We voted for mayor and City Council in Chicago on Tuesday. Well, a few of us did. Well, a few of them did. I didn’t vote, because there was no choice. Mayor Daley, running against three no-name candidates who couldn’t even afford yard signs, not to mention TV ads, garned 79 percent of the vote and won all 50 wards.

A record-low turnout of about 400,000 voters definitely put a damper on Da Mare’s festivities. U.S. Census stooges counted 2.8 million people in Chicago proper in 2000. That means, if I have the math right, that only 14 percent of Chicagoans voted. And only 12 percent voted for Daley.

Wow. It’s like the opposite of Iraq where 100 percent turned out for Hussein. This is dictatorship by apathy. Another great Daley achievement.

The Chicago Tribune ran a very obnoxious story about Sen. Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) last Sunday. “Bill Frist makes no apologies for taking a private-sector approach to America’s substantial health-care problems,” the subhead reads. Here are the first few grafs:

At almost every turn, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist reminds people that he’s a skilled and trusted doctor, not just a politician.

As he walked to the Senate chamber to be sworn in as leader last month, the Tennessee Republican compared the exhilaration of the moment to his first heart transplant. In 2001, when anthrax threatened the Capitol complex, Frist published a handy guide: “What You Need to Know About Bioterrorism From the Senate’s Only Doctor.” On the door to his new suite of offices, the sign reads, “William H. Frist, MD.”

Now he is charged with nursing President Bush’s legislative agenda through the Senate. But a look at Frist’s history suggests that his approach to numerous complicated health-care matters is shaped more by being a conservative Republican — with a strong affinity for business and a family that founded a for-profit hospital chain — than by being a physician.

Apparently, conservatism (which in this case means a preference for markets over government control) is incompatible with being a physician. Because, of course, no doctor, Zuckman seems to suggest, who wasn’t blinded by free-market dogma would possibly prefer market solutions to health-care issues.

Frist “does not deny his strong preference for business-oriented solutions,” Zuckman writes. Why should he? Is there something to be ashamed of? Zuckman implies it, but never comes out and says it.

She then quotes a professor of Frist’s who says, “Culturally, he’s a physician and he would like every patient who suffers to get state-of-the-art medical care without having their family go bankrupt, but to be a player in Washington, you cannot offend the White House, and obviously he probably will temper his own preferences with a view of whether it causes trouble for the White House, because I think he’s a team player.”

Huh? So he’s not really a free-marketeer? He’s just going along to get along? And again, there’s this suggestion that, gee, if Congress just put its mind to it, every patient could have state-of-the-art care with no problem. As if socialized medicine didn’t lead to worse care and fewer innovations and longer waits.

Sixty-eight percent of those surveyed by the Chicago Tribune recently said they will vote to give Richard M. Daley, Mayor, another four years in office.

Though we are less than a week away from election day, there have been no debates. Daley won’t stoop to that. There have been no TV ads for mayoral candidates other than Daley. The most you see around town to even give you a clue there’s an election coming up are huge signs with Daley’s name at the top and the name of the aldermanic incumbent on the bottom. It’s a wonder they bother to switch out the names. I suppose “Daley/Daley Stooge” would be too obvious.

Where to start? More than half of the City Council has been appointed by Daley. His political forces control everything that happens in the city. He has been busted several times for giving contracts to cronies, and treats public records as if they were his personal property.

A misguided system of tax preferences for big companies that threaten to leave town means Daley gets good publicity when they decide to stick around — if they do — but the average citizen (and business owner) has to pay that much more to make up the difference. And when Daley realized — whoops — that revenues were down and the city would be millions in debt, rather than force the government to take the hit he sicced his parking goons on the suckers too poor to afford a garage and too unskilled to have a job that gets them home at 5:30 p.m. so they can find a spot on the street.

Education? The test scores have inched up a little bit, and things may be a little better than they were before the city took control of the school board under Daley. But where are the charter schools that have flourished in other cities? Where’s the voucher program for poor kids that Milwaukee and Cleveland have? Where’s the competition to force government-run schools to improve?

Chicago is now the No. 1 murder capital, yet continues to push an ineffective gun ban and the useless war on drugs. The city still struggles to attract businesses. Money is poured into wasteful, big projects like the disastrous new Soldier Field, the three times over budget Millennium Park, and the long-delayed expansion of O’Hare Airport. Daley has made privatization a dirty word by taking the formula set forth in cities like Indianapolis and used it as an excuse to make his cronyism harder to track.

Essentially, no one trusts that the privatized contracts are actually going to the most lowest, most qualified bidders and that the contractor’s delivering the best service at the lowest price because no one trusts the process. How could they, when Daley’s administration routinely hides mundane details about how contracts are awarded and so many escape any meaningful bid process at all?

In other words, things are not hunky dory. But opposition candidates have been beaten mercilessly and by progressively larger margins since Daley took office in 1989. No one wants to pour the money and the time into a losing race. And so they are co-opted by a very clever politician who may not get much done but knows how to make sure that everyone gets his little piece. Even the news media score an occasional coup and can sneer at the mayor without ever really doing anything about it (except voicing the obligatory “buts” before unanimously endorsing him).

What a waste. And no one else to vote for. Not anyone who cares about liberty. Not in Chicago.

The International Society for Individual Liberty has purchased Free-Market.Net, effectively saving it from the wrecking ball.

ifeminists.com wound up with the Independent Institute and Bureaucrash is going its own way. It’s still tough to tell how the Henry Hazlitt Foundation‘s collapse will affect the content, appearance and missions of these Web sites, but it’s good news that they’ve found homes and won’t disappear entirely.

Who knows, they may emerge stronger yet. Here’s to spontaneous order.

First, everyone wanted to check as much baggage as possible to avoid security hassles.

Now that the Transportation Security Administration has banned luggage locks, anyone with any sense is carrying on anything of value — which means longer lines with the rent-a-feds.

Fliers’ angst, and the luggage industry’s design response, is well told in this Tribune story by Kathy Bergen.