Thugs Kill Baby, Again! Trading Shots for Votes and Calling it Gun Violence

I got up this morning to a bold orange-colored sky, announcing a glorious Sunday in Michigan City, Indiana.

Mass is at 10 AM at St. Stanislaus, six blocks to the south of my home and up a paved street that was once a sand dune.

I read the news, beginning with Second City Cop, the only reliable source of news in Chicago and run by a mysteriously literate, witty and clear-thinking police officer.

The officer/writer included a Chicago media report of the slaughter of the baby and the wounding of his mother, while they returned home from a laundromat near 60th & Halsted in the Englewood neighborhood.  A car pulled up next to their car and seven to eight shots were fired, hitting the infant in the chest and grazing the mother.

Second City Cop knows all too well that no shooter will be brought to trial for this horror, but points directly at who is responsible:  Mayor Lori Lightfoot, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, her creature States Attorney Kim Foxx, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart and Chief of Cook County Courts Tim Evans.

These pandering politicians are intellectual lightweights and shameless hucksters, concerned only with playing race-opportunity cards at every deal.

Tom Dart's press people paint him as a really WOKE and thoughtful agent of change, but he should act like a sheriff.  Hollywood actor John Cusack already grabbed the role that Dart insists upon playing to the advantage of no one but himself and his connected siblings. Dart has allowed the worst of the worst back on to Chicago's streets and preened before the likes of the oafish Mike Flannery and other propaganda spinners in Chicago's supine media.

Mayor Lightfoot proved herself to be a total incompetent this past May when she gave the green light to looters and Marxist agitators.

Toni Preckwinkle is a proven bigot and a vindictive power wielding oligarch.

Tim Evans is a career Democratic Party hack who parlayed his seat as a do-nothing alderman into a race-baiting grievance-policy autocrat who sends career criminals back to do havoc on Chicago.

The common shield used by each of these vote-sucking hacks is the strawman "Gun Violence."

The car used to drive up to the infant and his mother was driven by a thug.  The 7-8 bullets sprayed into the mother and child were helped along by the fingers of thugs.

Guns are inanimate objects.

Politicians and thugs know exactly what they are doing and they could care less about consequences.

I buried a score or more of bright and talented young men when I worked at Leo High School -1995-2016.  From Eric Ersery to Jason Riley to Antonio Collins, same old, same old - no one was caught, charged, tried, convicted, or imprisoned.  Hey, it's gun violence. No harm, no foul. 

I woke up in Michigan City, Indiana.  There are shots fired in this Indiana town, but they do not become part of a compelling narrative used to keep grifters elected to office.

I will go to 10 AM Mass at St. Stanislaus and say a prayer for the baby's mother. The child is home with Christ.

Chicago, Cook County and Illinois will do absolutely nothing for the grieving and wounded mother. 

Tom Dart will preen for Mike Flannery.  Lori Lightfoot will blame Trump. Toni Preckwinkle will raise taxes on everything and anything but her perpetual scowl and contempt for anyone not Toni Preckwinkle,  Kim Foxx will whine about police officers leading happy lives and she can't have that, and Tim Evans will open the iron bars and let more thugs out to exact more gun violence.

These politicians are not the only problem, however.

The other problem is that nice people will continue to allow Dart, Lightfoot, Preckwinkle and Foxx to hold public office,  Can't do a damn thing about Judge Tim Evans. He ain't going nowhere.

Neither is a former one-year old from Englewood.

Payback Really is a Bitch! Cook County Purge of Teamsters, Guards and Anyone Toni Preckwinkle Don't Like.

Hyde Park 2006 Independence Day parade (left to right starting at center in light green): Preckwinkle as the Statue of Liberty, Illinois State Representative Barbara Flynn Currie as Uncle Sam, and Chicago City Council Alderman Leslie Hairston as Betsy Ross

I did a buddy of mine a solid. He asked me to help get Pat Quinn elected Governor for real in 2009 and Pat would do my buddy a solid.  I was dubious.  No Progressive ever does any one a solid.   I am old school; I supported and voted for Pat Quinn for Governor. I still need a shower on that one.

That sin of mine is the real reason why Chicago, Cook County and the State of Illinois are so screwed up.

We all do 'nice people,' a solid.

Jeremy Bentham, the great 19th Century economist argued for the greatest good for the greatest number of people.  Can't argue with that.

However, for a Progressive, the greatest number is # 1.  That truth was argued to young President Teddy Roosevelt by glaciologist John Muir and still holds true today.

I did a buddy a solid and did not vote my own conscience.  I detested Pat Quinn's politics going all of the way back to the days when he carried water for a crook and a Progressive - Governor Dan Walker.
Quinn opposed all regular Democrats, because he wanted to be viewed as a Reformer ( aka - unskilled policy bully).

The Late Illinois Senate Leader Phil Rock was a Democrat of the old school - anti-abortion, anti-Marxist and true to the values that created the greatest standard of living in world history. Phil Rock kept goofs like Quinn at arm's length.  That was long ago, when being middle class was a good thing.

Pat Quinn and Dan Walker and Abner Mikva and Dawn Clark Netsch and Bill Singer and Jesse Jackson and Michael Shakman and Larry Bloom and Toni Preckwinkle and the late Red guru Dr. Quentin Young were dead set against  this middle class hegemony.

Toni Preckwinkle was a Catholic high school ( Visitation), when Pat Quinn was honing his Hyde Park Mafia ( Abner Mikva) chops.  Preckwinkle had a reputation as a humorless, racist ( hates whitey) and not very well read history instructor and those qualities made her an ideal candidate for IVI-IPO Democrats.

It took Toni three swings  with the IVI bat to unseat Tim Evans for Alderman of the 4th Ward, but the rest is the typical Progressive history - suck up to Regular Democrats, gain their trust, knife them in the kidneys and repeat, repeat, repeat and repeat while keeping the media with you.

Sometimes, the Feds get in the way of Progressive Independent and Reform minded Democrats -Larry Bloom (neighboring 5th Ward Alderman), IVI-IPO operative Bob Creamer and Illinois Governors Dan Walker and Rod Blagojevich come to mind.

When Reformer Larry Bloom went to school in 1999, Mikva Challenged Federal Judge was wont to complain about Federal prosecutors for  "prosecutorial zeal does not, as I perceive it, justify overstatements of the nature I find in some respects in this case."  Convict Larry Bloom whined, "I was mugged--not by any petty thief or street tough, but by agents of my government, our government."

Translated - "Larry Stole and cheated on his taxes but criminy . . .he's a Goo-Goo!"

Thus far, Toni Preckwinkle has escaped the eyes of the Feds.  Therefore, Toni Preckwinkle does what she wants and to whom she wants. It is now the Teamsters, who work for Progressive rival Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.

Tit for tat?

Or a case of unintended consequences?

Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart’s office just got a letter from Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle listing 925 positions designated for layoffs — if a judge doesn’t allow a countywide sweet beverage tax to take effect by August.
• The kicker: Sneed is told 377 of those jobs, many of them held by Cook County Jail correctional officers, are held by members of the Chicago Teamsters Union.
So here’s the kick in the butt.
Recently, the Teamsters Union took out a full-page newspaper ad opposing the tax, which Preckwinkle vigorously backed.
“This sure looked like a shot across the bow,” a top Sneed source said.
“Or interesting timing that many of the designated layoffs were members of the Teamsters Union, which took out the ad opposing the tax,” the source said.

You see, Teamsters not only work as Correctional personnel, but also deliver Pop. Pop is a Progressive target, because fat kids love it and it rots teeth, creates obesity and goes great with salty snacks.

Teamsters deliver salty snacks.

Teamsters also deliver votes.

Let's get back to my sins.

I agreed to do a pal a solid.  I helped support Pat Quinn for Governor.  Running with daffy Pat filling the void left by reformer Rod Blagojevich, for trying to sell  a Senate seat to IVI-IPO Alumnus Barack Obama, was Toni Preckwinkle for President of Cook County Board to unseat Todd Stroger, created by Progressive patron Tom Hynes, to replace the late John Stroger, a Regular Democrat and gentleman to the backbone.

My pal was immediately stabbed in the back by Pat Quinn upon his election, because Quinn has the loyalty of a gnat.

Toni Preckwinkle rode Quinn's coat-tails, because of people like me.  I did a pal a solid and created the person taking jobs away from 925 families in Cook County.

That's Progressive.  Get people to do you a solid and then give it to them good and hard.

As Progressive Federal Judge Milton Shadur lamented when he was forced to sentence Reformer Larry Bloom, "It is true of law-enforcement agencies in addition to anyone else that if you lie down with dogs, you are likely to get up with fleas."

As the great Fats Waller once reasoned, " One never knows, Do One?"

Ain't that a Bitch, Judge?

Welcome to Foxx's Rooster Coop, Where the Roosters Spit Hockers

Minor Offenses.

Taking the last cold beer in the icebox, or that slice of pizza?

Nah. Those transgressions might get a raised eye brow, or a verbal rebuke, but here are some things one might do in order to find oneself before Cook County Judge Peggy Chiampas.

• Retail Theft
• Minor Drug Offences
• Mental health-related charges
• Simple Assault
• Indecent Exposure
• Prostitution
• Drug Possession
• Drug Sale
• Criminal Damage to Property

Minor things. 

Poor folks no longer worry about getting up the cash to bond out before court date, because Cook County Government President Toni Preckwinkle, Sheriff Tom Dart and States Attorney Kim Foxx are all about Prison/Jail/Detention/Correction Reform.

Good news!!! You can now expedite the bonding process by emailing ccso.bonds@cookcountyil.gov before you come to the CCDOC. When we receive the email, we will begin getting the release paperwork together, which could cut down on your wait time. Your email must include the following:

That means, not holding people charged with Minor Offences in Cook County Jail.  People like gentle giant and Lynnwood resident Christian Brown, 23.

Brown, 23, of south suburban Lynwood, was up for a minor offense in the Leighton Criminal Courts Building on Saturday afternoon before Judge Peggy Chiampas when she handed down an I-bond, or signature bond, by which the defendant isn’t required to post cash for release, according to several people present during the hearing.
 Witnesses said Brown then spat at the veteran judge, striking one of her arms and her black robe. Some of those present for the incident wondered whether Brown knew that he would have been released without posting bond.
Before Brown was hustled out of the courtroom by deputies, Chiampas held him in direct contempt of court and ordered him held in Cook County Jail for 30 days. She initially ordered him held for 30 months but said she misspoke and corrected her previous order. Chiampas *did note that she could have had Brown jailed for six months but opted not to.

Mr. Brown spit at the Judge, when he was asked if he understood that the Cook County I-Bond insured that he would waltz out of the Leighton Criminal Courts Building and onto the pavement on California Avenue - guilty as hell and free as a bird.  

Well, not quite. And there's pizza!

Guilty as hell, free as a bird.

That is a paraphrase from Old Bill Ayers and his Old Lady, one of the master switches in turning our Justice System into the one where Minor Offenders like Christian Brown can spit on a Judge doing him a solid.

The above referenced news article from the Chicago Tribune does not explain exactly what 'Minor Offence' had been the cause of Mr. Brown's visit to the Leighton Criminal Courts Building.  However, Mr. Brown's new status as a guest of Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart is for Criminal Contempt. 

Kim Foxx is all about criminal contempt or Justice.

Minor Offence

One wonders how much saliva will be needed to splatter to keep Cook County Offenders from spilling even more blood into our streets.  As Fats Waller said, "One never knows, do one?"

Judge Chiampas is a hero of the American judiciary.

A Simple Way to End Urban Slaughter -Kick the Policy Wheel in the 'Old Loving Tackle'

pol·i·cy 1  (pŏl′ĭ-sē) etymology: [Middle English policie, art of government, civil organization, from Old French; see police.]
           n. pl. pol·i·cies
1. A plan or course of action, as of a government, political party, or business, intended to influence and determine decisions, actions, and other matters: American foreign policy; the company's personnel policy.
2.
a. A course of action, guiding principle, or procedure considered expedient, prudent, or advantageous: Honesty is the best policy.
b. Prudence, shrewdness, or sagacity in practical matters: It is never good policy to speak rashly.

After widespread criticism of Chicago's yearlong delay in releasing video of a police officer's fatal shooting of a teenager, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced Tuesday that the city will begin releasing video of shootings by police within two to three months of each incident.
Emanuel cast the new policy as a break from the past for a city that has been sluggish in releasing recordings of controversial police encounters, though civil rights attorneys said the policy still allows for too much delay. Chicago Tribune

The word policy comes from the Middle French word for police.   If It Ain't Policy It Gets Ignored. Policy begets lawyers, lawsuits and future policy. Hence the Policy Wheel 2016.

The Policy Wheel whirls dervishly! Hell, it is making Western Civilization -now a microaggression in its utterance - disappear.

More importantly, Policy kills police officers and good policing by police women and men; yet, politicians apply policy universal for political gain and then demand good policing of police officers who stand a very good chance not going home at the end of a shift.

Policy is used by everyone - usually to no good effect.  Gutless, lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities in all walks of life turn to policy to make decisions they do not wish to stand with, punish the people who work for them, make budget cuts in the workforce, deny access to funding programs they want to see ended and point to when called on the carpet by some higher-up, gutless, lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrity.

Here in Chicago, when a Mayor steps on his Johnson, he points to the failed policies he inherited with taking his oath of office - “On the police use of force, this is not [new]. Everybody knows we have had other issues as it relates to the Abbate case, the Burge torture, the Summerdale [district scandal]. Every mayor, my predecessors — have dealt with this in one way or another,” Rahm Emanuel

Then, announces new policy -"(The task force) helped the city take a bold step forward, in a comprehensive way, to establish the rules going forward that are clear to everybody," Rahm Emanuel

Politicians ( Policy Breeders) want to make sure that their policies have the backing of the University of Chicago Crime Lab Boys - who already articulated the very 'policies' that have turned Chicago into a thug comfort zone - This from the U of C Crime Lab:

" Basic scientific research has dramatically changed our understanding of what drives human behavior, what types of social conditions are the most important risk or protective factors for violence involvement, and how to manage and direct the activities of large-scale organizations – including the challenges of taking good ideas and making them work at scale. Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations. We need to ensure that the frontier of policy innovation takes advantage of the frontier understanding from basic science of people and organizations."

The University of Chicago Crime Lab? Good lord. Arrive at pre-conceived conclusion and then round-up the necessary facts to 'prove' it. What PC nonsense and what political ninnies. N.B. " Basic scientific research has dramatically changed our understanding of what drives human behavior, what types of social conditions are the most important risk or protective factors for violence involvement, and how to manage and direct the activities of large-scale organizations – including the challenges of taking good ideas and making them work at scale. Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations. We ( University of Chicago Gobshites) need to ensure that the frontier of policy innovation takes advantage of the frontier understanding from basic science of people and organizations." from the UofC Crime Lab: about us.

The frontier of "policy innovations" - geld cops and scuttle justice. Epic fail - scientific facts are indisputable!

That crappola is what Cook County will use to end urban slaughter - Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart calls it a 'home run.'

N.B. - Government agencies are typically not equipped to translate basic science into policy innovations
You mean like -CeaseFire: Safe Zones: Gun Buy Backs the much put-upon IPRB: the Wrongful Everything Industry . . .?

Political worms working the loam.

Here in the action-packed world of urban Catholic education, policy worms its coils and attempts to be like CPS, a policy laden monster of titanic ineptitude.  Failed teachers, educators and too many administrators, hug policy - especially ZERO TOLERANCE POLICY.

I told a Catholic high school principal once that "policy is for . . . ."  I used a word employed pan-gender to indicate possession of a female reproductive organism, . . . a synonym for See You Next Tuesday that begins with the consonant P.

If a student violates dress code by wearing a black polo instead of a seasonal white polo, go up ask the student why.  Perhaps, there had been a laundry mishap. Do your job.  Don't hide behind policies Zero or Robust!

Policy comes from like-minded gutless,lazy, unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities found in our more prestigious colleges and universities.

The University of Chicago not only built the atomic bomb, birthed scores of conservative Nobel Prize winners, but also forests of pages of policies that became Yellow Brick Road for Forrest Claypools, Richard M. Daleys, Rahm Emanuels and Barack Obamas.

In short, policy aborted thought, vision and charity quicker than Kermit Gosnell with baby's noggin and sharp scalpel in his bloody mitts.

My humble plea to restore thought, vision and charity to all human aspirations and endeavors is this -

When a politician, bureaucrat, activist, Ralph Martire, or school administrator utters the word policy, policies, or equine scat like this:

Our other goal is to ensure that policymakers have adequate feedback about what their innovations are accomplishing so that policy approaches get better over time. While randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the standard for testing innovations in medicine, they remain far too rare in the areas of crime policy and social policy more generally. It is very difficult to identify the causal effects of policy interventions in the real world, a problem that can lead to unhelpful or even quite harmful policy decisions. Without good evidence, policymakers have no basis for allocating scarce public-sector resources across different potential uses other than hunches and politics.

Kick them, or a have much more athletic and robust friend do so, squarely and honestly in the balls.

It is an empirically tested and proven scientific fact that a good, well-aimed and swift kick in the nuts, will end any and all idiotic inclinations.

When people depend upon shared universal truths, witness their small place in human society and acknowledge the Prime Mover, then, and only then, will thugs be punished for their crimes.

Homicides may diminish, but gutless, lazy,unimaginative and ambitious mediocrities will think twice before using the P-Word. 

Crains's Chicago Business and Greg Hinz Smear Sheriff Dart and Former Sheriff Sheahan and the 19th Ward in Two Smarmy Paragraphs.

Sheriff Mike Sheahan is the only elected official to my knowledge who did not profit from public service. This I know for a fact. I try to avoid getting behind Mike Sheahan in the check-out lines at County Fair Foods, because it is a sure bet that it will take a good twenty minutes of coupon counting, before my groceries get tallied.

Nevertheless, Media Types like Mark Brown, Carol Marin, and hugely unfunny Neil Steinberg take lame-ass shots at Sheriff Sheahan and the 19th Ward.

Here is Greg Hinz attempting out-Neil Steinberg on the Mayoral Race -

But the real question is how much Mr. Dart has cleaned up the sheriff's office, which for a couple of decades has been pretty much a 19th Ward fiefdom. Mr. Dart seems to have done a pretty good job, but then, he was chief aide to former Sheriff Mike Sheahan, who caught lots of flak.

You can bet the sheriff's operation will get a full airing before the mayoral vote. Mr. Dart doesn't need any other stumbles.

Greg another one those EVERYONE KNOWS it is true Craptabulous Columinist Pimp Slaps! Really. Shakman! Greg, Shakman!


Gee, Greg EVERYONE know s that Crain's Chicago Business is in bed with Rahm Emanuel - all of the Smart Money. EVERYONE KNOWS THAT!

Oh, that's right. I am not a columnist. Can't get away with that. I'd like to see Sheriff Michael Sheahan ( ret.) hire Joe Powers and sue Crain's and your sorry ass for defamation of character.
What is the exact statistical breakdown of 19th Ward residents in the employ of the Cook County Sheriff?

Mike Quigley used to wow cocktail waitresses with what passes for his wit with a snotty crack about 19th Ward residents with County Plates. No numbers, just Profiling.

19th Ward profiling is acceptable, because Irish Catholics rarely take people like Greg Hinz, or Neil Steinberg by their rolled lapels, pull them up close for a 'chin wag' let alone for a trip outside and a thorough and salubrious beating. Rarely.

Catholic Cemetery's Roman Szabelski to Oversee the Horrors at Burr Oak

I was at Kean Gas this morning and heard from a Cook County Sheriff's Deputy that Sheriff Tom Dart had asked a judge to appoint someone to oversee the disaster that is Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL.

My Cousin Willie works for the Sheriff and he has not had much shut-eye in the last six or so days. Willie bought some fish from my son Conor at Di Cola's on Western Ave. just before closing on Tuesday. Conor said Willie looked dead on his feet.

All of the Sheriff's people have done a great job.

Today, I heard that Roman Szabelski of the Catholic Cemeteries was appointed.

Roman Szabelski the Chief of the forty or so Catholic Cemteries in the Chicago Area was appointred by a judge to oversee the horrors of Burr Oak Cemetery, years of mismanagement leading to one of the great horrors of recent history.

Two years ago, Mr. Szabelski appeared on Public Radio to talk about Green Issues in the Cemetery Industry. ( click my post title)

Brushing aside the usual smarm ( snide remarks about 'What Catholics Believe') from the soft-talkers of Public Radio, Mr. Szabelski articulated the care and concern of the Chicago Catholic Archdiocese for families of the deceased:

RICHARD: The Catholic Church prefers full-body burial in consecrated ground. That’s because Catholics believe in the resurrection of the dead. The church has only allowed cremation since the mid-Sixties.

MELBY: That doesn’t mean Chicago’s Catholic cemeteries are immune to progress.

COMPUTERIZED GRAVE LOCATOR: Spell out the last name of the deceased that you are trying to locate using the touch-screen keyboard, and then press search.

SZABELSKI: So I’ve just keyed in my family name and I’m pushing search. Florence Szabelski is my mother so I’m asking it to show that record to me.

MELBY: That’s Roman Szabelski. He’s executive director of Catholic cemeteries for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

RICHARD: Roman started mowing grass at the cemeteries in 1979. Today, he presides over 2.2 million dead at 43 cemeteries around Chicago. He has a good sense of what his customers want.

SZABELSKI: We come from a very conservative tradition where people want their 3 by 8, their grave, to look like their backyard, which is perfectly manicured.

MELBY: Providing that much space won’t be a problem anytime soon. Roman says the archdiocese has stockpiled enough land not just for the next couple decades, but for the next one to two hundred years.

SZABELSKI: We’re sitting in Queen of Heaven Cemetery right now, which is roughly about a 300-acre site. About 100 of those acres are leased to the golf course next door. As we need the property, the golf course will go from 18 to 9 to zero and a driving range and that property will be used.

MELBY: Roman doesn’t expect to dig into that golf course for another 25 years.

RICHARD: Yet Roman is considering carving out a green burial section in one of the cemeteries here.

MELBY: Still it won’t be easy to do in this sea of manicured lawns. Green burial advocates prefer a natural landscape of wild grass and trees. Their preference is to keep the plots free of any monuments or markers.

SZABELSKI: So we’re trying to figure out how do you incorporate a green burial cemetery section into a traditionally kept cemetery.

Not much Green at Burr Oak, but a great deal of grief. I wonder if Chicago Public Radio will make note? Most likely not.


The families of the thousands of Burr Oak Cemetery Dead will at last have a caring and thoughtful soul looking out for them. Francis Cardinal George has a solid man being tasked with this extra duty.

Catholics cause Progressives the itch, until a human crisis like Burr Oak Cemetery seems to impact on all of us - and while the work is being done for people, the Progressives will stand on the sidelines and wait for the green light to go Bill Maher on Catholics again.

God Bless the work, Roman!

Burr Oak - The Four? Oh, There's Got to be More! Ah, "The Presence of Management!"

The looting of graves to make room for more bodies and bigger profits at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL. necessarily leads to the simple proposition -" God ain't making any more land."

Four cemetery employees are charged with dismembering human bodies so plots could be resold, or pounding down original graves to create more room, affecting nearly 300 deceased. ( click my post title for more) For openers.


The path from Burr Oak Cemetery goes well beyond the greedy designs of four hapless mopes - three gravediggers/graverobbers and the Lady in the Office - to Tucson, Arizona where the former corporate heads of Perpetua laid their weary bodies down in retirement.

Slivy Edmonds Cotton, the former president and CEO of Perpetua, Inc, lives in Tucson, AZ. She says she stepped down in 2002.

During her time with the company, she managed Burr Oak Cemetery.

Cotton says, "I have to tell you I was totally shocked and appalled at such a horrendous story, we really spent a lot of time trying to create the type of company in the funeral industry that was all about serving families and people."

We asked cotton if she investigated any similar cases of cemetery desecration at the time she was managing Burr Oak.

Cotton says, "I don't think that there's ever been anything to this magnitude. There are always rumors about things may have happened years ago, and there were rumors about things that might have happened years ago. We did do some investigation and were not able to identify anything that had actually happened."

Cotton says she did hire Carolyn Towns. Towns was one of the employees arrested in the case.

Cotton adds, "Carolyn having been on the management team, she was certainly aware at that time that these types of things were not tolerated."

Cotton goes on to say that she hasn't had contact with Towns in years, nor the company.

"I was there very often and we had two or three other managers who traveled to the various properties to make sure there was enough presence of management. This is not the way most cemeteries operate, and it's certainly was not the way Burr Oak operated at the time I was involved."

The current president of Perpetua in Richardson, Texas, Melvin Bryant didn't return our calls.

Ah, the Presence of Management! Is that something akin to The Ghost of Management, or the Chimera of Management? The Veneer of Management? How about the Panavision of Profit? The Galaxy of Greed?

I live near Burr Oak. In fact, I live near most cemeteries it seems. My wife and most of my family are interred with the Catholic Cemeteries at Holy Sepulchre and Mount Olivet. The Catholic Cemeteries purchased vast tracks of land way back in the 19th Century. Remarkably, despite more than a century of Christian burials in those vast tracks of land there remains many more great tracks of land, yet unused, or plotted.

Where the land is tight for burial, some real hideous shenanigans can dance afoot. Cui Bono? Those who might profit. Grave diggers, Management Presence Officers, and there just might be long procession of others who profit in Loss.

It seems that 111th Street, 115th Street and 127th Street and the adjunct north and south routes to the various Gates to Eternity in the southwest Chicago Mortuary Community are rarely if ever free of anacondas of cars trailing a hearse.

Land is tight and the mortal certainty of death must have made an impact upon a few people beyond the four mopes now in custody.

Sheriff Tom Dart, Attorney General Lisa Madigan and other members of Law Enforcement should be digging into the financial records and acquisitions of the Perpetua Corporate Officers past and present and perhaps other industries in the Death Market who passed through the Gates at Burr Oak.

This is only getting warmed up, Folks!

Sheriff Tom Dart - Dignity for the Deceased as Profit Made from Burking by Resurrectionists at Burr Oak in Alsip

Grave robbing is a taboo that goes back to the dawn of civilized (people living together) history. Respect, piety and grace is bestowed upon the dead, unless profit is to be had in violating the sanctity of eternal sleep. Indiana Jones, or Burke and Hare, rob graves for profit.

Burking the dead was a practice also known as Resurrectionists, after the two Irish grave robbers in Edinburgh, Scotland in the early part of the 19th Century -William Burke and William Hare - in which graves would be robbed and bodies sold for medical research and anatomy lectures. The practice was so lucrative that Burke and Hare became serial killers who filled the graves that they would later rob.

In the light of the miserable treatment of the dead at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL., Sheriff Tom Dart dispatched the Chaplains of the Cook County Sheriff's Office to bless the grounds in which the bodies were dumped, after their plots were re-sold.

This small act of decency speaks very well of the Cook County Sheriff. When small deeds mark a heart, one can trust that larger issues will be graced with a great heart.

Well done, Sheriff Dart!



Click my post title for the link to the Tribune Story.

Tom Dart Should be County Board President - Why He Would Want It?

Sheriff Tom Dart is the best qualified person to be President of of Cook County Board. Tom Dart is a brilliant young man and a good guy to the bargain. He is collegial, tough, courteous but no push-over.

Like Speaker Madigan, and any true public servant, Tom Dart plays things close to the vest.

Tom Dart has slowly climbed the Chicago political gradus and has developed the skills to allow him to be effective.

Tom Dart was President Obama's roommate and colleague in Springfield while working to reform the looming pay-day-loan catastrophe that is now Tsunami'd into a National Storm of Debt. Dart's Bi-Partisan efforts were smothered by political self-interests. The Zip-code was declared Racist by Rev. Jess Jackson and the hand -wringers went along on the disaster train. Tom Dart warned of this impending crisis ten years ago.

Tom Dart is Cook County Sheriff - the most thankless and ugly job on the planet.

However, the source of the sewer is the Cook County Board. A Sheriff is needed so the next Sheriff can avoid having the same clowns who killed phony pay-day-loan legislation undermine that job.

Tom Dart's predecessor had these clowns and their lawyers, and think tanks and journalist stooges bed-bugging his efforts to improve Cook County Law Enforcement twenty-four hours a day.

I love Paul Vallas, but he gave the job a duck. God Bless Him! Forrest Claypool passed on it. Forrest will be fine. He's always fine. Toni Preckwinkle could not find a Chinaman on 22nd Street, but so wants to sit in Todd's Chair. Todd Stoger . . .ah, Jaysus, the poor thing.

Cook County could use someone who took the time to learn how to lead. That is Tom Dart. Tom Dart could fix the Cook County Mess. There will still be greedy, back-stabbing oppotunists buzzing around him, like President Obama's Late Mr. Fly, but the skilled, honest and professional Mr. Dart can handle them - and PETA as well.

Dart began his career in public service as an Assistant Cook County State’s Attorney, where he prosecuted hundreds of felony crimes during his five years with the office. As part of his duties he was assigned to prosecute crimes in the South Suburbs, where he helped initiate a massive investigation of corruption in the town of Ford Height’s Police Department, leading to the indictment of the chief and several of the towns police officers. Coincidentally in 2008, Sheriff Dart’s took over police protection in Ford Heights because of ongoing problems with the town’s police department.

By 1991, Dart had moved to the Illinois General Assembly when he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the State Senate. The next year, he ran for elected office for the first time and won a seat in the Illinois House, representing a diverse district on Chicago’s South Side that included communities like Roseland, Pullman, Morgan Park, Mount Greenwood, Calumet Park, and portions of Blue Island.In Springfield, Dart quickly developed a reputation as a reform minded legislator who was willing to take on the state bureaucracy.

He served as chief sponsor of more than a dozen new child welfare laws that helped restructure the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. And, as an indication of things to come, Dart turned his attention to matters related to law enforcement. As Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, he sponsored Mayor Daley’s Safe Neighborhood Act and authored several state laws designed to crackdown on child sex offenders, including a statute that targeted child predators who use the Internet to lure young victims. He also wrote the Sexually Violent Predators Commitment Act, a groundbreaking law that enable judges to deny freedom to sexual predators and detain them in state mental health facilities if they were deemed likely to commit new sex crimes after being released from prison.

Dart received dozens of honors for his work in the legislature, including the Illinois State Bar Association’s President’s Commendation and “Legislator of the Year Awards” from several groups, including the Illinois Association of Chiefs of Police, the Illinois State Crime Commission, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Chicago Sun Times columnist Steve Neal referred to Dart as an “impact player” during his decade of service in the Illinois House.

Dart left the legislature in 2003 after an unsuccessful campaign for Illinois State Treasurer and was appointed to serve as Chief of Staff Cook County Sheriff Michael Sheahan. In 2006 Dart was elected to a four-year term as the new Sheriff of Cook County after Sheahan retired.

As Sheriff, Dart has enacted a variety of new policy initiatives. Among the many changes are an institution of psychological testing for entry level recruits, installing new technology in the Cook County Jail and court facilities throughout Cook County, and the creation of a weapons free committee to target the widespread use of homemade knives and shanks in the jail.
Under Dart’s directive, the Sheriff’s Police have initiated a variety of stings, crackdowns, and investigations of criminal activity. He has been in the forefront in breaking up dog fighting rings and presided over the arrests of prostitution rings that use the internet as their advertising arm.

Dart holds a J.D. from Loyola University and a Bachelor’s Degree in History and General Social Studies from Providence College. He and his wife Patricia reside in Chicago and are the proud parents of four children.

Maloclussion Means Exclusion in Chris Kennedy Bid for Illinois Senate Seat

Rhambo says 'Chris Kennedy a Go for Illinois Voters!!!' Really. What did he run for again? Oh, that's right -Nuttin'!

Scads of Cash-Dough. Dude ain't Tapioca! ( see Mike Houlihan's great Comic Film!).

Chris Kennedy runs the Merchandise Mart -that magnificent massive reminder that Joe Kennedy could put the fix in here in Chicago.

The guy is the son of Robert F. Kennedy who is most often linked to President Obama in spirit, but not in reality.

Robert F. Kennedy was and would be staunchly against a woman's right to to kill her child.

Rahm Emmanuel says Kennedy is the Guy and that means that Dave Axelrod will shuffle the race cards and get to dealing them out for Kennedy in bid for the U.S. Senate.
The trouble is that Illinois voters tend to take the dental appearances of their candidates very seriously.

Harold Washington had a great set of Buckers. Obama's Immaculate! Pat Quinn wonderful! Rich Daley -Yeomanlike. Mike Madigan- Ditto!

Now, Chris Kennedy is a Kennedy and all that, but his Choppers could bite a pig's ass through a picket fence*.

Take a look up thar! Lisa Madigan - Mike took wonderful care that little girl's Corn-grabbers.

Tom Dart - now there is a set of Ivories that any Senator would be proud to gnaw on the wallets of tax payers!

Rahm. Get the man to a top Molar Mechanic.

*Deep Overbite (also referred to as Deep Bite), a specific type of malocclusion. In the technical sense within dentistry, however, overbite describes or measures the extent of vertical overlap between the upper and lower teeth, especially the incisors, in occlusion.