WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot and Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle met downtown for a private lunch to discuss ways the city and county can cooperate as they try to move past the lingering hard feelings from their bruising mayoral campaign.

Mayor-elect Lori Lightfoot

“I would say that we, obviously the city and the county have a lot of overlapping things in common, and I wanted to make sure the president [Toni Preckwinkle] and I started off in the right direction a week out from my inauguration." -- Chicago Tribune

 David Greising, BGA President

If [Lightfoot] continues leveraging the capacity of civic and business leaders, without abandoning the progressives who helped elect her, she could have the formula for a lasting impact on economic equity in a city that badly needs it. -- BGA 

Laura Washington

[Congressman Bobby] Rush could be a potent ally for Lightfoot. He must be. Lightfoot needs every iota of power, access and wisdom the veteran congressman can offer. Rush needs “Landslide Lori,” who was elected Chicago’s first African-American woman and first LGBTQ mayor with nearly 74% of the vote. Many of Rush’s constituents have even more dire needs. In this supposedly robust economy, African American families on Chicago’s South Side are buried in a landslide of violence, joblessness and poverty. -- Sun-Times

Clint Krislov, IIT Chicago-Kent’s Center for Open Government

“If the city had just hired LAZ Parking directly to do the pay-and-display system, the city would probably have $2 billion-to-$4 billion more over the course of the deal above the merely $1.16 billion it got up-front.” -- Sun-Times

Sen. Elizabeth Warren

 “The “opioid war” is a medical problem rather than a behavioral or law enforcement one, Warren argued....But we got a second problem in this country and it’s greed. People didn’t get addicted all on their own, they got a lot of corporate help. They got a lot of help from corporations that made big money off getting people addicted and keeping them addicted.” -- Politico

Kate Oronoff on Green New Deal

Critics have smeared the Green New Deal as a colossal waste of money, involving a level of spending sure to crater the economy and pass an unnecessarily cruel financial burden down to future generations. They seem to be confusing it with business as usual. -- Guardian

Robert Kuttner

 The problem is not that “Democrats” fail to appreciate unions. It’s that the corporate and Wall Street Democrats who have dominated the presidential wing of the party since Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton actively loathe unions. -- Diane Ravitch Blog

 Cary Huang

Worse can happen than just material loss to the countries directly involved. While a country may try to destroy another by targeting its economy rather than its military, history suggests that a full-blown trade war inevitably leads to a shoot-out between nations. -- South China Morning Post