Privatize This, Motherf**kers

Today, the Chicago city council passed Mayor Daley’s proposal to privatize the enforcement of the city’s parking meters, essentially giving a private company a 75-year lease on these prime swaths of the public roadway, betraying the public trust in exchange for $1.15 billion, much if not most of which will undoubtedly be used to perpetuate the waste and patronage that has come to characterize local government.

I have three words to summarize the perversity of today’s vote: Lincoln Towing Service. Steve Goodman and Mike Royko must both be rolling in their graves. But what needs to roll are heads. Actually, the guillotine is too good for these folks. A lynch mob would better fit the dignity of their station.

Politicians should not be able to sell the parking spaces on a public city street, especially not to a firm represented by Morgan Stanley, which just happens to employ the mayor’s brother. Even though I’ve voted for him in every previous election, it is clear that Mayor Daley needs to go. Add him to the list with Blago and Stroger. They have to be the worst political trifecta in the country. It’s almost enough to make me into a Republican.