As the wife of a devoted Bears fan and as a person who has never had the fortune of living in a city with a winning football team, I call on Chicagoans to rise up.
Yes, there are far more important things to attend to. But the McCaskeys have run out of mulligans. And the only thing left is shame.
Chicago, what would you pay for a winning Bears team? I suggest you invest $30. In what? A Packers T-shirt. And wear it Sunday and turn Soldier Field into Lambeau Field on national TV.
There is no other franchise model than the NFL where business owners who can’t differentiate between a football and a can of Spam can rake in billions of dollars and give nothing in return.
The McCaskeys have zero incentive to give Chicagoans a winning team. Y’all keep paying their championship seat prices for an absolutely laughable team and management staff.
Enough is enough. Get your yellow and green gear and embarrass the hell out of them.
— Elizabeth Watts, Glenview
Coach and mayor’s choices
Who’s been more guilty of organizational malpractice this past month: Mayor Brandon Johnson or Bears coach Matt Eberflus?
After having the laurels of victory snatched from their hands in the final minutes of their game against the Commanders, the Bears followed it up with two games in which they failed to score a touchdown and gave up a 50-plus-yard touchdown in the closing seconds of the first half to the Cardinals. All the while, in the Commanders game, Eberflus failed to defend the sidelines on the penultimate play, as well as call a timeout before the Hail Mary to ensure that all his defensive players, including T.J. Edwards, were focused on their assignments, which turned out to be belied by Tyrique Stevenson’s preoccupation with taunting the opposing fans for the first four seconds of the play. The coach then refused to take accountability for this blunder and remained steadfast by the now-fired offensive coordinator Shane Waldron.
Now contrast that with the month that Johnson had in which he nominated to the Chicago Board of Education a misogynistic, antisemitic reverend who was disbarred in Ohio and avoided paying his child support. This decision was followed by the news that he was nominating to the Regional Transportation Authority board a pastor with no public transit experience, the second time he has done so after selecting the Rev. Ira Acree for the board last year.
Whether on the gridiron or in the chambers of City Hall, sustained success requires strong leadership and being able to take accountability for errors, while quickly rectifying them and remaining focused on the mission.
Unfortunately, as evidenced by the past month, Chicagoans don’t have strong leaders.
— Kevin Sussman, Chicago
Youths could teach the Bears
My experience with football is watching it as a fan, wife and mother. My son started playing football in fifth grade, and my husband was his volunteer coach. Both my son and husband were successful players during their youth and college years.
Last Sunday, where was the passion, frustration, enthusiasm and encouragement from the Bears coach and players that I always saw when I watched the youths play? Did coach Matt Eberflus and the players ever raise their voices or look exasperated? Fifth graders are better players than what I saw Sunday.
My advice to the Bears is to tighten up your boot straps or call the local grade schools for some football advice.
— Susan Herrmann, Wheaton
Nonprofits can aid city budget
As an organization committed to seeing governments raise money through progressive taxation, we at the Shriver Center on Poverty Law agree with the Tribune Editorial Board (“Aldermen must force mayor to find solutions other than a massive property tax hike,” Nov. 4) that Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to use regressive property taxes to raise $300 million to close a portion of the city’s $1 billion deficit was a poor idea. We also believe that at least one proposal made in recent budget negotiations, eliminating the city’s guaranteed income pilot program to save $60 million, would be a terrible idea.
However, we were disappointed to hear the board scornfully dismiss the mayor’s suggestion that he would talk to “large endowments” about helping to close the city’s budget deficit. What the mayor meant was that he would ask large property-owning nonprofits, which are not legally required to pay property tax, to agree to provide the city with an annual PILOT — payment in lieu of taxes.
PILOTs are progressive in that they ask wealthy nonprofits to contribute to city services that they use. The payments are voluntary and help make up for the fact that much of the city’s prime property is owned by nonprofit universities, museums and other cultural institutions and therefore is not part of the property tax base. PILOTs have worked well in Boston, where they provide millions of dollars a year in revenue.
Wealthy nonprofits should agree to PILOTs as a matter of fairness. The Art Institute and the University of Chicago pay no property tax on their campuses. Yet the police come when someone is robbed at the Art Institute, and the fire department comes if a University of Chicago building catches fire. These major institutions undoubtedly contribute much to our city that is nonquantifiable, but they should nonetheless contribute to fund the services that they consume — while removing part of the burden the city seeks to place on homeowners who cannot afford it.
A PILOT system can be one of several steps that the mayor and City Council take toward shoring up this year’s budget while also generating revenue to preserve popular programs such as guaranteed income, which is rumored to be at risk. Guaranteed income pilot programs across the country, including Chicago’s initial pilot, have been proven to work in numerous ways — allowing families to maintain housing and avoid homelessness, increasing access to health care, and ensuring that people can pay for food and other basic necessities.
— Jeremy Rosen, director of economic justice, Shriver Center on Poverty Law, Chicago
How to deter killing of cops
In response to the recent killings of police officers and first responders, Michael C. Flynn writes that we should restore the death penalty for those crimes (“Restore the death penalty,” Nov. 10). He claims that “the death penalty has a deterrent effect to committing serious crime.” According to the National Academy of Sciences, “research on the deterrent effect of capital punishment is uninformative about whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.”
I am sympathetic with Flynn’s frustration with the murders of people who risk their lives to protect us or, for that matter, anyone else. What the research does show clearly is that the chance of being caught is a vastly more effective deterrent. I agree with his comment that we should “back the blue because they back you.” The way to do that is to provide as much information and evidence as we can to aid the police in catching perpetrators and to the government in convicting them.
— Richard Badger, Chicago
Fighting harder for our planet
When I voted last week, I voted on one issue more than any other: drastic action on climate change and the environment.
Although the candidates largely side-stepped this issue because it has fallen victim to “identity politics,” climate change is affecting all of us. Climate change doesn’t care what party we’re affiliated with. Climate change doesn’t care if we believe in it or not. Climate change is happening because of carbon and methane emissions caused by people, and only people can fix this problem. Environmental scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades, and I trust them, because they have developed expertise through education and research. I trust them for the same reason I would trust only a cardiac surgeon to perform open-heart surgery — not a politician, a neighbor, or some podcaster or social media “influencer.”
The oceans are warming, and the poles are melting, and extreme weather events have increased greatly. If for no other reason than the economics of paying for nonstop catastrophes and of rising insurance rates, let’s band together to solve this problem through solutions such as carbon fees, reforestation, renewable energies and permitting reform. We need to let our legislators know that this is a top priority for us, and we need to keep reminding them with phone calls and letters. We need the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce more regulations, not fewer, because without regulation, corporations will prioritize short-term profits before long-term environmental solutions — as we have seen with the oil companies.
As a new presidential administration begins that may dismantle the advances President Joe Biden’s administration has made on mitigating climate change, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, we need to fight harder than ever to save our beautiful and life-sustaining planet.
— Francesca Kelly, Highland Park
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