Pritzker has gone squishy

He now supports an idea he once said was "really bad"

10-26-2023 (issue No. 111)

This week

• Last week’s winning tweet

• JB Squishker — The governor ‘has taken almost every possible position imaginable on the Invest in Kids Act’

• Where’s the leadership, transparency and urgency from City Hall on the migrant challenge?

• News and Views —On the Republican extremist now running the U.S. House, on allegations of sign-stealing by the University of Michigan football coaches and on the now undeniable existence of “cancel culture;”

• Land of Linkin’ — Where I tell readers where to go

• Squaring up the news — Where Charlie Meyerson tells readers where to go

• “Songs of Good Cheer” update

• Carol Marin vs. Bill Kurtis — an epic final pairing in the battle for best retired Chicago TV news anchor

• “The Mincing Rascals” podcast preview

• Re:Tweets — The winning visual tweet and this week’s contest finalists

• Tune of the Week — “If I Fell,” a “silly love song” by John Lennon.

Mary Schmich will return!

Last week’s winning tweet

One of the best examples of someone posing a question that they already know the answer to is the WeightWatchers website asking me if I accept cookies. — @Pundamentalism

And the winner of the bonus “Dad Tweets” poll:

I accidentally drank a bottle of invisible ink last night. I’m in the hospital now, waiting to be seen.

Here are this week’s holiday-themed nominees and the winner of the Tuesday visual-tweets poll. Here is the direct link to the new poll.

JB Squishker — The governor ‘has taken almost every possible position imaginable on the Invest in Kids Act’

When he was first running for governor in the 2018 election cycle, JB Pritzker said he believed the Invest in Kids scholarship tax credit program was “a really bad idea.”

He said, "As governor, I will not support school vouchers and will work to do away with this program,” and “What I oppose is taking money out of the public schools, and that’s what happened here." 

Tip of the press fedora to Capitol Fax proprietor Rich Miller for summarizing JB’s homina-hominas in his syndicated column:

The governor has taken three different public positions since early June.

Shortly after the legislature adjourned in May, Gov. Pritzker told reporters he’d like to see a change in the way the tax credits worked. 

“I think we should have tax credits that support education,” Pritzker said, “But we also have the federal government willing to cover about 40 percent of the cost.” The state tax credit law as currently written doesn’t allow for federal tax deductions, so he wanted the law changed. 

In July, Pritzker flipped from calling Invest in Kids a “relatively small” program during the 2022 campaign to saying, “People who say, ‘Well, actually it’s not costing taxpayers anything,’ actually, it’s costing taxpayers 75 percent of the total amount that gets raised. And so that’s something that I think some people who are budget conscious are paying attention to as well.” But, he said, “I’m willing to work with the program if it gets extended or to figure out how we would wind down the program if it doesn’t get extended.”

With the veto session fast approaching in late October and new draft legislation circulating about scaling back the program’s cost to $50 million from $75 million, adding an allowance for federal tax breaks and increasing the number of eligible kids if they live in neighborhoods with significant poverty, Pritzker was asked (Oct. 19) where he currently stood.

“I will support it, if it comes to my desk, to extend the program in whatever form,” the governor said. “I mean, I can’t imagine it would show up in some form, that, you know, that I would be unwilling to. But, again, the reality is that the legislature needs to go through this process, and I have said that from the very beginning.”

As I’ve written before, it’s a pretty simple question: Is it OK to divert public tax dollars toward private schools, often schools that promote a certain religion, in the name of “choice”?

Invest in Kids works this way: Citizens interested in supporting private education donate to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations (SGOs) that oversee the disbursal of tuition stipends to private school scholarships for children whose family income is up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level so they can afford to attend nonpublic schools that have the Illinois State Board of Education seal of approval.

Currently, donors can claim 75% of their donation as a tax credit, meaning that if they contribute $10,000 to an SGO, they can subtract $7,500 from the amount that they would normally owe in state income taxes. The shortcut means that the state doesn’t technically give out the money. But that $7,500 would have gone into the state’s general revenue fund if it hadn’t ended up at one of the schools on the approved list, many of which are run by religious organizations.

The Illinois Department of Revenue can issue up to $75 million in such tax credits every year, which deepens the budget hole we’re all in. So even those who don’t participate in Invest in Kids are paying for it in tax revenue that’s lost to the state.

Those who use the idea of “failing public schools” to gin up enthusiasm for the program don’t seem to care that it stands only to hurt public schools and the pupils who remain in them.

And it’s worth pointing out that those who object to efforts to end it can still donate all they want to nonprofit scholarship granting organizations and count those donations as charitable contributions for tax purposes. Their high-minded talk belies the fact that if they want to offer impoverished children more school choice — if they are truly altruistic rather than just directing money that’s not theirs (tax payments) into a program that will weaken public education and teachers unions — they’ll still be able to do so if the program isn’t renewed by the General Assembly.

But House Democrats in Springfield this week offered a partial cave-in, putting forth an extension that curtails the program but appears to concede on the principle behind it. From the Tribune:

In addition to extending the program through 2028, the proposal introduced Tuesday would reduce maximum annual contributions awarded by the state to $50 million from $75 million. Instead of the 75% tax credit, the donors would get a 100% credit for the first $5,000 they contribute, then a maximum 65% tax credit for any additional amount if the children they sponsor live in underserved communities and a 55% credit if the children don’t. The annual limit for tax credits of $1 million would also be reduced to $500,000. …

But members of the Illinois Freedom Caucus, the most conservative Republican House members who mainly hail from central or southeastern Illinois, slammed the new proposal as “a non-starter.”

“It will not make the program permanent, and it reduces the available funding for scholarships,” the caucus said in a statement. “The best course of action would be to extend the program and to expand it.

Nothing Pritzker has said about the program explains his about-face, suggesting he simply stuck up a wet finger to the wind of public opinion and fobbed the problem off on the majority Democrats in the General Assembly.

His mushy declaration — “I will support it, if it comes to my desk, to extend the program in whatever form” — belongs in the argle-bargle hall of fame.

Where’s the leadership, transparency and urgency from City Hall on the migrant challenge?

The South and Central American migrants who have been living in tents on the streets, often outside of Chicago police stations, have been lucky. The typical first freeze of the year happens on Oct. 19, and so far the low temperature of the fall has been 40 degrees (on Oct. 10).

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration ran into a buzzsaw of opposition in the 12th Ward when residents discovered work underway to erect an all-weather tent encampment for some 2,000 unhoused asylum-seekers on a vacant parking lot at 38th Street and California Avenue. His team may have ideas where other camps might go to meet the needs of thousands of other similarly situated migrants, but they’re likely to run into considerable opposition anywhere and everywhere in the city.

The story Tuesday was headlined, “Protesters scuffle with police ahead of emotional community meeting over tent city for migrants in Brighton Park,” and that’s likely not the last such story. So what’s Johnson’s Plan B? Why is he not out in front of the microphones every day trying to build support and compassion for these desperate and needy human beings and their families who are about to endure one of our bitter winters? If there is a sense of urgency on the 5th floor of City Hall, it’s certainly not obvious. And why did Johnson not inform 12th Ward Ald. Julia Ramirez of the tent-camp plan in advance?

There’s “no excuse for failing Communication 101. Especially for a mayor who repeatedly frames himself as a ‘collaborator.’” said an excellent Tribune editorial.

Make no mistake: This is a very difficult problem without any obvious solutions that’s getting more and more difficult to solve with every day that new buses arrive from the southern border.

But Johnson was elected to solve difficult problems. And the forecasts are predicting the first freeze of the year on Sunday.

No time to lose.

News & Views

News: Newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson has supported the criminalization of gay sex.

View: If the old Marxist saying “The worse the better” has any truth, then Democrats should be quietly celebrating the elevation to U.S. House Speaker of Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, an election-denying, Vladimir Putin-coddling, Social Security/Medicare-cutting, marijuana-opposing anti-abortion extremist who once wrote that same-sex marriage could lead to people marrying their pets.

Here he is in 2003, giving a friendly nod to the idea that states should pass laws to “discourage the evils of sexual conduct outside of marriage” while generally bashing gays.

.Johnson is a wing nut on the fringes of American politics. Republicans in swing districts will be justly battered by commercials linking them to his mostly unpopular views, and the stage is now fully set for a return to Democratic control of the House in 2024

News: The University of Michigan football program has been creditably accused of sign-stealing.

View: A complete disaster is in the offing. In Tuesday’s Picayune Plus, I expressed my dismay, consternation and sorrow at the allegations that my alma mater’s very successful team has been stealing opponents’ sideline signs in a way that breaks NCAA rules.

Yes, it’s a weird rule that says you can’t scout your upcoming opponents in person or try to decipher visual signals that their coaches are sending in from the sidelines. It’s all taking place in front of tens of thousands of people.

But it’s a rule, and sports are filled with rules that may seem weird and nitpicky. And if Michigan broke it — no matter how many other teams may also be breaking it — to try to gain an unfair advantage, I can easily imagine the NCAA stripping them of some or all of their eight victories so far this season, and the independent group that runs the College Football Playoff denying them a spot in the postseason that they might otherwise earn.

I can see the university firing coach Jim Harbaugh — who implausibly denies knowledge of sign-stealing — and anyone on his staff who knew about the scheme. I can see current players rushing for the transfer portal and committed high school recruits looking elsewhere. And I can’t see anyone having a legitimate beef about that outcome.

News: People are losing their jobs or having job offers rescinded for expressing what some deem as excessive solidarity with the Palestinian cause.

View: I second the New Republic headline on this matter, “Hello, Left. Now Do You Believe There's Cancel Culture?”

Writer Timothy Noah offers numerous recent examples and writes that cancel culture is “a phenomenon that many on the left pretend doesn’t exist. But it does exist, and it’s being deployed right now with a vengeance against that portion of the left that’s trying to explain away the events of October 7 as a blow for resistance and freedom.”

“Cancel culture isn’t real,” Sarah Hagi wrote four years ago in Time. “It’s time to cancel this talk of cancel culture,” A.J. Willingham wrote for CNN two years later. Cancel culture is “a myth,” Kathryn Lofton wrote this past March in The Yale Review.

I don’t understand this fashionable denialism. The truth is that speech is being suppressed on all sides by organizations that are either insanely ideological (read: red state school boards) or terrified of controversy (read: every university in America). Yes, it’s worse when state government does it. And yes, the term “cancel culture” gets abused by the hard right, which uses it to shield hateful utterances. …People are getting ostracized or bullied into silence, and it’s got to stop. … Let’s have more discussion, please, and less shouting. We might learn something.

This is not to excuse or analyze any of the over-the-top statements anyone has made regarding the bloody war between Israel and Hamas, but, for example, when the head of Florida’s public university system calls for all chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine to be “deactivated,” or when the Jewish editor of a scientific journal is fired for retweeting a satirical Onion headline (“Dying Gazans Criticized For Not Using Last Words To Condemn Hamas”), we should at least stop airily contending that cancel culture is simply another term for “deserved-consequence culture.”

News: Dozens of newspapers owned by Alden Global Capital, including the Tribune, were recently ordered to run an editorial urging news outlets to refer to Hamas as a terrorist group.

View: Whether or not you agree with the opinion expressed in the editorial, the chain-wide mandate was way out of line. Opinion sections of publications need to have independence if they are going to speak effectively to their readership. Ceding choices to a bunch of suits in a distant city — in this case owners who have no experience as journalists and don’t grant interviews or make themselves otherwise accountable — betrays the readership. A proper editorial board is not a ventriloquist dummy for rich twits.

The Tribune handled the problem well. It ran the mandatory essay on the page with staff editorials, but labeled it as at the product of MediaNews Group/Tribune Publishing. The piece therefore looked more like an op-ed. The paper did not include this essay in its online offerings.

Axios Chicago reported “Other Alden newspapers, including the Denver Post and New York Daily News, ran the piece online looking as if it were written by their editorial boards.”

“Looking” is too generous. Those papers stuck their freakin’ bylines on the piece, which amounted to a lie:

Land of Linkin’

• Allow me once again to amplify “Name Grapher,” a fascinating site that shows the popularity of certain baby names in the United States over time. It was formerly known as the Baby Name Voyager.

• “The Great Mothball Debacle of 2023,” a Sun-Times column by Neil Steinberg, reads like a sitcom episode, though Steinberg’s travails didn’t seem funny to him at the time.

• Those who don’t have the time or the Paramount+ subscription necessary to watch the new documentary “Milli Vanilli” can read a good briefing on the history of the infamous lip-syncers in Candice Frederick’s Huffington Post article, “In 1990, Milli Vanilli Was Canceled — And No One Cared About The Whole Truth.”

• In “How America Bungled the Pandemic,” former Tribune correspondent Merrill Goozner takes exception to some of the claims made in a new book, “The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind,” by Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean. The question, “Why did a country with the most expensive health care system in the world, an enviable scientific capacity, and a deep bench of public health expertise perform so miserably when confronted by this unique and dangerous pathogen?”

• Pulitzer Prize-winning right-wing columnist goes wrong: “Detroit News fires Charlie LeDuff over c-word insult.” directed at Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

• In the “You don’t say!” department this week: “How Elon Musk ditched Twitter's safeguards and primed X to spread misinformation,” by PolitiFact’s Madison Czopek.

• “Large portion of Americans doubt democracy and view violence as acceptable, poll finds” “When asked whether it is acceptable to employ violence to stop political opponents from attaining their goals, 41% of President Joe Biden supporters and 38% of Donald Trump supporters said yes” and “31% of Trump supporters and 24% of Biden supporters said democracy is ‘no longer viable.’”

• “I’m not surprised today’s corrosive talk radio allegedly led to murder of Palestinian American boy” is an op-ed by former WLS-AM 890 talk host John Howell. “Radio companies and hosts shouldn’t pander to the under-informed with lies and conspiracy theories. Those who do should be held accountable, and so should their enablers and sponsors.”

• “Harry Potter” author J.K. Rowling says she would “happily” go to prison rather than refer to transgender women as women. She was referring to a proposal in the U.K. that would make deliberately using non-preferred pronouns a hate crime, punishable by imprisonment.

• What a difference 50 years makes. Check out this Insurance Institute for Highway Safety video of a 1959 vehicle in a head-on collision with a 2009 vehicle:

• The Picayune Sentinel preview: Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. I talk with WGN-AM 720 host John Williams about what’s making news and likely to be grist for the PS mill. The WGN listen-live link is here.

Squaring up the news

This is a bonus supplement to the Land of Linkin’ from veteran radio, internet and newspaper journalist Charlie Meyerson. Each week, he offers a selection of intriguing links from his daily email news briefing Chicago Public Square:

■ The publisher of a small-town Tennessee newspaper punched back against vandals who targeted its offices after it reported on the white supremacist ties of a MAGA mayoral candidate who may in fact actually reside in Chicago—and who went on to lose.

■ Columnist and former Tribune and Sun-Times editor Mark Jacob offers a brief glossary: What Republicans say / What it really means.

■ In the far western suburb of Hampshire, a high school musical about four Broadway actors coming to a small conservative town to help a lesbian girl forbidden from bringing her girlfriend to a prom has been canceled due to “safety concerns” … or maybe just postponed?

■ The Reader’s Katie Prout surveys Chicago’s decadeslong campaign against rats: “I’m not saying that Chicago rat posters are racist, but …”

■ Critic Rick Kogan recommends an episode of PBS’ “American Experience,” “The War on Disco,” to those of a certain age. (Conceding what in retrospect feels like historical cluelessness, here is my first newscast on WXRT—July 13, 1979—which buried mention of the previous evening’s pivotal “Disco Demolition Night.”)

■ Beloved (yeah, Eric, I went there) veteran CBS 2 Chicago TV reporter Harry Porterfield — maybe best remembered for his series of profiles of ordinary Chicagoans doing extraordinary things—is dead at 95.

■ Block Club: “Chicago needs 18,000 coats for migrants. Here’s how you can help.”

Zorn addendum: I’m glad to see Meyerson at least acknowledge my war against reporters describing someone as “beloved.” It’s gooey, presumptuous and ill-defined death-notice lingo that has no place in news stories. I was similarly taken aback this week when a Sun-Times reporter described an accident victim as “well-liked.” Those are adjectives and phrases best suited for quotes from survivors.

You can (and should) subscribe to Chicago Public Square free here.

Cheer Chat

Barbie Silverman and Steve Rosen at “Songs of Good Cheer” rehearsal, Oct. 22

To mark the 25th annual run of “Songs of Good Cheer” programs at the Old Town School of Folk Music this year, my co-host Mary Schmich and I are reviving one of the most successful reader contests we’ve had: Tell us the story of your most memorable holiday gift.

A memorable gift can be a great gift. Or an awful one. Your story can be funny. Or moving. Things you might want to include in your story: What did the gift look like? What do you remember about the moment you received it? Where is it now? How do you feel now when you summon the memory?

We ask that you keep your entry to 200 words or fewer. The deadline is the Monday after Thanksgiving, Nov. 27. Email submissions only — use this link or write to ericzorn@gmail.com using the subject heading “Memorable Gift Essay.”

Winners will get two free tickets to “Songs of Good Cheer” ($108 value!), a caroling party at which Mary and I are joined by a band of accomplished local musicians who lead the audience in familiar and unfamiliar songs of the season.

Winners will also get the chance to join us on the stage to read their essays.

Opening night is in just six weeks, and tickets are already going fast. Here is the link for more information.

Marin vs. Kurtis — an epic final pairing in the battle for best retired Chicago TV news anchor

All week, Axios Chicago has been conducting a bracket tournament asking readers to choose the best retired local TV news anchor. From a starting field of 16 worthy contenders, they’re down to the championship matchup Thursday between Carol Marin and Bill Kurtis.

Both were familiar and trusted voices in Chicago for decades — Kurtis at CBS-2 and Marin at NBC-5, CBS-2 and WTTW-Ch.11. Both had stints on national network TV.

Marin gets my vote for her writing and reporting chops — she was also a Sun-Times columnist for many years — her current work as director of DePaul University’s Center for Journalism Integrity and Excellence, and her principled decision to resign from NBC-5 in 1997 when the station brought in schlock-TV host Jerry Springer as a commentator.

Go here to vote starting at 6:30 a.m.

Minced Words

Marj Halperin and Monica Eng joined host John Williams, Brandon Pope and me on this week’s episode of “The Mincing Rascals” podcast. We discussed sign-stealing in football, new U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson and issues related to asylum seekers in Chicago. In particular we discussed Monica’s eye-opening article in Axios Chicago, “Why Ukrainian and Latino migrations to Chicago worked out so differently” in which she puzzled over this fact: “Chicago has absorbed more than 30,000 Ukrainian refugees over the last 18 months with little controversy, but the arrival of 19,000 Latino migrants over roughly the same period has triggered a crisis in the city.”

Subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. Or bookmark this page. If you’re not a podcast listener, you can hear an edited version of the show at 8 p.m. most Saturday evenings on WGN-AM 720.

Re: Tweets

In Tuesday’s paid-subscriber editions, I present my favorite tweets that rely on visual humor. Subscribers vote for their favorite, and I post the winner here every Thursday:

The new nominees for Tweet of the Week, special Halloween edition:

• Handing out free candy to disguised residential beggars is promoting Biden’s socialist agenda. Any child who rings my doorbell will rake leaves for one hour and receive $7.25 minus taxes. — @RickAaron

• My kid keeps asking why we don't decorate outside for Halloween and I'm tempted to buy a bunch of poster boards and just write the scariest things I can think of on them, like, "Daycare is calling you at work right before a big presentation," or "Check Engine light comes on." — @ShannonJCurtin

• I’m focusing on hydration this Halloween and handing out eight glasses of water to each kid. — @Ygrene

• Cauliflower is broccoli dressed up as a ghost for Halloween. — @BrandonEsWolf

• People who hate candy corn love telling you. — @simoncholland

• I love October. When else do I say things like, “I’ll take a caramel apple and one ticket to be chased through a farmhouse with a butcher knife please.” — @Ivsy01

• I need a new Halloween party to attend this year, because I don't think "Speedo-Man" is getting a return invitation. — @WilliamAder

• It’s all fun and games until your kids start counting their Halloween candy. — @mommajessiec

• Last minute costume idea: You’re a grown adult and shouldn’t be dressing up for Halloween. — @ConanOBrien

• Employee: “How does it look?” Vampire in a changing room: “I can't see myself wearing this.” — @Browtweaten

Vote here and check the current results in the poll.

Usage note: To me, “tweet” has become a generic term for a short post on social media.

For instructions and guidelines regarding the poll, click here.

Tune of the Week

It’s difficult to believe in retrospect that so many old folks considered the Beatles a mere scruffy rock band in 1964, given the gorgeous and musically sophisticated quality of “If I Fell.” Though it was just a B-side in the U.S. (“And I Love Her” was the A-side), reached only No. 53 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is not as well known as many other Beatles’ hits, it’s an intricate masterpiece.

If I fell in love with you
Would you promise to be true
And help me understand?
'Cause I've been in love before
And I found that love was more
Than just holding hands

At About.com, rock journalist Robert Fontenot Jr. wrote that “If I Fell” is a John Lennon composition, though, as was customary, Paul McCartney received a co-writing credit. A few of Fontenot’s other observations:

• The structure of the song is unique among Beatles tunes of the time, and of pop music in general, in that it opens with an intro that contains no musical elements found in the rest of the song.

• Though this is thought of as John's song, and written exclusively by him, he sings the lead only on the intro, with no double-tracking; for the body of the song, Paul is actually singing a higher "lead" pattern while John sings harmony. Both sang into the same microphone at once to achieve this effect, a decision arrived at during recording.

• The body of this song has no verse/chorus structure to speak of, just two verses that each turn halfway through on an unexpected chord, making it seem as if a bridge has appeared.

• This was supposedly Kurt Cobain's favorite Beatles song.

Musicologist Alan W. Pollack offered these among other notes at Soundscapes:

•  The lyrics are deceptively simple and full of elliptical, ambiguous wordplay so typical of John's best work. Examples abound — the dangling question ("[would you] help me understand?" — understand what??), the use of "to", "too" and "two" in close proximity to each other, and the non-sequitur of the second repeat of the verse extension ("'‘cause I couldn't stand the pain") when it follows the line "she will cry when she learns ..."

• Beneath the mere cleverness of it all, what makes this song so potent is the desperate vulnerability it manifests; a veritable obsession with the subjunctive "iffy-ness" of love, described as a state in which people might run and hide and pride be hurt. For me though, the greatest ambiguity of all here is in the tension between the hero's begging for love's being requited on the one hand, while at the same time holding back from freely offering it for fear of being rejected. Is this ingenuous realism, such a lot of chutzpah, or likely a bit of both?

If you want to nerd out on the musical bones of the song, Pollack also has lots of notes like these:

 One's sense of D Major as the home key remains crystal clear but is made quite ironically bittersweet by some of the chord choices and the way they are orchestrated; e.g. the yearning stretch in the vocals required for the D7/9, and the small shift by John from B-natural to B-flat (on the words "and I") in order to ominously change that Major IV to a minor iv, accompanied as it is by Paul's literally trembling voice the second time around.

Lennon, who wrote the lyrics on the back of a Valentine’s Day card, referred to “If I Fell” as a “silly love song,” but it’s anything but.

Consult the complete Tune of the Week archive!

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