Judge Sitting On His Ass
“Little Village Residents Pine For Park On Vacant Land: Community has grand plans, but city efforts to buy site drag on for 7 years.”
– Tribune, December 6, 2010
And still they wait.
Posted on July 13, 2011
About Those Indicted Nurses
By Ed Hammer
During my 25 years of employment with the State of Illinois, I became aware of how much public corruption is connected to political fundraising. I was less than a year on the job as a Secretary of State Police Officer when my sergeant attempted to hit me up for a couple hundred of dollars for an Alan Dixon fundraiser. That same sergeant eventually went to prison for shaking down licensed auto rebuilders. It turns out one of the shops was an FBI sting operation intending to crack down on organized auto theft rings in Chicago. The sergeant was a by-product.
Annually, employees of the Secretary of State were expected to purchase fundraiser tickets from their supervisors. This became a personal concern when I was assigned to the Department of Inspector General in 1987 as the special agent-in-charge for northern Illinois. Frequently, driving schools, taxi drivers, and automobile dealers complained to the IG about being shaken down for fundraiser tickets.
Posted on July 9, 2011
Foreclosure City: Our Tsunami
By Steve Rhodes
“Englewood is rapidly being abandoned, many of its blocks now little more than weed-choked and trash-littered urban prairies,” the Tribune reports.
“A neighborhood that had long been on the brink was pushed over the edge by the foreclosure crisis, leading to a descent that threatens the rest of the city by draining resources and shrinking tax rolls.
“What is left in Englewood and West Englewood draws comparison to the worst of Detroit. As residents fled and investors pulled out, the number of abandoned buildings and vacant lots on many streets outnumbers occupied buildings.”
Posted on June 24, 2011
Media Trope: The Seven Dwarfs
By Steve Rhodes
“Republican voters are not especially enthusiastic about the potential Republican candidates for president this year, according to the latest polls, but history shows that is not unusual at this stage of the campaign,” Jennifer Pinto wrote for CBS News’ Political Hotsheet earlier this month.
Thank you, Jennifer. Because I’m already tired of seeing and hearing one of the political media’s favorite tropes – that of the Seven Dwarfs.
As in:
“They assumed the stance of the Seven Dwarfs, not as a matter of physical but rather intellectual stature. Not one of the candidates for the GOP presidential nomination who debated Monday night rose to a point of seriousness in addressing the nation’s grievous problems.”
Please.
Posted on June 21, 2011
Rahm’s War On Teachers
By Ed Hammer
In his crusade to reform Chicago Public Schools, Rahm Emanuel apparently has declared war on our teachers.
“Teachers got two types of pay raises [in a 2003 labor agreement],” the new mayor said last week as he defended his handpicked school board’s decision to rescind 4 percent raises for CPS faculty. “People in public life got labor peace. Can anybody explain to me what the children got? I know what everybody else got.”
In case anyone didn’t catch his drift, Rahm clarified: “Our children got the shaft.”
These are the same dedicated teachers I wrote about last month, nothing that “They have to manage the behavior of 25 individuals whose brains are not physically or emotionally developed while at the same time teaching them the basics needed to survive.”
On Friday, one of those teachers was listening to Roe & Roeper on WLS-AM. The hosts were playing parts of the same Emanuel dialogue, including when Rahm stated that, in good conscience, he could not meet the demands of the teachers’ current contract “because they have left the children by the side of the road.”
She was so stunned that tears came to her eyes. It was her last week with the kids before summer break. It had been an especially difficult year. She has dedicated 30 years of her life to teaching. How could the mayor be so demeaning to such a dedicated class of people?
Posted on June 20, 2011
The CPD Is Watching You
By Raza Siddiqui/Press TV
Chicago is home to the most extensive camera surveillance network of any U.S. city – and it’s going to get even more extensive under Rahm Emanuel.
Posted on June 17, 2011
The [Trade Show] Papers
By Steve Rhodes
“A three-month Crain’s investigation finds questions of profit and fairness clouding the future of McCormick Place, the linchpin of a Chicago convention industry that generates $8 billion in annual spending and supports 66,000 jobs,” James Ylisela reported on Monday.
“In 2009, when some big trade shows left or threatened to leave Chicago over price-gouging and labor practices at McCormick Place, lawmakers rushed through legislation imposing wage cuts and work-rule changes on unions at the convention center.
“But labor represents a relatively small share of exhibitors’ costs at McCormick Place. The reforms required no meaningful concessions from trade associations or a pair of show contractors that continue to squeeze exhibitors, who already bear most of the costs of conventions.
“Freeman and Global Experience Specialists Inc., which handle three out of four McCormick Place shows, still charge the same high rates exhibitors cite as their No. 1 complaint.”
*
This is true. See Convention Wisdom, an excerpted summary of the story about McCormick Place I wrote for Chicago magazine in 2004, which included these passages:
Posted on June 15, 2011
Fitzgerald Defends Plea Bargain With American Terrorist
By Sebastian Rotella/ProPublica
The chief prosecutor in a landmark terrorism trial that ended last week in Chicago says a plea bargain with a confessed American terrorist was justified because of his value as a source of intelligence and as a key witness in any future prosecutions.
Jurors last Thursday convicted Tahawwur Rana, a Chicago businessman, after a trial that revealed unprecedented details about the alliance between Pakistani militant groups and that country’s intelligence service.
In addition to investigative work by the FBI in the United States, Pakistan, India and Denmark, the case centered on five days of testimony of David Coleman Headley, who confessed to doing reconnaissance for the 2008 Mumbai attacks and a failed plot in Denmark.
Jurors convicted Rana on two of three counts of support of terrorism for letting Headley, a childhood friend, use his immigration consulting business as a cover for his plotting overseas. Headley described the Mumbai attacks as a joint operation directed by Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) and the Lashkar-i-Taiba militant group.
He testified as part of a plea agreement that enabled him to escape the death penalty for his role in the killings of 166 people, including six Americans, in Mumbai.
Posted on June 14, 2011
Rahm’s Palace
By The Beachwood Bookmaking Bureau
Rahm Emanuel may think he doesn’t look good in a toga, but if he gets his casino he may want to stick with the Rahmulus theme (better than the Rahmfather from a marketing point of view) and call it Rahm’s Palace. It worked for Caeser.
Here’s how we think it would work.
Posted on June 13, 2011