Day: August 8, 2003

Is it all over now, baby blue?

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

G-Rod has inked the Mayor Daley Cronies Full Employment Act of 2003, aka the O’Hare expansion deal (not to imply that G-Rod would ever serve up pork, because I don’t mean to imply it but rather state it directly.)

“Thank God this day has arrived,” Da Mare said. Yeah, I think God felt the ledger was a little uneven down here. After all Da Mare has given Chicago, didn’t all of us and our God owe him a little in return?

Still, is the last word on expansion? Not likely. The FAA has already sent back the plan based on its severe flaws.

And then there is the matter of who will fit the bill. As Sen. Fitzgerald points out in the same story linked above, United’s pension is underfunded by $6.4 billion but the bankrupted firm plans to stretch out its payments to the fund in order to make the necessary payments to get O’Hare expansion done.

There’s also the matter of the price tag, which the city says is $6.6 billion. These are the same folks who underestimated the cost of the disastrous Millennium Park project by a factor of three. We may be well into the next millennium before the damn thing’s finished.

Worse yet, the additional taxes the city is forcing airlines serving O’Hare to pay to finance its bonds on the expansion deal will make the airport an even less attractive for upcoming competitors like JetBlue to do business there. Instead, more than 80 percent of O’Hare’s gates will continue to be controlled by the aviation industry’s tweedle dum and tweedle dee, United and American.

Welcome to Chicago, Richard M. Daley, Mayor.

Nine out of 12 ain’t not good

/ Kevin B. O'Reilly

We’re actually looking at a run here, folks, from our dear old Cubbies. The Cubs were expected to take care of the Padres handily. They’re one of the worst teams in baseball and the Cubs had their three best starters (Prior, Wood and Zambrano) going.

And … they actually did it. They swept the Padres. Does this make the Cubs a pennant contender? Not really. But it indicates that here they are in mid-August trying to make a race of this thing and taking care of the team sthey’re supposed to take care of. And by a healthy six-run margin no less.

Heck, that’s the kind of lead where it doesn’t even bother me to see Baker go to Alfonseca.

Now the Cubs have second place clear and only trail the barely evil Astros by a game and a half. But … now the Cubs’ usually anemic offense faces the best pitching staff in the league in the Dodgers. We shall see.