April 1, 2012 - City Garbage Collection Grid Begins - Say Goodbye to Ward Accountability

Last year, while choking on Mayoral Election Hopes and Dreams ( all came true BTW), WTTW - Chicago's Window to Taking Whatever ?- the garbage collection debate snored through the Chicago City Council and onto Chicago Tonight.

While Chicago debates the decision to privatize recycling, Chicago Tonight takes a look at what other major cities across the U.S. are doing to ensure that their recyclables are picked up:

San Francisco: The city of San Francisco has partnered with private company Recology to provide curbside removal of recycling, trash and compostable material in three different bins. Residents pay Recology directly for their services. Ordinances passed in San Francisco make it mandatory for the city to recycle 75 percent of all waste after 2010 and 100 percent by 2020.

Los Angeles: According to their website, the Los Angeles Bureau of Sanitation collects over 240,000 tons of recyclables annually. The city operates the largest residential curbside recycling program in the United States, offering services to 530,000 single family homes and 220,000 small multi-family units. In 2009, Waste & Recycling News reported that Los Angeles had the highest recycling rate out of the 10 largest U.S. cities.

New York City: The city Department of Sanitation Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling runs New York’s recycling program. They offer services ranging from curbside collection to leaf and Christmas tree collection, as well as chlorofluorocarbon (C.F.C.) evacuation. While most businesses in New York use a private recycling company for their waste, the city collects between 366,000 and 423,000 tons of mixed paper recyclables per year from residents alone. In 2009, Waste & Recycling News reported that New York’s recycling rate ranked third out of the 10 largest U.S. cities.

Indianapolis: The Department of Public Works will remove curbside recycling for a monthly fee that residents may pay, or they may drop off their own recyclables at locations all over the city. Private recycling company Abitibi Bowater collects paper at many local grocery stores and donates some of the proceeds to a tree-planting fund in Marion County, Indiana.

Houston: The Solid Waste Management Department offers curbside and automated recycling, as well as removal of yard waste in compostable bags. According to their website, 19,000 homes participate in the curbside recycling program, and an additional 70,000 homes receive curbside recycling service from automated vehicles. In 2009, Waste & Recycling News reported that Houston’s recycling rate ranked ninth out of the 10 largest U.S. cities.

Seattle: The city of Seattle organizes free curbside recycling for its residents, with pickup every other week. By law, recyclable items like glass bottles and paper are forbidden from being part of garbage removal. Larger recyclable items like tires and yard waste may be dropped off at sites around Seattle.


Portland: The city Bureau of Planning and Sustainability hired 20 different waste removal companies for curbside recycling service. The city sets the fee per pickup, and each resident is given a green cart for yard waste and a blue cart for recyclable materials.

For more information on Chicago’s recycling history, check out the Chicago Recycling Coalition’s website.

Would you pay a monthly fee for citywide recycling? Sound off on our discussion board!

You see Chicago is a big city and we can't have that, no, no, no.

Chicago is so much a mirror of San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, New York and yes, dare we say it, Indianapolis. Look at our Golden Gate! Gander in awe at the Fjords and Tall Timbers! Gape like Barbary Apes at our island communities, Borough by Borough!

Chicago's urban sprawl takes in . . .neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are where breeeders and their disgusting children live. These Breeders operate all of those City of Chicago Department big blue garbage trucks, water services, and street repair vehicles. These Breeders share neighborhoods with cops, firemen, white-collar City, County, State and Federal office workers, teachers, nurses and those skilled tradesmen who make $20 an hour.

WTTW wants Chicago to be a Big Bean Ci. . . Urban Center. Pritzker Parkways and Lettuce Entertain You Trains! Symphony Centers and BikePaths Forward! Stopping progress are Chicago's neighborhoods. Neighborhoods are not Communities. Communities are geographical land masses dependent upon government largesse (Somebody else's money), grants, TIFS, and T-shirt give-aways. Neighborhoods are toxic to Urban Centers.

Neighborhoods are places where Planned Parenthood does not take hold. The key to Chicago's evolutionary path to Urban Center Citizenship requires that Breeders and their spawn depart for . . .anywhere else. The rub, is that the Breeders are paying the taxings on their properties and everything else because they have jobs with the City, County, State and to some extent the Federal government.

These other urban centers know that the key to becoming an urban center is the route taken by garbage collection.

Take garbage out of the City's Wards and watch the Breeders depart.

This April Fools Day is the beginning of Garbage Grid Chicago. This April Fools Day, ask your Alderman about the Garbage Collection Grid. Ask exactly how long before the lay-offs of all of the Blue Truck Breeders and jolly Snow Plow Men. Will laid off City Streets and Sanitation people be 'absorbed' into Waste Management?

I'll bet he will say, "Hey, not my problem anymore."

Leo President Dan McGrath on WTTW Chicago Tonight

Leo President Dan McGrath talks with WTTW Phil Ponce on the Mission of Leo High School.

You can be a part of helping inner city young get a quality Catholic high school education.

Send your tax-deducatible contribution to

President Dan McGrath
Leo High School
7901 S. Sangamon Street
Chicago, IL 60620

Call Pat Hickey-Director of Development with any of your questions (773) 224-9700 ex. 208.

WTTW and WBEZ Aficionados Clel and Murn Van Hoellen Shocked that Blago Did Not Testify!

WHUT: Twin brothers, Latin School and Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism alumni, Clelland and Murniford Van Hoellen called a press conference at the Peoples Law Office tomorrow to announce their shock and displeasure with the Blago Defense Team's refusal to put the Daffy Guv on the Witness Stand - Said Clel, elder of the two, " H'is a Dang Shayum. Whey, Meyun Murn H'yar, lussen tah Dubbya Bee Eee Zay (WBEZ) 'en watch Chanuhl Ah'leven (WTTW)ever nigh'd. Thot He'd Keep Huz Wurd."


WHAN:
11 AM on Thursday, July 22, 2010


WHUR:People's Law Office
1180 N. Milwaukee Ave., Third Floor

HOO: Hoo wee ez hot h'yar!

BAKEGROUN: Ova Thar!

Burge Trial - Burge Gives G.Flint Taylor What He Howled For . . . Taylor and Company Are Not Happy.

I know the Fahey family, not real well, but I know Packey and Mike. Their brother Chicago Police Officer William Fahey along with Officer Richard O'Brien was tortured, murdered and their bodies were urinated upon by the Wilson Brothers.

I do not know, nor have I ever met Former Detective Commander Burge. I do know several Chicago Police Detectives who worked under Jon Burge, in Area 2. They universally admire Burge for courage and leadership 'from the front' and say he was a great boss.

All I know about Jon Burge's nemesis G. Flint Taylor is what I have read in the news and other media publications and witnessed on television or heard over the radio. My impression of G. Flint Taylor of the Peoples Law Office is wildly unfavorable. Not a big deal.

The media love G. Flint Taylor because he is edgy and wraps his dubious agenda in rhetorical flourishes that would make Atticus Finch seem like the leader of a lynch mob.

“

There should be indictments and prosecutions of Burge and his men for obstruction of justice, perjury and conspiracy,” said Flint Taylor, Orange’s attorney. He called for hearings for the 25-30 black men imprisoned after allegedly being tortured into confessions of crimes they didn’t commit. . . .Meanwhile, Orange’s lawyer failed to produce a properly drafted document giving him power of attorney to settle, Georges said. . . . an attorney for one of the plaintiffs had not been able to produce a power of attorney executed by his client, a form that would demonstrate he had the authority to settle the case.

Chicago Sun Times


G. Flint Taylor it seems to me is a Marxist millionaire lawyer with the bulliest of pulpits - American Progressive High Ground. He is a nasty piece of work, it seems to me, because he has been at the plate with his Burge bats for decades and never hit one even remotely within the foul line. G. Flint Taylor's most telling moment occurred when career criminal and current Federal inmate Aaron Paterson's day in court went south on the thug. G. Flint Taylor and Urban Translator Gator Bradley as well as another attorney all but came to blows over the money that was settled out of court - yet, Aaron by dint of his thuggish instincts returned to prison.

Three of the alleged victims have remained free, but Patterson is serving a 30-year prison term on gun and drug charges.

In one of the strange twists in Patterson's civil case, a judge allowed Wallace "Gator" Bradley, a former gang enforcer, to sit in court with Patterson's attorney as an "urban translator" to control the volatile defendant. Now Bradley says Patterson's attorney, Frank Avila, owes him $250,000 for his work. Avila and Flint Taylor, Patterson's former lawyer, are fighting over their share of the legal fees.

Chicago Sun Times

G. Flint not only demands the spilled nickels on the courtroom floors, but also demands that the American Justice system be deconstructed. Any and all confidence in Law Enforcement and the Institutions of Justice must be undermined - in that way, G. Flint Taylor can continue to milk the Systemic Racist Police Torture Cow.

Every time, and he will again, Taylor fails make charges stick to Jon Burge and other police officers, he howls like a pig with a hair lip.

A panel of judges must study Burge and his Midnight Crew!!!!!

They did and produced a finding that cost millions of dollars and did not come up with Taylor's script.

Howls!!!! They are related to cops!!! It is more racism and cover-up!

Flint demands and the corporate media choruses along with Flint "The Federal Prosecutor MUST Charge Burge with Perjury!:

They did.

Flint Howls!!!!!!!!!!!"I want Burge on the witness stand!"

There is Burge in all of his beefy splendor!

Flint Howls!!!!!!!!!!!! to Elizabeth Brackin on WTTW. Naturally. Brackin wants Burge stomped -give her a listen. Hack.



I have a feeling that Burge will go back to Florida -John Conroy's editorialized reports for NPR notwithstanding. Many, many, many very good people believe G.Flint Taylor. I do not. I am around police officers very often and I am also around people in the news media very often. Some cops are thugs and most are not. Some journalists are lazy, scripted hacks, most reporters are not that at all.

The Burge Saga has been an orchestrated effort to create the facts -pure Hegelian/Dewey method. Facts are troubling things. What is ignored by the media is the fact that much of testimony in past trials concerning police torture were ruled as inadmissable. The 'black box' is an urban legend. I first read about the black box years ago, when Bernardine Dohrn strapped on her job at Northwestern. Sasha Abramsky echoed the tale and John Conroy then with Chicago Reader hammered it home.

G. Flint Taylor even had a re-production of the torture instrument brought into a courtroom.

A boy scout who later said that he had seen the device -melted into La Salle County Illinois and a series of arrests in Ottawa. UBI Sunt?

The City of Chicago, like other towns and municipalities walked right into G. Flint Taylor's agenda - they tried to toss money at a glutton.

Now, with witnesses against Burge self-impeaching and the high-minded suspender snapping oratory melted, Jon Burge is answering questions with piss and vinegar.

When and if Burge is acquitted and I believe that he will be. G.Flint Taylor and his orchestra will play more loudly. This is not about justice -this is all about money for G. Flint Taylor and his industry. But right now, things are not looking too good and it is torturing G. Flint Taylor.

G. Flint Taylor knows all about torture - he is a past master.


http://jailjonburge.org/tag/flint-taylor/

CPD 6th Respond to Fight on 87th Street - Last Night Rev. Jesse Jackson & WTTW Make Police Goats for Fenger Murder

The great officers of the 6th Police District* responded to a fight that I witnessed on the way to Leo this morning. At roughly 7:50 A.M. east bound traffic on 87th Street stalled near Loomis as a fight between about twelve young men took place in a lot on the south side of the street.

Before I could pull over and call 911, Blue lights flashed westbound toward the fight. I saw at least six CPD SUVs and cars race to the scene.

When I arrived at Leo, administrators told me that at least that number sped west on 79th Street -obviously destined for the brawl.

Last night I witnessed Race-baiting Professional Rev. Jesse Jackson serve up more nonsense to the ever supple-spined Phil Ponce on Chicago Tonight. In essence, the arch-race-baiter and Cop Hater, Jesse Jackson, parsed the Fenger murder into a 'Lack of adequate Police' nonsense. Jackson even blamed Burge for the Fenger beat down - click my post title for the WTTW Jesse Fest. Ponce could not be anymore amoeba-like in his Bill Moyers cupped chin-gee-whiz Jesse affection.

WTTW - where Winnetka Talks to Wilmette - adds more elbow room for gang-banging thugs in Chicago's Thug Comfort Zone. The namby-pamby Cheese Cube Gulpers who skew the news and parade on rhetorical stick-up artists like Pops Jackson to toss gasoline on Race and Law Enforcement are real the 2X4 swingers and do more for thug-violence than a GD operated free guns program.

BTW - The Men of Leo High School exceeded their quota in blood donations to Life Source in the Leo Blood Drive only yesterday. Chicago can use his kind of blood
letting. The imbeciles in the News Media help the other all too familiar blood flow.


* I had drafted merely a shout-out to WTTW and Pops Jackson for their Cop Bash on WTTW last night, but irony and God's magic eye helped re-draft this note.

Well done Lions!

Joel Weisman - A Tuba Joins a String Quartet of Chicago Talent

Joel Weisman on the Friday Edition of WTTW -Wilmette Talking to Winnetka -Chicago Tonight seems to be channeling MSNBC's Chris 'Milkey' Matthews. White noise.

I was stunned to see four great guest panelists on Chicago Tonight. While my daughter Clare was doing St. Rita Cheerleading stuff with the like-minded and spirited young ladies from the neighborhood, I chanced to see four -not just good -panelists on Chicago Tonight, but four great panelists.

News Legend Bob Crawford - a WBBM radio reporter who always gets it right

Nesita Kwan - A solid and clever NBC correspondent

Kate Grossman - a Chicago Education journalist for the Sun Times who speaks as well as she writes.

Dan McGrath - Chicago Tribune senior sports writer and the absolute best prose craftsman in journalism.


This line-up of genuine Chicago talent is like having the greatest Haydn String Quartet be joined by Joel and his Golden Tuba! Hey! Let's Polka to Haydn! Go for Baroque!

Jesus Christ! Everytime Bob Crawford presented a cogent analysis on Illinois politics, Kate Grossman cut through the nonsense surrounding the Clouting of CPS, Nesita Kwan silked the substance of dangers to our health , or the witty Dan McGrath hit for fences on Milton Bradley or the chances of 2009 Sox, Joel Weisman blows loudly to implode the music of great thoughts and sucks the intelligence and oxygen out of the room. Well, it is public TV.

Chris Matthews the braying jackass of MSNBC must have offered his playbooks to Jolly Joel.

Let's hear the panelists! Shut the Duck Up, Joel - your inner Duck! Keep him there.

Click my post title and watch a souffle drop because of Joel's Tuba playing to no one in particular.

We Have a Problem! Burr Oak Cemetery and Someone Else's Troubles

Father Dan Mallette blesses the desecrated grounds at Burr Oak.


So I asked the undertaker what it took to make him laugh/when all he ever saw is people cryin'

first he hands me a bunch of flowers that he received on my behalf/he said, "Steve business just gets better all the time
Steve Goodman -Somebody Else's Troubles



Max Weismann of the Center for the Study of Great Ideas is an architect and a philosopher.

He designs. Max Weismann thinks. He thinks because he reads and he reads what is great. Max wrote to me in response to the horrific desecration of the dead Americans at Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, IL

"We are under Siege!Aside from the plethora of current inequities and iniquities being perpetrated on the citizens of this nation, we have now reached the nadir--Congress now passes massive bills of profound and long lasting consequences, without even reading them.

That said, we are ultimately at fault--whenever something is wrong in our communities, cities, states or country, it's because we let it get that way."

We are responsible. Max Weismann is using the 1st Person Plural in its archaic form. Thanks to Progressive PC obfuscation of the common language ( O, Let's Ban Midget!)The first person plural however now means You. Thanks to Victimhood and Identity Politics. Many thanks. Like the name of that old Hippie/Yuppie bar Fred Holstein's - Somebody Else's Trouble , people like to talk of the revolution that someone else fights and spreading the wealth that someone else pays for.

I grew up in a blue collar world where free lunch ends when Mom stops making it. If someone at the bar buys me a beer, I am duty bound to buy the next one. It all evens out, unless you happen to be the type of louse who stands around caging drinks and smile with your short arms and deeper pockets when the round comes to you. I don't do those things, because I have had my ass kicked repeatedly and with great gusto by my elders and betters. You don't get away with that too much around Western Avenue, though I have seen it done. I called such a person a louse, an insect who feeds on others; but, who's to say? One man's louse is another man's cause celebre.

The bane of my outlook in all things over the last four decades has been a dominance of earnest people who speak in hushed measured tones and affect a look of pained recognition but intolerant disgust with all other people. Joan Walsh a Progressive writer and editor of Salon and all too frequent guest on MSNBC ( the Tool Shed) comes to mind. Joan Walsh and folks like her have a mantra - 'Who's to Say?'

e.g. Michael Jackson was not only the greatest entertainer of all time, the 21st Century Dionysus who danced in a Golden Age; a John the Baptist who announced Barack Obama. Who's to say?

Me. I don't do group think and neither do most Americans. I voted for Barack Obama when he ran against Bobby Rush in my Congressional District - Obama lost. I like Barack Obama.

I worked for John McCain. John McCain lost, because he seemed to want to lose, after September 19th 2008 - the day the American Economy tanked. My Mom, Dad, Brother, Sister, Aunts and my hundreds of cousins voted for Barack Obama.

Barack Obama is my President. I still feel that he was no where near ready to be President and that he will be the Jimmy Carter of the New Millennium - too bad. Nice guy.

I belong to the We - 99% of the Hickey/Winters/Brennan/Donahue/Cleary family voted to make Barack Obama Our President. Pronouns matter. Possessive Pronouns really matter. My guy lost, We won. That is America! Thanks be to God!

Who's to say? Me. I read and seem to understand history. I read and seem to understand poetry,drama, fiction and essays. I taught literature with some success for decades. I occasionally even get paid to write something, because I have something to say. Somethings I managed to learn on my own -from great books.
The rest I learned by getting the odd slap when needed, or from the silent treatment for being a jerk.

I work for and with black teenagers at Leo High School in Gresham neighborhood - in fact a black kid was shot over at 1400 W. 78th Place early this morning by a clown in dred-locks firing from the sun-roof of the car in which he was riding. Some mother has a kid at Advocate Hospital in Oak Lawn with his guts shot out and tubes in every orifice - my kids are asleep. This kid could be a Leo Man, I hope and pray not. The Kids at Leo High School are all black, but the guys helping pay their tuition are nearly all white guys.

Race relations issues are talked about by Joan Walsh-like head-shakers on WTTW who never drop a dime to help kids at Leo. Race Relations happen every day and race relations are pretty damn good. Leo High School is a safe place for Black Kids - they study, meet old white guys, play sports and succeed. Their folks pay heavy tuition bills and old white guys buck up plenty to ease their pain.

Gresham District Chicago Cops protect the kids once they are out of the school and help to see that they get home, without some clown throwing shots at them.


Sheriff Tom Dart unearthed the horrific desecration of My Neighbors at Burr Oak Cemetery. We have a problem. We are under siege, as Max Weismann wrote to me with heartbreakingly succinct clarity.

A Joan Walsh can write for Salon and shake her jowls with disgust at all of us, while making a case for Abortion about white on black systemic racism on MSNBC. Great.

The bones of a child are as precious to me as the bones of Emmett Till, Ezzard Charles, Dinah Washington and the hundreds of people who struggled and laughed and provided for their children and were back-hoe-ed by three morons at the bidding of some others.

We have a problem. Sheriff Tom Dart and all of us are now doing something about what was done. We need to start taking care of Someone Else's Troubles by calling out the dopes who continue to say 'Who's to Say?' We Do.

We need to Read what is Great and not just what is rammed down our throats, by Group Thinkers. We can read Dead White Men and still honor the thoughts of living women of color - honor bright; it can happen.

We need to say that killing Children is not a Woman's Reproductive Health Issue; murder is not the result of systemic racism, but an individual act selfish contempt for everyone else; suffering is not Some Else's Trouble; help is not always the result of more taxes.

Who's to say? Me. I don't need to be right; I just need to live like I might be correct.


Go to The Center for the Study of Great Ideas and get some Great Ideas from people who had them.

The CENTER has two primary missions:

One, to help awaken citizens from their moral and intellectual slumbers and to help them understand why philosophy is everybody's business: the possibility of finding sound and practical answers to questions about the good life and good society. And philosophy's ability to answer the most basic normative questions, WHAT OUGHT WE SEEK IN LIFE? And HOW OUGHT WE SEEK IT?

Two, to promulgate the insights and ideals embedded in Dr. Adler's lifelong intellectual work in the fields of Philosophy, Liberal Education, Ethics and Politics. To continue functioning as THE resource for, access to, and the on-going interpretation of his work.

Great Laura Washington Political Analysis - Chute and Ladders!

Laura Washington, along with Tim Novak, Mark Konkol, Mike Mulligan, and Kate Grossman, keeps me reading the Sun Times.

Laura Washington is one of the two people who ever make sense as guests on WTTW's ersatz Politics Spins on Chicago Tonight or the fatuous Joel Weisman's Week in Review. Weisman always seems 'coached and prepped' in PC Doctrine while he has been slapped with make-up before the show.

Paul Green and Laura Washington are almost always on the money.

Today, in the Chicago Sun Times Laura Washington uses the Chutes and Ladders - why not Snakes and Ladders? - trope to blueprint the upcoming political season.

This is brilliant! Click my post title for the whole story - here's my favorite nugget about Jan Schakowsky's perpetual 'PUT ME IN FRONT!' nonsense. Jan has all the genuine affection for working people as Leona Helmsley - but none of Leona's people skills.

Things will be even more hopeless if U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky decides to take a shot at the seat. Schakowsky is a powerhouse fund-raiser with a bullet-proof base among female, progressive and Jewish voters.

Ald. Joe Moore (49th) is said to be salivating over a Schakowsky bid, as that would give him a shot at her 9th Congressional District seat. The national thrill of his foie gras crusade is long gone, and he wants it back. Still, since the Rogers Park pol barely won reelection in 2007, he may not be in the best shape to muscle another rung up the ladder.

Nice work, Ms. Washington!