The way to access the halls of power is on one's belly.
Groveling before an elected, or appointed room temperature I.Q. with a nasty streak aiding and abetting a larcenous soul is the Chicago School Journalism.
No one crawls on her belly like a reptile better than Chicago Sun Times gossip, prattle, dirt, low-down, bilge and bullshit doyen Michael Sneed.
Steinberg, Brown, Spielman and Sweet are close to the nectarous nest, but they wriggle without real gusto.
Ink-slingers in this hick-burg, with the exceptions of Natalie Korecki, Tim Novak and estimable John Kass, eschew shoe leather for the blower to gain access from the narrow-foreheads at the County Building and City Hall.
So adept are these serpentine scribes, that in no times at all they, or their spouses, children, significant others find work with BGA, get a sinecure at De Paul, land a spot on the staffs of the Speaker, the Guv, the Mayor, the Leader, or the foundations that funnel the filthy lucre to the direct action social justice warriors.
Andy Shaw, who could not find the microphone into which he was shouting at the Democratic Convention, when John Kerry sailed into Boston Harbor like the British Fleet and big-knocker-ed socialites wore bright pink " I Had an Abortion" T-Shirts, is now the Watchdog of the People Killing Illinois.
But Michael Sneed remains the Queen of the Nest!
Today, she offers more propaganda than a Pfleger homily at St. Sabina Faith Community with Archbishop Cupich in the big chair.
Today, we are being signaled, given a heads-up, donchanew of the latest government grift.
The TextAlyzer. Think Skyway; think Red Light Camera's, think 20MPH less than 1,000 yards from the posted 30 MPH limit.
Quoth Sneed:
It’s no secret texting and using a handheld mobile device while driving is toxic, illegal and frequently deadly.
But brake on this mobile shocker!
• To wit: According to Chicago Police Department statistics obtained by Sneed, there were only 168 Chicago traffic citations for the improper use of mobile devices in 2016 — compared with 45,672 two years earlier in 2014!
So what gives?
Pause for a breath -
YOU DO!
Sneed slithered sources swiftly!
“It seems hard to believe, but when we received these shocking statistics we were stunned,” said Ald. Edward Burke (14th), who said Chicago traffic citations and violations in 2015 had already started dropping dramatically to 26,092!
“But the dramatic dip not only went down to 168 in 2016 — but as of April 2017, only 74 have been issued!
“Something happened,” Burke said.
“We are still looking into the reason for these statistics,” a Chicago Law Department source told Sneed.
“So now we are trying to find out why the issuance of tickets for the offenses has dropped so precipitously,” Burke added.
“Whatever the reason, be assured we will correct it one way or another.”
• A national note: “It’s distressing to see what’s happening across the country,” he said. “The stats show the most frequent cause of serious traffic accidents is the use of mobile phones and texting devices while driving — so we need to revitalize the effort led four years ago by Secretary of State Jesse White to enforce these traffic laws.”
• Backshot: Burke claims he and Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) came across the shocking stats while “investigating the possibility of requiring the police to use a Textalyzer device that could determine whether a driver involved in an accident was on the phone at the time of the crash.
Ceasefire was ceased back in March of 2015. That means simply that Ceasefire received no more State Money from us to them.
Ceasefire's web page commands, Cure Violence. Well, Ceasefire is smoked, salted, honeyed and cured like any great piece of pork and it is done.
Now, the Illinois voices that depend upon Illinois Alzheiner's (IA) are calling for the return of cash to Ceasefire $$$$$$. Illinois Alzheimer's- voters forget everything, every screwing, every promise, every election. IA is the only explanation for the continued public life of Dick Durbin, Jan Schakowsky, Mike Quigley, Forrest Claypool, Toni Preckwinkle, 90% of the Chicago City Council and the guy from over by Midway, what runs the State. IA allows Ralph Martire to continue to pie-chart Illinois into the poor house. IA allows Lisa Madigan to shine the light on workers and not the real gonifs - SEE Above.
Illinois Alzeheimers is chronic, progressive and fatal.
IA comes from being a person of normal intelligence, generous sentiments and modest income being too afraid to tell his neighbors, that 'No, I do not think that Andy Shaw is not a goof, I do believe that WBEZ is as lame as Derrick Rose, I am not with Hillary, Abortion is always killing a baby and the Sun Times is the Tribune with more wasted space.'
This fear being termed a Tea Party Palin-ite, Earth Hating, Meat Eating, Cretinous Downton Abbey Ignorant, Trumper Bumper Sticker, Racist Homophobe is all too real and has made all of us afraid to speak our minds and our expeinces, for fear that Bill Moyers will pop out the bushes and DEFINE US! Being defined by other people who need social reassurances verfied by WTTW, only hurts once. You get over it. It gets better and that is the Savage Truth.
Now, Ceasefire is back on the tongues of people taking the Metra to the Merc, looking for great seats to Hamilton and finding just the right candelabra for the last picnics of the summer at Ravinia.
Only last night I heard a jazz fan at the Serbian Village, a Chicago Police Officer say, " Ceasefire will get funded, but cops will get railroaded out of existence." I agreed and we listened to the music, Waiting for the Train to Come In.
Rich Miller's Capitol Fax Blog - the Illinois Clearing House of Budget Scams and Legislation lashing, is all in for Ceasefire. Miller offers a hand-wringing lament over the numbers of Chicago's fallen citizens,
Today’s number: 425
Monday, Aug 22, 2016
* Tribune…
Through Sunday, 425 people were slain in Chicago, up 50 percent from 283 in a year-earlier period, according to official police statistics. During the same period, shooting incidents rose by 48 percent to 2,136, up from 1,443, the data show.
Other violent crimes such as sexual assaults, robberies and aggravated batteries also have spiked by double digits.
- Posted by Rich Miller
and opens the door for commentary by lobbyists and Democratic operatives around Illinois
- uptown progressive - Monday, Aug 22, 16 @ 11:11 am:
There is no magic bullet - but in my community we lost CeaseFire funding (violence interrupters) and the CCBYS funding (crisis intervention with at-risk youth) was greatly reduced. No expansion in youth employment opportunities or for fully funded afterschool programing. These programs do make a difference.
Examples, please? No?
- Earnest - Monday, Aug 22, 16 @ 11:31 am:
>These programs do make a difference.
If only Rauner worried that his intentional destruction of the social service system could result in him appearing “soft on crime.”
Examples, please, of Ceasefire bringing thug violence to a $hit-screaming halt? One deep thinker lamented the fact that blood is not spilled in Switzerland Chicago -
- cassandra - Monday, Aug 22, 16 @ 12:02 pm:
Let’s not forget that some parts of Chicago are said to be a safe as Switzerland, and those of us who live in or near Chicago know which these (predominantly white, upper-middle-class) areas are. Chicago is deeply segregated, by race and economic status. More police and social services and persuading more folks to get married may help around the edges, but it is persistent segregation which must be addressed–and isn’t being addressed adequately at any level of goverment. Too risky for our political masters, I guess.
Well, Ride the Nine Down on my Broad Manly White Ass! I live in Geneva! Morgan Park!
That same Monday morning, The Better Government Association's Andy Shaw thundered loudly for all of us to "Think Ouside the Box" on thug violence ( often referred to as gun, or police violence in the Media), including opening the coffers to Tio Hardiman's Ceasefire Interrupters and Gang-banger Alumni Association
Are there any solutions? While we’re waiting for City Hall and CPD to implement reforms spelled out several months ago in a task force report, including a new agency to replace the ineffectual Independent Police Review Authority, other well- intentioned suggestions are surfacing:
Veteran Chicago journalist Jim O’Shea, writing in the Sun-Times, encourages CPD to resurrect the Cease Fire program that enlists former gang members and ex-convicts to work with police to curb violence.
O’Shea points to the program’s impact over the July 4th weekend in Englewood last year—no homicides or shootings—compared with 11 shootings this year, after the program was sidelined by insufficient funding and CPD’s reluctance to work with the group.
“City officials and the Chicago Police Department,” O’Shea writes, “seem willing to try anything to stop the violence…except something that actually works.”
Los Angeles police chief Charlie Beck and civil rights lawyer Connie Rice, writing in the New York Times, argue for the kind of sophisticated community policing that’s reduced violence in some of LA’s toughest sections.
Success, they write, depends on communities cooperating with “humane, compassionate, culturally fluent cops who have a mind set of respect, do not fear black men, and serve long enough to know residents’ names, speak their language and help improve their neighborhoods.”
Ceasefire has done . . .nothing to stop, curb. or hinder thug violence.
LA is not Chicago, Andy. Chicago is more like Philly, Detroit, Baltimore, Cleveland, or Baton Rouge, because the Media, the political oligarchs. academics and Marxist lawyers have destroyed policing.
The answer to the problem is radical. Stop listening to morons, grifters and Reds. Even more radical - start voting out the morons, grifters and Reds. That is how one avoids Illinois Alzheimers.
“Faced with the prospect of five or nine years to try to dig the state out of the mess that it’s in, Bill decided that’s not what he’s wanting to do at age 65,” campaign spokesman Pete Giangreco said.
Bill Daley bowed out of the Democratic Gubernatorial Primary Race, yesterday. Today, Tio Hardiman remains the only Democrat in the race to unseat Gov. Pat Quinn of Planned Parenthood Illinois.Tio Hardiman is the wife beating family man and former chief of the Illinois Gang-banger Pensioners - Ceasefire.
If Thundering Dick Simpson of Mikva Industries says he has NO chance . . ."Hardiman’s efforts at the grassroots level are undeniable, but with no legislative or policy experience, and a domestic violence controversy looming over his head, Washington and Dick Simpson, Political Science chair at the University of Illinois—Chicago say he has no chance of repeating the same statewide success that other black officials like now-President and former Illinois Senator Barack Obama or former Senator turned Mayoral candidate Carol Moseley Braun have.. . . And Laura Washington says that Tio Hardiman is "a true community advocate. He is a true grassroots man,” I just might be on the side of the angels, for once.
No Policy experience, says Thundering Dick - that's a plus. Policy is what killed government and government works best when politics is based upon loyalty. What could go wrong? Illinois.
Gov. Pat Quinn has all of the loyalty and commitment of an English Springer Spaniel; if you want to know where you stand with Pat Quinn, wait until Personal PAC Boss Terry Cosgrove lets him know. That said, I believe that recent revelations printed in theChicago Sun Times concerning CTA and RTA transportation moguls with a little Breakfast Burge Mythology on the side for post-prandial snacking.were spoon fed to the always hapless BGA by the Quinn-ippiac Clown Posse, You can call Bill Daley "Banker" six-ways to Sunday, but this other stuff? Hold the phone.
Given these exciting trends in the race for our Palace of Versailles in Springfield, Tio Hardiman has my vote for the Democratic Primary for Governor.
I do not believe that Emily's List, Planned Parenthood or Terry Cosgrove's Personal PAC will endorse Tio Hardiman. I know how Tio will spend Illinois dollars and so do the Feds.
Imagine spending quality time with Andy Shaw. Imagine.
I am old enough to remember when serious people, busy people, gifted people, other-directed people and competent people would give softballs, ninnies, grifters and egoists the air.
Over time, serious people, busy people, gifted people, other-directed people and competent people were asked by persons with authority over them, or somehow allied to them, to give softballs, ninnies, grifters and egoists greater opportunity to air their plans, policies, pet projects and polemics the same courtesy as people who could actually accomplish a task, follow through a promise and do so without consideration of their future power, purse stuffing or personal attention.
Today, aspiration and transcendent will trumps ones ability to legislate, budget, instruct, cut pipe, clear a homicide, or back a 40' tractor trailer up to a loading dock without calamity. Caring, really really caring and hammering home that titanic nail of care into the public policy coffin is the litmas test for seriousness.
I taught with a some grifters, all too briefly, who found life employment as education administrators, activisists and high-paid consultants. One such paragon of care sold grades for snow tires and returned to obligation to students by selling NASA space ice cream crystals from the back of his trunk. Another self-professed spiritualist who taught PE and organized Christian discussion groups at a Catholic high school with a very orthodox and competent religion department, while trysting with a sophomore girl who was large with child, before the 1st Semester exams, despite the high-minded predator's own family of three snactioned by the United Church of Christ.
These grifters were immediately sent packing. The former died of a massive heart attack, while changing his snow tires in the blizzard of 1983 far from his former place of employment, but with a trunk full of Astronaut Ice Cream. The later became a public school superintendent in deep southern Illinois and collected a magnificent pension in 1999.
There were women on the grift as well. One sold a book written entirely by her students. Another became a well-compensated criminal justice activist after being cashiered for not correcting tests -at all among other shameful deeds.Then, there is the Rev. LIE BERRYAN-PROFITUS who takes up a collection of cash money from students and new faculty members for for every conceivable heart-breaking tale of human suffering ( most imangined), or recognition of Birfdays, Onnahs, Wedins and Ged Wells, yet can not account for purchased gifts, honoraria, bequests. My saluation was largely "Take it on the heel and toe, grifter," upon coming into proximity with this Dewey Decimal disaster.
They cared deeply, male and female, but laughed out of the faculty lounge and the classroom. Gradually, the new civility trumped, " ARE YOU OUT OF WHAT PASSES FOR YOUR #$%^ing MIND?" Like the English teacher who dressed up like a gondolier, a waiter, and Gertrude Stein had ballet mirrors installed in his classroom after convincing someone that his resume included not only graduate work under Wayne Booth at University of Chicago, a pending PhD. from Loyola University, editorship of PMLA and two years with the Joffrey Ballet. He cared.
I am very often, and no doubt correctly, criticized for being caustic and cynical, hateful and bitter, cranky and judgmental. I am. I have the exact temperament of highly skilled tradesman saddled with a supervisor who does not know that an eighth is larger in measure than sixteenth, notwithstanding the fact that there are twice the number in a sixteenth. A good electrician, pipe fitter, stationary engineer, carpenter or machinist, not great mind you, would and is fully justified in declaring the Alderman's nephew a complete unexpurgated moron.
People on watch, on task, on guard and on the job are saddled with more work for less pay, while cretins feebs, dummies and platitude preaching footpads with great hearts screw up the labors.
Nothing is more screwed up than Illinois government. Some say, where it once had to do with people not paying their fair share of taxes (read Ralph Martire - an epic grifter), it now is all about legislative voting maps. Could be.
About a week ago, I rubbished a Chicago Tribune editorial ( read Bruce Dold -an epic ninny) trumpetting the massive grift planned by CHANGE Illinois, which lists Illinois epic softball/egoist Andy " MICROPHONE!" Shaw of BGA on its board of directors. Today, Andy, the former ABC go-to-goof who once demanded to know what was going on of a Chicago homicide detective crouching over the body parts of a Tech 9 dismembered Gangster Disciple, who replied, " We suspect foul play," is now openly shilling for his work on remapping Illinois and reforming, once and for all, politics as we know it.
In some districts the Dems fielded stronger candidates or ran better campaigns, but in others gerrymandering made the difference. And that helps explain why so few races are competitive, or even contested, and why incumbents rarely lose. Is that healthy for democracy? Of course not. So how can we clean it up? Well, lawmakers can pass a bill replacing gerrymandering with computerized mapmaking based on geography and population, not politics. Say what? Elected reps making it easier for opponents to beat them by unrigging the process? Next. Voters, as in “we the people,” can reform the system by referendum. They can sign enough petitions to put an apolitical redistricting plan on the ballot, and then pass it. The League of Women Voters gave it a valiant try two years ago but fell short. This year CHANGE ILLINOIS, the reform group that pushed campaign finance limits through the General Assembly, is leading a new drive that, if successful, gives us a healthier redistricting process in 2020, and a leveler and more competitive playing field in the 2022 elections.
That’s a long way off.
At one time, I might believe that Andy, but these days? I'd allow Eldridge Gerry, his own bad self. to salamander up Illinois before the pack of grifters among whom you number your gifts, Andy. I 'd have Jimmy the Two Headed Boy fix my air conditioner, before I'd allow this pack of villains to get their mitts on anything. Shucks, I'd have Pork Chop Louis Farrakhan over to a Passover picnic on my deck in Morgan Park, before I'd allow these goofs any nod of agreement from my tired old forehead.
Andy the new courtesy has removed the fools cap from your noggin and Velcro'd the laurels of public gravitas on your scalp.
You are no longer the giggle button of ABC, but the policy THE pronouncement foghorn of the Illinois BGA.
There I go being all improbus, crudelis, et duro, again. I could always suffer fools gladly, but never seriously.
The preacher’s garment is cut according to the pattern of that of the hearers, for the most part. Oliver Wendell Holmes Oh, Yeah . . .this kills me , too!
Dad always said that I couldn't find my butt with both hands. I can. Allow me to add this imperative -“Defend the unborn against abortion even if they persecute you, calumniate you, set traps for you, take you to court or kill you." - Pope Francis to celebrate Pro-life Mass, Vatican
"You stand up for what you believe in, even if it gets in the way of what other people think. You are proud of yourself and your accomplishments and you enjoy letting people know that."
A peach of a guy with all the sweetness one could expect from a life well-spent and in good company: short on brains but a terrific dancer!
Author:
Every Heart and Hand: A Leo High School Story
The Chorito Hog Leg, Book One: A Novel of Guam in Time of War