Chicago - A message from the station manager

The Weekend Desk Report

By Steve Rhodes

For my Minneapolis peeps.


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Bee Trial
“Nearly four years after geography bee cheating allegations rocked an Oak Brook school district, the long and costly litigation that followed is set to culminate with a federal trial scheduled to begin Monday in Chicago,” the Tribune reports.
“Dr. Rahul Julka, a DuPage County surgeon, and his wife Komal Julka are seeking millions of dollars from the Butler School District 53 in the west suburb, alleging that the school district destroyed their reputations with unfounded accusations of cheating in the geography bee in which their sons, then 9 and 11, were set to compete in January 2016.
“The school district, though, has maintained that it took appropriate action after, it says, Komal Julka registered as a ‘fraudulent’ home school provider to purchase the geography bee questions from the company that administered the bee. She was also accused of sharing the questions with at least one other family.”
Click through to read the rest because I can’t fairly summarize this mess here. But wow.
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Klobucharge
“Democratic presidential hopeful Amy Klobuchar, whose campaign is gaining strength as the primary field shrinks, returns to Chicago on Monday for three fundraisers,” Lynn Sweet reports for the Sun-Times.
“Her pragmatic politics has kept her in the game.”
“Pragmatic” actually means hewing to the status quo – and political journalists love it. But is the current health care system, for example, “pragmatic?” Or is it devastating real lives?
Are the health care plans of, say, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren not pragmatic – even though their models work splendidly in Western Europe, Scandinavia and Canada?
And who is to say what is and isn’t “pragmatic?” Very little that has been “accomplished” in the current administration could be considered pragmatic, and yet here we are.
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Maybe, just maybe, Klobuchar’s positions are radical. She wants to basically keep things pretty much the same! That’s revolutionary considering where most Americans seem to be. She would prefer, for example, to let people keep dying because of our current health care system rather than save them under a better system. That’s pretty radical to me.
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“Klobuchar has two events downtown followed by a third in north suburban Glencoe:
“There will be a 2 p.m. coffee reception at Grosvenor Capital Management where the co-hosts include Grosvenor executive Paul Meister.
“After that, a 5 p.m. cocktail reception at Clayco, the construction company. The hosts include people close to ex-President Barack Obama: Bob Clark, the Clayco Executive Chairman, and his wife, Jane; and Bruce Heyman and his wife, Vicki. Heyman was Obama’s U.S. Ambassador to Canada.
“The last fundraiser is a 7 p.m. reception at a home in Glencoe, with the hosts again Stephen and Karen Malkin; Paul and Jill Meister; and real estate executives David and Susie Sherman.”
So let’s review:
* Paul Meister is a hedge fund manager. How pragmatic!
* Bob Clark is a real estate magnate.
* Bruce Heyman is a former managing director of private wealth management at Goldman Sachs.
* Stephen Malkin is also a hedge funder, and bigtime contributor to Rahm Emanuel.
* David Sherman inherited his father’s real estate portfolio.
Maybe instead of name-checking, the journalistic thing to do would be to explain just who a presidential candidate is meeting with – and trying to raise money from – here in Chicago, and what that says about who the candidate is. Besides that she’s “pragmatic.”
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Sneedingaling
Just hand Kevin Graham your keyboard and have him put his own name on the story, my god.
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Lincoln Yardage
“Clean-up crews prep site for $6 billion Lincoln Yards,” Construction Equipment Guide reports.
“A fair amount of planning and research was required before work could be carried out on the overall project.

“Many historical documents were obtained and reviewed to better understand the former industrial operations,” said Oswald. “One of the more difficult site features to work around was a 175-ft. plate girder railroad swing bridge constructed in the late 1800s, known as Z-6, which was used to cross the Chicago River. Cleanup plans required work along the foundation of this bridge, but no documents could be located locally. After some notable online research, the swing bridge foundation drawings were found in an engineering journal article from 1899.

Alas, they were not able to find the billions of dollars the Chicago Teachers Union wants us to believe is buried there.
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New on the Beachwood . . .
The Beachwood Radio Sports Hour: What The Hell Is Theo Doing?


Dear Barry Rozner, keeper of the screw Bryant flame: Six, indeed, is still less than seven.
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And yet, Bryant is simultaneously overrated! By June 2016, no less!


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TrackNotes: Listen To Big Hank


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ChicagoReddit

Drawing I did, Robert Taylor Homes, 1965 from r/chicago


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Weekend ChicagoGram

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Day 14. Floral (mosaic #Chicago’s south side) #decemberrelections2019

A post shared by Diane Sherlock (@diane_sherlock) on


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Weekend ChicagoTube
Whitney Young Guitar Honors Magic Slim.

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BeachBook
Why Is This Artist Trying To Anger Disney’s Feared Lawyers? It’s All Part Of A Delightfully Devious Scheme To Stop Internet Scammers.

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It’s Not All In Your Head – The Art World Really Is Unfair. Here Are 9 Reasons Why.

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Selective Enrollment For Kindergarten In Chicago.

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Weekend TweetWood
A sampling of the delight and disgust you can find @BeachwoodReport.


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The Weekend Desk Tip Line: Drag it through the garden.

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Posted on December 14, 2019