The Real World

The greatest clown show on earth, aka the Chicago Bears, were at it again yesterday, promising another hundred years of mediocrity while displaying an arrogance to take your breath away. Munsters’ chair George McCaskey, at the NFL owners’ meeting in Palm Beach, told reporters, “We’ve said for many years we intend to own the Bears for as long as possible. Another hundred years would be great.” Read it and weep, fans. Then we had team president and CEO Kevin Warren perform the latest version of his shakedown dance for public money to help build a stadium, anywhere, somewhere. For the past year or so, Warren has tried to generate public support behind a behemoth on the lake south of Soldier Field. Yesterday, he signaled that suburban Arlington Heights was in play as well. Wait, there’s more. In true “cake and eat it too” fashion, Warren wants the Bears to own the project while paying next to no taxes on it. “We don’t want tax certainty for the first five years with a building you hope lasts for 30 or 40 years. We want to pay our taxes, but you don’t want to find yourself in the position where fifteen years down the road, your tax bill quadruples.” [all quotes from today’s Tribune] Kevin, real estate taxes go up all the time in Cook County, and it doesn’t matter—at least for homeowners—how unfair or onerous it might be; if the assessed property rate goes up, so does the tax bill. Given that you keep promising a unicorn entertainment/stadium district, that means the value of the property will increase yes? But it should be other property owners who pay full freight on their tax bill? Sorry, but that’s not how things go in the real world. You should visit sometime.