POP! . . . goes to Will County

"The beverage tax is not the cause nor the solution to Cook County's financial challenges," said Brian Jordan, president of the Illinois Food Retailers Association.

Didn't sound like much back in July, but now this could be slogan of a Cook County counter-revolution.  Store counter, that is.  The irony of the photo above is just magical.

The Signs of a Cook County tax are everywhere! Bi-lingual of course, but printed in non-union shops to save costs.

A Radical Idea from Your Betters!  -Idea radical de tus superiores!

Way to Tax! Viva!  -Larga vida a los impuestos!

Fight Fat Asses!  No más culos gordos!

Think of the Children, Bitches!- ¡Piensa en los niños, putas!

Let's Give Toni Some Sugar! -Vamos a darle a Toni un poco de azúcar!


Well, Supersize my cynicism!  Toni Preckwinkle, the most humorless and gormless of all government goons, shopped for an found a judge to jam this Sweetened Beverage Tax up, down  or into any orifice considered by individual Cook County residents the most . . .uncomfortable.

CHICAGO — Diet Coke heads, take note: just because the sugar in your pop is fake, you'll still be paying more for it starting Wednesday as Cook County's sweetened beverage tax finally goes into effect, adding a penny per ounce to the cost of bottled drinks.
The tax will hike the price of a 2-liter bottle by 68 cents and a six-pack by 72 cents.
Though often dubbed the "pop tax," the fee, narrowly approved in November 2016 by the Cook County Board, actually applies to hundreds of beverages beyond soft drinks.
The tax is expected to raise $200 million a year for Cook County, which the county needs to keep its books out of the red, according to Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle.

Every ounce of sugary liquid sends a penny to the Cook Coffers.  Gee, what could go wrong?

Pennies from heaven?  Nah, more like corpses stacked high in Toni' crypt until carted off to some subterranean cold storage.  I imagine the 40 oz slurpees purchased  at Kean Gas Station by County, City and State workers added to the larder until . . .Friday.

Then, like so many Chicago residents did with the idiotic plastic bag tax, residents will hop in the Prius and hybrid over to County Line road south, west and north to pick up cases of Mountain Dew, Fanta, Wildwood, Dr. Pepper and his collegaues Dr.s Bold, Skippy and Becker, Sweetened teas and all manner of Gatorades.

At the 7-11 on 111th & Kedzi,  a 28 ounce frozen drink (Slurpee, Slushie, or Whatever) bounces up from blue collar $ 1.75 to the Majestic price of $ 2.03.

Do the math. 12 ounces = 12 more cents and on and on.

Buy a Cook County Case of Coke and that is 288 pennies to Toni! $2.88 on top of City and County taxes already stamped to your receipt.

I expect Slushee sales to sink.

Will, DuPage and Lake Counties can expect a spike in sales of sugary drinks and the State of Indiana will be selling pop like fireworks.

Cook County residents voted all too happily for the obtuse Xanthipe, who ran poor old Zeus off to the Zamboanga, knowing that Todd Stroger could not do worse, will spend more gas buying pop in Peotone and Palatine, in the dim hope that they might come out a bit ahead.

Can't happen, Neighbor. 

We screwed our beds and must lay in them.

Pop goes the weasels like clockwork.

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?

COPA Opens a New Shakman Industry: Chicago Values the Chatham House Rules

“I don’t understand how every good cop would not want a very harsh, strong police board,” Pfleger August 2016

The Fraternal Order of Police and its City Council allies opposed Emanuel’s plan to replace IPRA with COPA because they were afraid the new agency would be stacked against rank-and-file officers. But the extensive training in police organization, general orders and techniques could help ease those fears.Fran Spielman and Frank Main

I don't know a Cop who is afraid of anything - including the creeps that will crawl up his/her rump 'after weeks of COPA training on “vision and culture” of the new agency for all 140 of COPA’s full-time employees.

But, I interrupt Fran and Frank - 

Advocates have complained that the $8.4 million IPRA budget virtually guarantees that investigations of police wrongdoing will drag on for months or even years.
COPA’s budget will now be “closer to $17 million,” Fairley has said. The influx of resources is particularly important, considering the fact that COPA will inherit an expanded annual caseload tied to its broader powers to investigate false arrests, illegal searches, denials of counsel and other constitutional complaints. Sun Times

More money for Advocates!  One could build an empire being an advocate in Chicago.  One do! Michael Shakman!  Shakman
Advocates?  You mean Jamie Kalvan and Pastor Pfleger?  Why unnamed 'Advocates,' Dear Read?

You know.  Progressive Transparency means that everything is coming Sub Rosa! The Old Chatham House Rules,* doncha new?

To all of us helots that means, Move on.

Last week, I noted that my hometown is the only place in the Fifty States completely unaffected by President Elect 45's landslide. As well as voting in a fake judge - Cook County - Chicago presents more!

• Rahm Refuses to abide by Sanctuary City Laws
• Toni Preckwinkle Raises Taxes Again
• CPS Grifter-in-Chief Claypool offers kids Trump Trauma
• Cook Count Sheriff Tom Dart refuses to abide by Immigration Laws
• Chicago Media Refuses to Connect the Dots on Protestors and Source Funding
• Bishop Cupich adds a Red Hat to his Pallium after demanding that Marist deal with texting girls  and "take the necessary steps to deal with this situation swiftly." What would Pope Francis Do?
• CPD remains demoralized, understaffed and gripped by corrupt politics
• COPA will make sure Jamie Kalvan's Invisible Institute makes Progressive transparency the key to the treasure chest - just like Shakman Industries

Gee, why is everyone crying?  Nothing has changed.

The Shakman Decrees are idiotic but lucrative for Michael Shakman.

Police Officers will know operate under the yoke of Jamie Kalvan, Mike Pfleger, and the columnists still giving cover to half-truths and out and out lies.

Good morning, Chicago! Chatham House Rules Everywhere!  It is another Boondoggle of a Day!

*Chatham House Rules:"When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed. " Royal Institute of International Affairs

Shame on DNAinfo Chicago: All Signs Point to REVCOM Stirring the Hate in Mount Greenwood After Shooting

 

From the Revolution Club, Chicago:
Joshua Beal

November 5—Twenty-five-year-old Joshua Beal

was in town from Indianapolis to serve as a pallbearer at his cousin’s funeral. Joshua was brutally murdered by a Chicago police officer while in a funeral procession. His aunt described him to us: “He [Joshua] just graduated from college, Ivy Tech College in Indianapolis. He was so happy in the graduation. And he was a father of two. Two young boys. He was a dedicated father.”
The funeral procession was driving through the overwhelmingly white Mt. Greenwood neighborhood on the far southwest side of Chicago around 3 pm on a sunny afternoon. This area is a notoriously racist enclave, home to many cops and firefighters. According to witnesses, an off-duty cop in plainclothes tried to force the car Joshua Beal was riding in off the road. Other members of the funeral procession got out of their cars out of concern about the situation. The off-duty cop threatened Joshua's 17-year-old cousin with a gun in her face. A bystander video shows this off-duty cop in street clothes wildly threatening people with a gun, including women dressed for a funeral.

Is that the official media narrative?  No, it has been tweaked a bit. Chicago Police Superintendent decided to call this a "Road Rage" incident which is almost as far from the truth.

Actually, it was just another in a long line pf celebratory gang funerals that plague the 19th Ward.  The right lane-me-first idiocies and blocking the exit of a firehouse sparked the incident and subsequent shooting of an armed idiot.

But we can not allow the facts get in the way of politics and social justice play acting.

The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun Times use the City Hall narrative and the go-to rhetoric of the city sanctioned and Cook County approved lungs of Ja'mal D. Green, who is being groomed by Rahm Emanuel and Toni Preckwinkle for some slot in the Cook County Democratic ticket. Ja'mal undid Bernie Sanders and is out on $ 300,000 bond for assaulting a cop.

Ja'mal has skills.

However, Ja'mal can't do Revolution.  For that he goes to the Pros - Bob Avakian;s REVCOM. The Reds make the signs, bring the bullhorns and stooge goofs to provoke.

The Chicago media completely ignore the influence of REVCOM  - that's Revolutionary Communist Party and Club.  The Revolutionary Club is provided the diversity to a protest - white revolutionaries. ( see photo above - that is the Revolutionary Club of REVCOM)

The Revolution Club brought a Stolen Lives banner into the BK and unfurled it. Many family members gasped, as they looked at the faces of so many others murdered by police. At this point, the Burger King manager announced that the family would have to leave the restaurant. This callous racism was called out by the grieving family members and people from the Club. “This is not Mississippi in 1960. This is 2016.” “They are afraid of too many Black people in this place.” Everyone stood firm, saying, “We paid for food and we aren’t leaving.”
The manager called in the police. The police arrived in force, further crowding the Burger King. They ordered everyone to leave, announcing that the BK was closing its doors early. People were forced outside into the dark and the cold without coats or sweaters.
Outside the BK, protestors from the Black Lives Matter movement began to arrive to support the family. Significantly, two white youth from Mt. Greenwood also joined the group in solidarity with the family. These white youth described the hard-core racism of the neighborhood.
As we were gathering outside, an angry white youth walked up to the Burger King wearing an American flag bandana and a “Blue Lives Matter” t-shirt and carrying a baseball bat. He was led away by police but apparently not arrested, even though he was clearly looking to commit a racist assault. This was in sharp contrast to the fact that some family members in the funeral procession had been arrested by the police. As of early the morning after, Joshua's brother was still in custody, charged with aggravated assault on a cop—AFTER HIS BROTHER WAS MURDERED DURING A FUNERAL PROCESSION!!!
Video taken by a bystander shows off-duty cop waving a gun, shortly before Joshua Beal was killed by another Chicago cop.
Across the street from the BK, a racist mob began to gather. White people with baseball bats out their windows drove by. “N*****rs,” a white man shouted. A group of white people gathered on the same side of the street as the family. Thinking they might be press, someone from the Revolution Club went over. They turned out to be off duty-cops and their friends. They began shouting and chanting, “CPD! CPD!” Drivers going by shouted out, “Trump, Trump, Trump.”
One of Joshua's family members, stunned to see this, talked about how her mother had told her of scenes like this but that in her four decades in Chicago, she had never confronted a racist mob like this. One Club member commented, “This is what the day after the election could look like.” It was really ugly.
The Revolution Club got on a bullhorn and denounced the brutal murder and racist actions and called for people to get organized for an actual revolution, calling on people to come and stand with the family and oppose the outrageous police murder and the racists in Mt. Greenwood. A crowd of people who had been commemorating the birthday of Rekia Boyd—a 22-year-old Black woman murdered by police in 2012—came from the West Side to stand in support of Joshua's family. ( italics my own)

Chicago's DNA Info, most disappointingly, picked-up the Selma theme memes

The pro-police supporters numbered into the hundreds, while less than 20 activists showed to the scene. They faced racial slurs and repeated requests to leave the neighborhood, and police had to intervene between a few incidents.
"It was hectic," said Ja'Mal Green, the activist who called for the Sunday event. "I was in shock the whole time."
Green said he knew what he was getting into, as he had received death threats in the hours after the event was announced. Still, Green said the racism the activists faces took him by surprise and made the group uneasy.  "It really felt like we were back in the '60s," he said. "The rally shows that a black man can be killed by police and they were overjoyed about that." (italics my own)

Ja'mal and the other civil rights reenactors will be back on election day.  After that I expect they will lose interest.

I hope that my neighbors in the 19th Ward totally and completely ignore REVCOM, Ja'mal D. Green, and the White Priestess , or  KIM FOXX, or Rahm Emanuel.

This is an orchestrated attempt to spark hate, violence and hot-mic'd sound bytes from goofs with an opinion.

I am disappointed that DNAinfo Chicago has decided to go-possum like the Trib and the Times and play make-believe social justice warriors.

Chicago Wants, Voted For and Fully Supported Rahm's ChiRaq

Here malice, rapine, accident conspire,
And now a rabble rages, now a fire;
their ambush here relentless ruffians lay,
and here the fell attorney prowls for prey;
here falling houses thunder on your head,
and here a female atheist talks you dead....
This mournful truth is everywhere confessed,
Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed. Samuel Johnson -London



Our local, state and Federal government was handed over to fools, thieves and petty tyrants (bullies) via policy, lazy and apathetic voters and, also, people wanting to help neighbors and strangers and feel good about doing so.

Chicago re-elected Rahm Emanuel - black voters, white ethnic Catholic voters, Jewish voters, Hipster voters, CTU Karen Lewis Fan voters, All of Chicago labor and people 'doing a solid' for their neighbors holding political jobs.

Try and find someone who will say, " I'm With Rahm!"

Rahm Emanuel did not shoot Laquan McDonald sixteen times, nor did the Chicago Police Department.



Many of the people leading Mag Mile protests and paying that 'stare-down' kid to goad police officers into giving him a well-deserved slap in the puss, had "I'm With Rahm' lawn signs, or sat with Mayor Emanuel in seats reserved for Progressive Democrat and GOP oligarchs at BlackHawks, White Sox and Cubs games.

Chicago has killed off people of 'worth' in politics and replaced the Ed Kellys, Tom Murphys, Paul Vallases and so many others to clear the way for Forrest Claypool, Mike Quigley, Rahm Emanuel, Toni Preckwinkle and Barack Obama.

Our schools of education helped a great deal.  Teachers and students are ignorant of shared truth, because shared truths are verboten.

Dead Old Men like Shakepeare, Chaucer, Cicero, Dryden, Thackeray and Samuel Johnson have no place in the canon of American education.

Instead, public officials are allowed to make idiotic indictments of shared truths in the media and remain completely unchallenged, unaccountable and perfectly acceptable. Several years ago, when then -Alderman Toni Preckwinkle was encouraged by the University of Chicago mafia to seek high office, she said this in print in reaction to a request to make Saul Bellow's name get the same treatment as Joel Hall "    "In a city whose streets commemorate fascist pilots and other controversial figures, it should have been a rubber-stamped request . . ."   Toni denied the request to give Nobel Laureate Saul Bellow a brown Honorary Street Sign based upon and equally idiotic article  - Oh, that's right. . .I forgot the Chicago Tribune put Toni Preckwinkle's comment into the Orwellian Memory Hole  - like I said Chicagoans ( Bruce Dold Editor et al) 'doing a solid' for a friend.

Worth means nothing and therefore the worthless get moved into public office.

A worthless class of executives, legislators, educators and policy engineers have created a city that proudly spears "I'm With Rahm" lawn signs into the homey grass and then marches down the Mag Miles chanting tired Marxist 'Hey-Hey, Ho- Ho, Rahm has gotta go!' platitudes.

Had shared truth been of any concern for Chicago voters, our children would be learning from Milton, Bellow, Booker T. Washington, Juvenal and Samuel Johnson