Picayune Extra: Trolling for polling questions

Plus an interview with Mincing Rascal wunderkind Austin Berg

I’m continuing my tradition of posting an online survey each December asking readers to predict the news of the year ahead. But I need your help in crafting the multiple choice questions for this year’s survey, which will post on Thursday morning

Questions have to be specific and contain one answer that will be unambiguously correct 12 months from now. In other words a question like this is appropriate:

Will the Democrats maintain control of the Senate after the 2022 midterm elections? (Yes) (No)

And a question like this is not:

Will we get a handle on the COVID-19 epidemic? (Yes) (No)

In the case of major criminal and civil trials, it pays to have a “we don’t know yet” option given how painfully slow the legal process can be.

Will Ald. Ed Burke be convicted of racketeering, bribery and extortion? (Yes) (No) (He will still be awaiting trial)

Sports questions are always good. Culture. Politics. I’ve started my list, but I need your help so I don’t miss any obvious ones.

Please post ideas in comments below.

Meanwhile, I’ve transcribed and edited an interview with Austin Berg of the Illinois Policy Institute and, much gaudier on his resumé, the Mincing Rascals.

Also below are some amusing visual tweets and a special poll to pick the best of the worst-performing nominees of 2021.

The chatter box

Notes and comments from readers, lightly edited in some cases, along with my responses.

Jake H. — I worry about the modern trend of saying to girls who don't feel stereotypically feminine, "Hmm, sound like you're a boy or a neither," rather than what I grew up hearing, which is "That's fine; nothing at all wrong with that; there are all kinds of girls; just be you." That second message strikes me as the truer message; the first one strikes me as going backward a little in so insistently and strongly linking the word "girl" or "woman" with "girly" or "feminine" stereotypes, as if they mean the same thing.

I’m also curious about the role that gender stereotypes play in our emerging understanding of transgenderism, gender dysphoria, non-binary identification and so on. My confusion of some of these points doesn’t diminish my support for equal rights and opportunities for those who identify in non-traditional ways, and I’m embarking on a print dialogue with a noted local trans woman that I’ll post here. If you have any questions for her, leave them in comments.

Dianne M. I strongly disagree with your idea — expressed in the Sentinel last week and on the Mincing Rascals — that the $2.9 million settlement for Anjanette Young was excessive. Excuse me! What price do you place on the horrific gestapo tactics she experienced while naked?

The city has settled for less over wrongful deaths. Anjanette Young did not die. Young suffered no physical injuries. She deserves compensation, to be sure, for how police forced her to stand naked momentarily and then draped in just a blanket during a wrongful raid. But that compensation should be proportional to other settlements paid to victims of police misconduct, and to her injuries. What was her humiliation worth? And if that question sounds crass, consider that there are all kinds of formulas for what it's "worth" to lose an arm, a leg, eyesight and so on in certain civil cases.

Owen Y. — Here's another vote for "Chariots" as a terrific Christmas song. The lyrics, many of them artful re-workings of Scriptural references, do indeed tell the Christmas story powerfully:

Bring your sheep bleating to this happy meeting

To hear how the lamb with the lion shall lie

It's mooing and braying you'll hear the song saying

The humble and lowly will be the most high

The poetry is so carefully constructed, with internal rhymes and careful deployment of alliteration —

With chariots of cherubim chanting

And seraphim singing Hosanna

And a choir of archangels a-caroling come

— look at all the hard C sounds in that third line, some in the midst of words — choir, archangels, caroling, com — which all fall directly on the beat.

And I learned it at Songs of Good Cheer, where I also learned another great recent Christmas — well, actually, Epiphany— song: "Long Way Around the Sea," by the Minnesota group Low.

“Long Way Around the Sea” puts me in mind of an SOGC offering we called “Who Am I to Bear You Here?” That song is better known as the “Christ Child Lullabye.” We led it a capella and I found it totally spine tingling, particularly the chorus.

Rick W. — Seems like there’s a growing number of product placements in the Picayune Sentinel Is this at least helping to keep the cost of subscriptions down?

There have never been any paid product placements in the PS, nor will I ever include any advertising content unless it’s specifically labeled as such. You can have confidence that when I speak highly of a product, service or company — my enthusiastic item last week about my new Zeba shoes, for instance — my sentiments are genuine.

The subscription price is the minimum allowed by Substack.

I’ll be presenting submissions for “best purchase of 2021” in Thursday’s issue.

Ya’ gotta see these tweets!

I often run across tweets that are too visual in nature to include in the Tweet of the Week contest (the template for the poll does not allow the use of images). Here are a few recent ones I’ve liked:

Rich Miller @capitolfax

NurseBrianRN @rn_murse

the Tripiletti sisters’ mom is fucking brutal

Jocelyn Plums @ColoradoUgly

Can't wait to see Mom's face when she unwraps her Paul Blart NFT

Meet the Rascals: Austin Berg

Austin Berg, 29, is a regular panelist with me on the Mincing Rascals podcast at WGN-plus. He is the Vice President of Marketing for the Illinois Policy Institute and a contributor to the Economist, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, ABC 7 Chicago and WTTW-Ch. 11. He is also the co-author of “The New Chicago Way: Lessons from Other Big Cities,” and he wrote the 2016 documentary film, “Madigan: Power. Privilege. Politics.” This interview, edited for length and clarity, was part of a Mincing Rascals episode in December, 2019

JOHN WILLIAMS (HOST) : Tell us where you’re from.

AUSTIN BERG: I was born in Evanston. My mom was a scientist at Northwestern University. She has a PhD in cell biology. I moved around throughout the state as a kid, and then I went to college out east at Tufts University just outside Boston

JW: You were a Jumbo!

AB: Go Jumbos!

ERIC ZORN (FELLOW PANELIST): Why did you move around the state so much as a kid?

AB: For my dad’s job

EZ: Is he an academic too?

AB: No. He works in healthcare finance. He ran for a congressional seat when we lived in Decatur. So as a kid I was throwing out candy in parades and stuff.

JW: He didn’t get elected?

AB: No. He lost in the primary. We also lived in Champaign before moving to the western suburbs. I went to Hinsdale Central High School.

JW: No kidding! Because, you know I’m a Lyons Township guy, which is Hinsdale’s rival.

AB: Well, Hinsdale Central thinks New Trier is its rival. But if you ask someone from New Trier if they think that's true they’ll dismiss you. And Hinsdale Central has similar thoughts about LT.

JW: So in other words, Hinsdale is so much better than LT that when LT says “That’s our rival,” Hinsdale people say “No, not so much, you’re not there yet.”

AB: That’s what I observed.

JW: Which is what LT says about Oak Park/River Forest, by the way.

EZ: What did you study at Tufts?

AB: Political science and economics

JW: And was this the sort of thing you aspired to do someday? Working for the Illinois Policy Institute? Analyzing social issues? Almost nobody gets paid to do that. How fortunate for you.

AB: Oh my gosh, yes. It’s the best job ever.

EZ: What was your path to that?

AB: When I was in high school I did yard work one summer and I’d just gotten a device that allowed me to listen to audiobooks. Someone told me to listen to “Free to Choose” by Milton Friedman. And I loved it. I got way into Friedman. I got way into behavioral economics.

So then I went to college and studied that. And one summer I applied for a program that offers students fellowships for think tanks. They said you can go to D.C. or you can work at a state-based think tank. I learned that if I chose the Illinois Policy Institute, I could live free at my parents’ house and still get to keep the housing stipend. That's why I ended up there as an intern. After I graduated they had a job opening and I’ve been there since 2014.

JW: So what's a day like for you?

AB: Well, first I have to do background reading to find out what the political and policy narrative is at the state and local levels. We do a lot of storytelling work around public policy issues. We do a lot of engagement with lawmakers personally in order to advance the policies that we think will better the state. And then we do a ton of writing and a ton of engagement on social media. We have the biggest policy megaphone in the state. We have 1.5 million people on our email list (updated number). We have a huge Facebook following.

EZ: Do you have a lot of meetings at the office?

AB: I’m a hater of meetings. I try to avoid meetings as much as possible. (in a December 2021 update, Austin reports he’s now in meetings up to six hours a day) We have a “policy pipeline” meeting once a week when the teams get together and talk about our priorities and discuss how we can best effect change and tell our community what's going on.

JW: Is the IPI doing somebody's bidding? Are you taking direction from Republicans?

AB: Definitely not. For all of our legislative proposals last year, the chief sponsor was a Democrat because we care about passing laws and the Democrats have a supermajority in the House and Senate and they have the governor’s mansion. So we need to get along and work with Democrats on all sorts of issues. We independently come up with our legislative agenda every year.

JW: So are you more left-leaning than people think?

AB: It depends on the issue. We’ve been criticized viciously by the right and by the left. But given the state’s fiscal problems we’re often most vocal in ways that would be considered right wing.

EZ: The IPI defines itself libertarian, right? And that’s where your heart is.

AB: That’s my lane, yes.

JW: So what's the definition of that? Is it economically conservative?

AB: In terms of state policy it’s don't spend more than you take in. Don't dump billions of dollars of debt onto the next generation. On social issues -- like abortion or the Second Amendment -- we don't take positions because you can't comment on everything and that's not our specialty. But on things like criminal justice reform we’ve done a lot of work.

One of my most rewarding projects was working with a woman named Lisa Creason in Decatur, helping her get an occupational licensing bill passed. She’d paid her own way through nursing school, lived in a terrible part of Decatur, and raised three kids by herself after her fiancé was killed by a stray bullet. But after she graduated from nursing school the state said she couldn’t get a license to be a registered nurse because she’d been convicted of attempting to steal from a Subway sandwich shop cash register when she was 19.

We lobbied for her in the legislature and got a bill passed that allowed her to get her license. Now she has that job and a meaningful way to earn a living. Since then, thousands of other people in similar situations have been able to do that. That’s not a traditional right- leaning issue but that story is an example of how we care most about economic opportunity. That’s where we play.

EZ: What do you do when you’re not nerding out our policy?

JW: Basketball? You’re very tall. How tall are you?

AB: I’m 6’3” to 6’4”, somewhere around there. Eric and I should stand back to back to see who’s taller.

EZ: We’re about the same height, but at my age I’m shrinking, so…

JW: Steve Bertrand comes in at 6’6”

AB: I love music. I collect music. I go to a lot of shows.

JW: Who’s your band? What’s the last show you went to?

AB: The last great show I went to was Will Kraus. He's a noise musician from New York. He played at Schubas. It was a really good show. I also love Wilco.

JW: Married? Kids?

AB: Not married. No kids. Two siblings. (December, 2021 update: I’m engaged to my long-time live-in girlfriend, Emily, a middle-school English teacher. We went to the same high school. The summer after our freshman year of college —she went to UW-Madison — we rode the train together every day into the city. Months later, on the same day, we independently told a mutual friend we had feelings for each other. He’s our wedding officiant next year.

Subscribe to the Mincing Rascals wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page.

Second chance for losing tweets

Here are the 10 tweets that received the lowest percentage of the vote of all the tweets that finished in last place in the weekly Tweet of the Week poll in 2021:

• If your friend says he can't swim, don't make him go in the water because he might be hiding the fact that he’s a robot and you don't want him to know that you know. — @geekysteven

• Doctor: You have 48 hours to live. Me: Oh my God, is there anything you can do? Doctor: Just this *does that thing where you wiggle a pencil up and down and it looks like it's bending*. — @daemonic3

• Dear Kanye & Kim, Your vows were a lie. I want my toaster back. —@RickAaron

• Will you be my friend? (asking for a friend). — @wildethingy

• Horses will eat almost anything. Pizza, broccoli, peppermints. You know what they don’t like? The terrifying prison of consciousness. — @Cpin42

• You can't spell redundant without "redundant." — @TheRobCee

• Call it “daylight savings” one more time, I dare you. — @not_delicate

• I bet there was a draft of "Green Eggs & Ham" where Sam got his ass kicked on like page 3. —@mack44_d

• Yes, I enjoy eating fondue during Zoom meetings. Not sure why that makes me "fondue guy."— @kipconlon

• I'm glad the Grinch stole Christmas. The Whos are the worst. -- @Contwixt

I still think some of them are very funny (it’s why I nominated them) and have created a special poll so that one will be a winner at last. Click and vote!

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