Bye-bye Chicago as city of the big shoulders.  Forget P-Stone Nation and various Lords: “Unions run it” goes on billboards at city limits all three sides and maybe on buoys offshore — just across city limits, that is, for people to see as they consider entry.  Not people, you know, but successful companies of a certain size.  Hey.  This may be why Oak Park flirted with a ban on Lane Bryant: it’s the size that put trustees off.  THINK SMALL!

After more than three hours of debate, aldermen voted 35 to 14 today in favor of an ordinance that will require “big-box” retailers to pay their workers more than minimum wage.

That’s veto-proof, not that Daley would do it if he could, unless he could do it under cover of darkness, as he plowed Meigs Field under.  It’s not his style. 

The measure only applies to companies with over $1 billion in annual sales and stores of at least 90,000 square feet, which means it primarily affects Target and Wal-Mart.

It requires them to pay at least $10 an hour in wages plus another $3 in fringe benefits by July 2010. The state’s minimum wage is $6.50 an hour.

This be madness.

Here is the day’s laugh from Romenesko, hot and heavy, at which neighbors may be calling to see if I’m all right following my outburst:

Military bloggers claim mainstream media play up bad news

Wall Street Journal
Many military bloggers, or “milbloggers,” argue that the mainstream media tends to overplay negative war stories and play down positive developments. For many of these blogs, says one milblogger, “the sole purpose is to counteract the media.” The frustration of milbloggers is understandable, says Shorenstein Center’s Alex Jones. But “if the overall picture is one of continued violence and a significant lack of stability in many parts of Iraq, the individual shards of good news could be more of a distortion than a reflection of the truth.”

Posted at 9:47:41 AM

Italics added, if you please, to this super-ivory-tower comment from the Shorenstein man.  Pray tell, where the hell would newspapers be without “individual shards”?  It’s the mother’s milk of sales nourishment, for crying out loud. 

Moreover, does he really think papers give the “overall picture”?  As in booming economy with pockets of poverty, when the latter are drummed home Alinsky-like to rub raw the sores of discontent?

What does he think editors do more of, induction (gathering of facts and then deciding) or deduction (picking facts based on embracing the generality)?