brown
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Mark Brown biography
Mark Brown is a local news columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times who writes about everything from political corruption to family life. Roger Ebert once called …Read More
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Mayor’s caginess on Brizard irritating
Let’s put this right on the table: when you’re stuck paying an employee more than an extra year’s pay for him to just go away barely 18 months after he was hired, then somebody made a mistake. If that employee runs your organization, then it …Read More
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Emanuel’s 2013 budget is calm before pension crisis storm
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s 2013 city budget is the calm before the storm that could make everyone forget the worst blizzards in memory. So feel free to savor the calm just a moment before stepping forth into the cold winds of reality. For the second straight …Read More
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Using Walsh to bash reps unfair
If Republican political strategists were to go on television right now with campaign commercials tying local incumbent Democratic congressmen to U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. and his travails, we could be pretty certain there would be a backlash in the news media. You can see …Read More
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Mark Brown: Rahm vs. Quinn: Who’s in charge?
For most of its 24-year history, the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority — landlord to the Chicago White Sox — has intentionally maintained the lowest of profiles. The agency’s aversion to publicity was in furtherance of its informal mission, that being first and foremost to keep …
A little good news for Obama after bad week
No sooner had Barack Obama finished flubbing his first debate with Mitt Romney than I saw Republicans gleefully speculating that a bleak September jobs report would complete a one-week reversal of fortune in the presidential race and put their man ahead. Looks like they’ll have …Read More
Cellini sentence another step forward for honest government
There were two almost mythical figures in Illinois politics when I started working for this newspaper 30 years ago: Eddie Vrdolyak in Chicago and Bill Cellini in Springfield. They were different in many ways — “Fast Eddie,” the charismatic Chicago alderman who attained star status …Read More
$395,000 a week on a Duchossois yacht
As Chicago’s foremost connoisseur of the sport of kings, Arlington Park racetrack impresario Dick Duchossois has long lived a royal lifestyle befitting a man of his considerable means. Now you, too, can enjoy the most visible trapping of his wealth by chartering a private cruise …Read More
Brown: Does DePaul really need a new publicly subsidized arena? No
If you took a sheet of paper and started drawing up a list titled, “What Chicago Really Needs,” I’ll bet you could fill both sides and never even consider writing down: Another publicly subsidized sports stadium/arena. Yet, we are now told that just such a facility is under consideration by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the McPier Authority.
Aldermen act shocked by pension mess
From the reaction of Chicago aldermen Monday, you would have thought most of them had only just learned for the first time about the city’s looming pension crisis. Worse yet, you would have thought the City Council had no role whatsoever in putting city employees, …
Power of persistence: Pair to pull off vet parade
Cristopher De Phillips and Laurie Ipsen were watching television last February in the kitchen of their apartment at Ogden and Grand when they got it into their heads that Chicago should hold a parade to honor veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. De Phillips, …Read More
$5 gets you a meal with President Obama?
Most of the polls seem to say the election is trending in Barack Obama’s favor and I don’t have any reason to believe otherwise, except maybe one: the urgency with which the president keeps inviting me to dinner. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m flattered …Read More
Day 2 of protest at construction site leads to one arrest and plenty of tension
For the second straight day, an 87-year-old retired Chicago businessman disrupted a South Side construction site Tuesday with his demand that more blacks be put to work. If he has the stamina to keep it up, somebody is going to start taking him seriously. This …Read More
Decades after helping elect Chicago’s first African-American mayor, Edward Gardner pushing for diversity on job sites
What do you if an 87-year-old African-American man in a dingy nylon windbreaker and pink ball cap hobbles onto your construction site with the aid of his cane, parks himself in the middle of traffic and declares he wants all the work stopped until more …
Teachers deserve to be heard
The Chicago Teachers Union strike is over but the fight for the future of public education in America may just be hitting its stride. The seven-day strike by the CTU aroused national passions over the place of public employee unions in our weakened economy and …
Bargainers, Delegates need to get on the same page
The Chicago Teachers Union backed Mayor Rahm Emanuel into a corner with its first strike in 25 years, but as its House of Delegates prepares to vote Tuesday on whether to end that walkout, you’d have to say the union has boxed itself into the …
Brown: ‘You’re showing yourself to be a union out of control’
Some people just don’t know when to leave well enough alone. Apparently, such people comprise a majority of the Chicago Teachers Union’s House of Delegates. Memo to Teachers: You did as well as you’re going to do, folks. Declare victory and get back in the …
Mark Brown: Despite wounds, mayor will eventually claim victory in teachers strike
The Chicago Teachers Union gave Mayor Rahm Emanuel a black eye this past week, no doubt about it. The teacher strike caught Emanuel flush, knocked him off stride for a week and will leave a mark. Just remember, though, black eyes heal. To belabor the …Read More
Teachers appear to be the winner
If the point of going on strike is to get a better deal than you would have received without it, then the Chicago Teachers Union is already a pretty clear winner this week in its confrontation with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his school board. If …Read More
It’s time for a little give and take
As a union member from a union family whose grandfather was shot and wounded by company goons in a railroad strike, my sympathies are with the teachers in their walkout against the Chicago Public Schools. That doesn’t mean I agree with them on every point …Read More