Digg this
| 
Post to del.icio.us
| 
E-mail to a friend
City officials have distributed a map to aldermen showing that they're planning to expand the Blue Cart recycling program to most of the north side and a good chunk of the south side between this December and the end of 2008.
If the plan is approved when the City Council votes on the 2008 budget ordinance Wednesday, the city's source-separated recycling program, in which residents served by city garbage crews place all of their recyclables into blue containers in the alley, will be extended to an 131,000 additional households on top of the 81,000 already included. That would mean that about 30 percent of the 700,000 residences with city garbage service--all Chicago dwellings with four or fewer units, known as low-density residences--will be covered by the program.
City officials say they want to organize this expansion around convenience and geography rather than ward boundaries. Previously the city has rolled the program out ward by ward; currently, all low-density residences in the 1st, 5th, 8th, 19th, 37th, 46th, and 47th Wards have the source-separated recycling service. Under the new plan ward boundaries would be ignored. All the low-density residences from Cicero Avenue east to the lake, and from Diversey north to the city limits, would be included. The service would also be offered to all the low-density homes between 55th and about 103rd, from State Street east to the lake. An area west of State from 55th to 75th would also be included, as would one south to 115th Street between State and Stony Island.
This would mean that all low-density dwellings in the 7th, 20th, 39th, 40th, 48th, 49th, and 50th wards would have blue cart service, along with portions of the 6th, 9th, 10th, 16th, 17th, 30th, 31st, 32nd, 35th, 44th, and 45th Wards.
Since the new recycling program uses its own trucks and personnel, city officials say, it doesn't have to run in tandem with garbage pickup, which is coordinated by Streets and Sanitation ward superintendents. Besides offering more efficiency, the new organization plan may satisfy--at least temporarily--a greater number of aldermen, many of whom have been getting the business from constituents demanding better recycling services.
The Chicago Recycling Coalition and other advocates have praised the Blue Cart pilot for yielding far higher resident participation and keeping about twice as much trash out of landfills as the city's Blue Bag program. But they've also been critical of the slow rollout pace, saying it's clear that source-separated recycling is far more effective than any other method. Some analysts believe the city is spending too much money and confusing residents by offering different recycling programs in different areas.
But city officials say they're limited by the up-front investment costs needed to take blue carts citywide. The proposed 2008 budget would set funds to purchase more than 20 new trucks to collect recyclables, at more than $150,000 apiece, and $7.9 million to cover 111 recycling-related jobs.
None of this will directly help the thousands of people who live in large apartment buildings and condos--unless they're planning to sneak over to drop their recyclables into a neighbor's blue cart [scroll down to read PK's comment at the bottom].
Not that this is legal.
Tuesday, February 13th, 2007
Barack Obama, displaying his peerless skills as a courtier in Rich Daley’s racist court, endorsed the Mayor in his bid against a qualified, competent, and honest opponent: Cook County Circuit Court Clerk Dorothy Brown. “I had made a determination well before the exploration of my presidential candidacy that this was the right thing to do. I am a Chicagoan. I care about the city. This is where I live. This is where my wife works. This is where my kids go to school, and I want to continue to see the city make the progress it has made.” By turning his back, he shows his true colors to anybody intelligent enough to see the import of this endorsement for what it is: a betrayal of justice and a betrayal of the black community.
The politically astute could see this coming because the Mayor’s brotha Bill Daley, a former Clinton Commerce Secretary, was added to the Obama campaign payroll in an “advisory” capacity. Obama really believes what the pundits breathlessly write about him and was duty bound to return the corrupt favor to the Daley regime.
Some of you might say, “It’s just politics,” or “He has to cut deals to get to the next level.” To that, I would ask, who does he step on to elevate himself to the Presidency? And by what right does he spend political capital to endorse Rich Daley and spit in the face of the black community? These questions are best answered by examining the political culture of Chicago and by revealing in explicit detail the victims of Daley’s regime and Obama’s ambition.
CHICAGO’S POLITICAL CULTURE OF WHITE SUPREMACY & CORRUPTION
During Harold Washington’s historic campaign for Mayor of Chicago in 1983, he was introduced at an event by a preacher as, “an amalgamation of all the good qualities of past mayors. There were no good qualities to be had, Washington said upon taking the podium, Daley included: “He was a racist to the core, head to toe, hip to hip, there’s no ding or doubt about it. He eschewed and fought and oppressed black people to the point that some thought that was the way they were supposed to live, just like some slaves on the plantation thought that that was the way they were supposed to live. I give no hosannas to a racist, nor did I appreciate or respect his son. If his name were anything other than Daley, his campaign would be a joke.”
The general election campaign against Harold Washington in 1983 was hands down the most racist in Chicago history. Cook County Democratic Party Chairman Ed Vrdolyak succinctly put the naked hostility and public revulsion expressed by the white community at the prospect of having a black mayor by saying, “It’s a racial thing. Don’t kid yourself. I’m calling on you to save your city, to save your precinct. We’re fighting to keep the city the way it is.” (Controlled by white ethnics)
Washington defeated Incumbent Mayor Jane Byrne andCook County State’s Attorney Richard M. Daley, son of the legendary mayor in the Democratic primary.After the primary, neither lifted a finger for Harold Washington. Their white supporters and the Democratic machine outside of black precincts defected en masse to the Republican challenger, Bernard Epton.
From Gary Rivlin’s book “Fire on the Prairie,” “Whites attending Epton rallies startled reporters with their frank comments about not wanting a nigger mayor. They held up signs calling Washington a “crook” and took to wearing a variety of political buttons decidedly racial in appeal: one showed a watermelon with a black slash through it, another was simply all white. VOTE WHITE, VOTE RIGHT one popular T-shirt boldly proclaimed.”…They passed out literature saying, “You will be robbed or killed. White women will be raped. With a black police chief there will be absolute chaos in the city.”
Washington’s first three years as Mayor were marked by a bitter and protracted battle with a white cabal of Alderman for political primacy.Stung by their loss of access to the power of the Mayor’s office and the political patronage that serves as the lifeblood of a ward heeler, they reacted like spoiled children and became obstructionists hell bent on crippling Washington’s authority. They hurled racist insults and taunts dripping with homophobic invective toward the Mayor. Moreover, they conspired with a compliant media in a racially motivated PR campaign to stoke white fears in an effort to stymie Administration initiatives.
The swirling cauldron of white racial animosity towards the black community shaped the politics of Chicago then and still shapes it today. Two years ago, the Daley machine that seized power after the death of Harold Washington wouldn’t give Barack Obama the time of day during his run for the Senate.
In keeping with the tenants of racial preferences and political nepotism for their own, they endorsed Dan Hynes, the son of Tom Hynes, an acolyte of the Daleys and pinstripe bigot who challenged Mayor Washington’s re-election by running against him as an independent. Now, when Obama’s star shines brightly enough to put the lights out on Daley’s re-election as Mayor, they endorse him for President. How convenient.
CHICAGO POLICE DEPARTMENT: KLANSMEN IN UNIFORM
July of last year saw the release of a whitewash report by Special Prosecutor Edward Egan, which was the culmination of four years of investigation and $7 million in taxpayer funds. The report acknowledges, according to a new standard news report, “clear proof that torture took place at Area Two, a 60 square mile police district on the city’s south side,” during the 70’s and 80’s.
Kari Lydersen, a staff writer for New Standard News wrote, “Significantly the report lacked any mention of the racial component which some critics saw as the most important facet of the case. Almost all of the 60-plus men who claimed to have been tortured by [Jon]Burge and other officers are black; the officers were all white. Alleged widespread racism on the part of officers was just part of an overall racist justice system; in the 1970s Chicago prosecutors were known to compete in a game called “niggers by the pound” to see who could convict the most black defendants.
From the website of the University of Chicago’s Police Torture Archive: Between the years of 1972 and 1991, approximately [192] African American Men and women were arrested and tortured at the hands of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and officers under his command at Area 2 police headquarters. Some of these victims were as young as thirteen years old. Various court cases have established that the methods of torture used in the interrogation of suspects included electric shock to the ears and genitalia, mock executions, suffocation, and burning. While Jon Burge was ultimately fired by the Chicago Police Department, not a single perpetrator of the tortures has ever been criminally prosecuted. Ten of those tortured were sent to death row.
According to the Chicago Reader, “More than 50 men alleged that they were tortured by Burge and his detectives during Daley’s term asCook County state’s attorney, from 1981 to 1989. He was put on notice several times, most dramatically in the case of Andrew Wilson. Photographs of Wilson’s stitches, burns, and alligator- clip wounds made compelling evidence in court, underlined by [DA]Hyman’s failure to ask if Wilson had given his statement voluntarily. Received copy of letter from Dr. John Raba, who as medical director of Cermak Hospital examined Wilson’s injuries, urging police superintendent Richard Brzeczek to investigate. Brzeczek told Daley he had promised to investigate all cases of police brutality but did not want to jeopardize Wilson’s prosecution and asked for guidance. Daley sent no reply.”
Daley’s tenure as prosecutor is stained by his craven capitulation to an electorate and a power structure in thrall to an ideology of white supremacist hate. Prosecuting police officers for their sadistic torturing of black criminal suspects, and their prosecutor enablers on his staff would have permanently put an end to his political support in the white ethnic wards of Chicago that still had fond memories of the brutal repression of anti-Vietnam political dissent at the 1968 Democratic National Convention ordered by Daddy Daley. Ultimately, Daley’s power rests on a foundation of deliberate indifference.
I don’t care how many handkerchief head Nigras Daley surrounds himself with. I don’t care how many Negroes people his Administration. I don’t care how many Negroes show up to his re-election press conference to create an illusion of inclusion. I don’t care that Michelle Obama worked for Daley and treated her well. What he has done cannot and will never atone for this. Dorothy Brown finally realized that and has asked U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to investigateand prosecute the Klansmen in uniform responsible for these crimes.
On the Senate floor, Barack Obama opposed the Military Commissions Act because it gave short shrift to the rights of foreign terror suspects. He said, “…the fundamental human rights of the accused, should be bigger than politics. This is serious and this is somber…” If he really meant that, he would be defending those same rights here at home, not endorsing a man who repeatedly turned a blind eye and a deaf ear to the screams of scores of black men tortured by those sworn to protect and serve white supremacy in a south side Abu Ghraib.
From important quarters in the black community, we’ve heard a cacophony of uncritical praise. Jesse Jackson and the black press are simply delusional, and the black Chicago political establishment has clearly been corrupted. Nothing else explains their cavalier attitude regarding Obama turning his back on Dorothy Brown, black victims of torture, the black community, and quite frankly, himself.
Debra Dickerson claims that Barack Obama’s heritage is not African American. Born the child of a Kenyan and a white woman, he lacks the cultural legacy of a descendant of slaves. Moreover, she believes that because his upbringing was managed by white relatives that we have nothing in common. It is my contention that the sistah is mistaken. Barack Obama is an indentured servant to the Daley machine and a slave to his own ambition. In the new millennium, becoming a willing tool and psychological servant to a corrupt white power structure is very African American.
I expect better from a former community organizer, constitutional law professor, and civil rights attorney than the politics of expediency.
Don't you get it, we dont care about this.
Stick to picking your navel over Mayor Daley and the aldermen and TIFS.
Leave this recycle crap for your side job at the New York Times.
I love how Mayor Daley recycles me!
Hey Mick! Did they purchase the blue carts from the same people that sold the taxpayers the failed rainblocker vortex device ?
So, $7,900,000 divided by 111 = a simple average of $71,171 per employee, per year.
Not that each and every employee is ever gonna see anything close to $71,171 a year.
71171.
Looks like a Pick-5 number.
Doesn't seem like a fortune to me.
Among the new positions will be two assistant general superintendents and four assistant division superintendents.
111 new jobs and you need 6 superintendents?? WTF? I am assuming there are foremen and assistant foremen as well?
This is 95 minimum wages jobs and 16 supervisors.
What I was implying was that it is unlikely that the $7,900,000 will be evenly paid to those 111 workers.
I'll take a guess that 100 workers, more or less, will be paid, say, $50,000 a year, which leaves $2,900,000, more or less, to be paid to those 11 or so 'chosen ones'.
Guess who those 'chosen ones' will be.
As for Hilary's people, masquerading as 'skeptical brutha', thanks for reminding us how full of shit 'regular' dumbocrats are.
With your mirror-image brothers and sisters in the 'regular' retardican party, you knuckleheads have really fucked up our country.
Personality Politics, along with the Love of Money, are the root causes.
HAVE NO DOUBT, VOTE INCUMBENTS OUT
is the beginning of a solution.
Simple
Effective
Easy
S.E.E.?
Just Do It.
Today is payday, and the funds have been direct deposited at midnight. Will probably knock off early today.
Thanks taxpayers, you are very generous !
Actually, the rotting process, for orion, started long ago.
Those who know him often remark on the stench he leaves behind, as he passes from one ass-kissing session to the next one.
Don't cry for orion, he relishes his odor, like a dog rolling in rotten fish remains.
Since the purpose of recycling is to benefit the public, why would it be 'illegal' for any citizen to deposit recyclable refuse into any recycling container, regardless of said recycling container's location?
One would think that all citizens would be encouraged to deposit recyclable refuse into containers designated to receive recyclables.
After all, why do we recycle refuse in the first place?
Do you have specific, personal knowledge of either John Stroger or Todd Stroger having engaged in acts which violated specific criminal statutes, state and/or federal?
If you do, please contact the U.S. Attorney's office.