By Celeste Meiffren/Illinois PIRG

Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Monday that he will be immediately implementing some of the reforms proposed by his Tax Increment Financing (TIF) Reform Panel five months ago. All of the proposed reforms are necessary to fix TIF and need to become law before more of our tax dollars are wasted.
Every year, $500 million worth of property tax revenue collected from Chicago taxpayers flows into a funding pool that, up until very recently, has been completely off the books – allowing for an out-of-control spending spree to well-connected developers and other special interests.

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Posted on January 31, 2012

By Dick Simpson

Hey bud, would you like to buy a judge?
Judges in Illinois can be bought by cash or votes. The Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Cook County buys judges with the promise of votes, naming them to the party’s official slate in exchange for implicit support. The key phrase at the slating session of prospective judges is “I am a lifelong Democrat,” which is code for saying, I’ll decide cases when I can the way the party wants.

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Posted on January 29, 2012

By Lois Beckett/ProPublica

We’ve been following the ways that politicians and special interests try to influence the redistricting process for their own gain, often at the expense of voters.

An article this week in The New Yorker suggests that President Barack Obama’s own political rise in Chicago was partially the result of gerrymandering.

As The New Yorker’s Ryan Lizza reported, Obama worked with a Democratic redistricting consultant to draw a state senate district tailored for him.

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Posted on January 26, 2012

By Anonymous Media

On Friday, January 20, Chicago police blog Second City Cop posted a blog entry entitled “Your New G-8 Best Friend” with an image of a roll of black electrical tape. The post stated, “Use as necessary,” followed by a series of updates that read, “It’s not for securing anything,” and “Hint – it covers things.”
Following this post, Chicago police officers, most of whom posted anonymously, weighed in on the suggestion. One commenter stated, “We should be able to cover up our names and badges with tape if our department is not going to protect us . . .” The officer expressed concern that the hacktivist collective “Anonymous” would release personal information on those identified.

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Posted on January 25, 2012

By The Illinois Public Interest Research Group

(Links added.)
The drinking water for 652,000 people in Illinois could be at risk of radioactive contamination from a leak or accident at a local nuclear power plant, says a new study released today by the Illinois Public Interest Research Group Education Fund (Illinois PIRG).
“The danger of nuclear power is too close to home. Nuclear power plants in Illinois pose a risk to drinking water for more than 600,000 Illinoisans,” said Brian Imus, Illinois PIRG state director. “An accident like the one in Fukushima or a leak could spew cancer-causing radioactive waste into our drinking water.”
The nuclear meltdown in Fukushima last year drew a spotlight on the many risks associated with nuclear power. After the disaster, airborne radiation left areas around the plant uninhabitable, and even contaminated drinking water sources near Tokyo, 130 miles from the plant.
According to the new report, Too Close to Home: Nuclear Power and the Threat to Drinking Water, the drinking water for 652,000 people in Illinois is within 50 miles of an active nuclear power plant – the distance the Nuclear Regulatory Commission uses to measure risk to food and water supplies.

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Posted on January 24, 2012

By J-Hustle

“Ten degrees out with an eight-below wind-chill and people have been camped out all night long just to get an application to work for Ford Motor Company. They turned people away and closed the doors.
“All these people praying for a job. Where are all the jobs, Mr. President, mayor, governor and crooked-ass aldermen and crooked-ass politicians?! Where the hell is the help you bastards promised the people for voting you assholes into office?”

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Posted on January 23, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

“The run-up to Thursday’s City Council approval of a new ward map was quintessential Chicago politics,” the Tribune reports.
“The deal – if not the details – had been largely finished the night before behind closed doors in a third-floor City Hall room that’s no longer smoke-filled like it might have been a couple decades ago. Mapmakers pulled an all-nighter, tweaking the street boundaries to keep enough aldermen happy.
“As soon as the maps could be printed, aldermen were handed copies. Less than an hour later, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel led the proceedings, the map was rammed through 41-8. There was no public hearing on the final plan, and the lopsided vote followed a discussion focused far more on legal technicalities than impact on Chicago residents.
“Reform groups and opposing aldermen asked what the rush was, given that there’s no city election until 2015.”

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Posted on January 20, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

I could write that the the Chicago City Council passed Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s draconian crackdown on free speech on Wednesday because they are still a collection of spineless twits, naifs and plain lousy persons, and that city government is still a boss and his tools, despite the malarkey emanating from aldermen being played in a kinder, gentler but more devious way, but then Ald. Joe Moore would accuse me of “overheated rhetoric and over-the-top hyperbole.”
What seems to be overheated and over-the-top to me, though, are the two ordinances Moore and his colleagues just passed despite the ink barely being dry on some of the provisions that just had to be rushed into law without due debate because the G8/NATO summits which have been scheduled for a year are now . . . four months away.
But there was Moore – and his so-called hip partner in progressive politics Joe Moreno – falling all over themselves to heap praise on Rahm Emanuel and his listening skills as if they would otherwise be carted off to jail themselves for violating the new rules that, as reported by Progress Illnois, include provisions requiring “paying parade insurance to the city, and registering for a protest permit 15 days prior to the event. The ordinance also says that protesters must provide the city with a list of all signs, banners, sound equipment, or ‘attention-getting devices’ that need more than one person to carry them.”

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Posted on January 19, 2012

By The Coalition Against the NATO/G8 War & Poverty Agenda

In response to a firestorm of protest, the Emanuel administration has dropped some of the more widely-publicized repressive measures of its proposed anti-protester ordinances, but has vastly misrepresented the magnitude of its concessions, say protest organizers.
Here’s why:
1. While the administration has made much of its dropping of increased penalties for resisting arrest, left unaddressed was Chicago’s unique interpretation of “resisting” which makes many forms of non-violent civil disobedience subject to punishment under the statute. This would be in addition to more conventional charges, like trespassing, that one would be likely to get for such non-violent protest.

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Posted on January 18, 2012

Whose City? Our City.

The essence of democracy is at stake.
1. The 99% vs. Rahm.
“A coalition of unions, religious leaders, community organizations and other concerned citizens is set to condemn a package of ordinances proposed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel that amounts to an all-out assault on the civil liberties of Chicagoans,” Danny Postel writes in a statement for Stand Up! Chicago. (Links added.)
“The group will conduct a press conference on Tuesday at a.m. on the 2nd floor of City Hall (one hour before a budget committee hearing on the proposed ordinances).
“The new restrictions place onerous limits on the First Amendment right to free speech and assembly, including burdensome permit requirements for even small sidewalk protests, the threat of steep new fines and other provisions that are practically impossible to comply with. The upshot is that almost any organization or group of individuals that wishes to express dissent can quickly find themselves on the wrong side of the law and subject to arrest and fines.

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Posted on January 17, 2012