Letters: Chicago regional transit is at risk and so are the economic benefits it brings

Chicagoland’s rapid transit system faces a catastrophic loss of service if lawmakers don’t find a solution this spring. I care deeply because this system has brought immeasurable benefits to my life and family, dating all the way back to when my grandfather worked on the Chicago Surface Lines, the street railway system that preceded the CTA from 1913 to 1947. Fast forward to my wife and me, and it’s no stretch to say we built our lives around transit. We even met on the Addison L stop platform outside Wrigley Field in 1974, and we’ve been life partners ever since.

In 1980 we bought our first home in Logan Square because the CTA Blue Line could inexpensively and reliably take me to my downtown office or to O’Hare for business trips. In 1988 we moved to Independence Park, off the Blue Line Irving Park stop. When our daughter entered Jones High School downtown, she could take the train each day to get there.

My wife and I are now mostly retired, and our travel needs have changed. But transit remains essential. We visit family, art galleries, shows and health care providers without worrying about traffic or parking. My brother Bob makes frequent Metra-taxi-Metra round trips to Northwestern Hospital for a medical study. Making that trek behind the wheel of a car two to three times a week would have been awful, maybe even impossible.

Important stuff? You bet. But it pales in comparison to the economic benefits that our regional transit system brings to Chicagoland. Now those benefits are in serious jeopardy thanks in large part to a state funding formula dating back to 1983 that, in the view of the CTA, is grossly inadequate. CTA, Metra, and Pace are facing a funding shortfall that must be addressed by Illinois legislators by spring 2025. If they fail, RTA analysis says it will cause a $2.6 billion annual loss to the region’s GDP and the loss of 27,000 jobs. On the other hand, says the RTA analysis, a long-term solution to invest in transit would grow the regional economy by $2.7 billion per year and add 28,000 jobs.

Bottom line? We should all be thinking of investing in our regional transit system in a way that addresses whatever shortcomings it has so that it will continue to be the invaluable resource it has been to me and my family for four generations.

— Patrick Reynolds, Chicago

Biden’s son

I hope people will stop and use logic in understanding the reason for President Joe Biden’s decision to pardon his son. Put yourselves in his shoes as a parent.

It’s one thing if your son hadn’t already been used as a political pawn, which Hunter was by virtue of the fact people almost never face prison for the crimes he committed. But if he goes to prison during the coming Trump administration, is it likely he will get fair treatment?

Not if everything we’re being told by Trump and his appointees to lead the Justice Department and the FBI comes true. Pam Bondi could be in charge of the Department of Justice and Kash Patel leading the FBI; both have promised to punish Trump’s foes with retribution. Is there any reason to believe that won’t include the Bidens?

Now think about the kind of people who staff and occupy our prison system. With the Federal Bureau of Prisons under Trump’s control, it would be frightening for any parent to realize how easily his son can be targeted for abuse or additional charges. For this reason alone it’s logical for Biden to have pardoned his son.

— Linda Finley Belan, Chicago

Budget compromise

Compromise is the process of settling a controversy in which each side bends until they meet in the middle. Neither side is totally satisfied with the outcome but both understand the utility of the agreement.

In Chicago we are in the process of budgeting. Let me suggest that the mayor and aldermen take a 5% cut in pay (the actual percentages should be reviewed by CPAs, etc.).  All departments should accept a similar reduction — with exceptions for critical services. This reduction should be shared by the Chicago Teachers Union. Taxpayers would have to share in this process with a like increase in their property tax.

A good compromise leaves both sides unhappy. This ought to do it.

— William H Baker, Chicago

Emanuel and NAFTA

Andy Shaw’s recent guest commentary, “Emanuel is the best choice to lead Dems out of the political wilderness,” was excellent propaganda for more of the same neoliberal policies and leadership that have collapsed the Democratic Party over the last 30 years. (Nov. 20)

Shaw contends “without a modicum of doubt or hesitation, that [Rahm] became the most successful and effective political operative in the country” before running for Chicago mayor in 2011.

In my 40-year Democratic Party activist experience, as a former Illinois state House member, DNC delegate and more, Rahm Emanuel is the poster boy for the collapse of the Democratic Party in Congress and among the working class.

Let’s look at the political fallout from one policy Emanuel championed: NAFTA.

After Bill Clinton won the 1992 presidential election with 43% of the vote, his campaign chair, Mickey Kantor, became Clinton’s U.S. trade representative and chief voter-getter for NAFTA.  Emanuel was the Clinton aid assigned to assist Kantor, and another Chicagoan, Bill Daley, became the White House NAFTA czar.

“It wasn’t whether NAFTA was good or bad for the economy,” Rahm says in John R. MacArthur’s The Selling of ‘Free Trade (2000). “The media were very clear about what they thought of NAFTA: NAFTA was good; it produced jobs; it’s the future.”

The American public thought differently.

In a November 1993 Washington Post/ABC poll, a day before the House vote, voters reported by a 60% to 33% margin that NAFTA would encourage companies to move jobs to Mexico.

Voters extracted a high price from Emanuel’s ramrodding of NAFTA through Congress. In the 1994 congressional elections, Democrats lost the House for the first time in 40 years and the Senate as well.

Twenty years later, in December 2013, Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group, reported the following NAFTA-related key findings:

  1. A staggering $181 billion U.S. trade deficit with NAFTA partners Mexico and Canada;
  2. One million lost U.S. jobs;
  3. A doubling of immigration from Mexico;
  4. U.S. manufacturing and services exports to Canada and Mexico grew at less than half the pre-NAFTA rate.

Emanuel represents the failed neoliberal economic policies that turned America’s working class against the Democratic Party.  America’s working class has suffered enough. It’s time to turn the page and send Emanuel to the dustbin of history.

— Bill Edley, Springfield

Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.

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