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A Better Class of Criminal

Tue, 07/29/2008 - 12:22 — Bobbo

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­­Factory Tour Guide­

In the latest Batman film, The Dark Knight, arch-villain The Joker blows up the Gotham City Hospital which disappears into a fireball of smoke and flames. Most film goers probably didn't realize that this was not a model or a computer generated image. The film crew actually exploded part of an abandoned factory only a few blocks from where I live. It was the old Brach's Candy plant on Chicago's West Side, a major landmark to anyone who travels on the CTA Green Line out to the Austin neighborhood or on to Oak Park and Forest Park.

What is left of the Brachs' Candy factory lies crumbling along Cicero Avenue, frequented only by the homeless, the professional junk scavengers, the graffiti artists and the urban adventurers who love to risk life and limb clambering around abandoned buildings. Brachs is only one example. Today most of Chicago's former industrial glory is a Machu Picchu of weedy rusting ruins or has been plowed under to grow a crop of yuppie condo buildings.

­Twas not always thus.


Coddling our Crybaby Corporations

Thu, 07/17/2008 - 05:37 — Bobbo

Grief Counselor

"This is a war on the middle class", an American Axle worker said, "People are losing their homes, while the banks and the rich are getting more profits. They preach they are creating more jobs—but what kind of pay are these jobs?"

The jobs that the striking American Axle worker referred to pay $14 an hour, down from the $28 an hour that the American Axle parts workers had been formerly paid. As peoples' mortgages, car payments, kids' college tuition and health care went down the drain when the strike was lost, American Axle CEO Richard Dauch was rewarded with an 8.5 million dollar bonus for his brave service in the battle against the American middle class.


Now Repeat After Me...We're Electing a President, Not a Messiah

Sun, 07/06/2008 - 18:59 — Bobbo

Government of the Rich

So Barack Obama is tacking to starboard. That's steering to the right for you landlubbers. But as a politician who lives next to those inland seas we call the Great Lakes, he must have seen sailors do this hundreds of times. He's already tacked to the port or the left side. Now it's time to tack to the right or the starboard side. Paradoxically, that's how you sail in a "straight" line and end up arriving at your destination.

Let's remember that Barack Obama is a South Side Chicago politician. Veering to the right after starting out on the left is a time honored Windy City tradition.