Category
Daily headlines
Date Posted
10/24/07
18 Comments

Comments ( 18 )

  • The saddest thing is that a headline like this doesn’t even shock people in this City.

  • Ah yes, more attempts by Messy’s to win over the hearts and minds of Chicagoans. Yes, bring in the Frangos and holiday decor…no, forget that laughingly obvious “State Street” ad campaign and all the other half-hearted attempts to convince us that we are wrong in protesting your takeover of the Field’s name and tradition. We’ll be back…we’re not going away…our movement is growing…check out http://www.fieldsfanschicago for more info.
    GIVE THE LADY WHAT SHE WANTS…SHE WANTS MARSHALL FIELD’S!

  • The lady would have a lot more discretionary income to spend ($8,000 per man, woman and child) if instead of spending time protesting this she protested the boondoggle military occupation in Iraq. Remember how that was going to pay for itself?

    But Marshall Field V himself said years ago that once the store was bought by Dayton-Hudson it really stopped being Marshall Field’s. Although the green bags certainly pwned the Macy’s one, as the kids would say.

  • Joe, there are political arguments out the yin-yang in here. If you want to end them, be consistent and censor out any comments regarding CTA budgets, TIF funds, municipal & state budgets, etc.

    Whether you agree or disagree with the decision to invade Iraq, there is nothing simply “political” about pointing out it is costing Americans a LOT of money – and this most certainly is relevant to what people can afford for housing & the Fed’s abilities to tinker with rates and thus, ultimately, housing prices and the larger market.

  • Carter,

    The CTA, TIFs, municipal and state budgets all have a direct impact on living in Chicago. Different story than the war in Iraq – all politics, alas, is not local.

    As you know, we don’t censor comments (except for the occasional overly foul one).

  • Thank you, Carter, for expressing a sentiment we Field’s Fans have encountered elsewhere – such as a cartoon in the Reader a few weeks ago.
    Can’t protesters/activists “multi-task?” Why can’t we be concerned about Iraq, AIDS, taxes, schools, etc. and ALSO present our feelings to the world about the desecration of a cherished Chicago institution? (BTW there were some changes to Field’s after it became part of a conglomerate several years ago, but the name, brands and general “atmosphere” were pretty much still there. You can’t say that now, no matter how hard the new ownership tries to “cherish the old traditions.” The more they try, the more obvious is it that they’re just “trying too hard.”

  • Joe, we will have to agree to disagree, as I could spend a few years explicitly going through federal budgets line-item by line-item to show you how large urban areas are getting the shaft right now, and one would have to take quite a leap of faith to argue that a military occupation which costs the country 60x the the entire City’s budget every year isn’t taking a toll on the CTA, schools, and local infrastructure.

    LR, the Reader cartoon was just that, a cartoon. Don’t take it so seriously.

    Can you show how me all of those Field’s protesters are actively at work in the issues you mention? I just don’t see an apparent tie-in between people upset about losing a place to shop and social activism.

    I see no links on your Field Fans site to anything else, so without any supporting evidence, it’s pretty easy to see why this “movement” is getting more than a few raised eyebrows about it’s importance in society.

  • Well, you’re just going to have to trust me on this one, since I neglected to bring a recording device to the protest so as to document people’s feelings on non-Fields issues. And this topic actually was covered in the Fields Fans blog a few weeks ago; maybe it’s been erased by now.

    As I said, multi-tasking amongst the “serious” and “frivolous” phenomena of life is not impossible. In fact it’s pretty much necessary to preserve one’s sanity and equilibrium.

  • Carter,

    Yes – please go through that budget line by line and show us where federal support for transit, education, etc. has been reduced (and the word reduced has a clear meaning) to pay for the war. I don’t believe you can make that case.

    I’m old enough to have lived through the debates over whether any federal support for education was advisable under our federal system. Saying “getting the shaft” is flaunting an ahistorical approach to these issues.

    I was, in part, reacting to your vile and close-minded choice of words – in particular, the word “occupation.” I prefer to avoid confronting that level of hatred of a place and a political system I love. Let’s, for sure, agree to disagree and leave it at that.

  • http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/interactives/budget07/category.html

    Go to that slice called “debt.” 9% of the entire federal budget. That is money taxpayers have to pay to continue just financing the national debt, which has ballooned in no small part by the refusal of the administration to include Iraq in the budget process.

    Now, go down to the little part which highlights the spending increases in the budget – there is “net interest” shown as increasing 12%.

    Go down in that same category, and you will see “transportation” up by 7% – unfortunately I’m not sure how to weigh that next to the 46% *decrease* in “Community and Regional Development,” but I’d wager Chicago doesn’t come out a winner on that scale.

    Back up one category, and you can see “Education, training, employment & social services down a whopping 20%.

    Those reductions are rather clear to me.

    I’m not sure why the phrase occupation strikes you as hateful. It’s simply a logistical description (we have military personnel and bases in Iraq) in contrast to the invasion, where the Iraqi army was defeated years ago.

    LR:

    “document people’s feelings on non-Fields issues”

    Feelings don’t equal action – that’s what multi-tasking involves. How many of them are going downtown tomorrow for the massive protest? Only reason I’m not is I have a 2 year old to babysit, and my feelings of proper parenting trump my outrage with our current foreign policy.

  • Carter,

    The graphs you point to are clear because you want them to be, not because they reveal any relevant facts. To me, they’re clearly irrelevant and misleading with regard to your original argument.

    I’m not going to address your argument point by point, because it has so little factual basis. I’ll just address one – “the toll,” as you call it on schools.

    Let’s go directly to the Department of Education (DOE) budget summaries (pdf file) for 2001 to 2008 rather than to WaPo’s misleading mish-mosh.

    What I see in the DOE budget is 2001 appropriations of $42.06 billion, including $8.76 billion in Title I grants under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), the program with the most direct impact on local schools.

    The proposed 2008 DOE budget is $62.6 billion, with ESEA Title I grants of $13.91 billion. That represents a 59% increase in ESEA Title I spending, and a 49% increase in the DOE budget from the 2001 appropriations to the 2008 budget.

    A massive toll, indeed, has been taken on education spending by the Iraq war. As to some of the whopping reductions you point to – try spelling Katrina.

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