It's okay Rahm. You can come out now.

Much of the credit for Foxx victory belongs here. 2 Down, Rahm to go.

Will the mayor come out of hiding now that pal Hillary Clinton has left town?

She succeeded in avoiding Rahm long enough to narrowly squeak by Bernie Sanders with just 50.4% in her home state. It was a race she was picked to win by double digits and surely would have lost, at least the popular vote, if the race had gone another week or so.

With the Illinois victory, Clinton secures 68 delegates and Sanders pockets 64 delegates. Not too shabby, Bernie. Credit should also go to groups like Chicago Votes who have made it easier to register, even on election day. More credit, at least in my mind, goes to the anti-Trump protests at UIC last week, which more than any campaigning, generated a sense of urgency and passion for political struggle in thousands of young folks.

Of course, the popular vote doesn't mean as much in this state, since, win or lose, Hillary controls the 29 big-shot elected officials ("super delegates") who automatically get convention seats. In that sense the game was rigged from the start.

But congrats to Bernie and his team of Chicago progressives for running an amazingly close race and engaging thousands of new voters in what otherwise would have been a dull race. The movement for social justice comes out the better for it.

Voter turnout in Chicago was over 50%, according to the Chicago Election Board, and 26,000 new voters, mostly young registered to vote on Primary Day.

The biggest win yesterday belonged to Kim Foxx who rode to victory over police-murder cover-up artist Anita Alvarez, on the momentum of the Black Lives Matter movement. Two down, Rahm to go.

Proud of Harish I Patel and Jay Travis for fighting the good fight. Progressive first-time candidate Patel was not only battling political boss Dick Mell's machine dirty tricks, he also was abandoned by unions who decided to play it safe and throw in with the machine's Jaime Andrade. I hope they hold Andrade's feet to the fire.

The unions split on Travis, with AFSCME and SEIU throwing [our] money behind pension thief and school privatization (Stand For Children) incumbent Christian Mitchell. The CTU backed Jay.

Glad Andrea Zopp got clobbered. Voters remembered her role on the school board in support of Rahm's school closings in the black community and her role in the Byrd-Bennett/SUPES corruption scandal.

Theresa Mah & Chuy Garcia

Congrats to Juliana Stratton. Bye-bye to Rauner's puppy-dog Ken Dunkin. You knew he was toast when Obama pointed a finger at him and said, "We'll talk later."

Congrats to Theresa Mah for beating the machine in the 2nd Dist. State Rep race.

Congrats to Omar Oquino for beating the machine in the 2nd Dist. State Senate race.

And did you see? Sue Sadlowski Garza whipped Pope/Rahm in the Ward Committeeman race. This despite massive vote fraud (ballot box stuffing) by Pope's machine goons.

Kudos to Aaron Goldstein for kicking machine boss Mell in the ass in the committeeman race. I've been waiting 40 years for somebody to do it.

When I went to bed last night, Goldstein was ahead of Mell by 143 votes with 2 precincts left. But I'm not celebrating yet. Aaron better keep close eye on the ballot box. Remember Deb Mell was down by 26 votes to Tim Meegan last Feb's aldermanic election and then beat him by somehow "finding" enough Mell absentee votes.

The Machine does its best work after the polls close.

Now the struggle moves back to the streets, April First (no foolin') when CTU teachers hit the bricks in a citywide, one-day strike action.

Standing up for Kim Foxx

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has never endorsed anyone running for states attorney before. Until yesterday, that is. That's when the 30,000-member union endorsed Kim Foxx, running against current SA Anita Alvarez and gambling industry shill, Dona More.

 And why wouldn't they? When Alvarez, began covering up cases of police misconduct, including the murder of 16-year-old Laquan McDonald, the election became a critical one for teachers. The school-to-prison pipeline, facilitated over the past few years by Alvarez, is an affront to all educators.

"We have never endorsed in a state's attorney's race, but we are at a turning point in Chicago," CTU President Karen Lewis said in a statement, issued after a morning news conference to announce the endorsement was canceled. "This race is critical to everyone that cares about the future of our children. Kim Foxx is (the) only candidate with a real plan to invest in our next generation that will help end the school-to-prison pipeline." (Tribune)

 To get an idea of where Alvarez backers are coming from, read their pro-pipeline comments below the Trib story. Their lock-em-up mentality is directed only at disruptive students, ignoring the fact that it is Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke who's finally on trial here for murder.

To those who say that teachers and their union should "stick to teaching" and stay out of politics, I would remind them that it's hard to teach a kid with 16 police bullets in him. They should also consider the high cost, socially and financially of locking up, rather than schooling, thousands of our city's children.  

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Special place in hell…" -- Albright

Madeleine Albright assails young women Democrat Sanders supporters

“There’s a special place in hell for women who don’t help each other!” Mrs. Clinton laughed, slowly clapped her hands and took a large sip of her beverage. -- N.Y. Times

Gloria Steinem says they're boy crazy

“When you’re young, you’re thinking, ‘Where are the boys? The boys are with Bernie.’ ” -- New Republic

Kim Foxx

Daily Herald Editorial Board

In the case of Laquan McDonald, it took Alvarez 400 days. That's more than a year. It was long after the city of Chicago had settled the civil case. And more than 50 percent longer than the national average she cites. Where is the swift justice in that? We endorse Kim Foxx in the Democratic primary for Cook County state's attorney. -- Endorsement: Alvarez slow on police shooting; we back Foxx 

Tom Corfman, Crain's political editor

Affluent Chicago families are directed to increase their supply of water from the Fiji islands. -- Chicago's Flint Problem, On Politics

Nikhil Goyal, author of "Schools on Trial"

From a President Clinton, unfortunately, I don’t expect anything better than what we’ve seen under President Obama. I don’t expect her to be any better; I think she’s still a proponent of charter schools and this pay-for-performance model. -- Salon

#LaquanMcDonald was moved from school to school as resources for troubled kids were cut, @SSKedreporter reports: https://t.co/MMfhNvCtnT

— Mick Dumke (@mickeyd1971) February 8, 2016

The trail to the 5th floor of City Hall gets warmer. CPS' 'confidential' memo.

Asking the right questions. 

Rahm is pleading ignorance... Not the top quality you want in the city's top executive. Of course, he was conveniently ignorant until after winning the election.

From today's Trib:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has said he didn't understand the gravity of Laquan McDonald's shooting death at the hands of a Chicago police officer until just before the city settled with the teen's family last spring, and that he wasn't aware other officers may have falsified reports about the shooting until just after the video was released to the public.

And then there's this:

 But interviews, official city calendars and emails show in both cases the mayor's closest aides and City Hall attorneys knew much earlier than that.

Chou's confidential memo

That would be Rahm's top lawyer, Steve Patton. Not to mention, State's Attorney Alvarez.

They probably didn't want to bother Rahm about it. Right?

CPS enters the picture...
Now comes news that the mayor's top staffers were alerted, in a "confidential" memo, the day after the shooting, by CPS security chief Jadine Chou, that Laquan McDonald was a student at YCCS-Sullivan House Alternative H.S.

Email traffic at City Hall started almost immediately after the shooting, and inquiries about the dash-cam video were made in the first month.

The trail to the 5th floor is getting warmer.

Tuesday questions... What? A tangled Webb?

Dan Webb

1) Will Rahm's pet aldermen finally find their backbones? 

"On Monday, that new era of independence was on full display", writes Fran Spielman in the Sun-Times, 

I don't buy Spielman's new era hyperbole, There are some small spine signs. But not many. At least some questions are now being asked before the pups sit up and beg for cookies.

Some are even asking for a little time to consider things before dancing to the mayor's tune like they did on the parking meters, red-light cameras, $5M cover-up payment to Laquan McDonald's family, killer property-tax hike, etc... Amazing!

Eg. they put Rahm's $2M TIF plan to build a park near the new Marriott Hotel on hold. OMG!

Originally, that money was part of $55M that was going to build DePaul's (mea culpa St. Vincent) shiny new (but I predict, largely empty) basketball arena. Now the money has been shifted to the hotel after protests against the building of the stadium caused the pols political embarrassment. Not enough to stop it, however. This was millions that should have been spent in classrooms. 

Still friends?

2) How real is Rauner's fallout with Rahm?

My friend, Benny J. says it's completely phony. I say, it's real and phony at the same time. Rauner knows that Rahm agrees with him on neutering the CTU and on much of his austerity reform. But the gov thinks that Rahm and Sen. Cullerton are too cowardly to stand up to machine boss, Mike Madigan. 

It's not just them. Many more Dems are with Rauner on the QT, says the gov. I believe him. 

3) Will Rahm's hiring of his friend, Dan Webb, save him?

Answer: No. 

It's a desperate move and could be his last. The Law Dept. is just a floor away from the mayor's office. Webb was brought in to circumvent the Justice Dept.'s planned investigation. The Pinex killing cover-up is hotter than even the McDonald murder. Jordan Marsh, Rahm's lead attorney who withheld evidence in the Pinex family's suit, has taken the fall and resigned. But was Marsh operating independently of the mayor and his law chief ? A rogue city attorney? No way.

Rahm's claims that it's 'not possible' that the Law Dept.was part of the cover-up. Well, it's not only possible, it's likely. If an investigation leads beyond March and connects to Rahm's top attorney, Stephen Patton, there's no way the mayor isn't culpable. 

Bringing Webb in, smells to high heaven. The deal has even got Rahm's pals at the Sun-Times board nervous. 

Webb's a partner in the clout-heavey firm of Winston & Strawn which has lots of City Hall contracts. Both the firm and Webb himself have given big bucks to Rahm's election campaigns. 

Webb is also representing the city of Ferguson, Mo. in its civil rights case with the U.S. Department of Justice. He charging the impoverished St. Louis suburb his full hourly rate at $1,335. But he working for Rahm for a measly $295/hr. I'm not sure if that's good or bad. If W&S is not in it for legal fees, what then?

He also worked as special prosecutor in 2012 to investigate the death of David Koschman. In 2004, Koschman was punched by Richard Vanecko — a nephew of then-Mayor Richard Daley — and died days later. Vanecko eventually pled guilty to involuntary manslaughter in 2014. But Webb never revealed the depths of the police cover-up in the case or Daley's testimony. 

Webb is defending Ferguson, MO in Justice Dept. civil rights suit. 

Even though Webb has agreed to report his findings only to the city's IG Joe Ferguson, the attempt to undercut the federal investigation is sure to bring down even more scrutiny on Webb and his law firm. Plus you can count on continuing street protests to apply added pressure.

In other words, Rahm's gambit just won't work. 

Remember, Hillary Clinton is coming to town. The IL primary is in March. I'm trying to imagine her posing with Rahm in the middle of a smelly cover-up investigation of his own Law Dept. with black community protesters and allies demanding that Mayor 1% resign. 

Not many of my more political junkie friends agree with me on this, but I still think he will. Of course, I've been wrong once or twice before. I had my money on Clemson last night, for example. 

Debating Rahm's viability

Asked the next day about when he first learned of the McDonald case and who informed him, the mayor responded, “Probably read it in the paper. Uhm and some of the staff, uhm could have informed me. -- NBC5 News

Even among my friends (across the political spectrum) there's widely varying estimates about Rahm Emanuel's continuing viability as mayor of Chicago. They range from -- resignation is imminent -- to -- this too will pass -- and he'll be able to hang in there until the next election.

Rahm's now polling at around 18%. Former Mayor Richie Daley decided to hang it up when his ratings dropped to 31%.

The fact that, when/if Rahm will resign has become the most hotly-debated question in political circles far and wide, is testimony to the depths of the crisis in Chicago following the street execution of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke and the ensuing political cover-up.

The relentlessness of the Black Lives Matter movement, combined with the threat of another teachers strike, could put enough pressure on the national Democratic Party leadership (Hillary has enough to worry about without having to carry Rahm's baggage into 2016) and on Rahm's Chicago patrons, to have them pull the plug early.

Then there's the Justice Dept. investigation of the CPD which could lead to a steady drip of info about Rahm's role in the cover-up. This despite Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch's assurances that the feds will limit the investigation to the culture and conduct of the police department.

But as a host of former pols here have learned the hard way,  once you begin turning over rocks, you find all kinds of nasty things crawling around. An active press, both main stream and new (social) media will play a big role in determining the outcome.

Protester thanks Carol Marin

There's been some great and some crappy local reporting. The great includes NBC5 News Carol Marin and Don Moseley, City Hall Emails Show Trail to Top Emanuel Aides, doing what a free press is supposed to do. Holding public officials accountable.

 Their story results from an FOIA request which uncovered emails from Rahm's inner circle which not only reveal that the mayor knew about the McDonald 16-shot execution way before he said he did, but that his people had actively worked to keep the video and other news about the shooting quiet until after the election. For me, the most damning evidence is that Rahm and his crew heavily redacted the report, showing that the cover-up was politically motivated and not as Rahm claims, due to concern about the "ongoing investigation."

The crappy includes S-T's Dan Mihalopoulos, whose column yesterday mainly targeted 16-year old Lamon Reccord who's become a visible leader in the street protests calling for the resignations of Rahm and State's Atty. Anita Alvarez. Mihalopoulos' piece goes after Reccord for, of all things, his past membership in Chicago Votes, a youth-led, non-partisan voter registration project and his support for Kim Foxx, Alvarez' main opponent in the upcoming election.

He writes:

According to his LinkedIn networking profile, Reccord began helping Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s challenger Kimberly Foxx in September — well before the release of the police video of McDonald being shot. 

Reccord also has worked as an intern for a nonprofit group called Chicago Votes. The organization’s former executive director is Foxx’s campaign manager, and one of its longtime board members is the campaign’s spokeswoman. 

He should be commended for getting involved in civic life even before he’s old enough to vote, at an age when many peers appear more interested in video games. [Patronizing crap--m.k.]

But Reccord’s recent trajectory makes me wonder if the protesters include many newly converted critics of the local political powerhouses or largely the same players who couldn’t unseat Emanuel in last spring’s unprecedented runoff election.

Along the way, DM does his best to belittle the current youth protest movement and prop up a stumbling Rahm.

He's also the hack who tried to paint CTU Pres. Karen Lewis as a supposed real estate tycoon, for her family vacation cottage in Michigan and time-share in Hawaii (enjoy Karen). And then there was his pathetic Enlace budget deficit "expose" aimed at boosting Emanuel's image as a financial leader and damaging Chuy Garcia's credibility as a Rahm opponent. Rahm's liar-in-chief at the time, Becky Carroll had ads out on DM's story, one day later.

Fast forward a year and we can see that it was Rahm, and not Chuy, who was blowing smoke on solutions to the city's financial crisis. Never has a political reporter had his head stuck so far up his butt.

I don't think he's a Rahm toady. More like a scoop-hungry reporter looking for an easy target and unwilling or unable to dig beyond the surface.

None of us can say for sure how all this will play out in the months ahead or whether Rahm will resign or be removed from office or who will replace him. But whether his stays or goes, his credibility as a political leader is gone.

I may be wrong, but I'm betting on (joining with) the young activists like Lamon Reccord and the new civil rights movement out in the streets. Not Rahm and his cronies up in the suites.

Donna More is more of the same -- if not worse

As readers know, I support Kim Foxx in her effort to unseat discredited Cook County State's Atty. Anita Alvarez, who covered up the Laquan McDonald murder. But Foxx is not the only one running. There's also Donna More.

I actually think More, who claims to be a "progressive Democrat," would be More of the same -- if not worse than Alvarez.

I mean, what kind of progressive Democrat makes big contributions to Bruce Rauner's and Eric Cantor's campaign war chests? More, whose family wealth alone could transform her into a contender, has also given money to Republican Senator Peter Fitzgerald and the disgraced John Ensign. In fact, all of her federal giving history has been to Republicans. 

Friday, More lifted the cap on donations to candidates in the primary race by handing herself a $250,000 contribution (Sun-Times).

More is also a big Rahm Emanuel supporter. She donated heavily to Rahm's campaigns, thinks he should remain in office, and defends him in the video cover-up scandal.

More is a throwback to the Jon Burge era. She was a deputy prosecutor under former Mayor Daley, when he was the State's Attorney. While she denies any direct connection or handling any of the Burge torture cases, it's doubtful that she, or anyone else in Daley's office, had no inkling of what was going on.

In Carol Felsenthal's article this week in Chicago Magazine, she boasted that there was one project at the State’s Attorney’s Office where she got to meet Daley. You might remember that it was Daley who looked the other way while Burge and his crew were torturing confessions out of hundreds of black men.

In 1990, she became the top lawyer for the mob (oops, I mean the) Illinois Gaming Board. And for the last 20 years, since leaving the gaming board, she has represented big gambling interests like WMS Gaming (sued over $1.5 billion merger deal) and Mandalay Resorts (just fined $500k by Gaming Commission in drug, prostitution scandal), who contribute heavily to her campaign.

She's currently Managing Partner of Fox Rothschild's Chicago Office.

More makes light of the connection.

“This is not the 1940s or the 1950s,” she says. “Some gaming companies are run by Harvard business graduates."

OK, I'm relieved. You?

A Sinking ship

I watched an old film, "The Shipping News" the other night. I liked it, mainly because it's set on the wild, stormy, Newfoundland coast and stars Kevin Spacey, one of my favorites. One scene that grabbed me, had newsman Quoyle, played by Spacey, an inexperienced sailor out in an unworthy boat in rough waters, bailing furiously while the sea overtakes and sinks his sorry craft... (I'll stop here, in case you haven't see it).

That image stays with me as I'm following (and telling) the story of the equally unworthy craft, the leaky Rahm Emanuel regime in the midst of another stormy scandal. Only Rahm (a terrible actor) is in the sinking boat with a crew of thieves and scalawags. Among them, his indicted schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett, police Supt. Garry McCarthy and State's Atty. Anita Alvarez. As the story unfolds, Rahm is faced with the choice of throwing some of the dead weight overboard or going down with the ship.

But no matter how hard he bails, it's the rotting, fabric of the regime that's sinking him. And each of his hand-picked crew that gets tossed, only reveals the depths of the problem.

Rahm didn't hire Alvarez. Like him, she was elected and therefore not so easy to dump, even after her betraying of the public trust in her mishandling of the 16-shot, racist police execution of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. So many questions still remain. But she pretty much sealed her fate last week when she stood before the media and assured the public that cops hadn't erased the tapes from the Burger King cameras, showing officer Van Dyke pumping more than a dozen rounds into the bleeding body of McDonald. The tape may well not have been erased. I can't imagine the missing 86-minutes could show anything more damning they the mysteriously-soundless video that Alvarez and Rahm were finally forced to release.

But anything is possible with this group of scoundrels. Case in point: The city is sitting on another damning video of a cop shooting an unarmed black man, Ronald Johnson. This seems to be Rahm/Alvarez M.O.

Yesterday, reporter Carol Marin showed actual pictures of  street cops sitting at the BK computer going through the tapes. Why?

Alvarez may be forced to resign before my choice, Kim Foxx, gets a shot at her in the upcoming election. I would rather see her go out that way so that Foxx is the people's choice. But either way, it's all good.

McCarthy swears he's staying and that Rahm "has my back". He obviously doesn't know Rahm very well. Ask Byrd-Bennett.

He's toast.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kim Foxx, running against Alvarez

Carol Marin

“The federal investigation of the shooting is active and ongoing,” the U.S. Attorney’s office assured us this week. 

Just remember. The feds never hurry. And Chicago is bleeding. -- Sun-Times

Kim Foxx

“She [State's Attorney Anita Alvarez] waited until her hand was forced by intense political and media pressure surrounding the release of this painful video. She waited even after City Hall was prepared to pay the McDonald family $5 million in damages.” -- Chicago Defender

Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, former member of "Anita's Army"

It was in this culture that Anita Alvarez and many other prosecutors (including Mayor Richard M. Daley) rose through the ranks of the Office of the State's Attorney, participating in its racialized rules of abuse and being institutionally rewarded with promotions and then, election wins. -- NBC News

House Select Committee on Indian Affairs

 “The goal of Indian education,” according to the committee, “should be to make the Indian child a better American rather than to equip him to be a better Indian.” -- Politico: How Washington created some of the worst schools in America

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka

Well, I always say, you know, most people who talk about schools have never been in one besides the fact that they graduated from an elementary school or high school. The reality is, schools get better when a community supports them. -- Democracy Now

Colleen Connolly

On Wednesday morning, the hashtag #ResignRahm was trending on Twitter in Chicago. -- Ward Room

Demand Rahm Emanuel's resignation. pic.twitter.com/kkk8buxzSi #ResignRahm Add your name. https://t.co/HCt1vL5uVJ

— Leland W Griffin Jr (@LeeGriffin42) November 29, 2015

Chicago needs better than @RahmEmanuel. We need a mayor who cares more about black lives than xmas trees. #BlackLivesMatter #ResignRahm

— Kian B. (@FalseFlorimell) November 29, 2015

It’s not about bad apples. It’s about a rotten tree that’s producing rotten fruit. Cut it down at the root. #LaquanMcDonald #ResignRahm

— Amara Enyia (@AmaraEnyia) November 29, 2015

Black Friday Protest: '16 Shots. Stop the cover-up!'

When Black Friday comes
I'll stand down by the door
And catch the grey men when they
Dive from the fourteenth floor -Steely Dan

The first recorded use of the term “Black Friday” was applied not to holiday shopping madness, but to financial crisis: specifically, the crash of the U.S. gold market on September 24, 1869. Two notoriously ruthless Wall Street financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, worked together to buy up as much as they could of the nation’s gold, hoping to drive the price sky-high and sell it for astonishing profits. On that Friday in September, the conspiracy finally unraveled, sending the stock market into free-fall and bankrupting everyone from Wall Street barons to farmers.

Today's Black Friday protest called by Rev. Jesse Jackson, CTU Pres. Karen Lewis and other ministers and community-based organizations, targeted ongoing police violence and the cover-up by political leaders of the brutal killing of a black teenager by killer cop Van Dyke, who pumped 16 shots in the body Laquan McDonald. 

Several thousand of us marched up Michigan Ave., rallied at the Water Tower, and disrupted business as usual on this, the busiest shopping day of the year. Our slogans called for the removal of those complicit in the cover-up and the delaying the release of the video and the charging of Van Dyke for 13 months -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, and States Atty. Anita Alvarez.

Be sure to read this commentary posted on NBC News by Temple Univ. Prof. Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve. who's the author of the forthcoming book, "Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Criminal Courts." Van Cleve's point is that this is a matter of institutionalized racism, not a case of a few bad apples.

She writes:

...they are merely the figureheads of an entire criminal court system fueled by racism. A court system where the death of another black boy barely makes anyone stand up and take notice and staying quiet about the police officers involved in the shooting is considered a professional courtesy amongst peers.

Mom from Ohio explains to son why protesters are on Mag Mile: "they shot a man 16 times.." #LaquanMcDonald https://t.co/dtBNDpfntn

— DNAinfo.com Chicago (@DNAinfoCHI) November 27, 2015