You're gonna buy Heinz instead?
Red Gold.
Emmanuel took on the teachers union, and the union won. BUT the union's favored candidate, Jesus Garcia, lost the runoff. He still doesn't have enough clout to prevail over the Union, but I don't see how he can be faulted for that.
Nor can he do anything about the Cook County Board raising the sales tax (which will bring Chicago's rate to 10.25 percent).
Of course, 10.25% isn't enough, nothing will ever be enough. But how much could any mayor (let alone any mayor electable in Chicago) do about that?
Now you know why little Richie Daly stepped aside. He knew it would only be a matter of time before the bills came due.
I was in Chicago years ago for a trial, and visiting in the U S Attorney's Office. There were 2 large courtroom photo exhibits in an AUSA's office, one a blow-up of the Cook County Employee's Code of Ethics, and the other a picture of a Cook County employee sitting at his desk, counting a cash bribe (taken by a hidden FBI camera).
I remarked on the photos to my host. "Ah yes" he said, "Cook County government. Our natural prey."
True the. True now.
The comments are hilarious. A parody of left wingers working for the feds.
"Note most European Cities "thrive" with liberal/socialist polices."
Best one I saw.
It has been many years, decades even, since George Will has written his own column.
JCC said...
I was in Chicago years ago for a trial, and visiting in the U S Attorney's Office. There were 2 large courtroom photo exhibits in an AUSA's office, one a blow-up of the Cook County Employee's Code of Ethics, and the other a picture of a Cook County employee sitting at his desk, counting a cash bribe (taken by a hidden FBI camera).
I remarked on the photos to my host. "Ah yes" he said, "Cook County government. Our natural prey."
True the. True now.
Oh. I could tell you stories.
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