By Friends of the MHCs

Dear Citizens of the City of Chicago:
Pending City Council approval, Mayor Emanuel is about to consolidate twelve Mental Health Centers into six, and it also appears that that’s only Phase One of a plan to privatize a little later. This is a shortsighted decision which will deprive the citizens of the City of Chicago of the health, safety, and educational benefits that could be derived from a reorganized and well-managed City of Chicago mental health system.
It has already been pointed out by mental health advocates within and outside our system that mental health services can effectively reduce medical and legal costs, help public school students achieve their maximum potential, and improve the overall quality of life of the communities of the City of Chicago. There is plenty of research data that supports these assertions, and a major urban public health department ignoring it isn’t intelligently understanding “Preventive Care” and aspiring to “healthiest city in America.”
The previous administration tried to downsize our mental health system because it lacked the competence to effectively reorganize and preserve the system. In fact, the former administration could not even handle something as basic as billing for services rendered. The software was flawed, (and the procurement process itself was eventually called into question). Despite a clear and timely warning by the State of Illinois that the CDPH billing system was not working, the administration could not create an alternative method of billing for services while the bugs in the flawed Cerner computerized chart system were being removed. It is extremely demoralizing to have millions of dollars lost as a consequence of managerial incompetence.

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Posted on November 9, 2011

Residents Protest A Budget That Eliminates Critical Services Chicago Working Families Depend On, While City Subsides To Wealthy Corporations Continue

From The Grassroots Collaborative:
WHAT: Community residents decry Mayor Emanuel’s proposal to keep hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ TIF money out of the budget discussion at a time when he’s cutting libraries and closing mental health clinics, police stations, and potentially a dozen community schools.
Mayor Emanuel’s budget declares a 20% TIF surplus of $60 million, but leaves $240 million in the slush fund. The 99% deserves more than just 20%. The mayor protects corporate subsidies at the expense of Chicago’s families.

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Posted on November 8, 2011

By The Beachwood Occupation Affairs Desk

What democracy does and does not look like.
1. “The largest banks are larger than they were when Obama took office and are nearing the level of profits they were making before the depths of the financial crisis in 2008, according to government data,” the Washington Post reports.
“Wall Street firms – independent companies and the securities-trading arms of banks – are doing even better. They earned more in the first 2 1/2 years of the Obama administration than they did during the eight years of the George W. Bush administration.”
*
“There’s a very popular conception out there that the bailout was done with a tremendous amount of firepower and focus on saving the largest Wall Street institutions but with very little regard for Main Street,” said Neil Barofsky, the former federal watchdog for the Troubled Assets Relief Program, or TARP, the $700 billion fund used to bail out banks. “That’s actually a very accurate description of what happened.”
*
Jamie Dimon, former Chicagoan who is now the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, on Occupy protesters: “They’re right.”

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Posted on November 7, 2011

By Steve Rhodes

John Kass began his coverage of the Bill Cellini trial by stating that the media had largely given a pass to the Springfield power broker – known as the Pope of Illinois politics. He returned to the theme near the end of the trial by noting that the halls of the federal courtroom where Cellini was eventually convicted were pretty damn quiet compared to the circus of the Rod Blagojevich trial.
Is Kass right? Did the media fail to properly scrutinize Cellini all these years?

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Posted on November 4, 2011

By ProPublica

First, the song. Then the dance.

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Posted on November 2, 2011

By Steve Rhodes

Seeing as how the National Restaurant Association’s annual show at McCormick Place is kind of the big dog of the local convention industry, I thought it would be interesting – in light of recent allegations – to dive into the ol’ database and see what kind of notice Herman Cain received in the local press in and around the time that he was the NRA’s chief executive officer.
Truthfully, there isn’t much. But he was famously loud during the debate over health care reform during the Clinton administration, which is reflected here. (It turns out Cain had actually voted for Clinton). And at the end, a pre-NRA profile of Cain that ran on the Tribune’s front page.

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Posted on November 1, 2011