Commander Paul Bauer Legislation Cynical Political Misappropriation of Man's Life

I don't recall reading the late Commander Paul Bauer's words on the banning of guns.  He was very outspoken about the criminals caught for felonies and released back into the public by cynical political judges and elected officials intent on fattening up votes. 

Commander Paul Bauer was respected by the women and men in blue who shared the dangers and ugliness of Chicago's streets, during his career.

Commander Paul Bauer was not killed in a mass school shooting, but killed doing his job, while off-duty.

No cop is off-duty.

A thug with a handgun bought out of state and with an extended magazine clip

I have never owned a gun in my life, nor do I ever intend to apply for, or purchase any firearm.   I live among many people to do and there has never been an incident where a gun was misfired, or directed at another person.

More than a very few times, bullets missed me by inches. They were all used by thugs (BDs, GDs, Stones, Four Corner Hustlers, or Vice Lords) in close proximity to Leo High School between 1996 and 2016. My guardian angle must come with Kevlar.

I have helped bury a dozen students and witnessed as many more wounded by rounds fired from Tech 9s and Glocks, none of whome 'were in the Game.'

Guns are tools and thugs use them to kill people.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, who once commanded the Gresham District 6 near Leo High School, was sent to Springfield to label anti-gun laws in Commander Paul Bauer's name.

The new legislation is a response to the Parkland public school killings, close on the heels of Commander Bauer's funeral here in my neighborhood.

Paul Bauer was a cop's cop.  He spoke out against the root problems of street violence: abuse of existing sentencing laws -

Commander Paul Bauer says there is a “high bar to prosecution” in Cook County, requiring Chicago police to get approval from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office before a suspect can be charged.
“Sometimes they want to come out and...talk to the victim,” said Bauer at the annual meeting of River North Residents Association. “If you think about it, we’re sometimes victimizing this person twice. You just got your phone snatched from you. You got knocked down. Now you’re going to be in the station. You got to stay here for another couple hours until the State’s Attorney gets out here.”
[...] According to Bauer, 75 percent of the crime in the 18th district is theft-related, whether it’s theft from a building or theft from a person, including a suspect who, while riding a bicycle, recently swiped mobile phones from people in River North.
“We caught that guy,” recalled Bauer. “and we figured he did about 30 [robberies] over the course of a couple months. We were only able to charge him with one felony theft [because] victim identification was a little hazy.”
[...] “Even when we catch somebody,” says Bauer, “there’s still a long way to go to get them off the street.”
In August, Chief Judge Timothy Evans replaced all the judges who presided over bond hearings in Cook County and directed new judges to set bail in amounts more affordable to defendants. This is at odds with Chicago police, who would prefer to see higher bail amounts for career criminals.
“That guy, Willie, he’s a case in point. He needs a high bond. We got him for a number of burglaries. He’s on parole for burglary. He needs to sit. We got to get him off the street. It’s just like if you have kids, if there’s no consequences to your action, those actions are going to repeat.”
And when they do go to jail, they need to stay there longer.
“The Sheriff of Cook County, for whatever reason, is very proud of the fact he has reduced the population of the county jail. Maybe I’m jaded, I don’t think that’s anything to be proud of.”  In Second City Cop

The thug who killed Commander Bauer was not armed with a straw-man AR-15, which Rep. Burke's canned legislation targets.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel talked about the bill after speaking to a room of police recruits, part of a package of legislation that would require gun dealers to be licensed, raise the penalties for illegal use of body armor, ban high capacity magazines for military-style weapons and ban bump stocks.
“We need gun legislation, like a waiting period, like a ban on assault on assault weapons, like what we're talking about on gun dealership that backs up the goals and the public safety goals we have as a city,” Mayor Emanuel said.

Rahm Emanuel did the canning and the sending.

Were he not an oily sneak with a power jones, Emanuel might have helped craft a Paul Bauer Law that would keep thugs out of our community.

Maybe, another family will not need to mourn a father and husband.  Maybe, fewer people will be gun down on streets at any time of the or driving the Dan Ryan and Eisenhower expressways.

Instead, Rahm Emanuel, Mike Madigan, Bruce Rauner and their stooges used Paul Bauer's sacrifice, as an unwasted opportunity.

Forrest Claypool - Quare desine/Why Resign? Club Fed, n'cest pas?

Quare Desine- Latin:  Why resign?

Forrest Claypool resigned on December 8, 2017 - A day that will live in someone's calendar.

Why? Quare desine,  as  the Latin Fathers asked. Here' a bit of Why

Claypool wanted CPS to hire Jenner & Block to handle the case. The firm’s lawyer who signed the deal with the Claypool administration was Randall Mehrberg. He’d been the top lawyer for the Chicago Park District in the 1990s, when Claypool was parks chief under then-mayor Richard M. Daley. Mehrberg later gave tens of thousands of dollars to Claypool’s political campaigns.
Mehrberg also was a volunteer adviser to Claypool in the mayor’s office when Claypool was Emanuel’s chief of staff, in 2015.
After Claypool went to CPS, Mehberg left City Hall, too. He went to work at Jenner & Block, where he began focusing on what would be CPS’ case against the state.
On March 1, 2016, Mehrberg sent a message to Claypool from his new job: “I started at Jenner today. I will get the file opened.”
Two days later, the firm started billing CPS, records show.
Claypool wanted Marmer to supervise the Jenner & Block lawyers working for the cash-strapped public schools. And Marmer did, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported, citing internal emails.
By April 2016, Mehrberg had sent Marmer copies of a draft lawsuit, and Marmer reported to Claypool on the case’s progress. Also that month, Mehrberg emailed Claypool to tell him he and Marmer had a “good conversation” about the planned suit.
“Great,” Claypool replied.
But there was one problem. Under the school system’s ethics code, officials can’t supervise the work of any CPS contractor with whom they have a “business relationship.” And Marmer was getting a $1 million severance package from Jenner & Block, in five $200,000 yearly installments through 2018.
Four in-house lawyers agreed Marmer shouldn’t be supervising his old employers. Two outside lawyers consulted in the spring of 2016 agreed.
But Claypool scurried to find a seventh — this time favorable — legal opinion from political supporter J. Timothy Eaton in June 2016.
By that time — May 12, 2016 — the Sun-Times had filed the first in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for CPS records on the deal.
CPS didn’t comply with the requests until after the school board approved the deal with Jenner & Block in late July 2016. A Sun-Times report on the issue prompted CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler to begin investigating.
On Tuesday — 16 months later — Schuler handed Board of Ed members a searing report that called for Claypool’s firing, saying the CEO lied repeatedly to him in a “full-blown cover-up” of a clear ethical violation by Marmer.
Schuler wrote that Claypool refused to pay one of the outside lawyers and got the other to alter the work description on his firm’s invoices, all to hide what was going on.
“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

Quare desine?  Why resign?

“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

No, it should not have happened and the Sun Time and the Tribune and the goofs at WTTW and WBEZ knew  all along that some shoe was about to drop and they were helping the powers that be make hurt go away.

The media never takes a chance at losing access - sneedless to say.

The 5th Floor's reliable Sneed of the Sun Times wrote this on December 6th:

Well, that may no longer be a question in the case of former top cop Garry McCarthy, who detests Mayor Rahm Emanuel — the man who fired him — and the man whose job he wants.“An announcement on McCarthy’s decision could come as soon as the aftermath of the Super Bowl,” said a top McCarthy supporter who cites recent polling as a hopeful sign McCarthy will green-light a bid next month for mayor of Chicago.
“The polling was encouraging,” the source said.
Sneed has learned a polling firm called We Ask America, which is run by XPS, described as “a political fulfillment firm owned by the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association,” did some polling “which did not shut the door” on the McCarthy movement, a top political source said.
• Backshot: A McCarthy for Mayor Exploratory Committee was created after papers were filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections in mid-September.• Big bucks shot: “Garry knows the campaign is going to cost $10 million and he’s got a lot of  money to raise — and it’s not going to happen until he gets into the race,” said the source, who is one of his backers — but asked to remain anonymous.
“But from what we’ve seen so far his sidewalk support is huge. . . . I can’t tell you how many people come up to him on the street and ask him to run. I’ve been with him when it happens and it is astounding. And we’ve heard rumblings Rahm’s approval rating is not great.”
• Upshot: But an attempt to reach McCarthy was unsuccessful on Wednesday.

The Same Day - the usually reliable Fran Spielman wrote this:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in a no-win position now that Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool has been exposed as a liar and the architect of a cover-up.
If Emanuel fires Claypool, he’ll be turning his back on a friend of nearly 40 years whose tenure has included impressive results on both the education and school funding fronts.
The mayor would also be emboldening the Chicago Teachers Union in the run-up to the 2019 mayoral election by serving up the head on a platter the union has long demanded.
If Emanuel keeps Claypool — even after he “repeatedly lied” to Inspector General Nicholas Schuler — it will invite CPS employees to do the same, send a dangerous message to students and gamble that a schools CEO whose integrity has been tarnished can still function.

Uh, oh!!!!!!!!! Conflict!!!!! Bet a call from the Nine Digit Midget on Five shook up Comrades Tom Frisbee and Tom McNamee a bit.

On December 8th, Fran Spielman wrote this about Rahm orchestrated public fellation for Forrest:

On Friday, Emanuel called his longtime friend “selfless” at least half a dozen times in as many minutes as he praised Claypool for restoring faith in the schools after his predecessor, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, left amid a bribery scandal that sent her to prison.
“He can walk out with his head high because he did the job well, and he will always be my friend,” the mayor said. “He did a great job for the children of the city of Chicago.
“Wherever he has worked, he’s left an incredible, indelible mark on every endeavor,” Emanuel said. “He has been selfless, and more than just selfless, he has been courageous to take on institutional inertia and make the entity — whether it was the park district, the CTA or CPS — better.”
In the 103-page report Schuler delivered to the school board Tuesday, he painted a different picture of Claypool. He said he “repeatedly lied” during the investigation of Marmer for overseeing work for CPS done by his former law firm even as he was receiving payments toward a $1 million severance. (emphasis my own) 
 

And?

How about asking if Claypool doctored the wording on Marmer's contract?

That is a felony, or as Claypool weaseled, “Good men can make stupid mistakes.”

Do good men lie and shop for lawyers in the pursuit of justice for CPS kids?

More telling though is this - Why is the Chicago media slow-rolling a block-buster scandal?

Why is Fran Spielman backpedaling? Here is a hint:

David Axelrod, formerly a top aide in the Obama White House and a close friend of Emanuel and Claypool, had predicted Thursday that Claypool would remain in office.
“The mayor never asked him to” resign, Axelrod said after Claypool quit. “But it’s also obvious that this would be an issue as we enter political season, and that would make it hard to do the job.”

Why bring out Comb-over Dave?

Abusing Federal budget - cover-ups after the crime!  Claypool a practiced lawyer has two or more predicate acts in the Marmer case alone commited by by the head of an organization and a criminal conspiracy with his old college rommie? Can you say RICO?

Why resign?

Hell, why not indict?

I think the Feds are snuffling very close to Rahm's rump and where Rahm's rump ranges, there you will find  Claypool.

The media, as expected the Sun Times and as follows the Tribune ( with the exception of John Kass) works for City Hall the County Building and the money infrastructure of Illinois all serving the few - the clouted and the bullet proof.

Things are chaotic with that crazy old Trump in the White House and even crazier with an independent Justice Department.

The Tribune wrote this weasel-word editorial for Forrest and Rahm the day before Forrest Claypool resigned"

Is this a firing offense? Based on what we know, no. We take ethics in government — and everywhere else — seriously. We strongly support the IG’s role in keeping a vigilant eye on CPS brass. You don’t need a long memory to recall that the last CPS chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now resides in prison on corruption charges.
But every rules violation isn’t a firing offense. This looks like a case in which the actions that drew the ire of the IG in the first place are less serious than later efforts to cover them up. But lying to the ethics watchdog is a serious matter. We think Claypool now understands that.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Board of Education members should consider the high stakes here. Ask yourselves: Are Chicago’s schoolchildren better off today because Claypool leads the district? We think the answer is an unqualified yes. Claypool was whistled in to do a grueling job: Get CPS in shape. He deserves a large share of credit for helping to shore up the district’s finances and boost its academic performance.
One more factor: From what we’ve heard, there’s plenty of friction between Claypool and Schuler. They’ve battled over the IG’s report on problems at the school at Cook County Jail, for example. We don’t know where all of this is headed.
For now, Claypool is on notice that he can’t pick and choose which ethics policies he’ll follow. This brouhaha may or may not get him fired. Everyone else who thinks ethics rules maybe don’t apply to them — including politicians and school officials — watch and learn.

Bite me, Bruce!

Watch this - from your editorial yesterday:

 It’s easy to see why Claypool concluded that he couldn’t continue under an ethics cloud. Even if he had the support of Emanuel, the optics of Inspector General Nicholas Schuler’s report were terrible. Headlines about how Claypool engaged in a “full-blown cover-up.” And how the schools chief “pushed the matter beyond all bounds when he chose to lie through two separate OIG interviews,” in the words of Schuler’s report.
“It goes without saying that if any line employee had done that much, he or she would be fired,” the report concluded.
We didn’t think Claypool’s transgressions amounted to a firing offense.

No. it is a felony.  Did Claypool doctor a contract ( one of many, many, many more - Ventra/Bombardier) ? Hmmmm?

Claypool, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked schools chief, has staunchly defended Marmer’s actions since the Sun-Times reported last year that Marmer is getting the $1 million package from Jenner & Block LLP, the Chicago firm hired to help CPS sue the state to try to win more funding for city schools.
But Schuler says six lawyers — four at CPS and two from outside firms — privately advised school officials that Marmer was violating the ethics code by supervising Jenner & Block’s work.
Only after CPS went to a seventh lawyer, in June 2016, did Claypool secure a legal opinion defending Marmer’s conduct. That opinion came from J. Timothy Eaton, a lawyer who has contributed to Claypool’s political campaigns.
“The clear inference is that Claypool had to shop through six lawyers until he found a seventh one who would publicly clear Marmer,” Schuler wrote to the Board of Education in the confidential report, which the Sun-Times reviewed

Good men make mistakes. Right?

 Political Weasels and Career Grifters lie, hide, doctor and cover-up.

Why Resign?  Quare desine?

Is it because the Feds are about to put the bracelets on some protected Progressive Species?


Rahm Emanuel?
Claypool?
Mike Quigley ( with Claypool over the voting machines?)

Maybe all  squirming in one big net?

The media knows and is not saying.  They will know when we know.  That is why we have contempt for the media - they print and report only what they want.

Fran Spielman indicated that she was on to something on December 8th.   Why back off?

Maybe we already know answer.

Things are chaotic!  It's a crisis!  Let's not waste a crisis!

Rahm's War on Neighborhoods is One of Attrition - Make Everyone Tired of Living Here

I live in a great neighborhood. great people who keep an eye on your home and most especially your kids.   The problem is that my neighborhood is in a city run by a guy who absolutely detests everything about living in a neighborhood.  His people do not live in bungalows, raised ranches, Georgians, or Flats - Rahm Emanuel's people have addresses, residences, places to end a busy day accumulation.

Rahm's people accumulate power in business, entertainment, political grifts, academics and most of all policy.

 Rahm's people do not shovel snow, cut grass, pick up empty beer cans tossed on the lawn by America's youth, nor do they agonize over ballooning taxes, revenue grifts and where to send the kids to school.  Neighbors do that.

Rahm Emanuel wants neighbors gone from Chicago and voters limited to dependable communities.

Rahm Emanuel is a smart-size city guy.  Reduce the city to lovely areas where affluent constituents and investors can walk and bike along streets free of traffic.  Reduce the number of benefits available to Chicagoans and raise the costs out of this world. We have one of the largest inland seas on the planet and it is potable water - you can drink it.

God's Lake on Chicago's shoreline.  Our water bill jumped a whopping 86%, because . . .. ?  Rahm can.

Chicago has the best police force on earth.  Yet, they are undermanned and out gunned. Thugs know - go and rob, beat, even murder, where there are no cops on patrol - in a safe neighborhood.  Big time crooks and grifters hitch their star to politics and government cash.   CPS alumni and drop-outs have the will to steal big, but lack the intellectual heft of a Northwestern education and must eke out a livlihood in a safe neighborhood in a an undermanned neighborhood.

On Friday afternoon at about 3PM, a gas station that serves as a neighborhood temple of good fellowship, Kean Gas at 111th & Talman *was robbed. Kean is place to grab a paper, coffee, candy for the kids and the real news, as well as top-off the gas tank.  Black, Mexican and Caucasians congregate like neighbors, do.

A black kid might rob a store, or grab a kid's cell phone, but it also common knowlege that 3rd generation Irish American might be doing Rahm's bidding and some Mexican St. Rita guy at the Merc could put them all to shame.

There seems to be a news embargo on what happened at Kean Gas on Friday.

No one is talking but the neighbors.

• No news casts
• No news features in print or on the web
• No nothing

Yet, Kean Gas was robbed. Here is what the neighbors know - on Friday, "around 3PM there was an armed robbery at the Kean gas station located on 111th and Talman. The offender is described as a black male in his 20s that possibly fled in a black mini-van."

Rahm is up for re-election.  Chuy Garcia has all of pension gobblers and Willie Wilson has $$$$$$$$$, Ald. Bob Fioretti has a mane of hair the hue of which resides outside of nature.  Chuy is all populist. Willie Wilson is all new.  Bob Fioretti is all about Bob.

Rahm is 'all about our suffering middle class,' . . . no really.

The skilled trades who howl at the sound of Bruce Rauner gave him the endoresement, the firemen gave him their nod, the business suits

There is no news about the robbery at Kean Gas in our neighborhood, because there must be another in the legion of embargos on news.  No one is talking, but the neighbors.

* You may remember Kean Gas as the staging area for the L'il JO-Jo mourners.

Old Coon Eyes is Back!

I have been a selfish man.

All of my thoughts, words and deeds for last several weeks have been about

• Raising more money for the guys attending Leo
• Getting the bus started
• Dealing with the huge horn grwoing out of the left side of my schnoze
• Praying for some really suffering people, kids with cancer and Chicago's Iron Man Great Shepherd -Francis Cardinal George
• Salting the walkways
• Finding a someone to cover my bus driving duties next week when I get my beak clipped
• Worrying about my motives in all things
• Worrying about my limitations
• Worrying that if I do go to see American Sniper, which I probably will not, because the my lady frined cringes about the violence on Dora the Explorer and shuddered like my hard wood floors when the CXO passes my house, all through UnBroke, will I be required to attend Tea Party rallies
• Worrying that, somehow, I have made Speaker John Boehner cry . . .

That is until, I unstuffed my mail box yesterday.

I had not gone to the mail box since last Thursday and Lowe and 35th St. there was a huge wad of Rahm Emanuel campaign flyers addressed to me, Patrick F..Hickey.

 

In all of my desultory worry and desperate acts of do-good rooted in my south side Catholic guilt-trippy being, I had totally forgotten our Random Mayor - Mayor Coon Eyes.

His adds reminded me of just what a warm, caring, 9.5 fingered neighborhood guy Rahm Emanuel happens to be. - I had forgotten all of that after I read my current bi-annual Water Bill that reads like a 2015 Lexus payment.  That made me forget that Rahn made bike lanes where people never cycle, gave Forrest Claypool another public teat - CTA,  voided more parking space, gelded the City Council like an Iowa hog farmer, made pot-holes last longer than an Alaska night and silenced more critics than Barbra Streisand during change of life.

The Campaign Flyers snapped out of it -my self-serving care for family, friends and freedom.

I'll remember, now.