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 

Disinvestment & Gentrification: Two sides of the same racist coin

On yesterday's Hitting Left show, community activists Christian Diaz and Cory Stevenson both agreed. Southside disinvestment and northside gentrification were simply two sides of the same racist coin.

Nowhere is this more evident than in city policies of closing dozens of schools in struggle south and west side communities while opening up new charter and selective enrollment schools on the north side. This tweet from the parent group, Raise Your Hand, brings the contradiction into clear focus.

#ERSBnow this is absurd. District lost 40k students in 7 years, resources spread way too thin. CPS keeps putting out charter RFPs yearly. @ILSenDems @HouseDemsIL what's the plan? https://t.co/uS4uIRXbR8

— RYHAction (@RYHAction) November 14, 2018

Cory Stevenson pointed to the impact the closing of two southside Target stores could have on his community and relatives in terms of loss of hundreds of jobs and access to basic needs for families that don't have cars.

The Target store closings are symptomatic of the structural disinvestment and erosion of public space and public decision-making now taking place in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods. This includes the closing of schools, clinics, stores and other city services, making many areas of the city uninhabitable.

While across town, gentrification has created a housing crisis for poor and middle-class, mainly Latino families in neighborhoods like Logan Square. This, according to Diaz, who is the housing organizer at Logan Square Neighborhood Association (LSNA).  LSNA has been organizing community meetings and marches to protest high rents and support affordable housing projects.

While supporting the push for new rent-control laws, Diaz doesn't think current emphasis on lifting the ban on rent-control is the best tactic. "My fear is that we're talking about a campaign that may take 10 years and in the meantime, families are losing their homes and rents are climbing, making affordable housing out of reach."

Instead, LSNA is pushing for a "community land trust" where a nonprofit, community-based organization develops and stewards affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of a community.

Harold died 30 years ago. 

At our holiday family gathering this week, we will take a moment to remember Chicago's greatest mayor, Harold Washington, who suffered a fatal heart attack the day before Thanksgiving 30 years ago. Today the city is more in need of a mayor like Harold, than ever.

Instead, big-money corporatists and old-line machine Democrats have jumped into the race following Rahm Emanuel's departure and they appear to be sucking up all the air and money from the campaign as they try and push out upstart progressives. The shakeout will begin in earnest after Nov. 26, the day that nominating petitions are due. Without a big campaign war chest and paid staff or ward organization to round up the needed 12,500 valid signatures, several of the early runners are likely to drop out. Actually, campaigns really need to collect at least double that amount so they can withstand a challenge.

More on that to come. But for now there two developments in the past week that caught my attention. The craziest came from candidate Bill Daley, who more than all the others, combines the worst of big-money corporatism with old-line machine politics. Daley, trying to outflank former top-cop, Garry McCarthy as the law-and-order candidate, says he wants to have thousands of camera-equipped drones flying over the city.

He tells the Sun-Times:

“I’d have as many cameras as we could buy so the people could feel safer wherever they’re at … I’d have a camera on every block in the city if I could.”

Chicago’s network of 29,000 public and private surveillance cameras is already billed as the largest “federated” system in the nation. But I'll bet there's a Daley family member or close business associate who'd be thrilled to get that drone contract. Kind of like Rahm's red-light camera plan.

The other recent development is the entrance of Susana Mendoza into the race. Mendoza, who has always been viewed suspiciously by progressives as a Rahm/Madigan machine puppet, is now staking out progressive territory and trying to outflank frontrunner Toni Preckwinkle on the left. She promises to stop school closures, including the closing of embattled National Teachers Academy, the re-opening of the clinics closed by Rahm, and support for an elected school board.

You can believe her or not. But for now at least, other candidates will have to respond on these issues.

Dizzying!