By Jeff Cohen/Common Dreams

TV news shows are good at getting viewers riled up. Day and night, I hear the anchors on CNN and MSNBC getting us riled up about the schemes of this or that “Russian oligarch with links to the Kremlin.” I’ve heard that phrase incessantly in recent weeks.
And plenty of others have heard the “Russian oligarch” phrase. Merriam-Webster.com reported that “oligarch” was one of its most searched-for words on April 5th “following reports that Robert Mueller had questioned Russian businessmen to whom this descriptor applies.”
But here’s a phrase I haven’t heard from any of the purportedly progressive hosts on MSNBC: “A U.S. oligarch with links to Washington.”
That avoidance is revealing when one considers an indisputable fact: U.S. oligarchs have done far more to undermine U.S. democracy than any Russian.

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Posted on April 12, 2018

By The City Of Chicago Office Of Inspector General

A report released Tuesday by the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General found that the City of Chicago Department of Buildings had a backlog of more than 5,000 complaints, some dating back to 2013, almost 200 of which described serious health and safety hazards.
OIG’s audit also found that DOB met its department response deadline for only 36.5 percent of building complaints in the first five months of 2017. The audit also determined that DOB did not have an effective strategy for prioritizing complaints, and exceeded the Municipal Code of Chicago mandatory 21-day deadline for several complaint types. In addition, the City Data Portal and DOB Building Violation websites failed to provide a property’s full violation history.
“Deadlines that fail to meet legal mandates set by the City ordinance, public information that lacks transparency, and unaddressed health and safety hazards pose far too many risks to the residents of Chicago,” said Inspector General Joe Ferguson.

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Posted on April 11, 2018

By Jessica Corbett/Common Dreams

Royal Dutch Shell’s scientists warned the oil giant about the threat that fossil fuel emissions pose to the planet as early as the 1980s, according to a trove of documents obtained by a Dutch journalist and published Thursday by Climate Files.
The documents bolster an investigative report published last year showing that Shell lobbied against climate legislation and invested billions in fossil fuels despite knowing dangers of global warming.
One such document, a confidential 1988 report entitled “The Greenhouse Effect,” outlines a comprehensive study of climate science and the projected impact of fossil fuels, and reveals that the company secretly had been commissioning such analyses since at least 1981. The report acknowledges the central role that fossil fuels – especially oil – play in increasing CO2 emissions that drive global warming.

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Posted on April 5, 2018

By Fight For $15

CHICAGO – McDonald’s is breaking its highly-touted April 2015 pledge to pay the 90,000 workers at its corporate stores $1 an hour above the local minimum wage, the Fight for $15 announced Monday.
Worker paystubs in three major metropolitan areas where the company has large numbers of corporate stores, including Chicago, show cooks and cashiers being paid less than $1 above the local minimums.
McDonald’s made the announcement of the increase three years ago in the face of massive worker protests calling for higher pay and union rights. At the time, CEO Steve Easterbrook said the increase was in response to employee surveys and was about delivering “better customer service.”
The move was widely panned as inadequate because the increases only applied to a small fraction of McDonald’s employees, but nevertheless the company has failed to make good on its promise.

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Posted on April 2, 2018