By Dennis Kucinich

The attacks on our unions in Ohio, Wisconsin, and elsewhere aren’t just labor struggles or budget battles. They’re an attack on the American middle-class – an attempt to, in a single blow, undo generations of progress for labor and working class Americans.
President Obama needs to lead the charge against this affront on public workers and unions. He needs to be on the front-lines of these protests, as he promised while on the campaign trail in 2007.

This is a defining moment for our country, and we need our President to lead. Will you join me in signing this petition to our President?

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Posted on March 10, 2011

By Ed Hammer

Earlier this month, the Sun-Times reported that the Chicago Board of Education spent $3,000 to electronically sweep certain administrative offices – including that of the board president – for bugs.
I am not talking about cockroaches here. I am not even talking about ants. The bugs I am talking about are eavesdropping devices capable of surreptitiously recording conversations.
A question then arises. Who would want to record conversations in the offices of CPS administrators?

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Posted on March 9, 2011

By Steve Balkin

Dear Mayor-Elect Emanuel,
Congratulations on your election victory.
I write this letter because I hope you are sincere about making positive change for Chicago.
But if you want positive change for the city, you need to know that a world-class city is more than neatness, corporate headquarters’, and big-box stores. A world-class city also includes social harmony, quality conversations across race and class, and preservation of the historical fabric, authenticity, and vibrancy in public places.
I expect you know about this, having lived in Washington D.C., and having visited places such as New York City and Paris; Manny’s delicatessen and Valois cafeteria.
I want to suggest how some simple changes in public policy can make the city money, create businesses and jobs, and enhance the reputation of Chicago as a world-class city.

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Posted on March 9, 2011

By Brooke Alvarez/FactZone

Congress has deemed yelling and screaming as the nation’s official mode of communication.

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Posted on March 7, 2011

By Steve Rhodes

Dan Sinker meeting Rahm Emanuel yesterday was a bit like a local version of Elvis Presley meeting Richard Nixon: A WTF moment for the history books.
But it also illustrated just what was wrong with Sinker’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes predictable, sometimes vulgar, sometimes prescient fake Twitter feed: It was all the time sympathetic to its “target.”
Sinker merely burnished the myth of a foul-mouthed pragmatist with little patience for pageantry who just wanted to “get things done” instead of doing what truly effective political satire does: reveal the truths behind the propaganda and manufactured media narratives.
Rahm Emanuel is a nasty man, but not as charmingly so as Sinker portrayed him. He and his buddy David Axelrod are kings of media manipulation, not doltish road trip buddies cranking Journey in Ax’s Civic.
And that’s why Jim DeRogatis’s criticism of Sinker is valid, despite the rush of fanboys and fangirls rushing to Sinker’s defense. It seems a whole lot of people have forgotten what this is all about – we live in a city decimated by poverty that has failed its most needy as well as its middle-class and we just had a campaign in which the winner did everything he could not to talk about those sorts of things – or anything.
But a lot of comfortable folks sure got a good laugh out of a Twitter feed not available to 40 percent of the city on the other side of the digital divide.

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Posted on March 3, 2011

By Ed Hammer

I stayed up late last night to read the deposition of a convicted felon.
George Ryan is serving time in a federal prison in Terre Haute, Indiana, for crimes of corruption and obstruction he committed while he was Illinois’ secretary of state and governor.
He was deposed last March by attorney John Stainthorp, whose client, Oscar Walden Jr., who was suing the City of Chicago.
Walden, who was convicted of rape, was granted a pardon by Ryan. Walden alleged his confession was coerced by the Chicago police.
The March 2010 deposition was the first lengthy interview of Ryan since he began serving his six-and-a-half year sentence more than three years ago.
Often throughout the interview, Ryan responded to Stainthorp’s question with “Pardon?”
What you can’t tell on the black and white document is whether he respond that way because he could not hear the question or because he did not understand the question.
Or, maybe it was something else.
Some of the Chicago’s reporters describe Ryan’s tone during the questioning as testy and combative. As I read the deposition, I could envision the arrogance spewing from the recognizable baritone of the once powerful politician.
I thought of what questions I would ask my former boss. Then I played devil’s advocate and answered my own questions.
This is how I imagined the interview would go.

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Posted on March 1, 2011