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It's funny the things that enrage Mayor Daley.
Aides and city employees indicted or carted off to jail on corruption charges? Hey, stuff happens.
The CTA's breaking down physically and financially? Hey, man, don't bother me, I got to catch a plane to Paris. My buddy Frank did his best.
But one alderman dares to tell the mayor he can't do what he wants? Look out, mama -- Katie bar the door.
Witness how Daley reacted to rookie alderman Brendan Reilly (42nd), who after weeks of community meetings decided to go with the majority of his constituents and oppose the mayor's plans to move the Chicago Children's Museum to Grant Park. Daley laced into Reilly, albeit screwing up his name. He was so riled he misquoted Reilly in his efforts to tarnish him. Reilly and his constituents, he insisted, were child-hating bigots whose opposition imperiled the future of the entire city. His face got red. His hair fell across his forehead. He snarled. He sneered. He threatened.
It was a vintage Daley temper tantrum. People at City Hall tell me he throws them all the time. It seems to be an effective tactic: most aldermen fall in line. To cite just one example, the council voted 35-5 for Daley's grand scheme to bring the 2016 Olympics to town, despite knowing full well we can't afford them. They figured the city wasn't going to get the games anyway, so why piss off the mayor with a "no" vote? And if the International Olympic Committee were to award the games to Chicago? Well, that's a risk the aldermen were willing to take. Better to risk public bankruptcy than the mayor's wrath.
In his tirade against Reilly, Daley said he was standing up for Chicago's children. "I hope you understand what this fight is all about," he said.
Who's he trying to kid? This fight is not about children -- it's about patronage, and it's about power. The mayor has both in spades, and he wants to keep them, particularly with his Olympic dreams on the line. As story after story points out, one of the biggest things Chicago has going for it in the eyes of the IOC is the notion that Daley's an all-powerful mayor (a benign tyrant, if you will) who can get whatever he wants. Want to shut down Washington, Jackson and Douglas parks for months, maybe years? Want to divert millions, if not billions, of property taxes from the cash-starved schools? Want to soak the taxpayers for billions in order to throw a three-week party? Mayor Daley can get it done. No one dares cross him.
Except, it turns out, Reilly. I didn't think he had this kind of guts when he was running for office in February, but he's shown signs of it before. I can only hope his council colleagues aren't afraid to emulate him.
I am still confused exactly how, and to whom, the parks advisory council is accountable for their positions. This is certainly true of many of the not-for-profit institutions throughout Chicago, least of which in my opinion is the community development corporations. I think that the tax-payers, whose tax dollars are used to support much of their activities, deserve a say on who sits on these advisory boards and development corporations.
Secondly, Carol Marin asked this evening if the construction of the BP/Gehry bridge was constructed with the assumption that there would be a destination for those from Millennium Park to cross too. Considering that the Pritzker pavilion is on one side of the street separating Millennium park from Grant park, and that "Gigi" Pritzker was traveling with the mayor to Paris and his nephew represents the private institution of the Chicago Children’s Museum that Ms. Pritzker sit’s on the board of, I think it is a valid inquire as to the purpose of building the bridge in the first place. Did the mayor and those clout heavy connections have this planned all along?
Finally, this is going to be a show down in the city council, and although Ben expressed his doubts that the Mayor could win this, I'm not counting out the Mayor's power of persuasion. Another interesting story ran on Chicago Tonight following the interview on the mayor’s eruption concerning the Columbia Yacht Club and moving the existing harbors and yacht club in order to make room for the rowing competition. I think there are several battles ahead, and while the old guard is still in charge, they may over ride the aldermanic prerogative traditionally made, and there is no union or organized effort to hold the mayor accountable as the Big-Box ordinance had. Those who truly care about the future of Grant park should be prepared for an expensive and lengthy court battle.
Congratulations to Alderman Reilly for proving all those skeptics wrong. An elected official who listens to his constituents, although a novelty, is something we should all aspire too in our wards.
$
Richard M. Daley.
Unbelievable.
Un-fucking-believable.
Someone call a paramedic.
This guy's having a meltdown.
Stat.
All that mess behind the city scene is starting to unravel...all that developer $$, that racism, that mindless garbage. It only gets worse for our city.
Those who oppose the musuem in Grant Park are NOT racist, and to color them as such is an invalid argument.
Those of us who oppose the museum do so on the basis of wanting to the park to remain unfettered with buildings and support the 1836 decree, that Grant Park should remain "Public ground. Forever to remain vacant of buildings."
Period.
It's very simply - corruption isn't a victimless crime. Munoz didn't get a lot of traction (and his father was conveniently arrested as he was starting to make more noise) when he tried publicizing the concept of the "corruption tax," but that's exactly what it is - it's not bags of money changing hands under the table (this isn't 1903 with the Boodlers' Den in the Council), it's padded contracts which jack up the cost of EVERYTHING.
Line 26f on part IV of this form gives a percentage of public support over the last four years (most of my local community development corporations and councils are above 90%) and line 1c on part 1 shows the amount of governmental funding received. These forms also list current officers.
What they don't address is exactly who and how these folks are representative of the community or accountable to the community they serve. I still think this is a nice set up for your local political folks to fund with your tax dollars, make it look like they are doing/supporting great things in your hood, and when ever their is a controversial issue, the local pol will hide behind these unaccountable groups and claim that the community supports what ever the controversial issue/decision is.
But let the reader figure out how their local charity organizations doing such great things are funded.
I am sick of him being the Dictator of Chicago and then calling eveyrone that disagrees with him racist.
By Ray Gibson, Dan Mihalopoulos and Oscar Avila | Tribune staff reporters
1:06 PM CDT, September 20, 2007
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Digg Del.icio.us Facebook Furl Google Newsvine Reddit Spurl Yahoo Print Single page view Reprints Reader feedback Text size: Mexican authorities have arrested corrupt City Hall contractor Marco Morales, nearly a year after federal prosecutors in Chicago again indicted the longtime fugitive from U.S. justice, his lawyer said Thursday.
Morales was detained at his girlfriend's home in the Yucatan Peninsula city of Merida on Wednesday night, his cousin Norma Hoyos Perusquia said in a telephone interview from Merida today.
Jaime Tacher, Morales' attorney in Mexico City, said Morales called him from Merida and said agents had surrounded the house where he has been living. Tacher said Morales surrendered on his advice.
Morales was transported to Mexico City in a government plane and is being held in a jail there, Tacher said.
A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in Chicago said he had no information about the arrest. Mexican officials also declined to comment.
Morales' epic legal saga began more than a decade ago, when he pleaded guilty to bribery and mail fraud. As part of the deal, prosecutors dropped a drug charge against Morales, and he agreed to serve a prison term and testify about bribing a high-ranking official in Mayor Richard Daley's administration.
But Morales fled to his native Mexico in 1997. Mexican authorities arrested him in 2004 and detained him for nearly a year because the U.S. government sought his extradition.
Morales went free again, however, when his lawyers defeated the extradition request in 2005.
Last October, U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald's office announced that prosecutors were indicting Morales again for the drug crime.
In interviews with the Tribune in recent years, Morales repeatedly has asserted his reluctance to return to Chicago to serve as a government witness.
Morales alleged that he bribed Anthony Pucillo, a former deputy transportation commissioner in the Daley administration, to win city sewer repair contracts. Pucillo, who has never been charged with a crime and denies wrongdoing, ran a pro-Daley political group of city workers.
rgibson@tribune.com
dmihalopoulos@tribune.com
oavila@tribune.com
In any city with a truly free press, that enormous mayoral Chicago Police houseguard (mentioned in the Sun-Times article about the New East Side Moms) would be a scandal, and ended once the total cost was outed. The photographs (of the three layers of police -- curbside; door; inside -- at the mayor's home 24/7) would be worth buying a lifetime subscription to the Sun-Times, but the story will never appear.
Likewise, the dozens of photographs I've taken of Daley getting out of the three-limosine caravan with Jackie Heard (who has just rehearsed him like an elementary school teacher with flash cards) about his next stop's talking points would be priceless. Just visually picturing Daley's point, center and slack bodyguard cars is worth the price of admission, but that story, too, will never get on the air about our imperial mayor, Mr. Olympics, and all the rest.
However, a major question has arisen as Hizzoner has degenerated more and more into that purplefaced haze that comes over him when he goes completely off script and starts babbling and even Ms. Heard can't shut him down. At some point, if we haven't reached it, Daley's going to head fast into early onset dementia. Then the real fun will begin.
Never the brightest bulb on the tree (when he "ended social promotion" for public school students, the joke was that he was being an ingrate, because without social promotion he'd still be in eighth grade), Daley will begin letting it all hang out. Even if the bigs (TV news, which is what every Daleyevent is staged for) can keep the visuals from the air waves under FCC regulations, more and more of us will have You Tube and other venues to give the world a taste of our Imperial Mayor, uncensored and in living color.
It's about to happen. This stuff about racists in the parks is just the beginning, and all the billionaire ladies in the world won't be able to prop him up when his tongue gets caught in his addled versions of reality. Last year it was his railing (September 12, 2006) against the "racists" who opposed Wal Mart and demanded the living wage ordinance. A couple of years ago, it was his Xing out the runways at Meigs Field.
At some point, all of this imperial nonsense will catch up with him. The TV stations will decide he's outlived his usefulness, and open the cans with the collected babblings. And even if they don't, it's a new world thanks to the Internet. So "Mayors Gone Wild" is just a mouse click away, and hopefully this is the first chapter.
Priceless piece of writing, George.
Simply priceless.
You're hired.
:)
Propaganda is alive and thriving in Chicago.
The spin machines are running night and day, day and night, 24/7/52, coating the many lies with paper-thin layers of truths.
Hard-working manipulators labor incessantly to keep the machine running smoothly, making heroic efforts to carefully assemble each component of the gigantic deception enterprise we've come to know and despise, aka, our city government.
The fuel this machine runs on, taxpayer dollars, is steadily flowing, like the Mississippi River flows into the Gulf, seemingly unstoppable, relentless, a flow one thinks one can depend upon, a force of nature.
Then, the unthinkable happens.
Daley speaks.
Daley spouts.
Daley fucks up that finely tuned and crafted bullshit machine, throwing it so far out of balance that those hard-working liars who strive daily to maintain it's balance are put to the test.
Can they repair the damage in time, to keep the now dangerously unbalanced money-making engine from destroying itself?
Can they do anything to save this machine from tearing itself apart?
Can they, somehow, get Daley to shut-the-fuck-up?
Can anyone?
How many 'not-for-profits' are truly unprofitable?
We consider a not-for-profit to be an enterprise that operates for the benefit of others and shows no financial gain, ie., no profit, at the end of each fiscal year.
What we fail to notice is that those who run these so-called not-for-profits are being generously paid for their 'charitable' efforts.
Just as in a for-profit enterprise, the executives and upper-level managers receive far more compensation for their work than those who actually do the work.
Thus, it's apparent that, for some so-called not-for-profits, those running them do, indeed, profit.
Add to that the undue and disingenuous influences exerted by these self-proclaimed community interests representatives, and their political pals and buddies, and you've got the recipe for all the abuses and misuses we are experiencing.
Solve the problem by eliminating the people who create the problem.
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT