Chicago reporters broke the story wide open. Mayor Lightfoot went to New York!

Jet-setters? Really?

Chicago's ace political reporters, Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times and wing-nut Kristen McQueary of the Trib, broke the story wide open. It's all about Lori Lightfoot, the city's first black, gay, woman mayor and it's a doozie.

No, she didn't close 50 public schools or cover up a police murder, like her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel. No, she didn't sell off the Skyway or the city's parking meter business for pennies on the dollar like Mayor Daley. No, it's worse. So much worse.

You see, Lightfoot WENT TO NEW YORK, home of the hated Mets and Yankees, raised big money for city projects, Democrats and LGBTQ causes and then, wait for it... she went on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. 

She told the donors the Democratic 2020 presidential contenders have to put more on the table than just being anti-President Donald Trump. 

She got that right.

The mayor said in her DNC speech, “I’m proposing that we pledge to work together to defend our democracy, promote equality for all, and refashion the values that our movement forged so many years ago after Stonewall.

“Let’s stand together, stick together, and work together for justice of every description. Racial justice. Gender justice. Immigrant justice. Economic justice. Environmental justice.”

The Horror...

According to Lynn Sweet who sat in Colbert's audience,

 The audience of about 420 in the Ed Sullivan Theater, where Colbert is taped, gave Lightfoot a standing ovation after Colbert introduced her. They laughed at his jokes — and hers.

But McQueary, who once famously editorialized for a Mussolini-type dictator to run Chicago schools and prayed for a Hurricane Katrina to ravage the city, wasn't impressed:

Most Chicagoans didn’t expect Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor and non-fashionista, to be popping up in their Instagram feeds. But there she is draped in Oprah’s embrace in the foyer of the media mogul’s estimated $90 million mansion.

 But it is surprising to see Lightfoot, four weeks on the job, already hopping on and off airplanes...We’ve got plenty of problems in Chicago. They don’t require commercial airline travel. 

Actually, hopping on and off an airplane is not easy. Try it some time, Kristen.

Spielman, a born-again Lightfoot hater, then echoes McQuery,

Four weeks after taking office, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has already stumbled in a way that might make it a bit more difficult for her to govern. From going to war with a police union that didn’t trust her to begin with, to hobnobbing with Oprah Winfrey and Stephen Colbert during fundraising trips to both coasts, Lightfoot appears to be repeating some of her predecessor’s early mistakes.

Then she sings a Daley praise...

 What former Mayor Richard M. Daley knew in his soul, but Emanuel never took to heart, is that Chicagoans believe the sun rises and sets in Chicago. 

She does have a point there. The sun does rise each morning and set each evening in our fair city. Doesn't mean we have to spend each day of our lives here, however.

Then for a topper, Spielman charges LL with spanking Eddie Burke publicly and having a nasty exchange with leaders of the Fascist Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). You know, the ones that supported Jon Burge and his torturing Midnight Crew.

It's about time someone took 'em on.

Nice work, Fran and Kristen. Could be story of the year. I see Pulitzers in your future.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Chuck Schumer gives advice to Trump on how to be a good opportunist

"He likes us. He likes me anyway..Here's what I told him. I said, 'Mr. President, you're much better off if you can sometimes step right and sometimes step left. If you have to step just in one direction, you're boxed.'" -- CNN 

Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) on Dem's deal with Trump

"I love Nancy Pelosi. I don’t have any doubt of her authenticity and commitment. But how do I now have to accept border security? Do I now have to put up half a fence? Is it going to have electricity and barbed wire on it?" -- Politico 

Robert Jay Lifton, psychohistorian

The American president has particular power. This makes Trump the most dangerous man in the world. He’s equally dangerous because of his finger on the nuclear trigger and because of his mind ensconced in solipsistic reality. The two are a dreadful combination. -- Bill Moyers & Co. 

Atty. G. Flint Taylor

About half (of the $125 million in taxpayer money used to defend torturer Jon Burge) has gone to the survivors. The other half has gone to...pin-stripe patronage'. That's all your downtown law firms that are hired to fight us in court, about twenty-five to thirty million that has gone into the pockets of those lawyers defending Jon Burge and Richie Daley. -- Hitting Left

Diane Ravitch

Betsy DeVos is the first secretary of education in our history who is actually hostile to public education. We've never had this before. -- NPE 

Racism works by raising the bar for some people, and lowering the bar considerably for other people. @chrislhayeshttps://t.co/paJ3Ztt4Dd

— Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) September 16, 2017

A new course at CPS. Studying Jon Burge.

Chicago teachers are currently reviewing the curriculum for a new districtwide course on the history of the disgraced former Chicago Police Department commander Jon Burge who systematically abused and tortured suspects on the South Side to force confessions for two decades.

According to a report on Chicago Tonight, the three to five week class – titled “Reparations Won: A Case Study in Police Torture, Racism And the Movement for Justice in Chicago” – was developed through the CPS Department of Social Science and Civic Engagement as part of a professional learning series for eighth and 10th graders beginning next school year.

This comes more than a year after the city passed a $5.5 million reparations package for torture survivors that included, in part, a lesson on the cases to be included in CPS’ existing history curriculum. All told, the city has paid out $100 million in legal fees and settlements related to Burge cases, dating back as far as 1982. Burge was fired in 1993.

“The torture and other abuse committed by Burge and officers under his command are a disgrace to the City and to the hard-working men and women of the Chicago Police Department,” a 10th grade unit overview states. “To remind the City of the injustices that occurred and to ensure that they are not repeated, the City will acknowledge and educate the public about this dark chapter in Chicago’s history.”

IT WASN'T JUST BURGE...I haven't seen the course outline but I'm hoping it will show students the larger context in which the systematic torture of mostly African-American and Latino prisoners took place over a period of decades, I'm thinking here about the culpability of CPD and political higher-ups like former mayor and then-States Attorney Richard M. Daley under whose watch the torture by Burge and his "midnight crew" took place.

Course designers would also do well to include those like Det. Reynaldo Guevara who carried on the Burge tradition in the recently-dismissed murder cases against Roberto Almodovar and William Negron. 

You can read all about disgraced Det. Guevara and how he beat confessions out of Almodovar, Negron and dozens of other Latino ment, in this Chicago Reporter article by today's in-studio guest on Hitting Left, Curtis Black.

Tune in to Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers this morning at 11 (CDT) on Lumpen Radio Chicago. We will also be talking pension theft with Bob Lyons who's about to retire after a dozen years on the board of trustees of the Teacher Retirement System.

Anyone buying Rahm's 'I'm sorry' (for whatever) speech?

“No citizen is a second-class citizen in the city of Chicago. If my children are treated one way, every child is treated the same way. There is one standard for our young men.” 

 "These facts defy credibility." -- Rahm Emanuel prepared remarks

Aside from a handful of Rahm's puppy-dog aldermen, I'm not sure who's buying his sorry-for-whatever speech.

One standard for Rahm's children and every child? Really? Tell that to the kids whose schools have been closed across the south and west sides, while Rahm's kids attend the chi-chi, progressive Lab School, free from dad's test-and-punish school reform.

Yesterday protest.  -- Fred Klonsky pic

The mostly young protesters in the streets yesterday, certainly weren't buying it. And for good reason. Rahm's not expressing sorrow for anything he's done. He's "sorry" -- no, outraged -- at the sins of others. After all, said the mayor, I was just "following a time-honored practice" which in this case, "you could clearly say we were adding to the suspicion and distrust.”

Time-honored practice, indeed.

According to S-T's Fran Spielman:

The cathartic speech before aldermen, who offered their own apology, did nothing to silence demands for Emanuel’s resignation.

More than 51% of likely voters now say he should resign,

At least one alderman wasn't buying it. Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) said the mayor’s rare show of emotion was more calculated than heartfelt.

“He had 400 days to work on that emotion and show that he was serious and he did nothing. They made sure they pushed this thing aside as long as they could. It took a court order to basically open this whole thing up for what it is,” Waguespack said.

Ousted police chief Garry McCarthy was having none of Rahm's scapegoating. He fired back that it was he who came to Rahm with a plan to clean up the CPD a year ago only to have the mayor sink it.

Several city sources told DNAinfo that McCarthy was upset because he had believed Rahm's attorney, Patton [who btw, lives in Evanston, not in Chicago - m.k.] was involved in blocking his effort to bring real reform to the department which turned it into “absolutely nothing … a bag of s---.”

As Brother Fred says: "Put ’em all in separate rooms and see who rolls on the other one first." 

Rahm's speech reminded me of when he "apologized" back in 2013, for Police Commander Burge's police torture, without any mention of his own authorized black site at Homan Square or the many Burge victims still remaining in prison.

According to attorney Flint Taylor, Chicago taxpayers have now paid more than $20 million in “pinstripe patronage” to private lawyers to defend Burge, former Mayor Daley (who looked the other way) and the City of Chicago, approximately $65 million in settlements to eighteen of the 120 known African-American victims of Burge-related torture and more than $500,000 to Burge in pension money.

SORRY WON'T GET IT...It won't get back the money or return the lives and lost years in prison to the torture victims.

But silly me was hoping for at least a tiny I'm sorry for Chicago's infamous stop-and-frisk policies, targeting mostly young men in the black community, including a quarter million S&Fs without arrest, in one three-month period a year ago. But none was forthcoming.

Under Rahm's regime, cops have been doing S&Fs at four times the rate of New York and we have overtaken NYC as the S&F capital of America (the world?).

And then there's the school closings. No I'm sorry there either.

Aaroncynic at Chicagoist writes:

If Emanuel truly wants to do more than just put on a fuzzy sweater and say that he “owns” these issues, he’ll have to address how his decisions such as closing 50 neighborhood schools, half the city’s mental health clinics, funneling money to big business in the loop and more, have disaffected the people in neighborhoods of color, who live with those decisions, which are tied to police violence, everyday.

Couldn't have said it any better.