Pensions Looted for Profit is Re(a)d Meat - Tim Novak Rides Again!

“Valerie Jarrett served as a board member for several organizations that provided funding and support for Chicago housing projects operated by real estate developers and Obama financial backers Rezko and Allison Davis. (Davis is also Obama’s former boss.)…

"The old social actionists are largely men of action, doers, not talkers. The new social actionists are intellectuals...They are masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas...They are fervent crusaders." Andrew Greeley - "Catholic Social Action"

I rarely agreed with Fr. Andy Greeley.  Social change is brought about by people who actually, not virtually, do good. Real people, like Father George Clements and  Fr. Dan Mallette actually Marched for Civil Rights with Dr. King, because they followed clerics like Bishop Bernard Shiel who founded CYO - he did not advocate for it.  People in the action have little to do with "do-gooders' who never seem to leave the plush Oak Park and Hyde Park dens. It is easier to get behind masters at manipulating words and sometimes ideas. 

Newspapers rarely talk about people in the action, other than snag a quote that justifies the words of an Advocate, Activist, or Office Holder.  Most columnists go to the pap of preachy, pontificating poltroon's who give good prose, like Claypool, Quigley, Schakowsky, Durbin, Quinn and Mell in Chicago because they are policy people and do-gooders. Pap is easy to read and nod-with-ruminent conviction and chew the cud of vegan issues.  A few, like John Kass of the Chicago Tribune, go to people in the action and presents their lives and struggles mired in the bog created by policy wonks.

Investigative journalists, the best anyway, go where facts have ignited a prairie fire.  The worst are jigsaw puzzle masters of making facts fit a narrative.

Reporters, investigative reporters, connect the dots hidden from the public.  Even those of us who read and remember quite a bit have not the time, nor the opportunity to often go 'beyond' the story.  People must do their jobs, raise their kids and the millions of dollars of taxes Progressive thinking political insiders loot from the commonwealth.

I am a pathological reader, I read everything from Cosmo to Commonweal, from Pepsodent tubes to the runic script on top of light bulbs.  Love to read.

I also love to read works that have something to do with the truth.  Editorial boards tend to present only a prefabricated package of political proselytism - Vote for Kim Foxx, or Mark Kirk is not really Dick Durbin's purse puppy.

The Chicago Sun Times, in my opinion, has the wackiest Editorial policy mandate that seems to have been crafted by retired and bonged-up Weather Underground and Catholic Call to Action cranks.  That's just me.

However, I believe that the Sun Times has the best investigative reporters Dan Mihiapoulos, Chris Fusco and Tim Novak, when they are not saddled with editorial constraints, or Andy Shaw and Carol Marin.

Tim Novak is a terrier.  He is the only reporter in Chicago to maintain a jeweler's eye on the connections between the political grifters and the Progressive machine emanating from Hyde Park and Kenwood.

The Fifth Floor, Real Estate, TIFs,  Big banking, the CHA, Slum Lording, Chicago's Department of Planning and Development and the White House are all players with the peoples pensions.

Sewer deals for Daley cousins seem as nothing compared to Valerie Jarrett.

Today, Tim Novak keeps the heat on the most powerful people plaguing Chicago.

Over the past nine years, two nephews of former Mayor Richard M. Daley have been involved in separate plans to redevelop a rundown warehouse on 15 acres of polluted land in Little Village just north of the Stevenson Expressway.
It hasn’t turned out well for Chicago taxpayers.

First, taxpayers have to make up for $4.2 million in city pension money invested on behalf of teachers, police officers and other city workers that ended up squandered on failed development plans involving Daley’s oldest nephew, Robert G. Vanecko.
Now, taxpayers stand to lose another $4.1 million on the same property at 3348 S. Pulaski Rd. That’s the amount of a property-tax break given to a second redevelopment deal for the site.
This one involves Vanecko’s first cousin, Patrick Daley Thompson, an attorney who helped the developers get the tax cut last year shortly before he was elected alderman of the 11th ward — the family’s power base for six decades.

Well them boys are "in the action."  Not for social good, but for profit in the name of Progress. There is so much more and Tim Novak delivers! He connects the dots of the contemporary ledger and double book accounting to the days of yore and actually gives us context that a Chicagoan can sink teeth into and gnaw healthy opinion into being - we are screwed not by the usual suspects, but by the do-gooders!

 The story of how the polluted Pulaski Road property became toxic for Chicago taxpayers begins in 2004, when Daley was still mayor. That’s when Vanecko — his sister’s oldest son — went into business with Allison S. Davis, the Chicago attorney who gave President Barack Obama his first job out of Harvard Law School, and Davis’ son Jared Davis.

Operating under the name DV Urban Realty Partners, their idea was to redevelop properties in some of Chicago’s most downtrodden neighborhoods. And they were aiming to get government pension funds to invest $100 million to bankroll their plans.
They had a hard time securing investments from pension funds, though, until the Chicago Teachers Retirement System agreed in early 2005 to put in $25 million of the money it held toward teachers’ retirement pay.

Then, the pension funds for police officers, municipal employees, city laborers and the Chicago Transit Authority also agreed to invest.
Altogether, the Davises and Vanecko wound up with $68 million from five public pension funds.

Man, if the editorial will of Chicago newspapers matched the grit of some of it's reporters, maybe a couple of dollars might be left in the kitty at the end of a Moody's evaluation.

This is meaty wholesome goodness in font!  It will put off the vegan offal digestions of 'edgy,whip-smart and Progressive voices in our city.

Eat more Chicago! Thanks for the red meat, Mr. Novak!

Chicago Dunciad: The Sun Times Watchdogs? Hardly. Rahm's Purse Pups More Exactly

"While pensive Poets painful vigils keep,/ Sleepless themselves to give their readers sleep" I 91–92) The Dunciad by Alexander Pope.

I am his Highness' dog at Kew;
Pray tell me, sir, whose dog are you?
"On the Collar of a Dog".Alexander Pope

I am a devout Papist.  Catholic born-bred and believing, but I am a disciple if Alexander Pope, who was the John Kass of the 18th Century. Unlike, Chicago's John Kass, Alexander Pope had a very weak constitution: sickly and small;nevertheless, was fierce foe of frauds and fawning lick-spittles - especially those who lived by the pen and the pay of politicians.

Men of talent can be hacks.  Hell, if I had the opportunity I'd probably be one too.  As it is, I live in simple and fortunate honest poverty.

Today's Sun Times Watchdogs ( giving ones self a nickname always bothered me)  as two very talented investigative writers for the editorially compromised and daffy Sun Times, Tim Novak and Chris Fusco presented burnt offerings to the Rahm Emanuel election campaign.  The family of Jeremiah Joyce gets the treatment.

Nothing new, nothing ground-breaking, nothing here but clippings of old items meant to arouse the ire of dim-wits and partisans. This a solely punitive piece; meant to hurt people and not inform.

It is a pretty nasty piece of work performed for a particularly nasty person who is scared out of his wits by Chuy Garcia and anyone who stands with Rahm's foe.

I love the Joyce family, because they are honest, unpretentious people who help people who need help.  Mike 'Pickle' Joyce is not only the most great-hearted and fiercely loyal person I know, but also the smartest person I have had the pleasure to meet  with exception of the late Steve Allen.  Mike has coached the African American young men of Leo High School without pay and out of his own pocket for nearly two decades - because Mike loves them and the school.

I know, not intimately, all of the Joyces.  Each and every one of them is a fine person. Nevertheless, The Watchdogs trotted out old news spun as political gold.

Gold is a metaphor for crap in classical literature, by the way.

Tim Novak and Chris Fusco acted more like purse puppies than Watchdogs.  That is a sad waste of their time and their talents.

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.