I'm for Ives, Bruce! Is 'Questionable' the New 'Deplorable'? How'd That One Work Out?

“Rep. Jeanne Ives has associated herself with questionable individuals that really don’t represent the views of the people of Illinois,” - Governor Bruce Rauner in Politico

One of the best reporters in the sorry State of Illinois is Natasha Korecki - late of the Chicago Sun Times and currently the Illinois Playbook editor for Politico.

Unlike too many Politico headline-grabbers, Natasha Korecki never allows politics to guide her words.  Ms. Korecki is the real deal - fair, professional and exacting with regard to the details.

You never, ever, get half a story with Natasha Korecki. She is a blue-collar Chicagoan.

Today, her front page by-line in Politico features the  Ad that is deemed "Repulsive" by the elites of both Party labels. BTW - it was Dan Bliss one of the Democratic stalking horses for plutocrat J. B. Pritzker's Guv Dreams who termed it 'Repulsive.'

The ACLU resorted to NPR scatology calling the ad "Sad."  You know, "It's just sad. Really, sad."

Bruce Rauner, a long time Cook County trough snouter, ran as Republican against Progressive Democrat Governor Pat Quinn, an accomplished goof and un-original thinker, which was like running against   J. B. Pritzker in the 100 meter dash any day.

Bruce sported Carhartt jackets and rode his  Harley into the hearts of uninformed voters as well as people suffering from Pat Quinn Malaria* ( about 88.4% of the Illinois population) .

Bruce immediately did nothing.
Svelt!

That was the plan all along - hold the spot for four years, while J. B. Pritzker dropped some tonnage for the Gubernatorial sound bytes and photo shoots 2017-18.

Jeanne Ives  stepped out of Springfield quick-sand and place her neck out for the vicious, the complacent, the satisfied and bought off to take some ax whacks.  Rauner was immediate.

The Ad vilifies Rauner  and not people.  I love my trade union, LGBTQ, Teachers Union and my Irish second and third cousins who landed in Canada and took a three year day visit to Hoffman Estates.   I want nothing but a great Illinois for them.

Only Jeanne Ives will afford them that possibility.

She is a womb to tomb social justice warrior.

Now, after Bruce and his Missus used their Equality Illinois Platinum donations and their Personal PAC good fellowship against Jeanne Ives, he now sets his piggy little eyes one me.

Bruce calls me questionable?   Ask, Bruce!  What you wanna Know?

Is support for a West Point grad, veteran, mother of five who wants a fair shake for all of Illinois not just selected few questionable?

Hell, no!  Last year it was deporable me.   Now, it is questionable me.

Hillary Clinton used that  same such sobriquette and stayed so long at the bottom of the toaster lot that she is still smoking.

I am far from questionable - I am taking a Republican ballot on March 20th and voting for Jeanne Ives.

In November Jeanne Ives will sprint past J. B. Pritzker and he can again use his gold card at Fogo de Chao. 
J.B. can Bruce about their wine list.

Politico's Natasha Korecki Details Progressive Duplicity - The Luis and Jan Knifing of Lipinski's Kidneys

It is what they do. Progressives are creeps.  They are not Democrats. They are not Liberals.  They are anything but decent and forthright people. If you think that is a bit harsh,  do a favor for one.

• Help Mike Quigley
• Ring a doorbell for Schakowsky
• March for Gutierrez the Gangbanger
• Cut Pat Quinn's lawn
• Give Toni Preckwinkle a Mountain Dew

I saw Forrest Claypool at a Democratic Regular fundraiser at Bourbon Street about ten years ago and a week later the Sun-Times ran a smear on a guest two weeks later - subsequently retracted.

I witnessed Jan Schakowsky bully an Asian girl at Alex Giannoulias's kick-off speech at the Hilton, because Jan was late and was not allowed to push other people out of theway in order to stand next to  Senator Obama . No, the little Asian volunteer did not know who Comrade Jan was and was subjected to all kinds of un-PC racist dressing down.  My ten year old daughter asked, "What is wrong with that woman, Dad?"  

I answered, " That is a Progressive.  Stay away from them."

Well, yesterday, my Congressman Dan Lipinski took two shivs in the kidneys from Comrade Jan and Luis El Piojo . 

The best political reporter in Chicago writes for Politico, without Fran Spielman's bootlicking deference to City Hall and Michael Sneed's gate-crashing idiocies. Natasha Korecki gives the low-down on the Lown-down shameless Progressive Playbook:

Natasha Report in Full:

 LIPINSKI KNIFED BY HIS OWN PARTY

When two veteran members of Congress kicked to the curb one of their own colleagues on Wednesday, even they called it unprecedented.

U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky and U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez, both Democrats, held a news conference to condemn fellow Democrat Rep. Dan Lipinski for his relatively conservative views and back his little-known primary opponent Marie Newman.

“It’s not easy to endorse a challenger for a colleague in the House of Representatives. Especially when that colleague is a member of your own party,” Gutierrez said at the news event on the Hill. “This is a very special, and, I think, dangerous time in the United States of America.”

The public shunning of a colleague for their positions on issues alone is almost unheard of in Congress. It’s a violation of the so-called “club rules.” If it’s done, it happens quietly, behind the scenes. For progressive groups angling to oust Lipinski, however, this is the Democrat’s comeuppance for years of bad votes. Gutierrez and Schakowsky both cited Lipinski’s opposition to abortion and past votes on immigration as out of step with his district.

“I assure you that this district is overwhelmingly pro-choice,” Schakowsky said.

Did Lipinski feel betrayed? “Jan has worked against me in the past. She’s never come out formally against me. Her husband has been straight about working against me,” Lipinski said in an interview with POLITICO. “It certainly does not surprise me. Even though I have supported her when she ran for vice chair of the caucus … I’ve been back and forth with Luis. He’s been with me, he’s not been with me. I’m not sure what his future is.” Lipinski defended his stance on immigration and said he’s worked for five months on a bipartisan agreement on DACA. He seemed to indicate it was his style as much as his positions that were under attack.

“I put in a lot of hard work trying to get this done. I’m a workhorse, I’m not a showboat,” he said. “I’m a problem solver. I see myself as a common sense Democrat. Some people want to be bomb throwers, they’re more interested in rhetoric than results.” Full story will be posted later at Politico.com and http://www.politico.com/news/illinois

SETTLING SCORES? Democrats privately questioned whether the retiring Gutierrez was settling a score by going against Lipinski and thus Mike Madigan, a longtime ally of Lipinski’s father.

“He jettisoned, 50-60,000 voters. Not Latino voters, not black voters. White voters, from his district. Wah-la they showed up in the 4th congressional district! I was happy to get them. Then all of a sudden I have the zoo. Brookfield Zoo … Just think about it. Pilsen, Little Village, Humboldt Park, Back of the Yards,” he said. “He did it because he was running away from progressive Democrats.”

Gutierrez told us later his point was that Lipinski wanted to export that population because areas like Berwyn and Brookfield were turning too progressive. “He didn’t get rid of them because of race. It was ideological,” he said.

LUIS FOR MADIGAN! Gutierrez said he had no issue with the remap. In fact, he said the General Assembly accommodated him when he moved out of his district. “I got my house included. I called my state reps and state senators, and said 'please, I moved,'” Gutierrez said. “They're wrong. this has nothing to do with that. I supported [Mike Madigan] three years ago. I did radio commercials, direct mail appeals. If the speaker calls me tonight and said he needed my help, I would jump on the first plane and go help him get reelected.”

As I told my daughter years ago -"Progressives - stay away from them." Thank you Natsha Koreki!

Natasha Korecki Helps Illinois Voters Spot the Loonies - Early and Often

You can't keep goofs down and that is why these Room Temperature I.Q.s hold public office!

Love me some Commie Chanting!  Everybody!

Grassroots/Netroots
Basket full of Grapefruits
Readnot/Thinks less
Illinois is in a Mess!

Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho!
We don't have no where to Go! (repeat . . .Early and Often)

You can not say that Progressive International is not having an impact - Elizabeth Warren is taken seriously . . . no really.

Here in Illinois, Cook County and Chicago we have an endless parade of goofballs, grifters and GooGo Fascists ( 3Gs) holding public office and looting our bankrupt communities six ways to Sunday.

Rahm Emanuel, once a 3G darling, and now considered a tyranical plutocrat ( he is THAT and change) Hell bent on destroying the PACS that masquerade as labor.  These PACs are the monster-sized public sector "unions" of wage slave workers decked out in Purple and Red XXXL t-shirts who happen to earn wages via tax-payers.

Grassroots are photo-op mobs chanting folks transported to rallies by the busload to threaten spineless dummies in elected office to tax the middle class out of existence.

Netroots are the fundmentally lazy college educated slackers and hipsters who Tweet anonymous HashTag slogans and threats.

Then there are the rest of us.  Some of read and a few of us retain the ability to manage an original thought.  We many, we unhappy many, we band of patsies! We pay, we will pay, until we have nothing less than resignation and we too beg for XXL Purple and Red T-shirts and the concomitant wage-slavery of a husky $15 an hour.

The American middle class and its robust standard of living was created in large part because of American :Labor - Real Labor.  Real labor are the skilled and low skilled Industrial trades who fought, not Scott Walkers, but Fords, DuPonts and Rockefellers for right to fair wages.

Progressives too coin from guilty Fords, DuPonts and Rockefellers and put it to great use underming and now strangling the American Middle Class as it gasps for its last breath.

Thanks be to God and Natasha Korecki of the Chicago Sun Times the Illinois Band of Patsies a heads up on the Netroots and Grassroots carpetbaggers re-settled like Rahm Emanuel himself in Sweet Home Chicago to place a new generation of goofs, grifters and Goo-Go Fascists into public office.  This is the second such report from the writer who provided the most accurate and clear prose on the unmasking and ultimate pants-yanking of two Progressive frauds - Rod Blagoyevich and Congressman Jesse Jackson, Junior.

Natasha Korecki warned of Progressive International's shop-set-up in Illinois and the bridge to the Karen Lewis City Hall Expedition.

Now, Korecki links the Grassroots/Netroots Coalition of Leeches in its Chicago, Cook County and Illinois campaign -

Look out Chicago, a new political movement has arrived.
United Working Families, a partnership between labor groups, including the Chicago Teachers Union, and a coalition of a dozen community groups is expected to announce its formal launch on Monday, executive director Kristen Crowell tells Early & Often.
Crowell is the same woman who headed an effort to counter policies by Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, raising $50 million along the way.
“This organization collectively will represent well over 100,000-plus members in a diverse range of communities in Chicago,” Crowell said of the Chicago group.
Crowell previously served as executive director of We Are Wisconsin, which grew out of protests in 2011 and eventually cultivated its battle into a full-blown recall election against Walker.

Remember the drum-circle jerks who camped out under the Madison Wisconsin Legislature rotunda and chanted Death to Walker and Tremble Ye Running Dogs?  Kristen Crowell managed that tasty street theatrical and rooted in the likes of Big Ed from MSNBC and Michigan Fats himself, Michael " 9Mansions" Moore.

Walker, if you will recall, was not Recalled and led his state out of fiscal water-boarding without killing off Organized Labor.

This time, however,  the Madison Class warriors and  Hipster Hobos will dress up like Chicago's Stan from Streets and San, Eddie the Electrician, Doreen the Dockworker  and Framin' Eamon the Irish Carpenter.  

You see, its all bout us, this time. Us, the Band of Patsies.

The Cadillac Commies are now the champions of the working mom and dad and all of their disgusting Catholic school attending spawn.

The natural Progressive contempt for We Band of Breeders is on hold until a thick cadre of creeps hold more elective offices than we can afford.

Still, it’s no coincidence. The Chicago group has been in discussions with the Working Family Party — a progressive group that successfully backed candidates for office in various states — about modeling some of their programs, including community outreach and candidate training. . . . Crowell said the group is developing its political strategy, including whether it will back a slate of aldermanic candidates.

“Certainly, it is our opinion that the current leadership is not doing enough to take care of our folks,” Crowell said. United Working Families will focus on “finding, recruiting and supporting candidates who are going to be with us.”

“It’s not about elected officials, it’s about members having a role and having a voice in Chicago.” 

I have a voice and I have very nice baritone.  I sing out when I am delighted and wail up a storm when creeps like Elizabeth Warren, Jan Schakowsky, Wee Mike Quigley, Dithering Dick Durbin and Governor Pat Quinn want to side with me and mine.  But that's just me.

Natasha Korecki told us to " Look Out, Chicago!"  Now, lets see if the Progressive 2 X 4 whacks the Band of Patsies between the eyes and continues to murder the American Middle Class.

Illinois School Reform is Dead -says Gov. Pat " Everyday People" Quinn

"Squeezy Will Now Choke School Reform to Death! Pension Debt?  . . . Not So Much!"

"These plutocrats at the top of the power heap, they may have a lot of money, but they don’t have any understanding of everyday people and what they go through." - Gov.Pat Quinn and the Family Stone

After picking up tree branches from the Chicago parkway on my property ( hard to get my head around that bit of Burnham ownership) I coffee'd-up and fended off potassium deficiency with an Irish-owned Chiquita banana and took in my morning's quota of political empty calories from Illinois Governor Pat " Everyday People" Quinn.

The Sun Times offers a political blog with the darling politically incorrect title of Early and Often ( the old-timey Democrat encomium for people who wanted to keep their jobs) which places solid reporters like Dan Mihiapolous and Natasha Korecki in close proximity to oily, or waxy political pests and nudniks needed by no one but editorial boards and other grifters.

Ms. Korecki is as solid and professional a reporter as one could hope for and did yeoman like work covering the vast decoupage that was the waning months of Gov. Rod Blagojevich's oil spill.  Korecki is no one's Carol Marin.  She is tough, witty and gifted with a foresight few journalists possess, because Korecki thinks for herself.

Sadly, Ms. Korecki is burdened with this Chicago Sun Times Civics Sesame Street for Dummies task, along with her more serious workload.

Nevertheless, Natasha Korecki, an everyday person if there ever was one, punches the time clock and gives editorial Star Chamber social engineers a solid eight.

Today, this morning, following coffee and banana, I joined Ms. Korecki for a Quinn-acopia of flat rhetoric and opaque insights.  Quinn drones about Stu Levine with whom Blago and Quinn spent many a happy hour in finding new and better ways to erase the middle class via pension and retirement scams  and Ralph Martire pie-charted tax increases.  Quinn squeezies  onto Stu-ey Levine like a plush python offered to teach Illinois morons about our unfunded mandates and pension debts.  I could almost see poor Natasha Korecki nodding off like a teacher at faculty meeting, when she too decides enough is enough.

The only take away of any substance in her exchange with Gov. Platitude Quinn comes about when Natasha Korecki somehow snaps herself out of a nap with a question that puzzles the droning Governor.

Q: Paul Vallas supports charter schools. Since you picked him as a lieutenant governor, does that mean you’re open to charter expansion?
A: No, Paul Vallas believes in public education. So do I. We believe in funding public education. A very, very important issue this year, we’ll be talking about that soon. ... He’s committed to a fair, open budget to properly fund education.

"No, Paul Vallas believes in public education!" ( exclamation mark my own)

Now, hold there a momentito!  Paul Vallas is The Grand Daddy of AMERICAN Charter Schools - ChiTown, Philly, N'Orl'ns, Connect -I-Cut!  Moreso, Paul Vallas has ALWAYS been open to Vouchers!  Real School reform.

Paul Vallas is every day people!  I know Paul.  I love Paul! I respect Paul!  If Paul were the top of this ticket, I'd vote Democrat in november.

Catholic schools comprise the bulk of private schools in Illinois.  Therefore, Catholic schools is a local euphemism for private education ( Non-public - no tax-money), including Dutch Reformed, Lutheran, Jewish, Muslim, and non-Denominational schools, as well as the elite first tier schools like Chicago Latin and Chicago Lab Schools.

Paul Vallas is solid man.  Pat Quinn is a pest with persistence, like all Progressives.  Like all Progressives, Pat Quinn is incapable of original thought and spouts only Hyde Park/Evanston Vatican Doctrine and Dogma.

Pat Quinn is no friend of Catholic schools.  By extension he is no friend of every day people who send their kids to Catholic schools.  Pat Quinn spoke for Paul Vallas.

Pat Quinn is the only one speaking - like any Progressive.  Everyday People, everyday people, everyday people, mean exactly what Pat Quinn thinks them to be - drones like himself.

Great job, Natasha Korecki!

Sun Times Investigative Reporters Tim Novak and Chris Fusco are Worth Ten Pat Fitzgeralds and Change.

Tim Novak and Chris Fusco of the Chicago Sun Times - real newsmen.

"I got a guy," is the Chicago Preamble . . .to everything.  There is always 'a guy' who makes something happen for better or worse.  If you have tree roots insinuating their arboreal fingers through your sewer pipes, someone will have ' a guy' once you utter the first syllables of your plaintiff cries of anguish - Kennedy Brothers Plumbing - their bona fides - Brother Rice guys, who roded out Mrs. Balauskas's pipes and never charged the octogenarian widow.  Where they come from and past performance, plus the cache of your mentioning Bubbles Quinlan during your call to the Brothers Kennedy are what make them 'your guy,' now; much more than the actual plumbing job and subsequent billing.

Your guy has an ever expanding web of connection linking you and souls Six Degrees of Separation square rooted to the sum of length of service and geography.

The Chicago Preamble is math based. Tim Noval knows this.  That is why he is the preeminent Chicago investigative reporter.  He is a gum-shoe ink-slinger without parallel.

If you live in Chicago, you have a guy and that guy may have gone to school with you, dated your sister, played over cousin in the St. Rita v. Brother Rice Championship game of 1983, helped your mom on the Richard M. Daley for Cook County States Attorney Race up at Congressman Marty Russo's old office, bought World's Finest Chocolate bars from your kids, or helped you boost freight out of yards over by 49th Street & Kostner when you were on the shorts after two semesters at DePaul.

An incident, a favor, a phone call, or larcenous dabble on the edges of the law may link you and 'your guy.'

We are only as good, as what we do when no one is watching.   You and your guy ( or person/woman/life-partner & etc.) might become public figures.  It all depends.. . on lots of stuff.

Chicago knows the Vanecko name because of its association to Clan Daley.  The nearer 'your guy' is power connects you to the juice - for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, until death do you part. . . .and sometimes long after that.  

Chicago knows the sad and tragic connection between the name Vanecko and Koschman only because Tim Novak and his teamwork with Chris Fusco is a pitbull who does not let go of a story found the Chicago Preamble working all over the city with investments, sewers and possibly . . .possibly . . .influence barter at all levels of city government.

Today, Tim Novak continues with a case involving several 'guys' - mutually attracted souls -and weapons violations.

Finkl is a member of the family that formerly owned A. Finkl & Sons Co., the Near North Side steel business founded in 1879, eight years after the Great Chicago Fire. The Finkls were major supporters of former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, hosting political events for him at the steel plant where Blagojevich’s father once worked. The Finkls sold the steel company five years ago.Finkl, 49, is founder and chief executive officer of Finkl Enterprises, whose holdings included Jetty Security, Radar Pictures and several other businesses. Radar has helped finance movies for Radar Productions, which is headed by former Chicago Sun-Times owner Ted Field. Some of those movie deals involved Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko, the nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley who late last year was charged with involuntary manslaughter in the death of David Koschman nearly nine years ago.

Novak's prose morphs to poetry at line eight of the above: " . . .deals involved Richard J. “R.J.” Vanecko, the nephew of former Mayor Richard M. Daley who . . . "

See? Reporters with the honesty, skills and Chicago savvy are much more valuable than a stick-figure talisman of  ethical purity like former US Mouthpiece Patrick Fitzgerald.  What did the guy actually do about corruption besides net a few smelt, get a saliva soaking from Media types and land swell sinecures - The Big Apple -cheeked boy went the Chicago Way, God Bless him.

Tim Novak remains on the scent and given Chicago's intricate web of connections any one of us 2 million souls might have or strand of spider silk get a tug from Tim.

I only wish that Tim Novak could apply his tenacity and courage and skills to G. Flint Taylor, Jon Loevy Locke Bowman and Lawsuit Lotto Lawyer industry. Now, that is one smelly old bone that needs a good chaw.

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

A Real Reporter, Natasha Korecki, Talks to Tony Rezko - America's Man in the Iron Mask

The Chicago Sun Times is blessed with great reporters.  It's editorial board seems stuck on the "daffy" button and with the exceptions of Steve Huntley and Mark Brown Sun Times columnists seem to have all of the gravitas and substance of an MTV documentary.

Chicago and the nation would never know about Allison Davis, President Obama's former boss and bullet-proof slum property owner who is 'this-close' to Valerie Jarrett, Sneedless to say without Tim Novak and  Chris Fusco - two pit-bullishly independent investigative reporters.  They also unearthed most of the dodgier aspects of Koschman Saga, as well as the career of Daley scion snouts in the public troughs.  Mark Konkol and his Southtown Star colleague Steve Metsch are solid voices for real people in Chicago's neighborhoods.

Natasha Korecki has always impressed me as a singularly and refreshingly honest and tough reporter.  Ms. Korecki's accounts of the Blag trial were essential documents.  One of the shadowy victims of retiring Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's Star Chamber is Tony Rezko.  The man was everywhere and with anyone who could both move and shake.

( looks just like the Old Petrillo!)

Rezko's role in President Obama's ascent to the national teleprompter remains a '" Mere distraction! "Nothing to see here, Folks!  Move it along!  Who cares about a 15' property bargain?  Really. Pay np attention to man in the iron mask!" Tony went away , when the crowd in Grant Park were shedding tears of pure joy that Our Post Racial and Post Political Politician snagged the Post in the West Wing.

Tony Rezko  is the Obama Justice Department's Utility Insider - trotted out when need and then sent to the showers.  Rezko padded wallets and campaign accounts and sits in a concrete and re-bar cubicle on the Federal dimes. Fellow Obama Distraction Bill Ayers bombed Federal buildings and has an Illinois Pension.Make sense?  We might not get to the root and marrow of the Obama Myth until long after the Mormon straps his mutt on the roof of Marine One for a chopper ride.

However, Natasha Korecki scooped and interview with America's Man in the Iron Mask - Tony Rezko -

In a wide-ranging telephone interview from prison with the Chicago Sun-Times on Wednesday, Rezko refused to talk about his former friend who went on to be elected president. 

Natasha Korecki immediately tells the reader that Rezko will not chat, utter, rat-out, or insinuate anything about his Chicago Real Estate disciple and political bundler.  Blago?  You bet. Why not.

Rezko was convicted of Blago Bog-trotting.  Candidate Obama and President Obama never got moist undies due to Mr. Rezko and Natasha Korecki perfumes her narrative and interview with the bog itself.

His ( Tony Rezko's) trial took place in the Spring of 2008, in the midst of a heated presidential primary between Hillary Clinton and Obama. In one debate, Clinton chastised Obama for having ties to Rezko, who had poured money into the campaign fund of Obama earlier in his career.
Rezko was behind bars when authorities arrested Blagojevich in December of 2008 and charged him with attempting to sell Obama’s vacant U.S. Senate seat, citing recorded conversations.
“I think it was very unsmart of him to have conversations when he did about Obama’s replacement,” Rezko said. “But he is not the evil person who is been portrayed over the last few years. I think he did good things for the state of Illinois.”
“I blame nobody but myself, no. I have no ill feeling toward him [Blagojevich]. Or anybody else. Even Stuart Levine. He did what he had to do.” Rezko was referring to the key witness who testified against him.

With whom do Tony have 'issues' and the odd 'ill-feeling?'  Thanks to a real reporter, Natasha Korecki, this mythopoeic regime occupying the White House may have more such inquiry from citizens.  Forward!

 Thanks Ms. Korecki!

http://www.suntimes.com/12873845-761/tony-rezko-says-blagojevich-knew-about-pay-to-play-for-state-posts.html