By Steve Rhodes

I attempted to figure out which aldermen were with which mayoral candidate, either through formal endorsements, obvious statements of preference, or other observable clues. In some cases, I couldn’t make a determination. Why does this matter? Think committee chairmanships, coalitions, voting blocs and so on.
Here it is, by ward. Where an incumbent was ousted in February, I’ve named the incoming alderman. Where runoffs are occurring today, I’ve done my best to tab each candidate with their stated choice.
If I’ve gotten any of these wrong, or you can fill in any missing gaps, let me know.
1. Daniel LaSpata -> ?
2. Brian Hopkins -> ?
3. Pat Dowell -> Preckwinkle
4. Sophia King -> Preckwinkle
5. Leslie Hairston -> Preckwinkle (William Calloway -> Lightfoot)

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Posted on April 2, 2019

By Julia Conley/Common Dreams

Former President Barack Obama on Monday night cautioned freshman members of the U.S. House against pushing for broadly popular, sweeping reforms by suggesting that voters will reject progressive policies due to their supposed high costs – despite evidence to the contrary.
At a meeting organized by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Obama told several first-term members that they should continue to pursue “bold” policy ideas while tempering their hope for change because of the (perceived) cost of those ideas.
Puzzling, predictable and problematic.

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Posted on March 27, 2019

By Anne Kirkner and Jeff Shuhrke

As spring break begins at the University of Illinois-Chicago, teaching assistants and graduate assistants with the UIC Graduate Employees Organization (GEO) remain on strike. Normal operations at the university were brought to a standstill last week due to the work stoppage, with students and faculty overwhelmingly expressing support for the GEO and blaming the dispute on the recalcitrance of the administration.

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Posted on March 25, 2019

By No Cop Academy

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Sophia Hall ruled Friday in favor of a Motion to Reconsider her December decision allowing Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his administration to withhold over 400 pages of documents related to the proposed Cop Academy.
Debbie Southorn and Erin Glasco, the plaintiffs and organizers with #NoCopAcademy, previously filed several FOIA requests seeking information regarding Emanuel’s plans to build the excessively costly venture which many believe is wholly unnecessary and will not decrease police violence that destroys the lives of scores of Black and Latinx people in Chicago.
As she read prepared notes in court this morning, Hall’s ruling made clear that the city has not given the court enough information about how the mayor makes decisions.

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Posted on March 22, 2019

By Jake Johnson/Common Dreams

Washington Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler cherry-picked evidence, played semantic games, and obscured the truth on Monday when he said Sen. Bernie Sanders inflated the amount of taxpayer bailout money Wall Street received following the 2008 financial crisis.
Kessler took issue with a line the 2020 presidential contender often includes in his stump speeches: “Not one major Wall Street executive went to jail for destroying our economy in 2008 as a result of their greed, recklessness, and illegal behavior. No. They didn’t go to jail. They got a trillion-dollar bailout.”
Dismissing the trillion-dollar figure as “a nice round number” that is “not borne out by the facts,” Kessler added up the amount of aid major banks received through the 2008 Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).
Even under an expansive definition of Wall Street, Kessler asserted, the bailout amounted to “just over $500 billion – or half a trillion.” Under the Post’s vaguely defined scoring system, Kessler rewarded Sanders with two “Pinocchios.”
But Sanders’ team and other critics were quick to argue that Kessler’s focus on TARP funds was overly narrow and neglected emergency loans from the Federal Reserve that amounted to trillions of dollars in bailout money that kept Wall Street afloat.
“If anything, Senator Sanders has underestimated the size of the post-crisis bailouts,” Arianna Jones, a spokeswoman for Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign, told the Post. Jones pointed to several studies and news reports, including this one from the New York Times, showing that Fed loans exceeded a trillion dollars and may have been as high as $29 trillion.

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Posted on March 21, 2019

By Thomas Chambers

Adapted from an actual note our very own Tom Chambers sent Thursday to Tribune columnist Steve Chapman after reading his “Trump’s Unwise Decision To Ground The 737 Max 8 And Max 9.”
Mr. Chapman,
Late on deadline and had to crank one out?
Your lack of information on the 737 Max situation is appalling.
The 737 Max is not a tweak of the old 737. It is almost virtually a new plane, hot-rodded off the old 737, with substantially new and different engine configurations and software that is supposed to control new aeronautics on an old chassis.
Boeing used its clout with the FAA and Trump to keep the plane designated a 737 so as not to put it under more testing and approval scrutiny.
The FAA is also allowing Boeing to certify its own airplanes in a classic fox-in-the-henhouse scenario. European nations depend on America’s FAA to certify American planes, and then do some follow-up evaluation. Simply said, other countries, include emerging Third World nations, depend on the FAA as the source of their confidence in American planes.

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Posted on March 15, 2019

By The ACLU of Illinois

The ACLU announced Wednesday that it has discovered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is using mass location surveillance to target immigrants.
Records obtained by the ACLU of Northern California in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit detail ICE’s sweeping use of a vast automated license plate reader (ALPR) database run by a company called Vigilant Solutions.
Over 80 local law enforcement agencies from over a dozen states – including four in Illinois – have agreed to share license plate location information with ICE.

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Posted on March 14, 2019

By Matthew Gardner Kelly/The Hechinger Report

From California to Wisconsin to Chicago, where both remaining candidates for mayor say they want to halt charter school expansion, efforts to stop charter school growth are gaining momentum.

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Posted on March 10, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

I highly advise you to think long and hard about how you engage with me, and about your role in this Village moving forward. If you (or any one else, for that matter) continue to expend your energy attempting to derail me, you will be highly, highly disappointed and in fact, you will be damaging not only your career, but your quality of life. I guarantee it. I will be merciless and relentless in ensuring that you, and any other people of ill character – not acting in good faith – are dealt with appropriately; for the sake of this Village – and it will be unlike anything you have ever experienced.
– Amara Enyia, then acting village manager of south suburban University Park, in an e-mail to trustee board member (and lawyer) Oscar Brown Jr., under the subject heading “Potential Legal Action Regarding our Conversation on Thursday 15th.” (Boldface in the original.)
–
When the Tribune reported its takeout of Amara Enyia in early February – one in a series the paper has done on mayoral candidates – it focused mainly on her tax problems, or at least that’s what seemed to get the lion’s share of everybody’s attention. But the paper also showed discrepancies between Enyia’s claims of accomplishment and reality. I encourage you to click the link and review the story again – or for the first time if you missed it!
Curiously, Enyia never talks about her brief time as the interim village manager of University Park, the closest job she’s had to mayor of Chicago. (If that sounds absurd, that’s because it is, even though it’s true.) Now we know why.
Enyia took on the assignment in 2017 – two years after her first run for mayor of Chicago. She is now, of course, running again to lead the nation’s third-largest city. But to be frank, Enyia’s time in UP was a shitshow well beyond what the Tribune has already reported.

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Posted on February 24, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

Barring developments of the unforeseen kind, I mentally locked in my vote for mayor two days ago and ended up where I started: Lori Lightfoot.
She’s far from perfect. But not as far as Toni Preckwinkle, to whom I gave the benefit of the doubt for a long time even as she seemed to do everything she could to lose it with each passing week. Plus, Berrios.
I briefly considered Paul Vallas, but this is not the time for a white male who chartered the entire New Orleans school district, even if he is a budget whiz.
Gery Chico isn’t actually altogether horrible, but that’s about the best I can say about him at this point.
I never really considered anybody else.
In a post-Laquan era, a believer and practitioner in police reform is exactly what the city needs – and Lightfoot is someone who understands that fixing our police department can go a long way toward not only driving down crime but uplifting communities and creating an environment in which other issues like affordable housing and neighborhood schools can really be addressed.
Bill Daley likes to say, “If we we don’t get crime under control, nothing else matters.” He’s wrong. His top-down law enforcement approach is exactly what we’ve had enough of. His specious calls for “tougher sentencing” and putting more people in prison goes against everything we’ve learned in recent years. Instead, we need to reverse direction, and that’s what Lightfoot (and, frankly, Preckwinkle) is advocating. Daley (among everything else that is wrong with him) is still stuck in the mindset that the only problem with the police are the few bad apples who spoil it for the bunch. That’s just sophistry. Lightfoot understands in her bones how systemic and institutional racism coupled with a sick organizational culture have created the environment we’re in – even as she’s spent a large portion of her career as a federal prosecutor and has even defended cops in court. Lightfoot, then, is uniquely positioned to be the mayor this city needs as it falls under the pall of a federal consent decree. This is Chicago’s chance to get this stuff right.
Now, I’ve been around long enough to know I should never allow myself to actually like a politician. They will always let you down. But Lightfoot is the candidate I find least undesirable. And this week she seems to have finally passed the viability and plausibility test. I’ve come to believe she might actually be able to do the job.
Of course, if she wins, I’ll be on her case from day one, when deserving. I’m not “backing” her. I’m not invested in her. I’m just voting for her.
So let’s take a look a long look at Lori Lightfoot.

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Posted on February 22, 2019