I took a sound beat down every day from Sisters Doralese and Gertrudis, ( Sisters of Mercy ,bye the by) through Sixth and Seventh Grades at Little Flower Grammar School in the mid-1960's, due to my profound inabilities where numbers are concerned.
Pay attention, or I'll give something to whimper about . . .' take the sum of any . . . .' and shave that mustache, Boyo!
In Eight Grade, I took B Honors, because the nun I had thought that I was someone else and graded accordingly.
I did learn to add, subtract, multiply and divide and fractions.
The Editorial Board of the Chicago Sun Times? I would have been proud to have them sit around around me in those swell desks bolted to the hardwood of Little Flower. I would have been spared a few cuts and thrashings, from the two Irish women, my Bogman Grandpa Hickey called 'Life's Unplucked Flowers,' when women were present, or 'hairy-faced old Galway Bitches,' between the two of us.
The Chicago Sun Times thumps its Saltine-like chest and thunders like Governor Le Petomane in Blazing Saddles, because the Workers Compensation Payouts are not like New York City's and that the Finance Committee is operating according to the rules of its charter.
The City paid out a whopping 115 million dollars 2011, but no where in the editorial is proof of illegality.
What the editorial amounts to is this - the City is bleeding dollars from the public schools, the CTA and special relationships like this between Friends of Richie Daley and Valerie Jarret in real estate swindles that add up actual theft.
In same edition is
Watchdogs ( Tim Novak who investigated Obama/Rezko/Jarret/Allison Davis slum real estates in 2008, but magically vanished around election day), but appears again with Vanecko lad, in keeping with the paper's Kochman bleatings.
The editorial deals with John Dewey Math (there might be theft Q.E.D. there is!) and Watchdogs in math that Archimedes could understand.
Now, Lookee H'yar!
Here’s how the Davises and Vanecko handled the pension money, according to documents obtained over the past nine years from the five pension funds.
• $9.9 million was lost on the purchase of the 344-unit building at 1212 S. Michigan Ave. Using pension money, Davis and Vanecko paid $65.2 million in September 2006 to buy it — and sold it about five years later for $65.5 million. The pension funds never got any money from the sale.
• $2.8 million was lost on two loans to the owners of the Chicago Defender’s former home, a boarded-up building at 2400 S. Michigan Ave. It’s unclear why DV Urban lent pension money to developers Brian O’Connell of LaGrange and his partner, Matthew A. O’Malley, a politically connected restaurateur who has been battling City Hall over a sweetheart deal to operate the Park Grill restaurant in Millennium Park. After a bank foreclosed on the Defender building, O’Connell and O’Malley sold the property in 2014. The pension funds didn’t get any money from the sale.
• $2.65 million helped DV Urban pay $11.7 million in 2007 for a commercial building at 217 N. Jefferson St. The building was sold last year for $14.5 million — one of the deals that helped the pension funds recover $6 million.
• $6.5 million was used by DV Urban toward $11.5 million it paid for a 162-unit apartment building at 7100 S. South Shore Dr. It was sold last year for $6.75 million, helping return some money to the pension funds.
• $3.5 million went toward $4.2 million DV Urban paid for the stores at 3508 S. State St., part of the CHA’s redevelopment of Stateway Gardens. The pension funds hope to sell the land this year.
• $16.9 million went to loans to developers of 3030 N. Broadway, where a Mariano’s store is being built, and to buy adjacent land at 3013-17 N. Waterloo. The property is expected to be sold this year.
• $4.2 million was invested with the firm Sydney Partners, which paid $10.5 million for a 15.6-acre industrial property at 3348 S. Pulaski. DV Urban leased part of the space to the city. But, beset by environmental problems including polluted soil, the property was sold for just $5.4 million in 2014, and the pension fund money was lost.
• $4.5 million was earmarked to buy the former headquarters of the National Association of Letter Carriers’ Chicago branch at 1411 S. Michigan, next door to the Chicago Firehouse restaurant owned by O’Malley. The deal ended up in court when DV Urban backed out of the deal, asking the letter carriers to return the money — which the union had used to build its new headquarters. The lawsuit was settled out of court, but the pension funds lost all of their money.
Now, I was taught round off decimals at .5 and adding these here figures comes to -
$30 M in losses from City Worker Contributions to Pension Funds - no how about that? Might call for a old timey stem-winder of an editorial!
Instead,
Michael Shakman beefed that he was not getting his cut from Ed Burke's Finance Committee and the harrumphing went viral.
$ 30M is a not, to be sure, a whopping 115 million dollars paid out to workers compensation claims according to the existing law and rules, but $30M in real loss to people who trusted politicians and had their savings picked clean by Progressively Approved Valerie Jarrett slumlords, just might be investigation worthy of city newspaper.
Nah. Gentlemen, we goota protect our phoney baloney jobs!
Now, here is smelly part. While cops and school teachers took an investment beating that would have warmed cold-hearts of the two above-mentioned Sisters of Mercy.
Valerie Jarret's slum-lord partner ( Valerie is somehow absent from Tim Novak's investigation) Allison Davis and one of the Vanecko boys made out like porch-climbers.
“The investment was effectively a total loss for DV Urban,” says Miller-May of the teachers pension fund.
DV Urban was paid $8 million in management fees between 2006 and 2012, when the pension funds got permission from a Delaware judge to fire the company.
A little over $1 million, for property-management fees, went to a company owned by Cullen Davis*, another Davis son, who oversaw some of the apartment buildings bought with pension money.
Another $1.7 million went to two companies, including Newport Capital Partners, to manage the DV Urban portfolio and sell off the assets in an effort to recover as much money as possible for the pension funds.
Beyond the money lost on the investments with DV Urban, the pension funds also had to pay $2.5 million for attorneys who fought the firm for two years in courtrooms from Chicago to Delaware over control of the real estate investments.
That's $13 million in money looted from City Workers and tucked in the wallets of slumlords added to $30m in losses comes to a very real $ 43 M beat down of City Workers, not a possible boondoggle.
Where is the editorial on this one? Somethings don't add up. Like editorial three-monte providing cover for Rahm, while doing absolutely nothing.
Alderman Ed Burke is playing according to the rules approved by the City of Chicago and he does seem worried a bit nor should he. He knows this is not newspaper, but a daily political fog machine.
* Like the Ayers/Obama papers held hostage at Cement City, better late than never.
Whenever I am near a Progressive Do-Gooder, I throw both hands over the Left check of my ass to protect my wallet.
Whenever a Progressive Do-Gooder gets near poor people, they rake in millions, properties get boarded up, and people die.
