Cases top 14 million while 'open-up' cuckoo birds keep tweeting.

  

More than 13.4 million people in the country have been infected with the novel coronavirus and 267,306 have died as of 2:30 p.m. Monday, according to Johns Hopkins University’s COVID-19 dashboard.

 Hundreds of people on Wednesday night — including members of the right-wing group Proud Boys — protested the closure of a Staten Island bar that ignored COVID-19 restrictions.-- NY Post

As I'm reading the news today about Florida nearing one million COVID cases, I'm recalling a column written back in May by former Tribune writer Dennis Byrne announcing to anyone who cared that he was abandoning Chitown for the wild and wide-open climes of Florida. He'd had enough of being told to wear a mask or wash his hands. He definitely didn't like Mayor Lightfoot and Gov. Pritzker telling him that he couldn't sit inside at a restaurant during a corona surge. 

Byrne, who loves him some Trumpy Gov. Ron DiSantis, said that in FL he felt free to wine and dine on "brisket and bacon burger slathered with BBQ sauce, cheese, onions, and mayonnaise."

I wonder where he'll move next. 

BIRDS OF A FEATHER ~ Mancow, Stone, and...Vallas???

Mancow (left) says he's sick of unions that “radicalize” teachers, and he supports “bringing back civility and respect for cops.” Wants Vallas as his running mate. Good luck with that.  

Trump clone and radio shock jock Erich “Mancow” Muller says he wants to run for IL governor. No joke.

Pritzker must be trembling with fear.  

Mancow is the anti-union, flat-tax, corona super-spreader pal of Roger Stone. (Stone claimed yesterday that "North Korean ships were delivering ballots through a harbor in Maine.”)

And guess who Mancow wants as his running mate? None other than former Chicago schools chief and perennial campaign loser Paul Vallas.

I get it. The two of them are ideologically simpatico. But Mancow could do better. Doesn't he recall how Vallas' last campaign for Lt. Governor went down the toilet, pulling incumbent Gov. Pat Quinn down with him? Or how Vallas fared running against his nemesis, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, and finishing seventh in the races with 5% of the vote.

Meanwhile, Vallas has been keeping himself busy speaking at right-wing anti-masker, anti-shutdown QAnon rallies sounding every bit like Dennis Byrne in his attacks on Lightfoot and Pritzker? 

He's gone full-blown MAGA. 

It's HAPPENING!!! Time to #RescueIllinois☀️

🗓️December 5th
🕐1:00
🌆Daley Center Plaza, Chicago (Loop)

Speakers include @Paulvallas @AmyJacobson @DarrenBaileyIL @deannemazzochi @janthonyspeaks & others!

Residents of all states welcome!!! 🥳 pic.twitter.com/YHXl7p8LoP

— Emma Woodhouse (@EWoodhouse7) November 25, 2020

Abandoning Chicago for FL or TX probably not a good idea

Florida bars empty out as the state's COVID cases top 10,000. 10M globally. 

FL reported 9,585 new corona cases yesterday, exceeding the previous record set Friday. Today the total number of cases has already soared above 10,000. The mainly young people who flocked to the beaches and packed the bars over Memorial Day, along with their older, more at-risk friends and relatives, are now feeling the pain of Gov. Rick DeSantis' early opening. He's boasted all along that he, like Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, were more than willing to play Trump's dangerous game by sacrificing thousands of lives in order to jumpstart "the economy" and boost corporate profits.

Then after helping jack up the state's COVID death toll above 3,300. DeSantis doubled down, moving on FL's public school system by expanding the already-huge school voucher and "scholarship" program.

A measure DeSantis signed Thursday will increase funneling of taxpayer dollars away from public schools and into the pockets of private school operators. It quadruples the rate at which vouchers will grow annually. This at a time when public ed in the state has been battered by the pandemic and will need those dollars and many more if radically replanned public schools are to reopen safely in the future.

If the metaphor holds up and this is really a war against COVID, DeSantis and Abbott will go down as two of the sleaziest enemy agents of all time.

This morning, I'm worried about my many friends and some of our closest relatives living in FL as the cases mount and the death toll spirals out of control. I'm also thankful to be here in Chicago where Gov. Pritzker's and Mayor Lightfoot's leadership in response to the pandemic has thus far been effective.

According to Crain's Greg Hinz:

It’s hard to deny Lightfoot and Pritzker a well-earned victory lap for their response to the pandemic. Their plan was early, thorough, and comprehensive. And it worked, as the number of cases and hospitalizations has plummeted even as the amount of testing has soared.

Hinz, btw, was actually being critical of Lightfoot and Pritzker for being "arbitrary." He claims Republicans "had a point" in their suit against Pritzker for setting a 10-person limit on public gatherings. Of course, any number would be arbitrary. But the results so far show the Gov was right. Republicans would have had us going the way of Florida and Texas.

Melbourne, FL restaurant. 

IN HINDSIGHT...Then there's former Chicagoan and Tribune right-winger Dennis Byrne who abandoned our city for the hotter and more open climes of Florida to escape the mask-and-distancing tyranny of Lightfoot/Pritzker. Back in May Byrne wrote blissfully about being able to gorge on a "brisket and bacon burger slathered with BBQ sauce, cheese, onions and mayonnaise" at Jacksonville’s BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse.

Wrote Byrne:

It tasted good enough by itself, without the added delight of knowing that such pleasures were verboten in Chicago and throughout Illinois. Here’s to you, Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Yeah sure, you know better, having confined your masses to a much more rigid, nearly universal lockdown. Never mind the restaurants that will go out of business. Never mind the people you treat like sheep who don’t know how to take care of themselves. Be satisfied with your self-assured virtue and wisdom.

Nearly two months have now passed. FL's bars are empty. The beaches are closing. BJ's has been forced to close again for indoor dining. But they still offer curbside pickup if you're dying for brisket and bacon burger. Florida is facing record highs in COVID cases and deaths while Chicago has flattened the curve. The mayor's go-slow reopening has probably saved thousands of lives.

I'm still looking for an apology to Chicagoans from Byrne but doubt if I'll see one. In fact, he hasn't mentioned the word Florida in the past month of tweeting. I hope he got COVID tested and his arteries reamed out after his BJ's extravaganza.

Looking back on Chicago's great 2001 Boeing tax giveaway

Chicago Theater welcomed Boeing in 2001. 

It's been nearly 20 years since Boeing Corp. pulled one of the great hustles on the people of Chicago with help from then-Mayor Richard Daley and Gov. George Ryan. While many of us protested the deal that brought Boeing's headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, we couldn't stop the huge corporate tax giveaway that would become the norm for cities and states competing with each other for corporate investments.

Families of Boeing 737 MAX crash victims protest. 

Boeing promised to bring 500 high-paying jobs to Chicago and claimed that the combined executive pay would trickle down and create even more jobs and small businesses. This in exchange for $60 million in tax breaks for the huge military defense contractor. Their promise wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

Gov. Ryan even claimed at the time that the move would bring Illinois more than prestige. "It will pay huge dividends, producing a 100-to-1 return on the state's investment", he said.

It didn't. 

Boeing's former CEO Tom Condit explained in 2001 and later, the headquarters move was made to create psychological distance between the corporate leadership and the manufacturing sites on the ground.

There also was a suspicion that the corporate and political climate of Chicago — its more conservative, business-friendly bent; its expensive steakhouses where macho titans of industry could talk over cigars and scotch — would better suit the taste and personality of men like Boeing’s then-president, Harry Stonecipher.

From their airy perch in Chicago, Boeing’s leaders could — and did — make steely decisions about where to locate work or where to make layoffs at a safe remove from the people affected on the ground.

 The BGA's Alejandra Cancino, writes this week in Crain's, that the Boeing deal,

...laid down a marker for megadeals to come that opened the public purse in the name of economic development. Since then, states and cities have engaged in an escalating bidding war for jobs and bragging rights, with the promise of future economic riches as bait. 

A new massive $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package signed by Trump includes billions of dollars in loan guarantees for Boeing, in financial peril before the pandemic because of the grounding of its faulty 737 Max aircraft. By that and other incentive measures, the price tag for the 2001 Boeing deal might seem puny. 

As would the failed offer of $2 billion in tax incentives then-Mayor Emanuel and Gov. Rauner made to Amazon in exchange for a promised "50,000 new high-paying jobs." That deal fell through but it's one that Gov. Pritzker appeared ready to pursue again in 2019 when Rahm was still mayor.

With Rahm and Rauner gone and more important things for Mayor Lightfoot to focus on, I doubt he'll pursue it now.

Side Note -- I would call the two Boeing 737 Max crashes, which killed 346 men, women and children, a case of criminal neglect and malfeasance and wonder why none of those top execs have been dragged from their "airy perch" in Chicago and carted off to prison?

Ald. La Spata needs to dump Moreno's plan for Von Humboldt School

Von Humboldt closed in 2013 when the district shuttered 50 schools. In July of 2015, IFF (formerly known as Illinois Facilities Fund) bought the school for about $3.1 million 

This from Mina Bloom at Block Club Chicago:

Nearly 200 Humboldt Park residents, teachers and teacher advocates packed into the Von Humboldt Elementary School auditorium this week to weigh in on a long-stalled plan to turn the shuttered school into an apartment complex geared toward teachers. At the chaotic two-hour-long meeting Monday night, the majority of residents who spoke during public comment lambasted the developer behind the project, East Coast-based RBH Group, and Ald. Daniel La Spata (1st). 

They took turns slamming the project, saying it doesn’t address Humboldt Park’s gentrification-fueled displacement problem and that teachers won’t be able to afford the apartments. Some said they’d much rather see officials reopen the school, which closed in 2013 when the district closed a record 50 schools.

“We would like to see the school be back open,” local teacher Jhoanna Maldonado said to cheers. “Whether there’s 10 kids, 100 kids or 2,000 kids in this neighborhood — every kid should deserve to go to their neighborhood school. If that’s not the case, it should be housing for families who have been displaced from our neighborhoods.”

 My note this morning to Ald. La Spata...

I'm surprised to hear that you are continuing your corrupt predecessor's backing for the Von Humboldt condo plan. The current version of plan was originally part of a deal indicted Ald. Joe Moreno worked out with RBH developers, a self-interested community group [that used to oppose gentrification], and with Teach for America (TFA) to house charter school teachers contracted to CPS to replace those lost to Rahm's mass school closings. Once media caught wind of it, the charter school plan was dropped and shifted to this so-called "teachers housing" scheme. It should be rejected and the building used for public good, including a new smaller public school.

Side note... RBH announced back in April, that it started a $700 million fund to invest in Teachers Village projects in Opportunity Zones. The firm already has developed a Teachers Village in Newark, New Jersey. It includes three charter schools, a daycare center, apartments and more than 70,000 square feet of retail. 

Ald. La Spata responded promptly:

It seems there’s still a lot of misinformation out there on what this project is. I’ll make sure to respond later with more details.

Thank you for the quick response, Alderman. And thanks for opening this up for community debate and discussion. I look forward to continuing the conversation. I trust you will do the right thing.

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.

Clock is ticking for victims of Rahm's closing of mental health clinics.

Dr. Leticia Villarreal Sosa, a clinical social worker and professor of social work at Dominican University, said at Thursday’s forum, “It has been difficult to account for what has happened to those folks who were receiving services at clinics that were closed, and what has happened to people who are continuing to need access to services.”

Time is running out for many of the victims of Rahm Emanuel's closing of our mental health clinics seven years ago. Many have already fallen through the cracks as public health care becomes less and less accessible. Now is the time to reopen the clinics.

More than half of the city’s mental health clinics were shut down in 2012, "leaving a void in parts of the city most susceptible to trauma", according to a report from last year.  Rahm also used the closings as a union-busting tactic.

Many of us took to the streets back then to protest the closings. We were met with abuse from the mayor who screamed at protest leaders, "You will respect me" (laughing as I write this).

In January, the City Council established a task force, led by Ald. Sophia King, to "take a hard look" the situation. But now it's June and still no movement to reopen the clinics. Enough with the hard looks. There's already an abundance of evidence showing the need and the community is demanding that the clinics and other cut social services be reestablished.

Now there just needs to be some will and determination on the part of our new city leaders.

Rahm's Health Commissioner Julie Morita is one of those who's been trying to prevent the reopening. All those clinics means more work, "more fires to put out" for the bureaucracy, claimed Morita. What nonsense! But she's on her way out the door this month, leaving it open for the mayor to replace her with someone who takes the task seriously.

I'm hoping this won't be another one of those four-year ramp-ups, like the $15 minimum wage.

Clock is ticking.

After Rahm's legacy tour, he heads for Wall Street

The elite get all the breaks and are shown all the shortcuts. In the meantime, ordinary people are forced to pay full freight. -- Rahm Emanuel in The Atlantic

Rahm’s announcement of his new Wall Street gig comes on the heels of his phony legacy tour where he tried, with lots of media help, to rebrand his term in Chicago as a “progressive” era of good governance. It included this piece of centrist populism in the Atlantic where Rahm fakes a hit on "American elites" but actually goes after the growing "socialist" insurgency within the Democratic Party.

As many of us expected it would, the story ends with Mayor 1% laughing and flashing his middle finger at all of us as he boards his limo to the Wall Street investment firm Centerview Partners LLC, whose leaders are mainly Rahm cronies and campaign donors. They include Centerview founder Blair Effron, who contributed $61,500 to the former mayor’s campaign fund, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who has donated more than $70,000 to Emanuel’s campaign, and Robert Pruzan, another Centerview founder and Rahm pal for the past 20 years.

This so-called "boutique" investment firm Centerview (centrist Democrats -- get it?) is one of the most profitable on Wall Street. The company brags on its website that it has advised on nearly $3 trillion worth of transactions.

In 2014, Centerview served as an adviser to Time Warner on its proposed merger with Comcast that drew opposition from many who argued the deal would hurt consumers.

According to the Tribune, Emanuel penned an August 2014 letter to the FCC, encouraging regulators to support the deal, writing on city of Chicago letterhead that he believed the proposed merger would not “reduce choice, elevate prices or otherwise harm customers.”

Good riddance, we hope, to all that.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ald. Maldonado

Ald. Robert Maldonado, new chair of the Latino Caucus

“Some of our communities are being completely gentrified. We need to stop that, we need to slow it down.” -- WBEZ

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

"This awful, untrue line got boo'ed for a full minute. John Delaney, thank you but please sashay away." -- The Hill

Howie Klein

Maybe the tent really is too big. If it's big enough for John Bel Edwards to be stinking it up from the inside, why would a normal Democrat even want to be inside it? -- Crooks & Liars

Elizabeth Warren

 “It’s not just the mass shootings. It’s the ones that never make the headlines. It’s the kids who are shot at the playground, on the sidewalk, in their own homes. Gun violence touches families every day." -- Rolling Stone

Fritz Kaegi after corporate lobbyists kill his reform bill

 “Asking our office to continue using a broken system goes against the reform taxpayers and voters want. Opponents of the bill would prefer we wait longer, knowing that the longer we wait, the less likely the bill is to pass. Delays favor a broken assessment system, however, that prolongs inequality.” -- Tribune

Kevin Durant to rapper Drake

Drake was walking in the tunnel near the Warriors' locker room with his head down when Durant trolled him. "Keep your head up young fella. It's alright, it's ok. We have more games to play." -- ABC 7

Thank god former White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel finally has a platform to do something about all this inequality pic.twitter.com/hWWkGFl9lo

— Hamilton Nolan (@hamiltonnolan) May 21, 2019

Lightfoot's empowering shutdown of Eddie Burke

But I'm Eddie Burke...

Mayor Lori Lightfoot's shutdown of indicted machine boss, Ald. Eddie Burke at yesterday's council meeting was a joy to behold. As a veteran WGN cameraman put it, “Somewhere In heaven, Harold Washington is laughing his a** off.”

I don't know about Harold, but my biggest laugh came from watching Burke play the feminist as he and his toadie Ald. Ray Lopez tried to block the mayor's rule changes by bringing up the issue of gender-neutral wording in the new rules. Lightfoot saw right through Burke's play as we all did.

Burke raises a "serious flaw". Says several of the rules are not "gender neutral" and presiding officer, Lightfoot, is clearly a woman. When was he concerned about this stuff before?

— Fran Spielman (@fspielman) May 29, 2019

In the end, the mayor's proposed rule changes, her first big test of strength in the Council, were adopted with only 3 anti-climatic NO votes. They came from Burke, Lopez and 9th Ward Ald. Anthony Beale,  the group I will lovingly call, "The New Vrdolyak 3".

Lightfoot's smackdown of Burke was certainly empowering for those of us who've been at war with the vile machine for more than 50 years. I imagine it was even more empowering for women -- especially women of color -- watching the city's first black, gay woman mayor boldly deliver the blow to last remaining dregs of the old Vrdolyak 29.

Lightfoot deftly handles early skirmish with Burke. She swats him down like a pesky fly and the rules she drafted are adopted by voice vote.

— Fran Spielman (@fspielman) May 29, 2019

'Flooding the zone' with cops didn't work. It never does.

There were multiple accidents involving police cars as cops raced from one shooting to another. In one collision in the Austin neighborhood involving two patrol cars, 10 officers and two civilians were injured and a woman killed.

It's hard to blame Mayor Lori Lightfoot for this Memorial Day weekend's rash of gun violence and deaths. After all, she's only been in office for a week. But I can say that her strategy of pre-weekend preventive mass arrests and then of "flooding the zone", concentrating 1,200 extra cops in targeted neighborhoods in the black community, was a bust -- as it always is.

The body count from Friday afternoon to Monday is reported to be at least 42 people shot, five fatally. This, even with severe storms keeping people indoors yesterday.

Several of the victims were shot within five hours on Sunday at the ABLA housing project on the northwest side. The second shootings occurred on the same block as the first while cops were still present and resulted in five more people being shot and two of them dying.

The Tribune's account presents a scene right out of a dystopian movie:

On Monday night, felony charges were announced against two men in the second shooting. Tevin Covens, 25, was charged with aggravated discharge of a firearm and Lawrence Wilkins, 29, was charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon after police found him carrying a gun at the scene, authorities said.

Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Covens will not be charged with murder after he shot and killed one of the two men at the scene in self-defense.

According to police, Covens was shot in the face at the scene by 28-year-old Antonio Green, who also shot and killed another man, 27-year-old Martez Cox, after Cox fired a TEC-9 machine pistol into the air.

Covens, also armed, opened fire on Green, killing him in self-defense, Guglielmi said. But he said Covens also unintentionally fired shots that wounded two female victims at the scene. Guglielmi said Covens was only charged with aggravated discharge of a firearm and not aggravated battery with a firearm, which is a more serious crime, because the female victims did not want to press charges.

There were slightly more shootings this year than last, despite yesterday's storms and police saturation. But the toll was somewhat lower than in 2017 when 45 people were shot, seven of them killed, or in 2016, when 71 people were shot, six of them fatally. But I doubt that people in the community or the mayor are taking much comfort in that this morning as funeral preparations are being made.

There are viable, tested, long-term strategies for reducing gun violence, strategies that have been successful in other big cities like New York, Boston and L.A.. They begin with gun control and stopping the sale, manufacturing and easy flow of guns into the neighborhoods. If the image of a young man getting shot to death in "self-defense" while firing an assault weapon into the air, doesn't move us to action...

A recent Sun-Times article by Kim Foxx and Arne Duncan (Chicago must learn from L.A. and New York that murder is more than a policing problem) gets it mainly right.

Both New York and Los Angeles have coordinated, holistic, and publicly-funded plans to dramatically reduce gun violence centered on prevention, intervention, and community coordination and support. As a result, New York reached a new low of 287 murders in 2018 and Los Angeles has experienced a 30 percent reduction in homicides since instituting a comprehensive community-based strategy in 2007.

Historically, the response in Chicago to a violent night or weekend is to put more police officers on the streets. The presumption is to deter through police deployment, but the focus should be on prevention — and that happens before criminals become criminals. We all recognize policing has its place among the tools to reduce violence, but we also know increased police presence is not the solution.

A lot more could be added about community engagement, ending poverty with jobs jobs that pay a living wage, community re-investment and and end to mass school closings (pointing at you, Arne Duncan) and neighborhood clinics. Lightfoot understands the need for long term, wholistic strategies but can she put them into action? Certainly not by herself.

But one thing is certain and needs to be reconsidered by the mayor. "Flooding the zone" with cops and filling the prisons with young people of color, are proven failed strategies.

Some unsolicited advice to both mayoral candidates

Despite protests, plans for the $95 million West Side police academy sailed through the City Council on Wednesday

As readers know, I've pretty much committed to voting for Lori Lightfoot in next month's mayoral election. I won't rehash all the reasons why right now. Suffice to say that while I have big issues with both (all) candidates, I find Lightfoot, basically a good-government candidate, (no radical or @AOC by any means) to be the most unchained to the old, corrupt machinery. In a race with no true hard-core progressives or lefties in it, that's good enough for me.

On key policy issues of police and neighborhood violence, as well as on education issues, both Lightfoot and Toni Preckwinkle appear about the same. At yesterday's mayoral forum hosted by the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, both stressed more community investment as a response to street violence.

According to Chalkbeat's report on the forum:

Both candidates pledged to devote more staff and resources to public safety, and honed in on underlying issues that contribute to violence, like poverty, housing and disinvestment, while emphasizing the need to provide mental health resources in communities wrestling with trauma. 

On police reform, both oppose the Rahm Emanuel's $95M Cop Academy. But they both see more police training as at least part of the solution, in step with with the DoJ report and the negotiated consent decree. Lightfoot said yesterday, that she would even consider using some of the city's shuttered schools for decentralized, community-based training, rather than the new cop academy, just approved by the city council.

While I'm OK with more and better cop training, I can think of at least 10 better re-uses for those buildings. I'd like to push the discussion beyond training. Racist police murders, like the killing of Laquan McDonald are not mainly "training" issues. They are systemic issues emanating from a system of white supremacy and class power, where cops are the enforcers. I wish we had some candidates who would talk about systemic change. But we don't. That's left to us.

On school policy, each candidate opposes charter school expansion and further school closings. Each call for an elected school board. Neither appear to be over-influenced by the school privatization, vouchers lobbyists -- so far at least.

It's true that Preckwinkle won the early endorsement of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), an endorsement I respect, if not agree with. I think it was a mistake, on par with the AFT's early endorsement of Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders in 2016. Feeling confident back then, that Hillary would have the best chance of defeating Trump, union leaders thought they were putting a lock on a seat at the table under the new administration. They were wrong on all counts. All they succeeded in doing was splitting the rank-and-file.

The CTU endorsement of Preckwinkle was understandable in the first round of the campaign when it looked pretty certain that Bill Daley, the man from JP Morgan, would be in the runoff and the hope was that Preckwinkle would have the best chance of defeating him. They and many of us were wrong about Daley who turned out to be a paper tiger despite his massive campaign war chest. He folded like a cheap suit, paving the way for a late Lightfoot surge into first place and a significant lead in the runoff polls. It now appears Lightfoot leads Preckwinkle in every demographic with three weeks to go.

But as we all know, anything can happen

*****

Now we have two African-American women, one openly gay, running for mayor. How great is that! But it's a situation fraught with danger. The campaigns have split the progressives into two pretty hard camps. In my mind, the progressive movement in Chicago, at its peak after the Bernie Sanders campaign, might have unified around it's own candidate for mayor and IL governor two years ago. But it didn't. Instead of building on the Sanders insurgency within the party, which produced successful electoral revolts in N.Y., Detroit, and other cities, we are fighting pitched battles over which mainstream candidate will take us to the promised land.

Now attacks are flying back and forth on FB and on Twitter, including sharp personal attacks which won't easily be forgotten.

Soon after the election, the camps will hopefully be able to put Humpty Dumpty back together again and unite to roll back Mayor Emanuel's boondoggles like the Cop Academy and Lincoln Yards, and to support the teachers union in their upcoming contract negotiations, and possible teachers strike.

Here's some unsolicited advice to both candidates. Whoever wins will unfortunately, at least for a while, have autocratic control over CPS -- control that neither claims to want. But the contract negotiations won't wait for the passage of stalled elected school board legislation to be passed or for the elections to follow.

Both candidates should make it clear now that their election won't mean a continuation of Rahm-ism without Rahm. First it means having a democratic (not autocratic) style of work. Second, it means clean house, if not immediately, soon after the election. Bring in your own team and tell us now who they will be. Next, it may already be too late, but playing the stall game on Lincoln Yards and the Cop Academy and call for an immediate stop to both.

In other words, show leadership now and not wait until you are elected.

Also, please stop the anti-teacher rhetoric about "supporting teachers" but supporting students "even more". The CTU has been in the lead when it comes to negotiating smaller class size, more nurses and social workers in schools and special ed resources. Teachers, students and parents have the same interests in the upcoming negotiations.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra are on strike after walking out of contract negotiations Sunday night at 9:30 p.m. Their current contract expires at 11:59 p.m. Sunday, and they say they will not return to work until a new contract is reached.

Stephen Lester, CSO bassist on strike today

“We have been clear from the beginning that we will not accept a contract that diminishes the well-being of members or imperils the future of the orchestra,” said Stephen Lester, CSO bassist and chair of the musicians’ negotiating committee, in a statement. -- Tribune

Soon-to-be-indicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

In response to a comment by Israeli actress Rotem Sela, who wrote on social media that Israel is a country of all its citizens: "Israel is not a state of all its citizens. Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People - and them alone." -- Haaretz

You ask how the mayoral campaign debate is going?
Well, let's just say, with a few weeks to go, it's umm, moved to another level.

 Tucker Carlson

...Used the c-word, said women are ‘primitive’ and ‘like dogs,’ and joked about a 13-year-old being molested during newly unearthed radio appearances. -- Now This

Coming up this Friday on Hitting Left...

Jamie Kalven, writer and human rights activist.  His work has appeared in a variety of publications.  In recent years, he has reported extensively on patterns of police abuse and impunity in Chicago.

The Preckwinkle campaign, like watching a slow-motion train wreck

Berrios & Preckwinkle...breaking up is hard to do. 

I realize, despite my best intentions, I'm a little preoccupied with this mayor's race. I've never really had a handle on it. I admit, I expected a Daley/Preckwinkle or Daley/Mendoza runoff and was amazed by Lori Lightfoot's come-from-behind charge in the opening round.

I loved it that the big-money guys like Daley and Chico turned into big losers. I was a little disappointed that Paul Vallas didn't make the cut. He couldn't even get out of single-digits. But only because over the years of battling his influence peddling in the field of education reform, I have so much unused op-research filed away on PV that I was itching for a chance to use it all.

But in the end, I was overjoyed to see two African-American women, one openly gay, and both with progressive credentials, make the cut. The inevitability of a black, woman mayor taking charge of what Carl Sandberg called, the city of "stormy, husky, brawling...big shoulders" still leaves me high as a kite -- Harold Washington high.

All the post-op pain killers I've been taking have also helped.

But another reality, not opioid-driven, is now setting in. With election day only a few weeks away, and Lightfoot apparently pulling far ahead, internecine warfare has broken out among the progressives to such a degree it's going to be hard to put Humpty Dumpty back together again when the election madness is over.

While both campaigns are going negative in their TV ads, (as Harold used to say, "politics ain't bean bag") I mainly put the blame for this on a self-righteous, dispirited and angry group of Preckwinkle supporters who can't believe they are losing and that the rest of the progressive left doesn't see Lightfoot in their one dimensional way.

Now I'm likely overreacting. I know it's probably just a small group of Facebook lefties that are portraying former Police Board chief and former prosecutor Lightfoot as a "cop" or "defender of killer cops". But the tone of the official campaign ads is nearly as negative and reactionary.

This isn't necessarily the case with the CTU leadership, which endorsed Preckwinkle when it looked like she was the only alternative to a Daley victory. I likely would have voted "strategically" for her if it came down to Toni/Daley as well. My god, I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.

CTU leaders while still strongly backing Toni, seem to be taking a more savvy and seasoned approach while still showing leadership where it really counts, in community battles, like stopping plunder of the city by Sterling Bay Corp. around Lincoln Yards.

They must realize that in three weeks there's going to be a new mayor on the fifth floor at City Hall and whoever wins, it will be a mayor who, in sharp contrast to the current one, the union can work with, one who opposes school closings, charters and vouchers, and favors an elected school board.

The union will also need its school/community base to stay unified if it is to keep the pressure on whoever's elected, especially with contract negotiations coming up and possible strike on the horizon.

FINALLY, I'M STUNNED at the ineptitude of the Preckwinkle campaign. Every day, I feel like I'm watching a slow-motion train wreck. It's not just about the reactionary overreach of anti-Lori negativity in their propaganda, which can't help but backfire. It's the daily miscalculation, the ducking a dodging, and misreading of the depths of anti-machine hostility directed at Preckwinkle on the part of voters.

"Change agents", White, Burnett and Preckwinkle

Take the past two days which saw the campaign accept official endorsements from Sec. of State Jesse White and and Ald. Walter Burnett. No matter what you think of this pair, it's impossible for most of us to consider them as change agents. Yet, the campaign pitched them both as "representatives of change".

S-T's Fran Spielman writes:

The state’s leading vote-getter and his political protege stood with Toni Preckwinkle Wednesday to help her make the case that she is the candidate for change in a change election because she has already delivered it.

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) endorsed Preckwinkle, but that was hardly surprising. Both men are longstanding Preckwinkle allies and stalwarts of the Cook County Democratic Party she chairs.

 On Wednesday, Burnett made a dramatically different argument. He argued that Preckwinkle’s decision to succeed her longtime ally, former Assessor Joe Berrios, as chairman of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization would pay handsome dividends for Chicago taxpayers if she becomes mayor.

Then, the second shoe dropped...

Never mind that White’s office hired Joe Berrios’ sister and friend when newly-elected Assessor Fritz Kaegi fired them.

As the Tribune reported in December...

 The secretary of state’s office, which has around 3,700 jobs, has long been known as a patronage haven under both Democrats and Republicans. The two women will each make $37,992 a year as public service supervisors in the Vehicle Services Department, said Dave Druker, White’s spokesman.

Yes, change agents.

These latest endorsements are going to make it even tougher in the final three weeks, for Preckwinkle to unhook from her own ties to Burke, Berrios and the rest of her old machine pals in the eyes of the voters.

Election thoughts...Blaming the messenger.

Who thought it was a good idea for Toni Preckwinkle to duck the S-T debate?

Who on Team Toni thought it was a good idea for her to duck out on the Sun-Times debate? Her lame excuse? The S-T has already endorsed Lori. But so what? That makes no sense.

With all early polls showing Toni running far behind, you would think that there's no better place to be than in the home of the opposition, appealing directly to their base. But Toni backed away, lashing out at Lori as she ran for the door.

"Starting with the NBC debate Thursday night, we look forward to hearing corporate lawyer Lori Lightfoot defend her record representing a Wall Street bank accused of massive discrimination and of defending Republican politicians trying to hold onto their power," spokeswoman Monica Trevino wrote in a statement.

There are plenty of valid criticisms of Lightfoot, but trying to make her look like the monied, Wall Street candidate was another misstep by Team Toni. That was Bill Daley. Daley and Preckwinkle outspent Lori in the first round by 3 and 4:1.

Preckwinkle has been the most aggressive and negative campaigner so far. It's a style that misreads the times we're in, and she's used it to whip up her Facebook supporters, lashing out with personal invective against Lori voters and neutrals. This has only helped her opponent look reasonable and likeable while further dividing Toni's base.

The latest polls show Preckwinkle trailing in every demographic. Lightfoot leads among women (60%) and men (56%). Lightfoot leads among all age groups: 54% of voters younger than 50; 55% of voters between ages 50 to 64, and 55% of those 65 and older favor Lightfoot.

Team Toni's response: They say that since the poll was paid for by the pro-school privatization group, Stand for Children, it can't be trusted. Their takeaway is that SFC supports Lori and therefore they produced the poll. The argument rings similar to the Sun-Times argument. Since S-T endorsed Lori, the debate must be rigged.

Actually, the polling was done by respected Democratic pollsters FM3. Their poll found that while both candidates are viewed favorably by a majority of voters, 64% view Lightfoot favorably and 53% have a favorable opinion of Preckwinkle. However, Preckwinkle also has a greater number of detractors. While only ten percent of voters view Lightfoot unfavorably, more than one-third have an unfavorable opinion of Preckwinkle (37%).

They might have had a point about SFC popularizing the poll results, except for the fact that SFC has every reason NOT to support Lightfoot. After all, like Toni, she's running on a promise to end charter school expansion and to support an elected school board.

There's also the problem for Team Toni that everyone now has done internal polling that could easily refute FM3's poll if theirs were divergent.

Team Toni says she's not running scared. She says she's prepared to debate Lori 5 more times, including in an event sponsored by the rival Tribune. But why? Remember, the Trib endorsed her opponent Bill Daley before he was knocked out of the race last week.

Strange game they're playing. May be time for Team Toni to retool.

Progressives split in Chicago race. Can they unite against Daley in a runoff?

With the first round of the mayoral election only a week away, things are starting to get hot and heavy. Progressives are split at least three ways (Toni Preckwinkle, Lori Lightfoot and Amara Enyia) and there's lots of vitriol back and forth among their camps..

Cook County party boss Toni Preckwinkle, with early support from many progressives, including the CTU and SEIU seemed like the clear front-runner a month ago.  The SEIU endorsements alone translated into roughly $2M in cash and in-kind contributions to Preckwinkle and nearly two dozen full-time campaign workers and upwards of 500 part-time volunteers.

Bill Daley, the man from JP Morgan and the candidate without a shred of progressive pretense, has replaced Rahm Emanuel as the darling of Chicago's 1%-ers. They've gone all in on Daley because, 1) they fear a takeover of the city by left-wing insurgents of the Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez type and 2) his early lead in fundraising has them believing he's a for-real candidate, who can win.

The irony is that the modern notion of Democratic Partyinsurgency they're so afraid off, goes back to Harold Washington's victory over the Daley machine in 1983. But the latest attempt at building a progressive electoral coalition petered out after the collapse of the Bernie Sanders coalition in 2016 leading to the election of J.B. Pritzker as governor with no real progressive opponent.

The current internecine warfare over mayoral choices results from progressive groups not being able to unify around candidates for mayor and governor two years ago.

Instead, Rahm, their main electoral target with plummeting poll numbers following his Laquan McDonald cover-up and his school-closing debacle, pulled a slick move and abandoned the race altogether, before we had a chance to beat him. Even though #RahmResign was exactly what progressives had been demanding, it took many of them them by surprise, as Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative admitted on our show on February 1st.

Without Rahm as a unifying target, the door was left open for a gaggle of old-line, well-financed Democratic Party regulars to jump in and suck up all the money and organizational support.

Mendoza, Chico, Daley and Preckwinkle, none of whom dared enter the race while Rahm was still in it, all jumped in and immediately got the support and credibility from the party bosses and powerful donors who had been sitting on the sidelines. Daley was the biggest beneficiary with $7M in big-donor money. $2M coming directly from Republican billionaire Ken Griffin.

But the good news is that despite their swollen campaign coffers and TV advertising, none of the party machine regulars or great-white-hope alternatives (Paul Vallas & Gary McCarthy) have been able to create any excitement at the base and break from the pack.

If the vote were taken today, undecided or none-of-the-above would be the clear winner. According to most recent polling, the top 5, including underdog and party outlier, Lori Lightfoot are all with a few points of each other and any two could make it to the runoff, especially if this becomes a low-turnout election.

Lightfoot, who if elected, would become the city's first black, woman, lesbian mayor, is a clear underdog. But she's gained momentum and funding in recent weeks, especially after picking up the Sun-Times endorsement, while Preckwinkle and Mendoza have failed to improve their numbers since being connected to the Burke/Solis scandal.

Progressive Preckwinkle supporters, including those in the CTU and SEIU, who backed her early when union haters Rahm, Vallas and McCarthy seemed like her main opponents, probably did so more because they thought she would win rather than  because of fundamental political agreement. But now they're stuck with her even as her campaign falters and stumbles towards the finish line.

They fear a Lightfoot victory next week will lead to Daley's election in the finals and are training all their tactical guns and money on Lightfoot. For her part, Lightfoot sees Preckwinkle as part and parcel of the Burke/Berrios party machinery and has been gunning for her from the start.

Lori Lightfoot goes head to head with Toni Preckwinkle ally, Rep. Martwick: “You were a Joe Berrios surrogate for the entire campaign. You filed this bill [to appoint rather than elect assessor] to profit yourself. Who benefits from a system that’s not changed?” Lightfoot said.

Things really came to a head this week when State Rep. Rob Martwick, closely tied to Berrios and Preckwinkle, tried to disrupt a Lightfoot presser and ended up in a well-photographed head-to-head, David vs. Goliath confrontation with the candidate. Martwick is authoring a bill that would make the County Assessor an appointed, rather than elected position. The bill is obviously meant as payback against anti-machine guy, Fritz Kaegi who defeated Boss Berrios in the assessor's race.

But the damaging confrontation instead meant more bad press for Preckwinkle and the machine. Martwick had to back off, claiming that his bill was only meant as a "conversation starter" while Preckwinkle was forced to issue a joint statement with Kaegi, opposing the Martwick bill.

If all this has your head spinning as you enter the voting booth, join the crowd. Daley seems like the main beneficiary of all this mayhem in the progressive camps, if he and Preckwinkle wind up in a runoff. A Daley/Mendoza runoff is also possible if Preckwinkle continues to stumble.

Amara Enyia, running with big campaign donations from rappers Chance the Rapper and Kanye West, hopes to pick up support from young black activists and hard-left organizers. But she doesn't seem to be gaining traction as the race draws to a close.

But if somehow, Lightfoot pulls an upset on Feb. 26, the whole thing is up for grabs. The progressives only hope is for some kind of reconciliation between Lightfoot, Preckwinkle and Enyia supporters and that's not likely.

But in a close, low-turnout election, anything can happen.

Buckle up and vote.


I'll be AWOL for Friday's Hitting Left show when brother Fred tries to make some sense of all this with Chicago campaign strategist, Joanna Klonsky and Progressive Caucus leader, Ald. Scott Waguespack. But I'll be tuning in to WLPN 105.5 FM, via live streaming on www.lumpenradio.com from 11-noon CT. I hope you will join me. 

Rahm hard at work trying to clean up his legacy on education

Rahm and his predecessor, Richard M. Daley. 

In the latest issue of The Atlantic, Mayor Rahm Emanuel tries to do a clean-up job on his years of crisis-ridden, chaotic one-man rule over the Chicago public schools. "I used to preach the gospel of reform," writes Rahm. "Then I became the mayor."

I'm not sure what gospel of reform Rahm was preaching in the first place. With no background in education and a long string of inept and corrupt managers surrounding him, His policies were neither research-based nor educationally sound. Rather they represented a googob of top-down, politically-driven policies and strategies that had more to do with breaking the union, real estate speculation, patronage and disinvestment in black and Latino neighborhoods than in anything curricular or pedagogical.

His mantra during his first campaign was, more classroom seat time equals better learning outcomes, holding up Houston, of all places, as his model. "The data shows that the longer you stay in the classroom learning,  you'll learn more...", claimed Rahm.

But we never were shown any such data. Maybe because, none existed. Everything depended on what was happening in those classrooms, how crowded they were, and who was teaching in them and what else was going on, inside and outside of school.

That led to the first of many clashes Rahm would have with the CTU and it's president, Karen Lewis. ultimately leading up to the great teachers strike of 2012. That strike would end in victory for the union which was able to gather wide parent and community support.

Rahm's revision of history has him winning the strike and Karen Lewis conceding on the longer school day.

My initial doubts emerged four days into what turned out to be the first Chicago teachers’ strike in three decades. After a series of arduous negotiations with Karen Lewis, the union president, we’d arrived at the basic contours of an agreement. In return for higher salaries, Lewis accepted my demands to extend the school day by an hour and 15 minutes, tack two weeks onto the school year, establish universal full-day kindergarten, and rewrite the outdated evaluations used to keep the city’s educators accountable.

In fact, it was the teachers who won that strike, fighting for much more that high wages, but smaller class size and an end to layoffs and much more.

Now Rahm claims to be a school-reform apostate who has abandoned "the gospel of teacher-focused reform for a more top-down approach centered on empowering principals." As any educator could have told him, real reform is not just about power struggles between principals and teachers. It’s more about school/community relationships and adequate resources.

Since Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he wasn't going to run for a third term, it seems all he's interested in is cleaning up (whitewashing) his brand. That's perfectly understandable if his goal is making a credible transition from the public, back to the private or non-profit (foundation or university) sector at the end of his term, the way his predecessor Rich Daley did after his notorious parking meter deal.

That won't be as easy as it's been for him in the past when he managed investments and other enterprises for the likes of Bill Clinton and Bruce Rauner. For one thing, he's got a poor track record when it comes to enticing giant companies like Amazon into Chicago by hook or by crook. Chicago still owns the reputation as the most corrupt city in the most corrupt state in the union. We still don't know how high up the current Burke/Solis scandal will go or if Rahm can steer clear of it. And despite finally getting a school budget passed in Springfield, Rahm still has to own the fact that he drove CPS finances in the debt hell.

Then there's his role in the cover up following the police murder of Laquan McDonald.

Finally and probably most important is the destruction he's left in the wake of his policy of mass school closings in the city's black communities, replacing them with school vouchers and privately-run charter schools. It was his misleadership on the schools, more than anything, that bottomed out his poll numbers and caused him to finally drop out of race for mayor.

He can now spend his time remaking his brand and rewriting history.

Problem: How to talk about Chicago politics on community radio?

Amisha Patel of the Grassroots Collaborative, will be our guest Friday on Hitting Left

Friday's Hitting Left show should be a good one. Brother Fred will be back from vacation and Amisha Patel from Grassroots Collaborative will be our in-studio guest. As you might expect, we'll be talking about the current list of Chicago's pay-for-play politics and machine scandals in the roll-up towards election day.

These will include, of course, the mayor's Lincoln Yards/Sterling Bay land giveaway which was being greased up until recently by prison-bound real estate attorney, Ald. Ed Burke. Sterling Bay had to dump him after the the feds arrested him. And then there's the little problem of having possibly the dirtiest alderman of 'em all, wire-wearing Danny Solis, sitting atop the zoning committee.

Amisha and her group have been in the forefront of the struggle to put the Lincoln Yards project on hold, at least until the new administration comes in and the city council has time to vet it. Problem is, it's looking now like the top-monied mayoral candidates all have strong Burke/Solis machine ties and unless the polls are way off (entirely possible) City Hall will likely remain in hands that are just a corrupt as Rahm's, or even worse.

Let's hope there's at least some progressive change coming in the aldermanic races, where some insurgents, women, teachers, and candidates of color have a chance to unseat the incumbents.

As listeners know, Hitting left is aired on a community radio station WLPN 105.5 FM in Chicago. It is live-streamed on lumpenradio.com every Friday from 11-noon CT. According to latest numbers I have received Friday, 30-50 thousand listeners are regularly tuned in to Lumpen Radio, with many more listening to our show each week on Mixcloud or downloading it on podcast.

I love being a part of community radio and that's exactly what our show is all about-- community building. But having a political show on a community radio station also has its drawbacks. One of which is language censorship. We cannot uses language that is considered obscenity based on "community standards" without facing serious fines.

As far as Fred and I are concerned, that's not a problem. Mom raised us right and we've managed to get most of our guests to clean up their act for our show. Our producer also keeps a hand on the red bleep button and he's had a pretty strict interpretation of allowable words.

Here's the problem. We're talking about politics and politicians from the likes of our "pussy grabbing" president to Alds. Burke and Solis here in Chicago. We often find ourselves unable to quote them directly or even report the news accurately without resorting to metaphors and code language.

For example, the Sun-Times reports:

The affidavit, sworn out by FBI special agent Steven Noldin, portrays Solis as deeply in debt and routinely on the prowl for sex, Viagra, campaign contributions and other favors.

...In July 2015, Solis called Caldero with another request.
“I want to get a good massage, with a nice ending. Do you know any good places?” the alderman said.

 When Caldero promised to arrange the liaison, Solis asked, “What kind of women do they got there?” “Asian,” Caldero said. Oh good. Good, good, good. I like Asian,” Solis said.

See what I mean? Chicago politics is so vulgar, is so racist, it's unfit for community radio standards. So we have to constantly find alternative ways to talk about it while still keeping our political edge. Actually, it's not such a problem that we can't and don't have fun with it.

Thanks for sticking with us.

Launching our tour from Lincoln Yards to uplift Mayor’s latest proposal to give away $1.5 bill in tax $ to mega developers like Sterling Bay. We must outline what a new Mayor can do differently. #ReimagineChicago pic.twitter.com/SSZ9uDLQBd

— Grassroots Collab (@GrassrootsChi) November 13, 2018

After the lights came on at the Burke affair

Best quote on the Burke(s) affair comes from S-T columnist Neil Steinberg:

Corruption is like rust. It spreads, both coming and going. When the party’s on and the lights are low, lots of people wander into the dim tent to help themselves at the long tables of pie. When the lights are snapped on, those same people are caught standing there with pie on their faces.

He adds,

It’s almost comical to see the casting call of mayoral candidates lunging for napkins to smear away Ed Burke’s money, or try to. It’ll be interesting to see how long that stain lingers around their mouths.

Yes, it would be comical if the cost of corruption at the highest political levels didn't weigh so heavily on the city's poor and working people facing severe cuts at their schools and city services. Dick Simpson and Tom Gradel, authors of Corrupt Illinois, put the "corruption tax" at $500M. Many experts believe it is much higher.

Examples include the costs of the Jon Burge police-brutality scandal, which has already reached one hundred million dollars and counting. The cost of Chicago police corruption averages more than $50 million per year. Since 2004, "Chicago has paid a staggering sum -- about $662 million -- on police misconduct, including judgments, settlements, and outside legal fees," according to the Associated Press' examination of city records. In 2015, the payment for the fatal police shooting of LaQuan McDonald cost the city $5 million in a settlement, while the cost to investigate and prosecute Police Officer Van Dyke is ongoing. Also, following that shooting, Chicago's legal and consulting bill for the subsequent Department of Justice investigation of city police practices totaled $760,000 through the middle of March, 2016. 

It's especially not funny when the lights come on and you see pie on the faces of the top three or four (at least) candidates for mayor, including the one being supported by many progressives, unions and community orgs.

I put an (s) in parenthesis above after Burke's name because Eddie's wife Anne Burke, the liberal IL state supreme court justice, who Steinberg once referred to as the “the platinum bar of probity” (look it up), was the one (not Eddie) who threw the fundraising party for Toni Preckwinkle, that netted $116K for her campaign war chest. She had already run and won her campaign for Cook County Board President, jumping into the mayor's race only after Rahm dropped out.

Burke (r) endorsed Gery Chico

I suppose Burke's fundraiser was legal and hopefully legally reported. Although you would think a supreme court justice would keep a money arm's length from Chicago politicians, especially when she's already married to the platinum bar of profiteering in the city council. It's not a good look. But Chicago reporters haven't even broached the subject. It seems, she's untouchable.

It was only after that backyard party at the Burke's house was revealed than Preckwinkle announced she would return ALL the money. Previously she copped to receiving only $5.8K.

Preckwinkle also removed Burke from the Cook County Democratic Party's judicial slating panel, a post he held for decades. Good for her. Although without demands for accountability coming from below, who knows if she and others like Bill Daley, Gery Chico and Susana Mendoza would have even bothered bailing on the Burkes for appearance sake alone.

Preckwinkle's progressive backers seem unfazed by the latest scandal. Some are just cynical, claiming "they all do it, so why pick on Toni?" Others blame it all on the "culture of corruption". 
S-T columnist Phil Kadner writes:

Let us remember Burke has not been convicted of anything, although he has been a symbol of Chicago political corruption for decades. He has had the best people into his home. He has done favors for scores of politicians who were happy to accept his support and his money. Maybe they are all victims of the culture of corruption. As someone once said, the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.

SEIU Illinois State Council, unfazed by Burke affair, just dropped another $500,000 into Preckwinkle’s mayoral campaign, more that making up for the Burke money she was forced to return. The new money brings the union’s contribution to Preckwinkle to $1.5 million with more money on the way.

Progressives like Rep. Will Guzzardi and socialist Ald. Carlos Ramirez Rosa (35th) were among the first to endorse Preckwinkle and at least Rosa is now lashing out against his fellow left-wing critics of TP in the press and on social media.

 “There’s nothing here,” Rosa said of the campaign contribution investigators say Burke illegally solicited on Preckwinkle’s behalf. “Do people think she called Ed Burke and said, ‘You’ve got to shake down these guys for $10,000?’ Come on. Let’s talk about what’s important to the people of Chicago, which is who can bring change to City Hall. That’s Toni Preckwinkle.”

Burke scandal aside, it's hard for me to fathom this city's progressives and socialists pinning their hopes for change on the head of the Cook County Democratic Party. It just seems to run counter to national trend of victories by young, insurgent candidates, many of them women of color or immigrants,  over party regulars across the country.

My brother Fred traces the history of the problem in the inability of the Chicago left to unify early on around insurgent candidates in opposition to the old-guard machine.

 In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, there was no single candidate that truly represented the politics of the Bernie movement and you could find Bernie supporters dispersed among all of the candidates, painfully diluted and with little apparent influence. The same can be said about the current race for Chicago’s mayor.

Who knows what more fallout will come from the Burke trial itself or who will be implicated or left with pie on their faces if he decides to roll over for the feds. But by that time we will have elected a new mayor and most likely, one still tied to the old machine by a thousand threads.

You can bet we'll be talking about the Burke(s) affair tomorrow on Hitting Left with a group of insurgent Chicago teachers who are now running for political office. And then again next Friday, January 18th with in-studio guest, author, political consultant and expert on Chicago corruption, Tom Gradel.

Tune in to Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers, Friday on WLPN 105.5 FM Chicago, streaming live at www.lumpenradio.com