The Mayoral Crossroads

     So this is where we're at in the great city if Chicago.  We have a run off between an incumbent mayor who interests seems to lie into making the city into a glitzy showplace where developers can prosper and there are skyscrapers and condo's as far as the eye can see.  If you want to see an area that symbolizes the festering disgust for Rahm Emanuel, one need look at a stretch of Diversey avenue from Damen through Milwaukee.  For blocks there is blossoming development anchored by glitzy condo's and high profile anchor tenants.  And then the number 76 comes up Albany and I realize that this area of Logan Square has remained as stagnant as it was when I lived there way back when.  No condos, no anchor tenants, just a hodgepodge of mom and pop business and empty storefronts that serve as a symbol of the divided Chicago that Emmanuel has over seen since he took over as Mayor.  Ah, but here comes Chuy Garcia, Chicago's white knight.  Well, he's a knight that wants to see the castle before he storms it and really doesn't have a plan for getting into said castle.  So this is where we are, mister and misses Chicago.  Emmanuel is a born leader with an actual plan, however vague, to lead in 2015 and beyond.  And then we have Chuy Garcia, who criticizes Emmanuel for run away debt and a doomsday snowball rolling towards us in 2015 known as an under funded City Pension system.  Again, Emmanuel knows that hell is coming and wants to send everyone into the fallout shelter and Garcia, well, he wants to see what kind of shelter we need to build before said snowball turns into us another Detroit.  If there is one thing that makes me hopefully that Garcia can be what he says can be, it's the fact that he has actually acknowledged the fact that our police force is woefully undermanned.  How Garcia plans to pay for extra police manpower while shoring up Chicago's long term financial future is another political maguffin that makes you wish Garcia was more of a detail man.  But if I've learned anything during my 37 years, it's that you can't dismiss a politician for being vague.  If you did,  everyone across the nation would be voting for none of the above.  And so it goes..... I give you my vote Mister Garcia and with that vote, I am reminded of a line from the Dark Knight.  "Everyone deserves to have their faith rewarded."  I hope that you reward MY faith Mister Garcia.  And as for you Mister Emmanuel, I came to the conclusion that a vote for you is a vote for the status quo and the status quo, in my view, has reached its shelf life.  I'm tired of kids being slaughtered in Englewood while the downtown area is polished ad nauseum with corporate tax breaks for developers.  We don't need more skating rink's named in honor of the wife of an incompetent former Mayor.  We don't need more foreign billionaires nibbling in the mayors ear for a land grab for some gaudy building to house fellow millionaires.  We need safer streets and better schools and fiscal sanity.  You are the better leader Mister Emmanuel, no doubt.  But I can't give you four more years.  It's time for change.  You're on Mister Garcia, you're on.