EDITORIALS Pritzker shouldn’t squander $205M on the ...EDITORIALS Gov. J.B.Pritzker’s five-year,...

15Chicago Tribune | Section 1 | Wednesday, November 6, 2019

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directors of contentJonathonBerlin, AmyCarr, PhilJurik,AmandaKaschube, ToddPanagopoulos,GeorgePapajohn,MaryEllenPodmolik,

ElizabethWolfe

EDITORIALS

Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s five-year,$23.5 billion plan to rebuild Illi-nois’ roads andbridges includes$205.5million for a highwayinfrastructure project that has noreason to be. Pritzker has ear-marked themoney as a steptoward enabling the pipe dreamotherwise knownas the SouthSuburbanAirport near Peotone.Put anotherway: The costly roadprojectwould serve a potentialairport that no oneneeds and onwhichno one—except Pritzkerand local officials—wants tosquander evenmoremoney thantaxpayers alreadyhave.

It’s as if Illinois doesn’t have anenormous list of infrastructureprojects that even the governor’s$45 billion capital spending plancan’t fund. This threatenedwasteof $200million-plus of scarce taxresources is asmaddening as theproject itself is unnecessary. Asyou readhere inAugust: Gover-nors have come and gone, thou-sands of acres bought by the statefor the site have yet to see a squareinch of tarmacpaved…and stillpublic officials keep committingOther People’sMoney to thenotion.

WhywouldPritzker addhissupport—and another heap ofOther People’sMoney— to aproject onwhichpotential pa-trons of a pretend airport keepvoting no?

This time the taxpayermoneywould go toward land acquisition,engineering and construction of anew interchange at I-57 andEagleLakeRoad.There’s nothing butfarmland there now, but Pritzkerhas fallen inwith a bevy of southsuburbanpoliticianswhoprophe-sy a vibrant, bustling third re-gional airport 44miles south ofChicago.

If there were any glint of de-mand for such an airport, theexpendituremight be justified.But that demanddoesn’t exist,and there’s no sign that it everwill. The airlines have never beenonboardwith the project, andinsteadhave declared themselvesall-inwithO’Hare InternationalAirport’smassive $8.5 billionexpansion and renovations atMidwayAirport.

Not toworry, Peotonepropo-

nents say.Thenewairportwillnowbehawkedas a cargohub forthee-commerce industry.Build it,andonline giantAmazonwillcome. So far, however,Amazonandotheronlinemerchantshaven’twarmed to thePeotonepitch.

Why? Several reasons. First,most cargo gets shipped by rail ortruck because it’s cheaper thatway. Items shipped by air tend toinvolvemore expensive goods,like pharmaceuticals and elec-tronics, or perishable productssuch as seafood.

Second, theChicago area al-readyhas abundant air cargo

capacity. ChicagoRockford Inter-national Airport sawcargo land-ings rise 55 percent in 2018, andairport officials expect that num-ber to keep rising thanks to part-nershipswithAmazon andUPS.GaryChicago International Air-port also serves cargo flights, andlikeRockfordhas the capacity tohandlemore of them.AtO’Hare,expansionplans include 915,000square feet of cargo space.

Illinois’ transportation needsaremassive. It’s not hard to drivethrough the state and find crum-bling roads andbridges. A betteruse of taxpayermoney is to fix

existing infrastructure, ratherthan spending it on an idea that’sbeen going nowhere formorethan a quarter of a century.

Therewas a time years ago,when the regionwas strapped forair capacity, thatwebacked theplan for a third airport at Peotone— if itwere built on the shouldersof private investment, and if theairlines committed to operatingthere.

Neither of those preconditionshas come to be. As long as thatremains the case, thePeotoneflight of fancy should remaingrounded. And so should any

needless spending on an inter-change built for an airportwith-out a reason to exist.

Gov. Pritzker,wewrote fivelong years ago that if private sec-tor investors didn’t step forwardto build a Peotone airport, Illinoisshould sell the land andmove on.Sohere’s your three-step agenda:

Don’twaste another dimeoninfrastructure for a pretend air-port.

Sell the land—another plus forIllinois taxpayers.

Move on to projects thatwouldactually benefit commerce andcitizens.

Pritzker shouldn’t squander $205Mon the Peotone airport folly

SCOTT STANTIS

ManyAmericans don’t careabout impeachment becausethey take it as a given that this isthe kind of corruption that poli-ticians of all stripes have beendoing all along.Manydon’t carebecause it looks like the samepartisanwarfare that’s beengoing on forever, justwith adifferent name.…

I get thatDemocrats feel theyhave to proceedwith impeach-ment to protect theConstitutionand the rule of law. But there islittle chance theywill comeclose to ousting the president. SoI hope they set aThanksgivingdeadline. Play the impeachmentcard throughNovember, havetheHouse vote and thenmoveon to other things. The Senatecan quickly dispose of themat-ter andDemocratic candidatescanmake their best pitches fordenyingTrump re-election.

ElizabethBruenig ofTheWashingtonPost put her fingeron something important in arecent essay onTrump’s evan-gelical voters: the assumption ofdecline.ManyTrumpvoterstake it as amatter of course thatfor the rest of their lives thingsare going to getworse for them—economically, spiritually,politically and culturally. Theyare not the only voterswhothink thisway.Many youngvoters in their “OKBoomer”T-shirts feel exactly the same,except their concerns are cli-mate change, employment pro-spects anddebt.

This sense of elite negligencein the face of national decline isthe core issue right now. Im-peachment is a distraction fromthat. As quickly as possible, it’stime tomove on.

DavidBrooks,TheNewYorkTimes

WHAT OTHERSARE SAYING

“Abrazos, no balazos.”Hugs,not bullets. That has been acornerstone ofMexicanPresi-dentAndresManuel LopezObrador’s policy toward thecountry’smurderous drug car-tels. Eradicate poverty, and eradi-cation of the cartels follows, hehas insisted. It’s hard to imagineObrador hewing to his noncon-frontational tackwith the cartelsafterwhat happenedMonday innorthernMexico.

Ninemembers of aMormonfamilywith dualU.S.-Mexicancitizenshipwere killed during abrutal ambush on their threesport utility vehicles. Six of thedeadwere children.Members oftheLeBaron family say one childwas gunneddownwhile trying toflee. The attackers set one of theSUVs ablaze. Insidewere twinsless than a year old.

At thiswriting,motive remainsmurky. Authorities say they’restill trying to figure outwhethertheLeBaron family,which hadlived in the scrublands ofMexi-co’s border region for decades,had been specifically targeted orwhether the SUVsweremistakenas belonging to a rival gang. Inthe past, the family has spokenout about criminal gangs thatoperate in the border states ofChihuahua and Sonora, TheNewYorkTimes reported. Ten yearsago, twoLeBaron familymem-berswere abducted and killedafter confronting local druggangs.

In extending an offer to helpMexico, PresidentDonaldTrumprashly tweeted that theU.S. couldjoinwithMexico to “wageWARon the drug cartels andwipethemoff the face of the earth.”

America doesn’t need this entan-glement. Obrador quickly re-jected the offer: “Theworst thingyou canhave iswar.”

ButObrador’s approach isn’tworking either. LastDecember,the longtime leftist rose to poweron a slewof populist pledges,including a “Mexico first” ap-proach toward governance, anend to corruption—and an endto his country’s drugwars. Thefulcrumof his anti-cartel policywas a raft of social programs thatwould alleviate poverty and, intheory, eliminate root causes ofcartelmayhem. “Evil needs to befoughtwith good by addressingthe roots that generate violence,”he said after his election.

Since that show of naivete,the cartels have displayed the

blood-lust evil he’s up against.InOctober, hundreds of cartelgunmenbesieged the city ofCuliacan afterMexican securityforces arrested the son of con-victed cartel drug lord Joaquin“ElChapo”GuzmanLoera. Thesiege forcedObrador to releasethe son. Just days earlier, cartelgunmen ambushedpolice in thestate ofMichoacan, killing 14officers.

And now, themassacre innorthernMexico. Obradorshouldn’t need anymore cartelambushes to realize that timehas run out on his hugs-not-bullets strategy. TheMexicanleader shouldmake this a turn-ing point — for the sake of drugwar-wearyMexicans and for thesake ofMexico’s neighbor to thenorth.

Chicagoans are all too awareof the long reach of the cartels. ElChapo’s Sinaloa cartel usedChi-cago as amain hub for cocaineandheroin shipments through-out theU.S. andCanada. Someshipments stayed here, though,makingChicago’s gang anddrugscourges thatmuchworse.

Reacting to themassacre,U.S.Sen. Ben Sasse, a RepublicanfromNebraska,warnedMexicois “dangerously close to being afailed state.” That shouldworrynot just Obrador and the rest ofMexico, butAmericans aswell.It’s time forObrador to overhaulhis strategy against the cartels,for the sake of citizens on bothsides of the border.

Mexico’s presidentmay notwantwar. But that’swhat thevicious cartels have handedhim.

Mexico’s ‘hugs not bullets’ approach to drug cartelshas failed. The massacre of Americans is proof.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, left, with Secretary of Public Security Alfonso Durazo,speaks in Mexico City Tuesday. An attack on a Mormon family in Mexico left nine dead, six of them children.

SASHENKA GUTIERREZ/EFE