Booman Tribune ~ A Progressive Community

Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders

by susanhu
Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 11:50:12 AM EST

And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
faces of women and children I have seen the marks
of wanton hunger. - Carl Sandburg

Of wanton hunger and of bitter cold.

In secret negotiations, Chicago, the "tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities," is turning down an offer from Citgo, the Venezuelan oil giant, of a 40-50 percent discount on diesel fuel for buses this winter. (Only 12,000 homes in all of Illinois use heating oil.)

It's actually Chicago's windy bureaucrats who are the "little soft" ones as they tremble in fear of losing federal funding for the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA) if they're caught consorting with the radical Hugo Chavez. "Just weeks after Citgo made its offer to the CTA, Congress signed the Federal Transportation Appropriations bill, allocating $89 million in infrastructure project funds the CTA had been seeking for years."

In a masterfully researched story, New Standard News's Jessica Pupovac found out that "[i]nstead of accepting deeply discounted fuel from the Venezuela-owned Citgo Petroleum Corporation, the city is instead raising fares to solve budget shortfalls."

In an October meeting with representatives from the Chicago Transit Authority (CTA), the city's Department of Energy and other city officials, Citgo unveiled a plan to provide the Chicago with low-cost diesel fuel. The company's stipulation, at the bidding of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was that the CTA, in turn, pass those savings on to poor residents in the form free or discounted fare cards. [...]
According to Venezuela’s consul general in Chicago, Martin Sanchez, the CTA has yet to inform his office of its decision to decline the discount offer.
In place of the proposed discount, which the CTA apparently does not want Chicagoans to even know about, budget shortfalls will be addressed by fair hikes. Chicagoans who are unaware of the Venezuela offer will be hit with an increase of 25 cents per ride next month, and discounted route-to-route transfers will be eliminated for passengers paying cash.

"I only earn $560 a month and of that, over $200 a month goes to my bus fare," a mother of two teenagers told Ms. Pupovac. The mother uses CTA to get to her GED classes.

In November, I wrote a story about Rep. William Delahunt engineering a deal between Citgo and the state of Massachusetts to provide heating oil for 45,000 needy residents. The New Standard News story tells us how this program has expanded to other cities and states ... continued below ...

The offer of discount fuel is not just confined to Chicago. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the first of Venezuela's "oil-for-the-poor" programs in the US was launched. Citgo struck a deal with three nonprofit organizations in the Bronx to deliver 5 million gallons of heating oil at 45 percent below the market price. The deal will amount to a savings of $4 million for the 8,000 low-income households slated to benefit from the plan.
Citgo has made a similar arrangement with Citizens Energy Corp. in Boston for the sale and distribution of 12 million gallons, saving low-income and elderly residents there a total of $10 million. The company's website says that it expects to expand the program to other boroughs in New York City and that it is exploring the possibility of offering discounted fuel to residents in Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
[...]
[I]nstead of fuel for heat, Citgo representatives offered the CTA a 40-50 percent discount on diesel fuel for buses to benefit Chicagoans most in need of relief from soaring oil and gas prices this winter.
"We didn't know how else to reach enough people," said Consul Sanchez.
Another difference between the Chicago offer and the programs enacted in the Northeast is that Citgo proposed to work with a government agency, rather than nonprofit organizations. The CTA relies on the US federal government – which is in a constant war of words with Venezuelan President Chavez – for much of its funding. ... (NSN story)

As for the critics of Chavez's program to help the poor and needy in the U.S.:

[A]s Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research – another progressive think tank – pointed out, the Venezuelan government has been providing cheap fuel to several countries in Latin America. Weisbrot is a staunch supporter of the Chavez administration.
"It is part of [Venezuela's] policy to compensate for the impact of the high oil prices on poor people," he said. "They don't have any grudge against the American people; it's just the Bush administration that they don't like."
Consul Sanchez echoed this sentiment. "Any corporation that makes a big profit in a community owes that community something in return," he said. With one of Citgo's three light-oil refineries located in nearby Lemont, 30 minutes outside the city, Sanchez said, Venezuela has "a special relationship with people and community organizations in Chicago."

So, not only is Citgo community-spirited -- and on an international level -- it has businesses that provide jobs in the job-thirsty urban parts of the Midwest. Come on, CTA. Or your citizens will railroad you outta town.

P.S. We've talked about New Standard News here before. You can sign up for their daily news stories and RSS feeds. They do solid reporting about stories that the MSM overlooks.

  Hog Butcher for the World,
  Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
  Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
  Stormy, husky, brawling,
  City of the Big Shoulders.

Dear Carl, besides those now-narrowed shoulders, you should know that the stockyards are almost gone. Once a 475-acre spread, there's only one slaughterhouse left in Chicago, reported the WaPo on July 18, 2005 ... all the land "bought up by high-rise condos, coffee shops, five-star restaurants and martini bars."

Could you have written about "high-rise condos, coffee shops, five-star restaurants and martini bars," Carl? With their well-heeled habitues who don't know the cold, the misery, the hunger, the laboring jobs?

No, you would be writing about Dorothy Chew and the other Chicago transit riders -- traveling through the bitter cold, the wind, the unfriendly bureaucrats to whom they perhaps are invisible:

"This is going to hurt the poor and the minority people, like me," said Dorothy Chew, resident of Humboldt Park, where one-third of residents live below the federally recognized poverty level - currently just $16,000 for a family of three. Chew relies on the CTA to get to work and to Chicago Commons, where she attends classes daily in preparation for taking her GED. Since she rarely has money to invest in a fare card, she will be forced to pay for transfers the majority of the time.

Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders | 21 comments (21 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

The Daley Center in downtown Chicago which is the seat of local government is a Soviet Style beaucracy.You can feel it just walking down the halls. It's extremely impersonal...very much like Leningrad before Perestorika. It's gray, dark, cold and all the people look unhappy.

It's a semi police state here. From my window (where I work) I look out on Lawrence Ave and almost everyday the police are arresting people, looking for drugs, harassing passersby all for nothing. They really go after black people.

THe CIty is corrupt.

The City is run by Mayor Daley whose dad was also Mayor, Just like Bush's dad was also President.

You know, Mayor Daley never endorsed John Kerry. This has never been done before by any mayor in the city. They have always endorsed the Democratic candidate.

It appears he voted for Bush. Currently Patrick Fitzgerald is putting in jail all the people around Daley for things that politicians have always done here and which even I don't consider terribly offensive, just matter of course.

But he certainly wouldn't want to offend Bush, and the Illinois Commerce Commision which regulates utilities is really controlled by the utilities...the Gas, electric companies.

No one in power wants cheap oil.

I like Castro, I like Hugo Chavez, I like Sadaam Hussein.

They offer an alternative view. The only opposition I can find. The Democrats, like Daley are not in opposition to anything.

America need a new Soviet Union to keep it in line.

by Stu Piddy on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 12:14:19 PM EST

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

There is a very good reason why pride is the deadliest of sins- it leads to all the others. (not that I believe in sin exactly-most "sins" are acts of frustration.)
But this--is it political or just negligent?
A public authority refusing to serve the public?? HMMMMM

by shycat (painebillATHotmail) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 12:17:11 PM EST

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

C-posted at DKos.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

by susanhu (susanhuatearthlinkdotnet) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 12:20:31 PM EST

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

Isn't it interesting how language changes .... I wondered why Sandburg chose the adjective "wanton" for hunger.

My dictionary says its original meaning is unmanageable ... it also means senseless, unjustifiable ...

Hunger is senseless. So is the fear of the CTA in fearing the wrath of Bushco over Citgo.

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

by susanhu (susanhuatearthlinkdotnet) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 12:26:19 PM EST

Wonder what (none / 0)

Ozzie Guillen has to say about that.

The 10,000 Things

by Andrew C White (acwhite.nospam.@taconic.net) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 12:31:54 PM EST

Re: Wonder what (none / 0)

Uhm, if JJJr doesn't run against Daley, I say we draft Ozzie! Imagine the turnout! And how could you NOT vote for him????

I think I am on to something here....

Ozzie Guillen for Mayor!

by poemless on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 02:08:50 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Guillen (none / 0)

Ozzie Guillen says he like Chavez but he doesn't agree with eveything Chavez does. That's pretty liberal these days.

by Stu Piddy on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 02:17:03 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Wonder what (none / 0)

Wow! Is that like... really obnoxious as a signature or what! Guess I'll switch back to the original one.

The 10,000 Things

by Andrew C White (acwhite.nospam.@taconic.net) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 04:00:12 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Wonder what (none / 0)

That's better.

The 10,000 Things

by Andrew C White (acwhite.nospam.@taconic.net) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 04:02:47 PM EST
[ Parent ]

saved by Daley (none / 0)

Tricky one, that Mr. Chavez! Taking advantage of the poor to import & spread wild-eyed notions of equity and social justice, I mean, what's that dirty word . . . socialism? It's downright un-american . . .

". . . the more educated you are, the more indoctrinated you are. After all, propaganda is largely directed towards the privileged." -Noam Chomsky

by Arcturus on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 12:45:03 PM EST

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

"I only earn $560 a month and of that, over $200 a month goes to my bus fare,"

... FYI, someone should tell her she can buy a monthly pass for $75.

And I for one am glad the stockyards are gone. And a lot of Starbucks sipping yuppies (as I might be taken for) take the CTA and suffer in the bitter cold. that's half the fun of living here! And taking the CTA is still cheaper than owning a car.

I have a real problem with the framing of public transit as the milieu of the poor. The poor do take it. But so do a lot of people. In fact, there are really few good reasons for anyone to DRIVE in the city. So what I am saying is public transit funding should be framed as good for all residents, not just for charity cases. That's half the problem right there.

I support what Chavez/Citgo is doing and I think the city and the CTA are run by idiots of the highest caliber.

The CTA gets a lower grade from me than the city. In fact, if you live here you know that the CTA is beholden to NO ONE, and they will do whatever they damn well please, thank you. They don't listen to the customers, the Aldermen, or the Tsar, I mean mayor. Seriously, Daley just recently had to fight the CTA to stop them from RAISING fares for the DISABLED! Oy. The CTA management make City Hall look like a socialist paradise. I could go one forever, but I can tell you this comes as no surprise to me.

Looks like we better start shooting off LTEs to the Trib and SunTimes.

--Car-less Chicagoan

by poemless on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 01:59:38 PM EST

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

Great info from a resident. Thanks.

I will quibble with this though:

"I only earn $560 a month and of that, over $200 a month goes to my bus fare,"
... FYI, someone should tell her she can buy a monthly pass for $75.

The problem is getting that $75 together at one time.

And, hell's bells, if she's going to school and she's on welfare, the city should give her a free bus pass!

Hickok: "You know the sound of thunder. Can you imagine that sound if I ask you to? Ma'am, listen to the thunder."

by susanhu (susanhuatearthlinkdotnet) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 03:01:37 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

I agree about the pass.

But if one can spend $200 over a month, one can save $75. The issue, I think, is that people, especially the poor, are never taught how to manage their money. Which is part of the reason it is more expensive to be poor.

by poemless on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 03:19:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

Poor people don't have money to 'manage'...although I agree that teaching anyone how to really manage money doesn't seem to be a goal of most parents/school system.

Trying to save the money for cheaper bus pass could be set to this analogy..if you're poor and need toilet paper you go to the store with only a few cents and have to buy the smallest cheapest package even though buying twice as much would save you in the long run but you need that toilet paper now and can't wait to save up for the larger package.

And you're quite right about that is how it is more expensive to be poor. There are million different ways like the toilet paper example or the woman and her bus fare that conspire to keep poor people poor.

'Poverty is the worst form of violence'--Gandhi

by chocolate ink on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 04:23:08 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

Believe me, poor people know how to "manage" their money. Never having lived in Chicago and not knowing this woman, I can't speak to the situation, but I'm sure there could be many reasons.

It could be the one discussed, that she never has the money in a chunk, or it could be that there's a deadline for purchasing the monthly pass and her check comes after it. It also could be that one or both of her teenagers also need to take the bus to school, jobs, or other caregivers if the mom's in night-school. Or maybe she has to transfer an extra time that's not covered by the pass and has to buy extra tickets. You just never know.

Be Unbossed!

by Izzy (izzy AT unbossed DOT com) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 05:30:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Wonder if the newspaper will get (none / 0)

donations to get her a bus pass.

Talk about "micro-lending" (or micro-gifting).

10 readers at $7.50 each, and she'd have a pass for a month.

by LookingUp on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 03:56:58 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders (none / 0)

It has recently occurred to me that perhaps Hugo Chavez is some sort of political genius.

This reinforces that idea.

What is "politics" really but the search for real win-win ideas?

And here he has found one.

Offer the corrupted American political infrastructure a deal that it both cannot refuse and MUST refuse. A combination of carrot and stick. Eat the carrot and become beholden to an erstwhile Third World client country or be pummeled by the stick when you refuse.

Brilliant.

And Chicago? The only real difference between the way the Daley gang runs things and any other major U.S. metropolitan autocracy (Like the Giuliani/Bloomberg axis right here in NYC) is one of style. They all have the same problems and the same solution.

Problem: How to obtain a wealthy enough tax base....private AND business...to sustain the kleptocracy and simultaneously maintain the servant class...err, sorry, the working class...in a state of relative invisibility yet still pay them just enough to survive but NOT enough to prosper.

Solution: A welfare and educational system that produces emotionally and mentally crippled people who will work for next to nothing and a brutally, criminally racist police force to keep the lid on those within that system who get angry and are willing to take the risks necessary to try to get more.

Daley pere always looked to me as if he was born in the wrong place to the wrong family. He belonged in the U.S.S.R with Stalin, Khruschev and the boys. Put him and his allies in a lineup wearing those shabby grey Soviet cut suits they always wore and present any group of people with a multiple choice questionnaire about their profession that had both Soviet apparatchik and leader of a major American city in the choices and the Soviet one would have won by a landslide.

Remember... the governments of almost ALL of the major cities in America were quite recently clearly heavily influenced by ethnic white working class criminal enterprises. Boston, Chicago, NY, LA, Philadelphia, Providence, Miami, New Orleans...the list is both long and quite well documented.

Now as that money climbs the ladder to respectability, they are known as "real estate" interests.

"Business" people.

I got your real estate, right HERE!!!

Peel back the new layer of disguise, and who do you find?

Every time?

Thugs like Bernie Kerik.

BET on it.

Chicago.

City of the Pinched FACES.

Just like New York.

Same faces.

Better suits.

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 02:21:26 PM EST

I don't think so, Arthur (none / 0)

Chavez may or may not be a political genius, but my sense is that he is simply a statesman, which is such a rarity these days that it is no surprise that people are not quite sure what to make of it.

And I don't think it is about carrots and sticks so much as a different value system, one so alien to Americans that it can scarcely be comprehended.

If it is any comfort, it is equally difficult for many people outside the US to understand a culture that actively prefers spending a dollar to murder someone else's child than a dime to care for their own.

And regardless of the decision of Chicago politicians regarding the diesel fuel, Chicago people who need eye surgery and cannot afford it have only to call the Venezuelan consulate, and they will be flown to Caracas, eyes fixed, and flown back.

Venezuela hopes to expand the program to other cities and other medical treatments as it gets its own health care ducks in a row. Great progress has been made, but there is still much work to be done, but they are committed to share with the US poor.

It is, again, a difference in cultural values, medical treatment as a right, and a service, as opposed to a commercial product.

one man's conspiracy is another man's business plan
Blog updated as needed

by DuctapeFatwa (DuctapeFatwa@yahoo.com) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 03:07:24 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: I don't think so, Arthur (none / 0)

Well, if adherence to a different...and objectively better...value system also quite organically includes imposing the carrot/stick quandry currently faced by people like Daley...

THATS entertainment!!!

And/or real statesmanship.

And/or political genius as well.

I did not mean to imply that what Chavez is doing is necessarily a cynical move.

Just good business that is informed by what I like to call the real basis of morality.

What we generally think of as "morality"...the moral codes that have supported every great and successful, long lasting human culture, no matter which ones you examine...is really just the distillation of the observations of the wisest among hundreds and thousands of generations as to what behavior works best to sustain a society.

Remain rooted in honor, and your actions will BE "statesmanlike".

And effective as well.

The good guys ALWAYS win, eventually.

"The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Yup.

That's all you really need to know.

It is surprising how rare the application of that knowledge is, considering its utterly apparent truth.

Keep the faith.

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 03:58:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Frontpage Space Available? (none / 0)

.
No conspiracy, sorry chap ... I got just facts today!

UK Secrecy Act muffled torture docs sent to Boomer - HERE ◊ by gandhi

«« click on pic for Paris Memorial
Nicholas John Andrew Langman - SAS agent

Preceded by yesterday's revelation of SAS agent in Athens, accomplice in abduction of Pakistanis after July 7 London bombings.
Athens abductions part III - MI6 officer named ◊ by talos

"Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

▼ ▼ ▼ MY DIARY

by Oui on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 02:26:00 PM EST

Re: Frontpage Space Available? (none / 0)

I notice that you are getting very...non-linear, these days, Oui.

Interesting...

AG

Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie.-Mae West

by Arthur Gilroy (arthurgilroy<at>earthlink.net) on Thu Dec 29th, 2005 at 04:00:11 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Chicago: City of the Pinched Shoulders | 21 comments (21 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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