“Chicago,” schmicago!

The overly hyped Miramax musical isn't worth the sequins that gave their lives for it. Here are five song-and-dance films that are the real deal.

By Karen Croft

Topics:Chicago, Movies

I saw an “opinion-makers’ screening” of “Chicago” recently and had an epiphany. That is, I had an epiphany if an epiphany can bode doom instead of joy.

Sharon Stone introduced the film with much grace and gush (she even tried a modified tap routine with a Bob Fosse-style palms-up hand move). She then brought on the director, Rob Marshall, who talked about the writer Bill Condon, the composers John Kander and Fred Ebb, and the choreographer Bob Fosse — with similar but less theatrical grace and gush.

Then the movie began and after about five minutes the epiphany hit: This is another Miramax miracle! The movie is filled with stars, good music and choreography and a sexed-up sort-of story — but it’s been homogenized to fit into a package that will win awards if enough publicity and advertising are grafted onto the product.

And enough has been. This movie has won Golden Globes and, as has been predicted elsewhere, is probably going to win the Oscar for best picture (unless another Miramax miracle, “The Hours,” does instead.) It has all of the elements that the savvy big-M boys know will prevail: the most popular kids in class as its stars, top-notch creative people in all the right places and a novice director who can be asked to make the kind of pic Miramax needs to win another naked gold man.

All of this is bothersome for two reasons. First, a couple of really good movies won’t win. “The Pianist” will not be noticed much. Academy voters probably feel like they’ve given their award to a Holocaust film (1994 to “Schindler’s List”), and besides — who would give an Oscar to a foreign director accused of having sex with an underage girl? “Far From Heaven,” which is also wonderful, will also be passed over. (Even though Julianne Moore is perfection, director Todd Haynes is not a Hollywood insider and he once made a film about the death of Karen Carpenter starring Barbie dolls. Big mistake when it comes to winning popularity contests, Todd!)

The second is that people may think, and probably already do think, that “Chicago” is a great movie musical. Yikes! Its two biggest stars were chosen not for their singing and dancing abilities but because they are good box office right now. (It reminds me of the stories about the casting of “The Godfather” when Paramount executives tried to force then-novice director Francis Ford Coppola to cast Ryan O’Neal as Michael. Who had ever heard of Al Pacino?) In this case, Renée Zellweger and Richard Gere were coached in singing and dancing and we’re supposed to love their gumption.

Yes, this movie’s goal is to razzle-dazzle us so we won’t see what’s missing. But we should. “Chicago,” besides being a film that made me yawn, is just not worth the sequins that gave their lives for the production numbers. In fact, it has no real socko numbers because every scene was edited into quick-shot takes that could give the most centered person a headache. To appreciate choreography you have to see legs and feet at the same time.

One might say, “Oh, stop your whining. It’s just a fun movie.” And I would say, shut up. I think it’s OK to worry that we are losing the ability to tell the difference between a good movie and a collection of perhaps well-intentioned and strategically orchestrated scenes strung together for effect but adding up to not much in the end. If audiences can’t tell the difference, why should anyone care to do better?

See “Chicago.” See if I care. But when I want a job done well, I hire professionals. These movies have them:

“Cabaret” A good movie version of a Kander and Ebb musical starring a woman who can hoof and belt with the best of ‘em (she comes by it genetically).

“Singin’ in the Rain” Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, Cyd Charisse and Rita Moreno in the classic movie musical. Kelly had the flu during the famous rain scene and still looks perfect.

“On the Town” Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra play sailors romping on leave in New York and gee, look — the dancer can sing and the singer can dance!

“Funny Face” Audrey Hepburn as a model, Fred Astaire as a fashion photographer. He is a great dancer who sings sweetly. She is a great actress with enough dancing and singing ability to charm an angry warthog.

“West Side Story” Rita Moreno, George Chakiris, Russ Tamblyn and the devastating duo of Jerome Robbins (choreography and co-direction) and Leonard Bernstein (score). Shakespeare is snapping his fingers in his grave. This movie won the Oscar for best picture in 1961 — and deserved it.

Or just get any musical with Fred Astaire or Frank Sinatra in it.

: Karen Croft is the editor of Salon Sex. More Karen Croft

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Posters that rival the London Underground

These fascinating transit posters provide a different view of 1920s Chicago

By J.J. Sedelmaier, Imprint

Topics:Imprint, Design, Chicago

This article originally appeared on Imprint. It piece is a much expanded version of an article co-written with photographer/writer John Gruber for Print Magazine and the British trade mag Ads International in 1998.

Samuel Insull - 1920

The thought of Chicago in the 1920s usually conjures up images of gangsters, Prohibition and other Roaring 20s clichés, but there was another movement in the Chicago area that encompassed this decade. It inhabits the world of graphic art and has gone relatively unheralded, especially outside the Windy City region – The Insull Transit Posters.

Samuel Insull (1859-1938) left his British home in 1881 for New York to become Thomas A. Edison’s assistant. He eventually worked his way up to become one of the founders of what we now know as General Electric, and in 1892 left New York to helm the financially struggling Chicago Edison Co. In general terms, Insull’s most important contribution to modern life is his dedication to the idea that electricity use should be for the common consumer and not a novelty of the rich. He believed in providing electricity to as many customers and at the lowest price possible. Much of what we take for granted today in terms of the use and distribution of power and energy can easily be attributed to his groundbreaking ideas and efforts. By the 1920s Insull owned shares in all the major Chicago area utilities as well as the region’s transit lines, specifically the Chicago North Shore & Milwaukee (North Shore Line), Chicago South Shore & South Bend (South Shore Line), Chicago Aurora & Elgin and the Chicago Rapid Transit (Elevated/”L”) Lines. He solidly invested in programs to modernize, consolidate and publicize their existence and offerings. The poster campaign he initiated is but one aspect of the comprehensive program of advertising and promotion he developed.

It’s my contention that a good deal of what inspired Samuel Insull in the use of graphic art for his utility posters and marketing efforts during the 1920s must have come from what he witnessed Frank Pick was simultaneously implementing with the use of art and design in the London Underground’s poster and branding campaign.

The London Underground's Frank Pick (1878-1941)

Insull traveled extensively to his U.K. homeland throughout his years in America, and what he saw and learned in Britain could often directly influence how he ran his utilities in Chicago. For instance, while visiting Brighton, England, in 1894 he noticed that many of the shops that were closed for the evening were still brightly lighted – something unheard of in the “flat-rate billing” world of the United States. After tracking down the head of that township’s electric company, Insull was introduced to the use of a “Demand Metered” billing system. It applied different rates to different times of the day. Upon Insull’s return, Chicago soon saw a similar approach as well as an eventual 32 percent cut in rates for the consumer. Insull’s use of poster graphics so closely on the heels of Pick’s approach in the U.K. seem so similar that I have to believe it’s more than coincidence. The major difference, however, is that Pick’s influence is still evident in the identity of London Transport – from the use of Edward Johnston’s font “Johnston Underground” (commissioned by Pick and precursor to Gill Sans – Eric Gill was a student of Johnston’s) to Johnston’s “Roundel” logo, and the continued marriage of varied graphic art styles within LU promotion, the hand of Frank Pick continues to guide the company’s image. It’s a truly remarkable demonstration of how a strong, consistent branding vision can withstand the test of time yet continue to feel fresh. I’ve always seen it as a precursor to what MTV did when it was sculpting its image in the 1980′s – commissioning the talents of independent animators to design and produce short network IDs in varied techniques and styles, but always reinforcing the core MTV sensibility.

Below: A select group of London Underground posters

Frank Newbould 1929 - C. Paine 1921 - E. McKnight Kauffer 1921

Maxwell Armfield 1915 - A. Rogers 1930 - V.L. Danvers 1924

Two classic graphic creations: Edward Johnston's LU "Roundel" logo and his "Johnston Underground" typeface.

The control of the utilities and transit lines in 1920s Chicago offered Insull all sorts of opportunities to cross-promote his empire. He could encourage the development of rural areas into suburban communities by stretching his railways out and making them commutable into the city. This not only created customers for the transit lines, but also new subscribers to Insull’s electric utility network – it all tied together. And the land used by the utilities to run their electric lines via high tension towers could also be utilized as a right of way for the expansion of the railways. As a result, it totally made sense to entice the masses to leisurely explore the virgin countryside and in the process offer potential homeowners a cleaner (electric railways were void of the soot and cinders of steam railroads) and more pastoral existence. This is obvious in many of the posters’ imagery. Chicago’s transit lines had been doing advertising and even some poster designs since the 1910s, but there was no consistent graphic approach or what we now know to be “branding” in the direction of the marketing. This all changed once Insull took hold of the Elevated Rapid Transit System and the associated interurban lines. He soon assigned the poster project to the railroads’ president, Britton I. Budd, who later brought people like the North Shore Line’s Publicity Manager Luke Grant and Commercial Department Head John J. Moran, into the fold.

Britton I. Budd (1871-1965)

The design of the posters covered a wide range of styles. From the figurative work of artists like Willard Frederic Elmes and the young Oscar Rabe Hanson to the flat graphic interpretations of Ervine Metzl, many of the works produced were as strong and bold as anything being created simultaneously in the U.K. or Germany. The series not only utilized the talents of professional artists like Leslie Ragan, Elmes and Metzl, but also was a proving ground for newcomers like Hanson, and other art school students like Clara Fahrenbach and Wallace Swanson.

The depression of the 1930s not only effectively shut down the production of the poster campaign but also destroyed Insull’s entire empire. His electricity, gas and transportation utility and holding companies that served 5,000 communities in 32 states soon collapsed and he found himself indicted on multiple charges – and ultimately acquitted in each and every verdict. By the end of all legal proceedings in 1935, Samuel Insull was ruined. He and his wife, Gladys, settled in Paris and on July 16, 1938, Insull was felled by a heart attack. Ironically, he had been stricken while awaiting a train in the Paris Metro…

The Chicago transit posters designed between 1920 and 1930 received a fair amount of attention in the U.S. and the U.K. They won medals in several Art Directors Club annual competitions and to this day there are eight examples in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Once the transit poster campaign ended in 1930 the collection of images drifted into obscurity. It would take 45 years and an exhibition organized by Dave Gartler and his Chicago vintage poster shop Poster Plus, to resurrect them. Gartler came into an archived cache of them that had never been used and were still in their original folded condition. He painstakingly restored and mounted them for an exhibition in his gallery and they’ve been highly sought after collectibles ever since. Almost all the images in this article are included here thanks to Dave and Poster Plus. He remains the expert authority in this realm.

I’ve included some minimal biographical material on W. F. Elmes, Walter Graham, Ervine Metzl and Leslie Ragan. Except for these designers, biographies of the artists involved have been most elusive, so I hope readers don’t feel I’ve done an injustice to the artists or the subject matter.

As far as I know, the following assemblage is the most comprehensive collection of the Insull Transit posters ever gathered together in one article. I’ve listed the following images together alphabetically by the artist…

________________________

Harry Walters Armstrong 1883-1954

1924

________________________

Ivan V. Beard 1896-1980

1927 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1927- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1928

________________________

Robert Beebe 1896-1965

All 1923

________________________

Carroll Thayer Berry 1886-1978

1927

________________________

Roy F. Best

1922

________________________

Emil Biorn 1864-1935

1929

________________________

Otto Brennemann 1864- ?

All 1926

1927 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1928 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1929

________________________

Willard Frederic Elmes 1900-1956

1922 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1923 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1923

Both 1923

All 1924

Both 1925

1925- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1926 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1928

Elmes’ also contributed to the Mather & Company 1924 motivational poster series profiled by Steven Heller here.

________________________

Francis Raymond Elms 1906-1984

1927

________________________

Norman Erickson 1884-1964

1925 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1925- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1926

All 1926

________________________

Clara B. Fahrenbach 1886-1976

1927

________________________

Walter Graham 1903-2000

1929

I was fortunate enough to speak to Walter Graham in 1998 about his work and also sent him a copy of his Insull poster, which he’d lost long ago. He freelanced as an illustrator/artist after he finished school in 1928 and had his own commercial art studio, Nugent-Graham Studios in Chicago, from 1937 until he left for the Northwest to retire as a full-time painter in 1950.

________________________

Oscar Rabe Hanson ? -1926

All 1923

All 1924

All 1926

1926 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1927

________________________

Raymond E. Huelster 1890-1955

1927- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1928

Both 1929

________________________

Arthur A. Johnson 1898- ?

1923 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1924- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1924

Both 1924

Both 1925

All 1925

1925- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1925 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1926

________________________

Charles B. Medin

1925 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1929

________________________

Ervine Metzl 1899-1963

Both 1921

1923- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1923- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1924

Ervine Metzl was arguably (even when considering the prolific career of Leslie Ragan) the most successful of all the artists in the Insull poster series. He designed posters, did several covers for Fortune, and illustrations/covers for other magazines and books, and was as a designer for U.S. Postal stamps from 1957-60. He’s credited with helping along a young Paul Rand by pairing him up with a NYC ad agency in the 1930s and introducing him to the influential package/industrial designer George Switzer. Metzl served as a mentor to a young Ron Barrett, designer/cartoonist/humorist, and later illustrator of “Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs.” Metzl also wrote an early definite study of poster history “The Poster” in 1963.

________________________

Datus Ensign Myers 1879-1960

Both 1922

________________________

Rocco D. Navigato 1895-1942

1923- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1924- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1925

All 1926

________________________

Walter Necker

1927

________________________

Ruth A. Olson

1925

________________________

Leslie Ragan 1897-1972

All 1927

1927- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1927- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 1928

Leslie Ragan made a career out of designing railroad travel posters. Beside the half dozen scenes he did for the South Shore Line, his work for the New York Central Lines, Norfolk & Western and the Budd Corporation, produced over one hundred images.

________________________

Wallace Swanson

1925

________________________

Hazel B. Urgelles ? -1989

1923- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – — - 1924- – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - – - 1925

________________________

(2 remaining posters by unknown artists)

1924

(Maybe Harry Walters Armstrong ?)

__________________________

As an added bonus, I’ve decided to include rare examples of the original gouache paintings done by some of the artists as designs for their posters. Nowadays, a photographic and usually digital process is used to reproduce posters in quantity. The artist’s original design is simply reproduced in whatever form the final piece needs to be in. Back then, the lithography process used to (re)produce these posters involved taking an artist’s artwork (in this case 15″ x 22″ water-based gouache paintings on board) and translating the designs to separate lithography stones – one for each color. The lithographer’s objective was to faithfully reproduce everything from color to texture and then register all the separate color levels during the printing process to replicate the original design. The final image was also enlarged to the standard 27″ x 41″ (one sheet) poster size for exterior display on the train platforms, etc. What’s interesting are the changes made between when the artist finished his painting and the final poster was printed. Sometimes, for specific reasons lost to time, the text was changed as evidenced when comparing the paintings to the final product. (BTW, as far as I know, the “Winter-Fields By The North Shore Line” poster only exists as a gouache painting, I haven’t been able to locate a lithograph poster print of it yet.)

The original gouaches are below with their various sources/credits included underneath the image.

Laura Hedien - - - - - - - - - - - - Dave Myers

Dave Myers - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Dave Myers - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -B. Mooney Photography- Chicago

Hopkins Stolp Peffers

________________________

A two-page spread from the 1927 Westvaco "Inspiration for Printers" annual (reprinted from the 1926 British annual "Posters & Publicity").

Pages from 1928 and 1927 Art Directors Club annuals.

1920's Edwards & Deutsch Lithographing Co. picnic photo (Nice squeeze-box !). E&D was one of the firms in Chicago chosen as lithographers for the posters along with National Printing & Engraving Co., Illinois Lithographing Co., and Gugler Lithographing Co.

A brochure from the 1910s era prior to Insull's poster program showing the extensive use (see below) of poster advertising along the elevated system.

The four sets of photographs below show how the Insull Transit posters were mounted on-site. By enlarging shots like these, I’ve been able to discover posters not found anywhere else. The detail in these pictures is truly remarkable.

E/NE view of Linden Avenue stop, Wilmette, IL

Loyola Station looking south on Sheridan Road, Chicago, IL

Northeast view of Isabella stop, Evanston, IL

Left: Edison Court/Waukegan. Il. Top right: 5 Mile Road/Racine, WI. Bottom Right: Indian Hill/Winnetka, IL.

Even though the Insull poster campaign was discontinued by the onset of the Depression, there was a revival of sorts of the program in 1997. Addressing many of the same reasons that the original posters were created — to stimulate residential, commercial, and industrial growth, Mitch Markovitz (formerly the art and advertising director of the South Shore Line in the ’80s) was commissioned by the Northwest Indiana Forum to produce new posters. Mitch served as the founding artist and art director of the campaign and produced a run of lovely images in the process. The works of Markovitz not only took inspiration from the original series, but paid a respectful homage to Leslie Ragan in particular. I’ve included several examples of Mitch’s work below…

Contemporary posters by Mitch Markovitz

Corrie Lebens and Zero Lastimosa were endlessly patient and helpful in working with me on the production of this piece.

The other people and organizations that I’ve relied upon (over a 15-year period) to help me cook this casserole are: Dave Gartler and his Poster Plus shop/gallery, John Gruber — an amazing photographer/editor/writer/historian –, Mitch Markovitz, the late Arthur D. Dubin who connected me with SO many people who have become good friends and collaborators, John Horachek, Bob Harris, Laura Hedien/Tom Herrara, Graham Garfield, Norm Carlson, Walter Keevil, the late George Krambles, his nephew Art Peterson and the “Krambles-Peterson Archive”, John Wasik, Cousin of Ervine Metzl — Karen Kohn, Erich Knautz, Dave Myers, Eric Bronsky, the late Walter Graham, Martin Tuohy, Britton Budd descendent James Delacour, Ken Fletcher, Scott Gendell, Al Louer, Denny Mayer, Malcolm D. McCarter, Ed Tobin, Barbara Mooney, Wilmette Historical Museum, Milwaukee Public Library, Highland Park Historical Society, and the Chicago History Museum (formally the Chicago Historical Society).

Finally, please refer to the book, “Moonlight In Duneland” by Ronald D. Cohen & Stephen G. McShane 1998 Indiana University Press for a great profile of the Insull Transit Poster campaign. It concentrates primarily on the work done for South Shore Line, but still nicely analyzes the overall series.

: More J.J. Sedelmaier

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The myth of the progressive city

With mayors like Bloomberg and Emanuel, urban areas have become bastions of privatization and corporatist economics

By David Sirota

Michael Bloomberg and Rahm Emanuel (Credit: AP)

Topics:Democratic Party, Media Criticism, New York City, Chicago

If you’ve listened to a political pundit predict any election in the last 50 years, you’ve been told that there are Republican small towns whose politics are organized around the three G’s (guns, God and gays) and there are Democratic cities whose politics are organized around the two L’s (labor and economic liberalism). While this binary mythology is insulting for its hackneyed stereotyping and lack of nuance, it has at least half the story right — in terms of sheer partisanship, many rural areas do tend to go red, and many urban areas do tend to go blue.

Where this story goes wrong is in its ideological suppositions about the cities — and specifically, about Democratic cities. Sure, two or three decades ago, there may have been some truth to the notion that the American city is a union-driven bastion of populist progressive economics. But today, while cities may still largely vote Democratic, they are increasingly embracing the economics of corporatism. The result is that urban areas are a driving force behind the widening intra-party rift between the corporatist, pro-privatization Wall Street Democrats and the traditional labor-progressive “Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party.”

Start with a look at Chicago, the metropolis most identifiably (and inaccurately) branded as a hotbed of labor power and liberal economics.

In recent years, the Windy City has become “the most aggressive city in the United States in the privatization of public infrastructure,” according to the Public Interest Research Group. Citing the city’s budget crisis, officials have sold off highways and parking meters at cut-rate prices — all to pad the profits of corporate investors (the schemes are now being explored by other Democratic cities including Pittsburgh and Los Angeles). Despite this, during its once-in-a-generation contested mayoral election in 2010, the city’s voters chose investment banker Rahm Emanuel over other far more economically progressive candidates, and Emanuel quickly filled his administration with corporate consultants eager to accelerate the privatization already under way. Now, Emanuel has declared war on organized labor, with the Associated Press’s headline blaring “Even in Chicago, Mayor Goes After Labor Unions.”

A similar trend is happening in my home city of Denver.

As in Chicago, lazy reporters and pundits equate the Mile High City’s votes for Democratic candidates as proof of the city’s alleged affinity for liberal economics. But Denver is today embracing right-wing economic ideology — and that ideology’s politician-promoters — with the zeal of Colorado Springs.

A few years ago, the city saw one of right-wing billionaire Phil Anschutz’s corporate takeover specialists, Michael Bennet, appointed school superintendent and then use his power to thrust the public schools’ finances into the hands of his friends on Wall Street. The move effectively forced Denver taxpayers to use money for public schools to subsidize the profits at financial behemoths like JP Morgan. Nonetheless, when Bennet turned around and ran for Senate on huge campaign contributions from the very financial sector that he helped fleece Denver taxpayers, the city rewarded him, first by giving him higher-than-expected vote totals to defeat a progressive primary challenge, and later by delivering him the general-election margin of victory.

In the last year, Denver has moved even farther to the economic right. In early 2011, it elected Michael Hancock, the most economically conservative mayoral candidate in a large field of choices — a man who, as mayor, has made headlines by effusively complimenting George W. Bush; appointing a top Republican who previously headed a corporate front group as his chief of staff; pressing for so-called education “reforms” specifically aimed at undermining the teachers union; and starring in television ads railing against a progressive ballot measure that would mandate employers allow workers to accrue paid sick days.

Seeing that conservative political trend, record-setting amounts of corporate money subsequently flowed into the city’s major elections this fall. The result? A city which just a few years ago voted to raise taxes to support public services voted down a progressive state ballot measure to better fund education in a state that — compared to others — disproportionately underfunds its schools. It also succumbed to a massive corporate-financed campaign and rejected the paid sick days initiative (which had initially polled well). Additionally, it preserved a school board majority that has already aggressively worked to undermine traditional public education.

Similar examples are everywhere.

On education, the Democratic-voting city of Washington, D.C., was the place that launched the political career of Michelle Rhee, the face of the right-wing effort to siphon public school money into private schools; Democratic Los Angeles has seen a successful Wal-Mart-funded effort to encroach on traditional public education, with more privately administered “public” schools than any district in the country; and Democratic New Orleans has seen a wholesale charter-ization of its schools.

On economic justice issues, the Democratic-voting city of Philadelphia saw its popular mayor veto paid sick days legislation (it ultimately passed over his objections) while Democratic-voting cities like Oakland, Boston and Denver have led the way in deploying their police forces on peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors.

On spending issues, Democratic-voting cities across the country have simultaneously slashed social services while offering up huge taxpayer subsidies for stadiums, corporate office buildings and other private, for-profit projects.

And on tax issues, Democratic-voting New York City has seen its billionaire mayor become the national champion of regressive tax cuts for the wealthy.

Though Bloomberg is officially an independent, his brand of politics perfectly epitomizes the radical shift in urban economic ideology from one of labor/progressive traditions to a now-familiar greed-is-good crony conservatism — all under the veneer of liberalism. Like now-standard Democratic Party corporatism that puts a velvet glove of equal rights rhetoric over the brass knuckles of Big Business cash, his formula relies on a larger realignment of liberal orthodoxy away from economics and toward social issues. As Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi put it:

[Bloomberg] is a billionaire Wall Street creature with an extreme deregulatory bent who has quietly advanced some nastily regressive police policies… but has won over upper-middle-class liberals with his stances on choice and gay marriage and other social issues.

Bloomberg’s main attraction as a politician has been his ability to stick closely to a holy trinity of basic PR principles: bang heavily on black crime, embrace social issues dear to white progressives, and in the remaining working hours give your pals on Wall Street (who can raise any money you need, if you somehow run out of your own) whatever they want.

He understands that as long as you keep muggers and pimps out of the prime shopping areas in the Upper West Side, and make sure to sound the right notes on abortion, stem-cell research, global warming, and the like, you can believably play the role of the wisecracking, good-guy-billionaire Belle of the Ball…

Though Taibbi was writing about Bloomberg specifically, his words aptly sum up what the American cityscape has become — yet more scorched earth in the successful assault of Limousine Liberals and Crony Corporatists on Lunch-Pail Liberals and Progressive Populists. In political terms, it represents the broader success of the transpartisan moneyed class in fully redefining “liberal” exclusively as “social-issue liberal” — without regard for economic agenda.

To be sure, most cities may never vote for openly declared Republicans (though it’s worth noting that New York City did see a longtime Democratic congressional district go to the GOP a few months back). But official partisan complexion is far less significant in the day-to-day lives of most citizens than the rightward shift of public policy in America’s biggest population centers.

This truism, which the red-versus-blue fetishists in our media and political arenas refuse to acknowledge, is well understood by movement conservatives (as just one example, here in Denver, it was major GOP donors that underwrote the nominally Democratic candidates who promised to preserve the corporate takeover of the city’s school board). They get that, at the policy level, it doesn’t really matter if cities votes for candidates who call themselves Democrats, independents or liberals, and it doesn’t matter if reporters keep misrepresenting cities as enclaves of ultra-liberal economics — as long as this breed of politicians continue getting urban areas to play their new role pressing the conservative economic agenda.

: David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota

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Rahm Emanuel sworn in as Chicago’s new mayor

"It is time to take on the challenges that threaten the very future of our city" said the former White House chief

By Don Babwin and Deanna Bellandi, Associated Press

Rahm Emanuel takes the oath of office of Mayor of Chicago from Timothy C. Evans, Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County during inaugural ceremonies Monday, May 16, 2011 in Chicago. Watching are from left, daughter Ilana, wife Amy Rule, daughter Leah and son Zacharia. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Rahm Emanuel, War Room, Chicago

Rahm Emanuel was sworn in Monday as Chicago’s first new mayor in two decades, a historic power shift for a city where the retiring Richard M. Daley was the only leader a whole generation had ever known.

The former White House chief of staff took the oath of office at downtown’s Millennium Park, one of the signature accomplishments in Daley’s efforts to transform Chicago from an industrial hub into a gleaming global tourist destination. He planned to head to City Hall later to the fifth-floor office that was Daley’s lair for 22 years.

“We must face the truth,” Emanuel said in his inaugural speech. “It is time to take on the challenges that threaten the very future of our city: the quality of our schools, the safety of our streets, the cost and effectiveness of city government, and the urgent need to create the jobs of the future.”

“The decisions we make in the next two or three years will determine what Chicago will look like in the next 20 or 30.”

Emanuel inherits a city with big financial problems. His transition team predicted a $700 million budget shortfall next year, but because of some controversial decisions by Daley — most notably the push to privatize parking meters — he has limited ways to pay for school improvements or repair the city’s aging infrastructure.

In his speech, Emanuel walked a fine between bluntly assessing the city’s problems without being directly critical of the departing mayor.

“From the moment I began my campaign for mayor, I have been clear about the hard truths and the tough choices we face. We simply can’t afford the size of city government that we had in the past, and taxpayers deserve a more effective and efficient government than the one we have today.”

Emanuel also showed that he would not be shy about wading into national politics, referring to efforts in other Midwestern states to eliminate union rights for many public employees as part of budget cuts.

“I reject how leaders in Wisconsin and Ohio are exploiting their fiscal crisis to achieve a political goal. That course is not the right course for Chicago’s future,” he said.

Emanuel, who represented Chicago in Congress before he went to Washington to become Obama’s senior aide, made his mayoral ambitions known more than a year ago during an interview on Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show, saying it was “no secret” that he wanted to run for mayor if Daley did not seek re-election.

When Daley announced last fall that he would not seek a seventh term after 22 years in office — a longer tenure than any other mayor in the city’s history — some wondered if Emanuel had some prior knowledge when he made that comment.

But if he did, that didn’t stop him — just days before Daley’s stunning announcement — from renewing his lease with the tenant who rented his Chicago home while the Emanuels lived in Washington.

That decision to rent his house was at the center of the biggest obstacle standing between Emanuel and the mayor’s office: the legal battle over whether he was a resident of Chicago and eligible to run for mayor.

The fight ended with an Illinois Supreme Court ruling in his favor — but not before an appellate court panel knocked his name off the ballot, citing his time away from the city.

Once that issue was out of the way, Emanuel simply steamrolled over his opponents.

Branded as a Washington outsider by other candidates, Emanuel didn’t miss an opportunity to remind voters that, unlike his opponents, he had friends in high places, even as he sought to convince Chicagoans that he was one of them.

Armed with a $14 million campaign war chest that dwarfed those of his opponents, the only question in the last weeks of the race was whether Emanuel would get enough votes to avoid a runoff.

Emanuel, who kept his temper and his famously profane vocabulary in check during the campaign, ended up collecting 55 percent of the vote. In his last election campaigns, Daley was accustomed to collecting more than 70 percent.

Emanuel seemed to allude to his reputation when he spoke about school reform.

“As some have noted, including my wife, I am not a patient man,” he said. “When it comes to improving our schools, I will not be a patient mayor.”

Once elected, Emanuel wasted little time putting his administration together, bringing with him a number of people from his days in Washington.

For key posts, he went far outside the city. He hired the schools chief in Rochester, N.Y., to run the city’s massive education system. He went to Newark, N.J., to find his police superintendent rather than promoting from within. And where Daley hired a local newspaper reporter as his press secretary, Emanuel hired his away from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

In his speech, Emanuel thanked Daley for his service to the city, noting how the “world class” park where he was speaking had once been an abandoned rail yard and “nagging urban eyesore.”

“A generation ago, people were writing Chicago off as a dying city,” the new mayor said. “They said our downtown was failing, our neighborhoods were unlivable, our schools were the worst in the nation, and our politics had become so divisive we were referred to as Beirut on the Lake.”

When Daley took office in 1989, “he challenged all of us to lower our voices and raise our sights. Chicago is a different city today than the one Mayor Daley inherited, thanks to all he did.”

Emanuel’s swearing-in completed an interesting role swap between City Hall and the White House: Emanuel’s replacement as Obama’s chief of staff is the outgoing mayor’s younger brother, William Daley.

In a mark of Emanuel’s continuing ties with Washington, Vice President Joe Biden attended the inauguration, as did William Daley, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geitner and two other cabinet secretaries.

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Emanuel sworn in as Chicago’s new mayor

Richard M. Daley leaves office after 22 years as the former White House Chief of Staff is inaugurated

By Don Babwin and Deanna Bellandi, Associated Press

FILE - in this file photo taken Wednesday, April 27, 2011, Chicago Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel smiles as he answers questions at a discussion about how the arts contribute to the development of a thriving region during The Arts and Culture in Action event at the Goodman Theater in Chicago. When Emanuel takes over as mayor on Monday, May 16, he will infuse Chicago City Hall with hip vibe as he inherits a vibrant city from outgoing Mayor Richard M. Daley. (AP Photo/M. Spencer Green, File) (Credit: AP)

Topics:Rahm Emanuel, Chicago

Former White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was sworn in Monday as Chicago’s first new mayor in two decades, a historic power shift in a city where the retiring Richard M. Daley was the only mayor a whole generation of Chicagoans have ever known.

Emanuel was sworn in during a morning inauguration ceremony at the popular downtown Millennium Park, one of the signature accomplishments in Daley’s efforts to transform the city. Emanuel later planned to head over to City Hall and, for the first time since he was elected in February, walk into the fifth-floor office that was Daley’s lair for 22 years.

“The decisions we make in the next two or three years will determine what Chicago will look like in the next 20 or 30.”

Emanuel’s swearing-in completes an interesting role swap between City Hall and the White House: Emanuel’s replacement as Obama’s chief of staff is the outgoing mayor’s younger brother, William Daley.

In a mark of Emanuel’s continuing ties with Washington, Vice President Joe Biden was in attendance at the inauguration, as was William Daley, Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geitner and two other cabinet secretaries. Also scheduled to be there were the ambassadors of Mexico and six other countries.

Emanuel inherits a city with big money problems. Not only has Emanuel’s transition team predicted a $700 million budget shortfall next year, but because of some controversial decisions by Daley — most notably the push to privatize parking meters — he has limited avenues to fund efforts to improve schools and repair the city’s aging infrastructure.

It’s a challenge Emanuel has not shied away from.

Emanuel, who represented Chicago in Congress before he went to Washington to become Obama’s senior aide, made his desire to be mayor known more than a year ago during an interview on Charlie Rose’s PBS talk show, saying “it’s no secret” that he wanted to run for mayor if Daley didn’t seek re-election.

When Daley announced last fall that he wouldn’t seek a seventh term after 22 years in office — longer than any other mayor in the city’s history — some wondered if Emanuel had some prior knowledge when he made that comment.

That decision to rent his house was at the center of the biggest challenge standing between Emanuel and the mayor’s office: the legal battle over whether he was a resident of Chicago and eligible to run for mayor.

That fight ended with an Illinois Supreme Court ruling in his favor — but not before an appellate court panel decided that Emanuel’s time away from the city made him ineligible to run and knocked his name off the ballot.

With that out of the way, Emanuel simply steamrolled over his opponents. Branded as a Washington outsider by other candidates including former Sen. Carol Moseley Braun and former Chicago schools president Gery Chico, Emanuel didn’t miss an opportunity to remind voters that, unlike his opponents, he had friends in high places, even as he sought to convince them that he was one of them.

There was the campaign stop by former President Bill Clinton and the visit to Chicago by the Chinese President Hu Jintao — a visit, Emanuel reminded reporters, that included a private meeting between the two.

Armed with a $14 million campaign war chest that dwarfed those of his opponents, the only question in the last weeks of the race was whether Emanuel would get 50 percent of the votes plus one vote to avoid a runoff.

Emanuel, who kept his temper and his legendary profane vocabulary under wraps during the campaign, ended up collecting 55 percent of the vote. In his last election campaigns, Daley was accustomed to collecting more than 70 percent.

Once elected, Emanuel wasted little time putting his administration together, bringing with him a number of people from his days in Washington.

For key posts, he went far outside the city. He hired the schools chief in Rochester, N.Y., to run the city’s massive school system. He went to Newark, N.J., to find his police superintendent, choosing the head of that department rather than promote someone already in the department. And where Daley hired a local newspaper reporter as his press secretary, Emanuel hired his away from the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington.

In his speech, Emanuel thanked Daley for his service to the city, noting how the “world class” park where he was speaking had once been an abandoned rail yard and “nagging urban eyesore.”

“When Richard M. Daley took office as mayor 22 years ago, he challenged all of us to lower our voices and raise our sights. Chicago is a different city today than the one Mayor Daley inherited, thanks to all he did.”

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Reaganomics will bring our cities to ruin

Chicago and Colorado Springs have been praised as models -- but wrecking public infrastructure isn't the answer

By David Sirota

Reaganomics will bring our cities to ruin

Topics:Chicago, War Room, Rahm Emanuel

If America circa 2011 were a movie, there’s little doubt it would fall into the “sci-fi/horror” genre. We’ve got a government that emulates Big Brother, wars that are prosecuted by Terminators, and leading politicians who seem fit for the cover of Fangoria magazine — and that’s just at the federal level. Down at the local level, deindustrialization and recession have left more and more cities looking like the set from “Twelve Monkeys.” Even more troubling, the two archetypal models for supposed “success” in the future are Colorado Springs and Chicago, two enclaves that have been pioneering a sub-genre of policymaking we might call “Municipal Dystopia.”

The Springs, as we call it here in the square state, has made national headlines as a Republican bastion with an unwavering commitment to the old tax-cuts-and-budget-cuts theory of growth. During the recession, that has resulted in both comparatively low property tax rates and in darkened street lights, cuts to police and firefighting forces, and an end to basic municipal services.

The more Democratic Chicago, on the other hand, has gone in a slightly different — but equally radical — direction. Instead of offending its liberal voters by overtly terminating municipal services à la The Springs, Chicago has instead cloaked its Municipal Dystopia agenda in complex corporate transactions, raising short-term money by selling off huge chunks of public infrastructure to private investors, often at scandalously low prices. In the process, the city has become “the most aggressive city in the United States in the privatization of public infrastructure,” according to the Illinois Public Interest Research Group — and other cities like New York and Pittsburgh have been looking to follow its lead.

Such schemes as the Skyway privatization plan and the selling off of parking meters provided a relatively small amount of money up front to momentarily fill public budget shortfalls. But that cash came in exchange for guaranteeing huge future profits for private investors — profits that will be financed by the ever-increasing fees those backers are already forcing Chicago residents to pay.

This has been the tale of twin cities hurtling down two lanes of the same Reagan-paved road — perhaps until now.

A few weeks ago, the Springs hit the brakes, as anti-tax forces were decidedly crushed in municipal elections at the same time Democrat Richard Skorman swept into front-runner position in the city’s May mayoral runoff. The stunning results appear to be a direct repudiation of the Springs’ previous commitment to the Municipal Dystopia agenda, in part because one of the electoral casualties was Douglas Bruce, the well-known architect of Colorado’s anti-tax ballot initiatives (and good thing he was defeated — his tenure on the council would have been interrupted by his recent indictment).

By contrast, Chicago may be hitting the accelerator in the face of foreboding news.

The Medill News Service reports that the one-time money the city raised from privatization schemes is now running out, as the city is quickly “burning its way through millions of dollars [from the] deals, threatening to leave the long-term financial health in ashes.” Meanwhile, a new lawsuit cites the city’s own data in alleging that taxpayers were fleeced by a collaboration of politicians and corporate consultants who sold public infrastructure at deliberately below-market prices. Nonetheless, Chicago’s incoming mayor, former investment banker Rahm Emanuel, is now loading up his new administration with privatizers.

Specifically, Emanuel’s top economic advisor will be private equity investor Mark Angelson (for more on the private equity industry and the looting of public infrastructure, see this report in Businessweek). And as the New York Times reported this weekend, Angelson will head an economic team chock-full of consultants who specialize in privatizing public infrastructure:

During the campaign, Mr. Emanuel advocated a go-slow approach to any future privatization deals, but there seems little doubt what sort of advice his economic advisers will be offering. Lois Scott, the chief financial officer, runs a consulting firm specializing in privatization deals that has put together more than $35 billion in bond sales over the years. The budget director, Alexandra Holt, is a Baker & McKenzie lawyer who worked for clients trying, unsuccessfully, to privatize Midway airport.

Chicago, of course, is still a few privatizing steps behind smaller towns like Maywood, Calif., and Sandy Springs, Ga. And its commitment to the Municipal Dystopia agenda hasn’t yet delivered the same painful budgetary consequences that may now push the Springs off that course. But if the numbers from Chicago’s past privatization deals predict the future, then it and other cities following the same path will indeed face those consequences — the only question is whether, like the Springs, those cities must bear that pain before voters finally demand a true change of direction.

: David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com. More David Sirota