J.B. Pritzker, jail bird? (Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune)

UPDATES: Illinois Supreme Court disses downstate judge by yanking the case out of his hands.

• Pritzker no longer has to appear in Clay County Court on Friday

• Supreme Court moves Bailey suit to Springfield

He’s been ordered to appear in court at 1 p.m. (Chicago time) to explain why he shouldn’t be held in contempt of court. As Cook, Count Record explains:

On Aug. 7, Clay County Judge Michael McHaney issued an order directing Pritzker to appear in his courtroom on Aug. 14 to “show cause” why the governor shouldn’t be held in contempt and possibly jailed until he rescinds the COVID-19 disaster-related orders he has issued since May.

The order directing the governor to appear comes two days after State Rep. Darren Bailey, R-Xenia, and his attorney, Tom DeVore, filed the contempt petition before Judge McHaney.

That, in turn, came about a month since McHaney had ruled Pritzker overstepped the bounds of his authority under the state constitution and state law in using emergency powers to issue orders statewide, which Pritzker has said are needed to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Will he show up? Will he send a lawyer instead? How will the judge react to having his order summarily ignored by Pritzker. I thought no one is above the law, not even a governor.

Related: 

• Pritzker no longer has to appear in Clay County Court on Friday

• Supreme Court moves Bailey suit to Springfield

[email protected]

St. Louis’ expansion Major League Soccer team won’t play until 2023, but on Thursday they revealed their branding.

The team will be known as St. Louis City SC, with red as a primary color and a crest featuring the St. Louis Arch. The logo has some nice touches, they get minor bonus points for going with SC instead of FC, but the color scheme seems to echo the St. Louis Cardinals a bit too much.

The spirit of a new St. Louis.#stlCITYsc #OurCITYOurSpirit pic.twitter.com/cKpcnjKO5J

— St. Louis CITY SC (@MLS4theLou) August 13, 2020

It’s inoffensive overall, and maybe that’s all they were going for, but it does continue a frustrating trend within MLS. The City part of the name is forced and generic, joining a number of forced and generic MLS names in recent years.

Since 2015, there have been 12 expansion teams that entered MLS or are set to enter in the coming years: Orlando City, New York City FC, Minnesota United, Atlanta United, Los Angeles FC, FC Cincinnati, Inter Miami, Nashville SC, Austin FC, Charlotte FC, Sacramento Republic and now St. Louis City SC.

Only Sacramento Republic enters with a name that isn’t a ripoff of a traditional European naming convention, a name they are bringing with them from the USL. Sacramento had that name in 2014, when they started playing in the USL.

Inter Miami is the only one in this group with a name that isn’t specifically English, and they got sued by their Italian counterparts in Milan.

St. Louis is the third “City” in this period. Sporting Kansas City doesn’t count because they are more about Sporting in their branding and city is in the name of the actual city. Sporting is another typical European naming convention, but that’s another story. New York City FC at least makes sense because, again, city is in New York City’s name and they are referencing their parent club, Manchester City.

Orlando and NYCFC gave us two “City” teams in the same year. Minnesota and Atlanta gave us two “United” teams in the same year. Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Nashville, Austin and Charlotte elected to not even pick a name, which isn’t the worst thing, but is fairly meek.

The logic behind this trend doesn’t resonate with me. Knowing enough about how MLS works, they found market research to support this trend, but it doesn’t make much sense. Who are they trying to appeal to with these generic names?

People who grew up playing soccer in this country, a group that is most likely to be among your fanbase, are so used to American naming conventions and terminology that I don’t think European names carry extra weight with them. The suburban family with kids currently playing likely doesn’t care about FC, United or City names. If you’re trying to reach the “Euro snob” crowd, odds are they aren’t going to suddenly appreciate MLS because of names they will easily identify as ripoffs. Why cater to them?

To be clear, I don’t think these names are harmful. They aren’t bad enough to turn people away, but they also fail to create individual identities for these teams, which is always something you want in any form of marketing.

St. Louis City SC is in a good position to succeed in MLS regardless of the team’s branding. Overall, the branding is more good than bad. I just don’t see the need for generic branding in a league where two of the most popular teams are the Sounders and Timbers. They have names and it didn’t stop them from succeeding. Why can’t we pick actual names for new expansion teams?

When NYCFC or Minnesota United (where the United can be a reference to the twin cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul uniting) roll along with a good explanation for the name, fine, go for it. But most do not have a good explanation and when they all do it, it becomes exhausting.

MLS has ambitions to be better than a generic ripoff of European soccer. Their branding should reflect it.

Hi Cachia! Thank you for allowing us to get to know more about your brand. Please start by introducing  yourself then tell us What your business is about. 

My name is Cachia Cherise, I am a child of GOD, committed wife, and mom that has been blessed to be gifted with being a Transparency Lifestyle Coach, Speaker and Blogger. My educational background in business and healthcare coupled with my career background within Fortune 500 companies. I have been fortunate to perfect my communication and interpersonal skills while working as a project manager, finance coordinator, and healthcare administrator. My business is based on being committed to becoming free by being Transparent in my life in the hopes that it will help other people become free and transparent in theirs. A transparency coach requires you to dig deeper inside yourself and work on spiritual cleansing from within. I have also created an apparel line that is geared towards transparency affirmations which are the foundation in my faith in GOD. “Transparency is a lifestyle” that’s what I practice in my life daily which allows for me to become free of hurt and pain of past life issues and circumstances.

 Wow that is absolutely amazing. We all could use your expertise. What makes your services and products relevant in a time such as now? 

 My products and services are relevant because they are designed to help people deal with life’s issues that keep you bogged down with self-doubt, insecurities, inner hate, and shaken faith. My service and apparel helppeople to dig deeper and be transparent about their own life. This allows you become free in your life and to clear the space of negativity, hurt, pain and insecurities. Therefore, becoming lighter and healed in the mental and spiritual space that you function in.

 I love that. So many people around the world are dealing with so much right now. How do you make the experience people have with you worth it? In other words, why should they choose you? 

 You should choose my company because I am committed to providing a interpersonal service that is centered around your individual needs. My services can be altered towards goals you set which will help you achieve the results you desire in your life.

 That’s great! Lets shift gears a little bit. What do you love most about entrepreneurship? 

 What I love most about entrepreneurship is that I have the ability to change lives by providing services that will not only impact others and change their lives, as well as influence my personal growth in the process of giving to others.

 I can hear the passion you have for what you do and that certainly matters. Has there been any obstacles/ struggles you’ve had to overcome while building your business?  

 One of the biggest obstacles that I have had to overcome while building my business was understanding that I have all the skills needed to provide the services that I am providing based on my prior experiences.

 Wow I love that answer. It definitely helps to be confident about your skill set. So tell me, How did you push through naysayers and critics?

What helps me push through is my faith and inner cleansing of my own self-doubt. This process has allowed me to become extremely confident while believing  in myself and my abilities.

 Bingo! Letting go of your own self doubt is crucial in entrepreneurship and life in general. You’ve got to be your own cheerleader.  What expert advice would you give Someone looking to start a business? 

The advice that I would give someone looking to start a business would be to research the industry that they are going into and be passionate about what they are doing because it shows in your business outcomes. Also, don’t give up, there will be more downs than ups when first starting out.

  I certainly agree. Ok so before I let you go, give us a Lookclusive. What can we expect from you this year?  I.e any new offering, promotions, events, etc?

 This year I will be offering new products such as a Journal Series and Coaching Courses geared towards helping people to dig deeper than they ever have before in their life to uncover the hidden things that keep you bound. I will also be writing a book sometime in the near future.

 That’s great, I can’t wait! Lets tell people where can find you?

You can find my services on my website at www.cachiacherise.com or feel free to                 email me at [email protected]

I am cleaning out my refrigerator. Two jumbo black garbage bags are ready. Everything is going inside the bags. At least I think everything is. It is Thursday afternoon and power went down on Monday at 4:04 p.m. according to the electric clock upstairs, the result of a powerful storm that roared through Chicago.

I toss in an unopened carton of a dozen eggs plus the carton with three eggs. Why didn’t we give these to the neighbors? They came over Tuesday to tell us that they had an extra refrigerator in the basement and they could take as much as we had. The other side of the street has power, as does our neighbor to the left.

We took the milk, the half-n-half and lots of frozen goods that had already thawed. I realized on Wednesday evening that the thawed frozen goods will likely have to be tossed by the time our power comes back, according to the company by 11 p.m. Friday.

I toss the mayo and the vegan mayo, the ketchup, the mustard into a bag. I can’t face emptying them all out, rinsing and recycling. But the guilt weighs heavily.

I open the cheese drawer. Goat cheese crumbles, Feta, two unopened blocks of sharp cheddar, two unopened packages of Parmesan Reggiano. I wonder if cheese will last. I can’t face throwing all of it in the garbage bags. I’ll keep it for now.

And then my mind wanders to Puerto Rico, which has been without full power for over 300 days. My husband’s dentist, who is from Iran, said that when he lived there they had power for the morning and had to use generators for the afternoon and evening.

I clear out the freezer, the puff pastry, the salmon patties, the vegan meatballs. I place the formerly frozen homemade vegetable broth by the sink to wash and next to it the leftover homemade Minestrone. The soup has to be strained because the garbage disposal needs power and I don’t want lots of liquid in the trash bags.

When I get to the vegetable and fruit drawers, I toss blackberries, raspberries, spinach, celery. We had just gone on a major shopping trip the weekend before and couldn’t eat it fast enough. We find a decomposing cucumber at the bottom of the vegetable drawer, which went bad long before we lost power, but is now a mess.

I think of all the things I should have/could have done with this food. I could have used all the thawing fruit—purchased in the Spring when COVID triggered some hoarding—to make pies and give to the neighbors. They could have been delivered with a little note telling them what temperature to bake them at.

I could have done the same with the thawing vegetables and the veggies in the fridge. I could have used them with the eggs and cheese in frittatas made on top of my gas stove and shared them with others who lost electricity.

But I didn’t. I check the my phone and realize all the cheese has to go. I have a vague idea of how much wasted money is in those bags, but it has to remain vague or I’ll tip over into extreme anxiety.

The clearing and cleaning of the refrigerator is the last straw. I want to feel sorry for myself. I want my hair dryer, my dishwasher, my refrigerator, my computer, my television, my wifi, my phone, my air conditioner, the lights in the bathrooms, the fans, I want all of them to work. I am hot, depressed, anxious, immobilized, unable somehow to know what to do with myself.

But I can’t give in to these emotions because I can’t get Puerto Rico out of my head. I can’t forget the families in Detroit that don’t have safe drinking water, the millions of people around the world who struggle every single day to find food and clean water.

I don’t know quite how to end this. I’m at an impasse. I have found a routine, a new way of making coffee at home, then a trip to Starbucks to charge the electronics and get online, then time outside on the patio to write and watch the birds. I have found my headlamp that I use to walk the dog in winter and I use it to read when we head up to bed around 8:45.

It is life as we know it, and though I am grateful for this life, for the pure privilege of being able to buy Parmesan Reggiano, for all of these things that run on electricity, I am also feeling isolated. This home has been my safe place during COVID and now it is no longer a place of comfort.

I simply can not imagine living 300 days without power, and it hurts to know how many in this world are suffering. Still, when 11 p.m. on Friday arrives I will embrace the arrival of power, get the refrigerator ready for new food and close all the windows to keep the air conditioning inside.

Peter Breinart in The Atlantic asserts, “Kamala Harris Did What She Had To: In attacking her record on crime policy, her critics are ignoring how politics actually works.”

In Sunday’s New York Times, the reporters Danny Hakim, Stephanie Saul, and Richard A. Oppel Jr. quoted David Campos, a former member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, who argues that when Harris “had the opportunity to do something about police accountability” as the city’s district attorney, “she was either not visible, or when she was, she was on the wrong side.” Criticisms like these, the Times notes, have led progressives to ask: “Is Ms. Harris essentially a political pragmatist, or has she in fact changed?”

This is a false dichotomy. The implication is that if politics has influenced Harris’s views on criminal justice, progressives shouldn’t support her for vice president. But that’s naive. Because if politics hadn’t influenced Harris’s views, she probably wouldn’t be in a position to join the Democratic ticket in the first place. Commentators can ignore the way American politics actually works. Black women who want a career in national politics cannot.

Admittedly I haven’t studied Harris’ record in detail, but I’m inclined to agree with this take on politics overall. Politics is hard, and it’s too often broadly dismissed as dirty work. The gaming part of politicking is not an option. Nor is it a vice or a hobby as it is for most armchair analysts. It’s a rare and valuable skill set necessary to get anything done. Survival as a long-term government employee — which is needed to effect wide-reaching, lasting change—is not easy; the playing field is unfair, and the rules absolutely change with the sentiment of the times. As an example, the indecision happening now with the stimulus bill is less a function of individual unethical, cruel politicians and more a result of a dysfunctional two-party system. 

It’s even dismissive to refer to any part of government work as “gaming.” In any other industry, the work of an elected official would be regarded fairly as marketing, negotiations, branding, and strategy. Side deals, carrots/sticks, and ambitious promises are part of all major decisions in private business. But in government, these routine tools of negotiation are viewed as virtually criminal. I guarantee far worse is happening in the private sector with our favorite companies, public figures, and celebrities. We just never hear about it. Sure, there are a handful that abuse the government office, and we clutch our pearls when we hear about these scandals from time to time. But they really are the exception. The belief that all politicians are only in it for money or power is a myth. Most government officials (elected or not) are typically competent leaders who would be paid double/more for similar work in the private sector. Instead they dedicate their lives to advance challenging causes, on behalf of others without a voice, that the private sector would otherwise leave behind. The daily struggle of a difficult and often thankless job is rarely acknowledged.

I also think a lot of people greatly overestimate their own ability to navigate a 100% morally straight line within the confines of the political system. A lot of armchair experts would likely be waffling all over the place if held to the same impossible standards. I would, anyway. 

Right now I really wish these gargantuan omnibus bills (like the CARES act and this upcoming stimulus) weren’t allowed to be mega-packaged as such. I wish every item were voted on totally separately with each rep/senator having to make a choice on every item. Politicians can still vote en bloc by party, but this way all the side deals are plain and not buried in 300 pages of technical text. Sure, it takes forever, and it is riskier because any member of the voting bloc could go rogue, but it forces transparency and individual accountability. Every party should be afraid one of its members might defect, frankly. Keeps the party leadership on its toes. Party loyalty, like voter favor, should be continually earned and not a given.

But then party loyalty all stems from electability, and that is its own animal. So any aspirations of  fixing the system starts with campaign finance reform. How though? Don’t know, but I like the idea no private campaign funding at all. Every politician gets the same small budget that they can use for whatever. It’s scaled so a Presidential candidate gets more funding than a local rep. Maybe some use it for limited state touring, broadcast speeches, town hall Q&A, debates, and a detailed website on positioning and policy proposals. Way less advertising, fewer rallies, no fundraisers. Fewer opportunities for special interests to enslave candidates from the outset.

The COVID-19 pandemic put a halt Friday afternoon to the oldest college football rivalry in Illinois – the Mid-America Classic between FCS programs Eastern Illinois and Illinois State – when the schools announced via their websites that the game will not be played.

The two schools, who have played football since 1901, announced Friday that the game was off for the first time since 2001, when it was cancelled after the 9-11 terrorist attacks in the United States.

This year’s matchup in Normal on Sept. 12 would have been the 109^th time the two teams have played.

In 2018, the game was selected as an official Illinois Bicentennial Event when the state celebrated its 200^th birthday.

According to the news release, “administrators at both schools stated that based on what other institutions of higher learning in the region were doing, it was not in the best interest of the health and safety of either teams’ student-athletes to try and play the Sept. 12 contest.”

Eastern announced Friday that the Ohio Valley Conference has postponed its league football schedule until the spring, which the Missouri Valley Football Conference previously announced it would do a week earlier.

Though the OVC said Friday that football teams that can meet NCAA health and safety guidelines can play up to four non-conference games, the Panthers have now lost an opponent in ISU that is a mere 103 miles from Charleston.

Previously, EIU’s non-league game against Indiana State – which is 47 miles away in Terre Haute, Ind. – was called off when the Sycamores chose not to play any games this fall. A game against FBS Kentucky also was called off when the Southeastern Conference dialed back its schedule.

Illinois State previously had Illinois of the Big Ten Conference and FCS newcomer Dixie State cancel non-conference games.

Thus, any fall football in the state among FCS teams is growing more unlikely by the week.

OVC Commissioner Beth DeBauche said in a statement Friday, “while we understand there are many student-athletes, families and communities that are disappointed by the lack of conference competition this fall, and we deeply share that disappointment, it is the OVC’s ardent intention to ensure seasons postponed are not seasons canceled if the facts support it.”

MVFC member Southern Illinois announced Friday via Twitter that Southeast Missouri has called off the teams’ annual “War for the Wheel” rivalry game and that the Salukis no longer will pursue any football games this fall.