Chicago Tribune Does Rahm Recovery and Dan Mihalopoulos Tosses Red Meat to Real Readers

It does not take a Jeremiah, a Daniel, or an Ezra to read Chicago Tea-leaves and know with 100% certainty that Chicago's Media will apply rouge, mascara and pancake to the potholes on Rahm Emanuel's mug only seconds after every disaster. 

Immediately after the weekend's whirlwind "Forget about it!  Good Men Make Mistakes"  from Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune, the greasepaint got slapped on with hefty trowel:

Top news
CLOUT STREET
Trying to dig out of turmoil of second term, Emanuel looks ahead to re-election bid:
Bill Ruthhart
Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in the back half of a second term filled with controversies and challenges that would have left many politically weakened if not finished for good, but he’s as cocksure as ever about his future.

Gee, what a scrappy kid!  What a with it guy!  Them controversies???  Go on; pick one!

Whoever runs against Emanuel, the Tribune will morph him/her into 'The Trump Candidate.'

Already Dold's hacks, Steve Chapman, Rex Hupke, as well as imported features are dominating the most read section with Trump Thumping tub-thumpers.

• I Study Liars fro  Living. I've Never Seen One Like President Trump
• A lesson in history: Why the furor behind declaring Jerusalem Israel's capital?
• Donald Trump's biggest flaw: He's not that bright
• Don't underestimate how low Trump can go
• Trump endorses Moore — something for Gross America to ...

We get it Bruce, Trump is bad, very, very, very very bad.   So is the Tribune.

Rahm Emanuel is Cocksure that he can depend upon the purse-puppies in the Tribune Tower to lick-spittle up a storm for him! Membership in the Progressive Democratic Oligarchy requires lock-step from stooges.

However, West of the tower along the river, the Sun Times' Dan Mihalopoulos  has tossed raw meat to real readers

Mayor Rahm Emanuel will get a brief break from his troubles here next week — thanks to a star in the vast constellation of brother Ari.
When news broke that Emanuel will go to New York to be a guest on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” on Monday, I couldn’t help but immediately suspect Colbert is one of the many entertainers who make gobs of money for uber-agent (and Uber investor) Ari Emanuel.Well, sure enough, what could seem like a cynical question yielded just the answer I suspected: Ari Emanuel’s massive Endeavor talent agency owns the company that manages Colbert’s career.
Ari Emanuel is the chief executive of Beverly Hills-based Endeavor (which recently changed its name from WME-IMG). A couple years ago, Endeavor acquired New York-based Dixon Talent, which represents Colbert.

Think Colbert will ask about the Feds circling around Forrest Claypool and not Cook County Forest Preserve workers? Not a chance!

Well, sure enough, what could seem like a cynical question yielded just the answer I suspected: Ari Emanuel’s massive Endeavor talent agency owns the company that manages Colbert’s career.
Ari Emanuel is the chief executive of Beverly Hills-based Endeavor (which recently changed its name from WME-IMG). A couple years ago, Endeavor acquired New York-based Dixon Talent, which represents Colbert.

Mihalopoulos goes for the jugular . . .and all south side Irish . . .by forcing readers to remember Robert Redford's lousy docu-drama that attempted to present Rahm as a human being

As with CNN’s fawning “Chicagoland” series — which starred Rahm Emanuel and his then-loyal top cop Garry McCarthy during Emanuel’s first term — the mayor is again benefitting from people who are financially connected to his little brother.
Clients of Ari Emanuel directed CNN’s 2014 homage to Rahm and Garry. Before that show aired, the directors promised to be so fair and balanced that Mayor Emanuel would be irked.  The final result was virtually a propaganda film, with Emanuel and McCarthy portrayed like urban superheroes. Emails later revealed the show’s producers privately coordinated scenes with mayoral aides and even promised to present Emanuel as “the star that he really is.”

You Steven Colbert works for Ari Emanuel's talent rodeo.  He is in with the Chicago Progressive Democratic Oligarchs and a HUUUUUUUUUUUUGE Trump Thumper.

Dan Mihalopoulos cuts through the PR stooging from Rahm's office person and gets to meat of the matter:

An Endeavor spokesman on Friday confirmed Colbert is a client of Dixon Talent, but Dixon Talent did not return messages seeking comment on Rahm Emanuel’s appearance with Colbert.
A spokeswoman for CBS, the network that airs Colbert’s show, had no interest in elaborating on why they would want the mayor of Chicago on their show.
“So you’re aware, we don’t comment on our booking process,” said the spokeswoman, Lauren Kamm. “Photos of the mayor’s appearance will be available on Monday evening and the full clip of the interview will post on The Late Show’s YouTube page on Tuesday morning.”
We local yokels also can tune in to CBS-Channel 2 at 10:35 p.m. Monday. The mayor is scheduled to appear between Oscar winner Matt Damon and Colombian musician Juanes.
Emanuel should hope he gets glowing reviews in Beverly and other neighborhoods of his city — and not just in Beverly Hills. (emphasis my own)

Rahm plays Ok in Beverly, but west of Western and East of Longwood Drive ? Morgan Park?  Roseland?  Auburn-Gresham? Mount Greenwood?  West Beverly?   Garfield Ridge?  West Lawn?  Noyt so much.

Dan Mihiapolous shows real fangs and claws, unlike his editorial board.

Sun Times will back the SEIU/AFSCME approved candidate and then curry favor with the Third Term Rahm Administration, once the stalking horses white, black and Latino divide the votes again.

Here's hoping the Feds still have a RICO bullet in the chamber for Forrest Claypool and the will to let fly.

If not Rahm will face Trump and win again.

Colbert ought to be ashamed, but he is not. He is Hollywood.

Until then, Nothing is on Square and the Nine Digit Midget remains on Five.

Pensions Looted for Profit is Re(a)d Meat - Tim Novak Rides Again!

“Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.)…

"The old social actionists are largely men of action, doers, not talkers. The new social actionists are intellectuals...They are masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas...They are fervent crusaders." Andrew Greeley - "Catholic Social Action"

I rarely agreed with Fr. Andy Greeley.  Social change is brought about by people who actually, not virtually, do good. Real people, like Father George Clements and  Fr. Dan Mallette actually Marched for Civil Rights with Dr. King, because they followed clerics like Bishop Bernard Shiel who founded CYO - he did not advocate for it.  People in the action have little to do with "do-gooders' who never seem to leave the plush Oak Park and Hyde Park dens. It is easier to get behind masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas. 

Newspapers rarely talk about people in the action, other than snag a quote that justifies the words of an Advocate, Activist, or Office Holder.  Most columnists go to the pap of preachy, pontificating poltroon's who give good prose, like Claypool, Quigley, Schakowsky, Durbin, Quinn and Mell in Chicago because they are policy people and do-gooders. Pap is easy to read and nod-with-ruminent conviction and chew the cud of vegan issues.  A few, like John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, go to people in the action and presents their lives and struggles mired in the bog created by policy wonks.

Investigative journalists, the best anyway, go where facts have ignited a prairie fire.  The worst are jigsaw puzzle masters of making facts fit a narrative.

Reporters, investigative reporters, connect the dots hidden from the public.  Even those of us who read and remember quite a bit have not the time, nor the opportunity to often go 'beyond' the story.  People must do their jobs, raise their kids and the millions of dollars of taxes Progressive thinking political insiders loot from the commonwealth.

I am a pathological reader, I read everything from Cosmo to Commonweal, from Pepsodent tubes to the runic script on top of light bulbs.  Love to read.

I also love to read works that have something to do with the truth.  Editorial boards tend to present only a prefabricated package of political proselytism - Vote for Kim Foxx, or Mark Kirk is not really Dick Durbin's purse puppy.

The Chicago Sun Times, in my opinion, has the wackiest Editorial policy mandate that seems to have been crafted by retired and bonged-up Weather Underground and Catholic Call to Action cranks.  That's just me.

However, I believe that the Sun Times has the best investigative reporters Dan Mihiapoulos, Chris Fusco and Tim Novak, when they are not saddled with editorial constraints, or Andy Shaw and Carol Marin.

Tim Novak is a terrier.  He is the only reporter in Chicago to maintain a jeweler's eye on the connections between the political grifters and the Progressive machine emanating from Hyde Park and Kenwood.

The Fifth Floor, Real Estate, TIFs,  Big banking, the CHA, Slum Lording, Chicago's Department of Planning and Development and the White House are all players with the peoples pensions.

Sewer deals for Daley cousins seem as nothing compared to Valerie Jarrett.

Today, Tim Novak keeps the heat on the most powerful people plaguing Chicago.

Over the past nine years, two nephews of former Mayor Richard M. Daley have been involved in separate plans to redevelop a rundown warehouse on 15 acres of polluted land in Little Village just north of the Stevenson Expressway.
It hasn’t turned out well for Chicago taxpayers.

First, taxpayers have to make up for $4.2 million in city pension money invested on behalf of teachers, police officers and other city workers that ended up squandered on failed development plans involving Daley’s oldest nephew, Robert G. Vanecko.
Now, taxpayers stand to lose another $4.1 million on the same property at 3348 S. Pulaski Rd. That’s the amount of a property-tax break given to a second redevelopment deal for the site.
This one involves Vanecko’s first cousin, Patrick Daley Thompson, an attorney who helped the developers get the tax cut last year shortly before he was elected alderman of the 11th ward — the family’s power base for six decades.

Well them boys are "in the action."  Not for social good, but for profit in the name of Progress. There is so much more and Tim Novak delivers! He connects the dots of the contemporary ledger and double book accounting to the days of yore and actually gives us context that a Chicagoan can sink teeth into and gnaw healthy opinion into being - we are screwed not by the usual suspects, but by the do-gooders!

 The story of how the polluted Pulaski Road property became toxic for Chicago taxpayers begins in 2004, when Daley was still mayor. That’s when Vanecko — his sister’s oldest son — went into business with Allison S. Davis, the Chicago attorney who gave President Barack Obama his first job out of Harvard Law School, and Davis’ son Jared Davis.

Operating under the name DV Urban Realty Partners, their idea was to redevelop properties in some of Chicago’s most downtrodden neighborhoods. And they were aiming to get government pension funds to invest $100 million to bankroll their plans.
They had a hard time securing investments from pension funds, though, until the Chicago Teachers Retirement System agreed in early 2005 to put in $25 million of the money it held toward teachers’ retirement pay.

Then, the pension funds for police officers, municipal employees, city laborers and the Chicago Transit Authority also agreed to invest.
Altogether, the Davises and Vanecko wound up with $68 million from five public pension funds.

Man, if the editorial will of Chicago newspapers matched the grit of some of it's reporters, maybe a couple of dollars might be left in the kitty at the end of a Moody's evaluation.

This is meaty wholesome goodness in font!  It will put off the vegan offal digestions of 'edgy,whip-smart and Progressive voices in our city.

Eat more Chicago! Thanks for the red meat, Mr. Novak!

Billy Thurber? Jimmy Ayres? It's a Whimsical Terrorist Reading His Own Whimiscal Thoughts

The Whimsical Weathermen Bill and his Odious Old Lady.


I love DNA.com Chicago.  DNA.com features Pulitzer Prize winning Mark Konkol  one of the very few authentic Chicago writers in the local media.  Along with John Kass, Steve Rhodes, Natasha Korecki, Dan Mihalopoulos, Steve Metsch, and Kate Grossman, Konkol respects the people who live in this city and not just the tonier denizens of  metro power-communities like Winnetka, Evanston, Hyde Park, Oak Park and Lakeview. The balance of the crew aboard this Chicago neighborhood news aggregater is pretty much solid - I especially like  Wendell Hudson ( Gresham etal) Casey Cora ( Canaryville and Erica Demerest ( Pilsen).  A very few ink-slingers give me the vapors and miseries, Lawd, Lawd!

One howler is the chap who covers Hyde Park - home of humorless Humanists and the prickly Progressive.  Hyde Park is a cool neighborhood with great dining and dancing, as well as intellectual jungle jims where coffee or beer can lubricate quality talk between persons who actually know something besides their place in the front of the line.

The neighborhood is not generally plagued with crime despite the disposable income available to ne'er-do - wells in the corduroy, or denim britches of both gender afoot. Rather the neighborhood is blemished with blow-hards who tend to be radical Progressives. Convicted Alderman Larry Bloom'd here and abouts until his two big-hearted meat hooks snagged some swag in between Larry's Rage Against the Machine landed Larry in Oxford Federal Pen. Toni Preckwinkle, Barbara Flynn-Currie, and,of course, Dr. Quentin Young the Guru of the Marxist Progressive Democrat sway enormous clout over the city, county, state and nation from this 'hood.

A tad north of Hyde Park is Kenwood kind of like Morgan Park is to Beverly in the real world.  In Kenwood resides President Obama's clout and chinaman - Bill Ayers, SDS/Weatherman Veteran/ Educational Ghost Payroller (Ret.)/ Commie Snake-Oil Shill and Cubana de Aviación frequent flier - he is even believed to have penned both of Barack H. Obama's autobiographies.  Bill Ayers - the Barney Google of Terror.This fatuous dope gets far too much attention and I only wish to point out the rather flawed work of a small cognomen in the DNA.com Chicago wheel - Ted Cox - accent grave on the Ted.

Bill Ayers is the product of a powerful home chock full of money - cash, bonds, dividends, investments, trusts and I'll bet more gold coins than William Devane.  Ayers Pappy - Old Tom - was a Commonwealth Edison CEO and Chicago's utility, charity, civic and political, boards-man.  I know some revolutionaries and even a couple of devout Communists and they are sweet generous and self effacing people from whom one could expect the loan of a generator when Com Ed goes out.  Old Tom and his kid strike me as the types who call the cops on Trick 'R Treaters at the stroke of 6PM.  The real revolutionaries worked in Northern Ireland and Nicaragua and one never hears much about their guerrilla days.  Ayers never shuts up.  Covering this clown is Ted Cox.

International House at University of Chicago - has a seating capacity for 300-400 persons.  Bill is reported to have attracted 100, which in crowd reporting gets a bemused nod of 'Sure. . .sure.'  Ayers Zippo'd Kerry, Obama, Clinton and Henry Kissinger and dys-informed the gathering on Syria, Libya and Dylan.  Ted listened and filtered Chicago's Own Billy Ayers through . . .now, get this . . .James Thurber

The reading part of the evening, from "Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident," a sequel to his earlier "Fugitive Days" about his time underground with antiwar radicals the Weathermen, tended to be humorous, ironic and self-deprecating, as Ayers' writing also displays an air of whimsical imagination reminiscent of James Thurber.
Ayers writes of being in a seminar with his students in 2008 when they began watching the debate in which he was dragged into the campaign as a "domestic terrorist" who had supported Barack Obama in his early political ventures. One student turned to him and said, "Oh my God, that guy has the same name as yours."

Pokkatah, Pokkatah, pokka . . .What???  Whimsical Billy?  Whimsy is Ogden Nash.  Bill Ayers is a political sideshow and rhetorical chicken choker.  Ayers is a hillbilly grifter, so obvious in his dress, speech, deportment and pretensions ( Rilke?  Really?),  that he resembles the old cartoon-snake-oiler Barney Google. Even Slate hates Ayers books.

Beacon Press will publish Public Enemy: Confessions of an American Dissident. It’s billed as a sequel to Fugitive Days, Ayers’ 2001 Weather Underground memoir, which at the time was the most “self-indulgent and morally clueless” memoir Slate’s Tim Noah had ever read. (This was several years before Eat Pray Love.) I liked Fugitive Days a little more than that, and Ayers was kind enough to sign a copy for me after some of my college friends and I annoyed him at one of the 2001 readings.

Fugitive Days and Ayers’ post-9/11 book tour were streaked with humility. Ayers had done something wrong, and he admitted it, but he did it for the right cause. Public Enemy, by contrast, is a memoir of score-settling, against a cast of extremely stupid (according to Ayers) critics. To hear Ayers tell it, since 2001 he’s been victimized and pilloried and misunderstood by a succession of idiots.

Guerrillas don't cry!  There's no crying in Bolivarista World Revolution!

Ted Cox finds the dope whimsical!   How about CCCP's own Thurber, Beria, Ted? What a scamp.   Now, that lad could kick up a swell Beriozka.  Ted is probably a pretty good guy, who just wants a neighbor to feel good.

Ted, Bill Ayers is a talentless, wealthy, but talentless dope hooked up for life to an odious hag of a cheerleader.  Now, she is dangerous.

Ted, Bernardine Dohrn is not whimsical. This is 

Sun Times' Natasha Korecki Scoops National with Jesse Jackson, Jr. Saga

The Chicago Sun Times is blessed with very talented reporters ( Dan Mihalopoulos, Chris Fusco, Tim Novak, Art Golab and especially Natasha Korecki). 

The columnists? Not so hot; with two notable exceptions -  Mark Brown and Steve Huntley are very exacting with the facts and wholly independent.  The reporters are old school fro the most part.

No reporter in Chicago did a better job of covering the hair-ball that was the Blago yarn, than Natasha Korecki. That particularly epic fabrication had more twists than a Chubby Checker retrospective on WTTW, or single Carol Marin column. 

At the core of the Blago trichobezoar remains the campaign for and election to the Presidency of Illinois Senator Barack Obama with its cast of characters* Homer would be hard-set to catalog - Tim Novak somehow managed to do so.

This weekend, the young woman who reported the Blagojevich Trials with the keenest eyes to detail, Natasha Korecki equals the tenacious pitbull Novak with a close look at Jesse Jackson, Jr. - Illinois' Congressional Howard Hughes. 

The first of two reports centers on the Federal probe of the reclusive Jackson's ( odd saying that) Congressional cash piles of taxpayer-lifted spondulices (archaic and so am I)**

The snowballing troubles of Jesse Jackson Jr. took a new turn Friday with the revelation that federal investigators have launched a probe into “suspicious activity” in the South Shore congessman’s finances.
Focusing on a completely new area of scrutiny for the son of the famed civil rights leader, the investigation is not related to former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s attempted sale of a U.S. Senate seat, a scandal that has ensnared Jackson in the past, sources told the Chicago Sun-Times.
Rather, the probe — based in the Washington, D.C., FBI field office —is focusing on “suspicious activity” involving the congressman’s finances related to his House seat and the possibility of inappropriate expenditures, the sources said. . . .News of the probe — first disclosed by the Sun-Times — comes as questions increasingly swirl around Jackson’s absence from not only his official duties in Washington, but the campaign trail as the Nov. 6 election nears.

Citing exhaustion, Jackson, 47, stopped working, according to his staff, on June 10. His staff did not make that known until two weeks later.
He went to a clinic in Arizona then to the Mayo Clinic, which released a statement saying he was being treated for a bipolar disorder. Jackson is up for re-election Nov. 6 but has not campaigned since he won the Democratic primary in March.

The next places the hairball, not unlike Felonius  Guv doing a few semesters in Club Fed Colorado, into voter responsibility and same-old-same-old Cook County Context:

In Jackson’s South Side and south suburban 2nd Congressional District, even people who don’t like him think he will easily get re-elected.
“I don’t see how he can deal with all these problems and still deal with the district,” said South Shore resident Carlos Jones, 64. “But I believe he’s going to get re-elected and try to make amends.”
William Davenport, 29, said he knows Jackson “has definitely been in hot water with Blagojevich and has issues with his [mental] stability.” Now the new investigation “makes me wonder what’s going on with him.”
But, Davenport added, “The Jackson name carries a lot of weight around here.”
The newly disclosed federal probe is not related to the attempted sale of the U.S. Senate seat that figured in Blagojevich’s corruption conviction, but it’s focusing on “suspicious activity” involving the congressman’s finances related to his House seat and the possibility of inappropriate expenditures, sources said.
The probe was active in the weeks before Jackson took a leave from his U.S. House post on June 10.
“I don’t think this is going to affect his re-election in 2012,” said a Democratic strategist who didn’t want to be named. “I gotta believe that the day after his election, the gun goes off on his next federal primary.”
Jackson has been through the political wringer since 2008. He was initially under federal scrutiny tied to charges leveled against Blagojevich. In 2010, it was revealed that a donor to Jackson, Raghuveer Nayak, told federal authorities that Jackson asked him to approach Blagojevich with what the ex-governor believed to be a $1.5 million offer to be appointed to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by President Barack Obama.

Sun Times reporters, especially the great ones like Novak and Korecki, scoop up the hairballs of political hypocrisy and present them to the careful reader and thoughtful voter.  They do great civic service and honor their craft.

The editorial boards of both Chicago papers never seem to read, much less understand the work of gifted writers like Korecki, Novak and Kass at the Tribune.  

The editorial boards send in the clowns and vigorously licking cats; they help elect the mopes and frauds and grifters as much as the "benighted" electorate. Psssst! Read the reporters and skip the editorial pages. Well done, again, Ms. Korecki!

*The following fact pattern was out in the open long before Obama severed his ties to Rezko (sometime in late 2006): In 1983, Rezko started raising a lot of money for Chicago politicians. In 1989, he and his partner Daniel Mahru started vacuuming up deals with the city to develop low-income housing, despite having virtually zero experience in the field. They proceeded to obtain over $100 million in city, state, and federal grants and bank loans to develop 30 run-down properties into affordable-housing projects, earning $6.9 million for themselves. By 2007, the city had sued them numerous times for failing to heat these properties; over half of the properties had fallen into foreclosure, and six of them were boarded up.

Obama helped put one of these deals together during his time as a junior associate at Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland. Other lawyers at Davis Miner helped Rezko acquire half of the properties that fell into disrepair. And many of these properties were located in the district Obama represented as an Illinois state senator. Nonetheless, Obama told the Chicago Sun-Times that he was unaware of Rezko’s growing reputation as a slumlord until he read Sun-Times reporter Tim Novak’s two-part series on the subject. So we are to believe (yet again) that Obama was the last person to know what one of his longtime friends was up to. (National Review June 5, 2008)

**

spon·du·licks

   [spon-doo-liks]  Show IPA

noun Older Slang .

money; cash.

Also, spon·du·lix.

Origin: 
1855–60, Americanism ;  origin uncertain

Why Bother With The Trib - The Real Reporting Can Be Found at Chicago News Co-Op

I read quite a bit. Even at this hoary-age of the dark-side of 58, I tend to remember what I read. Reading like plumbing, carpentry, and painting is an art. I do not plumb, carpent or paint, unless there is a very good reason to do so, like black water gushing up out of every household orifice, timbers a'cracking and chips of paint getting mixed in with the Lime and Salt flavored tortilla chips.

I read because I must. I have taught generations of high school kids not only to engage in reading, but introduced them to the very best in writing, in order to become discerning readers.

While a student at Loyola, I worked with a Stationary Engineer who was a 'big reader' - Mack Bolan, Nick Carter, Mickey Spillane, various and sundry crotch novels with titles like "Trailer Park Pam and the Big-Top Snake Wranglers at Play." While appreciative of the cover art that packages such tomes, I, none the less, found the lurid prose to be just that and came away from their sentences with the feelings of shame that must accompany young Ezra when Mom comes down into the basement with basketful of the twenty-something's laundry and catches Young E with his mitts around more than a pretzel stick, while watching the Kardasian hi-jinks on the wide-screen Hi Def.

Chicago's two remaining big newspapers and their web-sites have become little more than Condensed Lite Nick Carter dailies.

The Chicago Tribune, to be fair, has made some modest gains toward substance in recent months, but any paper with a disc jockey as managing editor and editorial board propagandist is rather sad. The Sun Times, likewise has improved from its laughable days when Cheryl Redd called the shots, and has excellent journalistic foot-soldiers like Mark Konkol, Natasha Korecki, Maureen O'Donnell, Tim Novack and Abdon Pallasch and Southtown's Star's Steve Metsch.

However, you can not find a better source for reporting, opinion and insight than the Medill Castaways of the Chicago News Cooperative ( New York Times).

One of my favorite, Metro and City Hall beat journalists is Dan Mihalopoulos. Today, this gritty and exacting reporter cuts through fatuous opinions of the Aldermen and City Hall flacks and presents the realities of Chicago Police Manpower shortages.

The ACLU and the usual suspects of political loudmouths and phonies are providing cover form Rahm Emanuel's dodgy deployments. Dan Mihalopoulos offers the facts - reminding readers of what newspapers used to do. While the Emanuel 'Smart Sizing" of the Chicago Police Department might provide cover for aldermen and the Administration, saturating high crime areas with Officers will not necessarily solve the problem.

Only Dan Mihalopulos cuts to the chase -

The Chicago News Cooperative recently obtained a list of the unit assignments for the 10,300 sworn Chicago police department employees from a police source who requested anonymity because the department leaders have declined to release it.

The records described the unit assignments as of early October and appeared to reflect the vast majority of the recent personnel moves ordered by the Emanuel administration.

Most of the detectives were assigned to one of the department’s five area headquarters, while about 2,400 of the police officers were either assigned directly or detailed to specialized units, including the narcotics section and the internal affairs division.

It was impossible to deduce from the data exactly where the officers in specialized units were working. The list also did not include supervisors.

The other 7,000 police officers, representing a majority of the department’s sworn members, were each assigned to patrol beats in one of the 25 districts. The number of officers in each district ranged from a low of 191 in the 23rd district to 386 in the 7th district.

A comparison of the beat deployment figures with department statistics for property crimes and violent crimes in each district this year shows:

¶Four districts — the 25th, 8th, 6th and 4th — had higher ratios of both property crimes and violent crimes per officer than the citywide average.

¶The highest ratios of property crimes to beat officer counts were in the 14th, 8th and 25th districts, each of which reported at least 15 property crimes per patrol officer in the year’s first eight months.

¶The lowest proportion of violent crimes to officers was in the 1st district, which covers downtown Chicago, followed by the 19th district on the North Side.

¶The 4th district, in the city’s southeast corner, had the largest gap between staffing level and violence, with 4.05 violent crimes per officer.

The 4th district covers most of the 7th Ward, whose alderman, Sandi Jackson, praised Emanuel for adding officers to areas of greater need, despite tight budget constraints. But asked about the Chicago News Cooperative findings, Jackson replied: “There is absolutely a disparity. We are not where we would want to be ideally.”

Some experts say the reaction of aldermen in apparently underserved districts, though politically astute, would not lead to the wisest policies for fighting crime.

“It is reasonable and rational to expect that there should be more officers in areas with more crime,” said Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminology at Loyola University. “But there is no evidence that would necessarily be the case.”

Lurigio said saturating areas with officers often merely pushed criminals to other places that then witnessed a spike in violence.

Imagine if high crime areas were saturated with beat officers, prowler cars and paddy wagons?

Imagine what Harvey Grossman and the ACLU say and how quickly they would shop for Federal Judges to sue over racist invasions and forces of occupation in Englewood, or Roseland?

Fourteen people were wounded and one killed last night, blares the Tribune in anticipation of a full explanation to people by Eric "The Water Boy" Zorn, or a thunderingly hilarious cop-slamming J'accuse from Bruce Dold.

Read The Tribune for laughs, read the Chicago Sun Times for the great reporters and skip the columnists, and read the Chicago News Cooperative in order to be fully informed.

To Well-Heeled Chicagoans

It is a shame that Chicago's 1%ers can meet at Smith and Wolinsky's and pony up hundreds of thousands of dollars and invest in a bar or a restaurant, but take a pass on helping to fund the only real news source in Chicago - The Chicago News Cooperative. I mean aside from a guy who moved to Chicago and already pumps millions into schools, the great John Canning, where are all of the Oxen Gore-ing PlumpCats and Kittens? Support Chicago News Cooperative. Us Helots are already pumped dry, by Rahm, Boss Preckwinkle, Governor Easter Bunny, and Boss Claypool -not to mention Boss Shakman.

This great source of news should be supported by the people who have the most treasure in their kicks. If you have a couple of hundred thousand dollars laying around your Gold Coast condo, Lakeview gray stone, or Hyde Park mansion, give Jim Warren a call, or write a huge check to

Chicago News Cooperative Contact Info:
70 East Lake Street, #810
Chicago, IL 60601


www.chicagonewscoop.org

Chicago needs real news and good writing.



The two journalistic and editorial equivalents of "Trailer Park Pam and the Big-Top Snake Wranglers at Play" just aren't cutting it. Buck up, Buckaneers!

Underlings? NYT Underling Dan MIHALOPOULOS Calls O'Brien Supporters Underlings?

Huge Hat Tip to Questian at Windy Citizen.com

Mr. O’Brien has support from many of the mayor’s underlings, particularly from the Northwest and Southwest Sides.

Underling? From the New York Times' Chicago News Cooperative - nice Lefty Progressive ring to that one.

under·ling (un′dər liŋ)noun
a person in a subordinate position; inferior: usually contemptuous or disparaging

You see Mayor Daley ain't backin' no one for the County Board President. He is going to ground for Ground Hogs Day ( February 2nd Primary Day By the Way!). He would have his pectorals in the Old Maytag Ringer! The Revs would go nuts; the Lake Shore Activists would do a Manger Scene in front of his 5th Floor Door; everyone else would shrug.


Toni Preckwinkle has no "Underlings" - she has . . .something, er other.

Dorothy Brown has no "Underlings" - she has retainers.


The New York Times recently picked up some cast off Chicago Tribune "Underlings" - Jim Warren - an MSNBC cast player for Chris "Milky" Matthews and Fat Boy Olbermann and the talented Mr. Dan Mihalopoulous.

"Underlings?" Oh, Danny - HENCHPERSONS at least!

Contemptuous and disparaging prose Danny Lad is the reason newspapers tanked. Keep that resume fresh son. Terry O'Brien will be fine.