Showing posts sorted by relevance for query shakman. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query shakman. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, November 18, 2011

John Ruberry Marathon Pundit on the Street With SEIU . . .I mean OWS Chicago

Pat Quinn and his Marxist guru Dr. Quentin Young* - Shanghai Pat is sporting his SEIU Purple Tie - wears it alot.

That purple tie and the color purple here in Illinois is the icon of the next layoff for a skilled tradesman, cop, nurse, firefighter, Chicago sanitation worker ( Garbage Collection Grid), Water Reclamation District employee ( think Rahm's looming Tax Water Park, kids) all thanks in large part to the influence of SEIU on Illinois' political/journalistic/academic culture.

When all the taxes have been sucked dry, it's lay-off time! We have larded the government work rolls and the pension debt at the say-so of SEIU.

Yesterday, I wrote about the Vanishing American Middle Class. This morning I read Marathon Pundit by Morton Grove's on the scene pundit-blogger John Ruberry.

Rubes is a guy who is like so many Americans; he has a good memory and is not much for the Memes.

When The Catholic School Girls Against the War tossed fake blood on worshippers at Holy Name Cathedral he too remembered that International Solidarity Movement ( Hamas Activists)leader Kevin Clark not only goaded the goofy kids taken away in hand cuffs after their assault, but had also encouraged American-born Rachel Corrie to place herself in front of an Israeli Bulldozer and become an International martyr for the Left. Kevin Clark is a Gay Liberation activist as well and all purpose goader who manages to avoid arrest.

More so, John Ruberry also recognizes that activists like the shameless Clark work and play together, while the lazy Chicago media actively ignores their complicity in every confrontational demonstration and manage to spark police bashing universally.

Hamas, or the Palestinian Blockade, or George Bush Hate Fests, or anti-Catholic Gay Rights shout-downs, Condoms for Kindergartners, or Big Box SEIU Tax Raises, Kevin Clark, Andy Thayer and SEIU's Joe Isobaker are in the thick of the goading, shouting, liquid tossings, or press opportunities.

The Middle Class, in particular families supported by members of the Skilled Trades and Industrial unions, has been chipped away to near invisibility by SEIU and their lesser lights. SEIU is the monster PAC that masquerades as a labor union.

SEIU became legitimatized under the leadership of oafish John Sweeney in the 1970's, along with Teachers Unions, AFSCME, and radicalized under the great Mandarin of "Labor" Andy Stern.

SEIU is the most dynamic of organizing machines. They amass numbers - members, dues, and votes. Their members stay in low paying jobs for their entire lives as members of SEIU - janitors, nursing home bed-pan tossers, some nurses & etc.

SEIU members depend upon the threats of the leaders over cowardly, or cynical legislators, City council members, or any one who can raise tax revenue. That is collective bargaining SEIU fashion.

The Democratic Party and the Skilled Trades found it convenient to play-ball with SEIU, in this our post-Shakman Progressive world. SEIU feeds platitudes to lazy ink-slingers and copy for the morning reads.

Pipe-fitters, Insulators, Operating Engineers, Iron Workers, Electricians, Carpenters and Industrial workers have allowed the bullhorns of SEIU and its armies of XXXXL Purple T-shirt clad mobilized forces to intimidate legislators and keep American Labor in the news. In fact so effective was the Marxist Andy Stern in leading labor that BIG LABOR became synonymous with SEIU. SEIU is the voice of the National Democratic Party on Health Care, Gay Marriage, Abortion and Redistribution of wealth. SEIU organizes. SEIU is Occupy Wall Street as it was Occupy Madison and get Walker.

Click my post title and read John Ruberry and take a gander at the great photos take by a real journalist. You won't find this coverage of OWS kiddies in the Tribune or the Sun Times.

Thanks Rubes!

*

The primary figure who delivered Obama to the single-payer camp was Quentin Young, an 86-year-old retired physician who was a longtime friend and neighbor of Obama in Chicago. Young joined the Young Communist League as a teenager in the late 1930s. From the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s, he was closely associated with the Communist Party. In October 1968 he was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee, which was probing the extent of his knowledge about the riots that had erupted at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago two months earlier. The Committee accused Young of belonging to the Bethune Club, an organization for communist doctors; the group was named after Norman Bethune, a communist physician who devoted his services to the totalitarian regime of Mao Zedong.



Dr. Young was active in the radical movements of the Sixties and Seventies and led a small delegation to Communist North Vietnam in 1972. In the late 1970s, Young became associated with a Marxist organization known as the New American Movement, which was initially convened by Michael Lerner, an America-hating radical who counseled young people to explore the use of LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs as portals to a greater comprehension of socialist principles.



In 1980 Young founded the Health and Medicine Policy Research Group, a single-payer lobby group whose Board of Directors he chairs to this day. In 1982 Young helped establish the Democratic Socialists of America, which, as the principal U.S. affiliate of the Socialist International, asserts that "many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed." In 1987 Young co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP), a single-payer advocacy organization where he currently serves as national coordinator. In PNHP’s view, government-run healthcare "should be financed by truly progressive taxation."

In 1995 Young attended the now-famous meeting at the Hyde Park home of former Weather Underground terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, where Barack Obama was first introduced to influential locals as the hand-picked successor to Alice Palmer, a pro-Soviet radical who planned to vacate her Illinois State Senate seat in pursuit of a higher elected office. Young quickly became a friend and political ally of Obama, teaching the latter about the merits of single-payer healthcare. In a 2009 interview with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Young reminisced about the germination of his ideological kinship with the young Obama:

"Barack Obama, in those early days [as a state senator] -- influenced, I hope, by me and others -- categorically said single payer was the best way, and he would inaugurate it if he could get the support, meaning [Democratic] majorities in both houses, which he’s got, and the presidency, which he’s got. And he said that on more than one occasion…."

Another noteworthy influence on Obama’s views vis à vis healthcare has been Dr. Peter Orris, who co-founded Physicians for a National Health Program with Quentin Young. The son of a Communist Party member, Orris in the 1960s was a leader of Harvard University’s campus chapter of Students for a Democratic Society, the New Leftist organization that aspired to overthrow America’s democratic institutions and remake the nation’s government in a Marxist image. He later joined the Communist Party (CP) for more than two decades, before ultimately shifting his allegiance to the CP splinter group, Committees of Correspondence, where he remains a prominent figure to this day.

Wednesday, October 06, 2010

Phyllis Lockett, CEO of the Renaissance Schools Fund Should Head Chicago Public Schools

Dr. Phyllis Lockett at the podium -Ron Huberman looks off for his next appointment and opportunity for a six, or seven figure salary and something to screw up.
So, Ron Huberman is hitting the silk as CEO of CPS. Mach Nichts. Forgedaboudid. A Hearty Joe Biden BFD! It was in all (both) of the newspapers.

Ron Huberman*, Chicago's Post-Shakman Clout King went from the cops,where he did what? -to the CTA, where he did less -to CPS where gunfire is the Chicago school bell.

Huberman came on after Arne Duncan, who speaks like a marble salesman with mouth full of samples. Duncan is the creature of Ariel Capital Management's John Rogers, who gave Arne his shove into the limelight created by Rogers-happy media with gloves padded with Buckeens, The Elusive Spondulix, The Long-Green Difference. This is a Green City.

Arne Duncan was foisted upon the only effective CPS Leader in the last thirty years - Paul Vallas who was driven into exile.

Well, Ron Huberman who is a PC ICON is bailing out. Ron Huberman is Black, Jewish, Young Handsome, Articulate ( really?) Media Tagged "Really Smart" ( always dead give-away that the guy is a clever dope), and as Gay as Christmas! What is not to love and admire? The question -rhetorical and jam-packed with nutritious and delicious irony!

CPS? It is to laugh, if were not so tragic.

Phyllis Lockett, CEO of the Renaissance Schools Fund would make a great CEO for Chicago Public Schools, but she will be opposed by Bill Ayers, Mike Klonsky, Karen Lewis, Marilynn Stewart, the Chicago Teachers Union, Chicago's daffy editorial boards, and every other person responsible for the destruction of education in Chicago.

Dr. Phyllis Lockett is the real deal and has earned the respect and attention of Chicago's most effective Business Leaders. Dr. Lockett is no Media Poser. She is tough, smart, energetic and responsible teacher, manager and fund-raiser. Dr. Lockett understands that competence,competition and accountability are the foundations of education.

No wonder Bill Ayers and Mike Klonsky scream nonsense at Dr. Lockett - like this drivel -

"The business
community has a responsibility, as we all do, to
support public education. But these partnerships can
be built without selling off large chunks of public space.
Small schools are not a panacea, and, while they create
wonderful possibilities, the language of small schools
can be twisted to become an excuse for inequity and
promotion of the ownership culture. Every wave of official
“school reform,” including small schools and Ren
10, must be met with skepticism, agnosticism, and doubt
by those of us who hope and struggle for a more democratic
future, a more just social order.
A school renaissance built on the ideals of the ownership
society, on privilege for a few, on creating winners
and losers among students and among neighborhoods
will never sustain itself. On the other hand, small
schools and classrooms built on equality and community,
on shared power, on the right to humane treatment,
on full participation, and on access can flourish
and nourish a community."



Who let these two clowns near our children?

Bye, Ron!

http://www.pdkmembers.org/members_online/publications/archive/pdf/k0602aye.pdf



*RON HUBERMAN
Work: Police Department, 1995-2004; Office of Emergency Management and Communications, 2004-05; mayoral chief of staff, 2005-07; CTA president, 2007-09; Chicago Public Schools CEO, 2009- present.
Personal: Born in Israel, grew up in Tennessee and Chicago's western suburbs. He and his partner have adopted a son.
Chicago Sun Times

Monday, January 03, 2011

Innovation Key to Chicago's Rebirth -Interesting Thoughts By Bruce Katz, Vice President and Director, Metropolitan Policy


I spoke with a skilled tradesman, a journeyman electrician, who has been out of steady work since 2008. His nest egg is being eaten up by making his mortgage payments, paying his taxes, and working where and when he can find a job. His wife works. His kids attended Catholic Schools, until this year and that is no longer viable.

Foreclosures in Chicago are ballooning. Guys who once made $ 80,000 to $ 100,000 a year as skilled tradesmen are out of work. Shakman makes even asking a neighbor in a government agency about any job an impossibility, Machine? As if . . .

The Mayoral election will be that important. While everyone is tasking the atmosphere with questions about residency and race, Chicago is losing jobs faster than a fixed income victim feeding the slots at a casino.

Chicago Chamber of Commerce posted this interesting presentation by Bruce Katz. Give this a viewing.



Chicago must take the industries already here and send them around the world and then the world will return to Chicago. Chicago has skilled workers, innovative thinkers and an infrastructure that can be productive and competitive. Chicago had better select a Mayor who knows what is here already and send it forth.

There is a skilled electrician and thousands of other skilled people hungry for work.

The Chamber of Commerce is ready -

The Summit further concluded what the Chamber has been advocating for years- that the future of our economy depends on how we innovate and transition to a "knowledge-based" economy. This includes using innovation in processes and products to modernize traditional industries and supporting entrepreneurship to grow new sectors and firms.

The Chamber has long been a supporter of innovation, the knowledge based economy, and fostering entrepreneurship to help grow our economy. In 2006 the Chamber Foundation launched InnovateNow; a major, new regional economic development initiative focused on enhancing the region’s innovation and entrepreneurial capacity. The goal of InnovateNow is to transform our region into a center of innovation, entrepreneurship, and creativity. For more info on InnovateNow visit www.innovatenow.us.


Learn more at InnovateNOW -

•Expand the Innovation Capacity of Illinois Businesses---Assist Illinois businesses in improving their capacity to develop new business models, products/services, and markets, especially small and mid-sized businesses in key sectors such as manufacturing that are facing global competition.
•Strengthen Public-Private Innovation Networks ---Promote stronger linkages and partnerships between Illinois businesses and universities, colleges, and federal laboratories to drive and support innovation in Illinois.
Expand the Innovation Talent Pool---Develop a new breed of innovation talent in Illinois that can start new businesses and drive innovation in existing businesses in Illinois. Innovate Now will promote the development of innovation talent at all education levels (P-20 pipeline) with stronger foundations in business as well as science, technology, engineering mathematics (STEM) and related creative and design fields. ( emphasis my own)

Where can we get more information?

Lance Pressl, Ph.D.
Foundation President
Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce
200 E. Randolph Street, Suite 2200
Chicago, Illinois 60601
LPressl@chicagolandchamber.org

Monday, February 29, 2016

Sun Times Editorials Add Up, Only If You You Really Stink At Math


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.

Monday, February 13, 2012

Chicago Tribune Editorial Hypocrisy Avoids School Choice, Vouchers, to Plump More U. of Chicago Influence - School Choice is The Metric that Matters


Nepotism, political hiring, crony capitalism, and toe-nail fungal infections get full bleat from Chicago's lily-livered editorial boards.

That tradition continues with today's milk and water editorial on Chicago's permanently hobbled public schools.

School closings, due to complete failure, gets the Hurrumph of the day. The editorial board panda bears of the Medill Empire tout yet another fabulous University of Chicago ( home of John Dewey, the Prospero of our Caliban public schools) study as the silver-bullet cure.

Under the heading of saving poor kids trapped in failing schools, the editorial praises the factory that produced this mess from the get-go:

One in three Chicago students is stuck in an academically feeble school. Scores of public schools languish — some for more than a decade — on academic probation.

We strongly support the CPS effort to close the worst-performing schools and send those students to better-performing schools nearby. We back the CPS plan to send 10 schools next year into what's known as turnaround — an aggressive move in which teachers and administrators are fired, and specially trained replacements are brought in.

Critics say these moves don't work. The critics are wrong. These dramatic reforms pay off in significant student gains, according to a just-released report by the University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research.

The consortium found that 22 lagging elementary schools made dramatic academic progress in four years under several reform strategies, compared with similar schools that didn't undergo reforms.

The highlights:

• Faltering elementary schools dramatically improved in reading and math. The schools cut the gap between their test scores and the CPS average by half in reading, and by two-thirds in math. That's astounding growth in four years.

And what of similar schools that didn't undergo reform? No change. Those schools continued to fail their students.

• Revamping struggling schools generally didn't mean pushing out lower-performing students. By and large, the students who enrolled after the CPS intervention had previously attended the school.

Yes, the schools still fell short of the average CPS school. But the metric that matters here is student growth. The trajectory is up.


Boy, Howdy! The metric that matters is student growth! Please, parse that one.

Here's the deal, Sweethearts - To wax automotively metaphorical, the engine is shot; call a tow; get a new one.

School Choice, Vouchers for all Illinois taxpayers with children would fix the problem, but you already know that.

Nowhere in the hand-wringing of this editorial word are the words -school choice, school reform, or vouchers.

Instead we get another, trumpet blow for Chicago's policy factory -University of Chicago - the same geniuses that gave us the CTA Reforms ( Frank " Too Smart" Krusei and Forrest Claypool, The Garbage Grid, Cook County Reform & etc.) and place for former Mayor Daley to train future policy peddlers.

We need a Shakman Decree or sorts to protect citizens from the tweedy geniuses.

Catholic schools outperform public schools. Catholic Schools, were they collectively placed in an iron lung, would outperform CPS on a snow day following a plague of locusts.

Thursday, February 23, 2017

John Kass Coins Brilliant Neologism - Supine Journalist and Oligarchy Sycophants are American Kemalists



Kemalism (Atatürkcülük) is the main structure of realistic ideas and principles about the state, ideologies, economics and the society’s fundamental institution that assure the Turkish Nation’s full independence, peace and welfare for the present and the future, the state’s being dependent on the nation’s solidarity Oxford Islamic Studies

One thought, one voice - that is the resistance.  From Michael Moore to Bruce Dold; from Nancy Pelosi to Rahm Emanuel; from Mika Brzezinski to Sheriff Tom Dart they are one in the spirit and one with the laws, policies and editorials that create more opportunities for Red Light Camera Companies, Uber Board Membership, Gentrification Aldermanic Generosities, and Nepotism leading to Dynastic Sinecures!

The Chicago Progressive Banana Republic was replicated nationally for eight years with the Obama White House.

From the Progressive Mikva Shakman Chicago of the 1980's there evolved the many faced Richie Daley's Ameritech Chicago, Boeing Chicago, LaSalle National Chicago, Fifth Third and Goldman Sachs Chicago and finally in full flowering fruition as Brand Obama Chicago, which it still remains with Rahm.

This oligarchic tendency is national and not limited to the City formerly known as Big Shoulders, but a coast and coast tendency blooming in New York and walking the red carpet in L.A.

The vast middle opened the door of the White House for the Obama moving van on November 8, 2016 and the howls have increased in volume from David Brooks to Eric Zorn, from Lynn Sweet to to Sally Kohn - TRUMP'S HITLER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, cupcakes, Hitler is still Hitler and Joe Stalin would be as welcome as the flowers in May on Morning Joe.

However, the only voice in print journalism un-impressed with, un-Hope-iumed and un-shackled by the Obama Chimera, John Kass offers a more compact nomenclature - American Kemalism, to describe the need, the plead, and greed that it corporatist statism covering American left culture like a Scherwin Williams ad.

In a brilliant rhetorical Granby taking the dominant voices of oligarchy to the mat, John Kass pins the supine media of the Obama Years:
But this business of finding a renewed sense of journalistic mission poses an awkward, unanswered question.

Just where was that sense of mission for the past eight years?
You know where it was. It was in polite hibernation, on its back, with President Barack Obama in the White House.
When he was elected, there were happy newsroom tears of real joy for America's first black liberal president. It wasn't contrived emotion. It was real, and there was much bonding over a sense of accomplishment.
But there is a cost to powerful emotional connections with a politician. Love of a president can blind, but so can hatred of a president. And in the land of the blind, things tend to get lost, like journalistic mission.
One might wonder.

But John Kass is a great neighbor and he not only clears up the matter of the skunks behind the dry wall, but shoos them out.

Now journalists are at the barricades once again, like those idealistic students of Paris in "Les Miserables," protecting us against the orange-haired barbarian they so very much despise.
And they also seek to protect America against his populist army, that forgotten working class that sent him to Washington and that frighten them so very much.
Trump despises his media critics, and in his raging narcissism, shrieks that what we call the establishment media is "the enemy of the American people," and this only encourages them to hunker down even deeper into their Left vs. Trump bunker.
Yes, the criers of Beltway news are on the political left. But that's like saying rain is wet. Where's the surprise in this?
Modern American liberal journalism might not believe religion has a place in the public square, but it has a deep abiding faith, in government to accomplish the good. And there is the danger.
Because if journalists were truly intent on speaking truth to power, they wouldn't be defending the unelected rulers of America:

One slight objection: Les Miz is so Bill Clinton.  These are Hamilton Partisans!

However, the guy from the Hood who can sling ink and say something, puts the cherry on this sundae with this neologism and a nod to Busty Brzezinski of Morning Joe:

 The unelected and unaccountable federal bureaucracy is true power. The federal governmental leviathan is the faceless vanguard of the status quo. It is the vast hiding place of our modern American Kemalists, who are at once the servants of empire, and its quiet rulers, and they will not relinquish power easily.
Trump was sent to Washington by the majority of the states and by his voters — those folks repeatedly mocked and ridiculed as deplorables by Beltway journalism — to break that status quo.
And the bureaucracy fights back, offering crippling news leaks and resistance against the White House — even classified intelligence leaks from the Deep State — in exchange for journalistic protection.
On the popular MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, co-host Mika Brzezinski responded to whether Trump's attacks on the status quo were the fulfillment of campaign promises.
"Well, and I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media," Brzezinski said, "trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that is the — that is our job."
Later, she tweeted out that her comments were purposely misinterpreted, but I listened to it again and again and it was quite clear to me.
Controlling what people think isn't a mere job. It's a mission.
And now it's been renewed.
Journalism is not dead.  It written by neighbors.

American Kemalists are outed. 

Friday, July 16, 2010

Consider Samuel Johnson's "London" When Thinking About Chicago



In the 18th Century, the fashion in poets, as in all things, was imitation. Imitation was and is the means by which the best that has been presented can be restored for ages to come - consider, in music, the parade of cover bands. Imitation was and should not be duplication. Rather, a poet fashioned what was great in Classical Greek and Roman literature into the vernacular-spiced with contemporary allusions to public person, politics, and events.

London in 1737, was a horrific mess. The city was overcrowded, crime-ridden, gang-infested, and notoriously corrupt. Yet, London was the heartbeat of the Hanoverian Empire of King George III,so busy taxing his colonies out of existence.

Samuel Johnson was a poor man - impecunious, broke, Tapioca. However, he was a powerful intellect and a robust and energetic citizen. Chicago's Tom Roeser has about the liveliest mind and matching conservative spirit to Dr. Johnson.

The poem "London" is and Imitation of the Roman poet Juvenal's Third Satire and it written in closed couplets - two exact rhyming lines expressing a complete thought or sentiment.

Given Chicago's horrifically murderous condition and notorious corruption - I am more concerned with the Huge Brahmin Thieves than I am with the Streets and Sanitation worker grabbing a snooze - the stuff of the Inspector General and the Shakman Snitch Enterprises.

I think that this poem reflects our times. The character Thales is a guy who is sick of it all and wants to blow town for the quiet of rustic Wales (Cambria).

LONDON: A POEM

In IMITATION of the THIRD SATIRE of JUVENAL

By Samuel Johnson 1738


———Quis ineptæ
Tam patiens Urbis, tam ferreus ut teneat se?
Juv.
Who is so patient of the foolish City, so iron-willed that he can contain himself?

Tho' Grief and Fondness in my Breast rebel,
When injur'd Thales bids the Town farewell,
Yet still my calmer Thoughts his Choice commend,
I praise the Hermit, but regret the Friend,
Resolved at length, from Vice and London far,
To breathe in distant Fields a purer Air,
And, fix'd on Cambria's solitary shore,
Give to St. David one true Briton more.
For who would leave, unbrib'd, Hibernia's Land,
Or change the Rocks of Scotland for the Strand?
There none are swept by sudden Fate away,
But all whom Hunger spares, with Age decay:
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.

While Thales waits the Wherry that contains
Of dissipated Wealth the small Remains,
On Thames's Banks, in silent Thought we stood,
Where Greenwich smiles upon the silver Flood:
Struck with the Seat that gave Eliza Birth,
We kneel, and kiss the consecrated Earth;
In pleasing Dreams the blissful Age renew,
And call Britannia's Glories back to view;
Behold her Cross triumphant on the Main,
The Guard of Commerce, and the Dread of Spain,
Ere Masquerades debauch'd, Excise oppress'd,
Or English Honour grew a standing Jest.

A transient Calm the happy Scenes bestow,
And for a Moment lull the Sense of Woe.
At length awaking, with contemptuous Frown,
Indignant Thales eyes the neighb'ring Town.

Since Worth, he cries, in these degen'rate Days,
Wants ev'n the cheap Reward of empty Praise;
In those curst Walls, devote to Vice and Gain,
Since unrewarded Science toils in vain;
Since Hope but sooths to double my Distress,
And ev'ry Moment leaves my Little less;
While yet my steady Steps no Staff sustains,
And Life still vig'rous revels in my Veins;
Grant me, kind Heaven, to find some happier Place,
Where Honesty and Sense are no Disgrace;
Some pleasing Bank where verdant Osiers play,
Some peaceful Vale with Nature's Paintings gay;
Where once the harass'd Briton found Repose,
And safe in Poverty defy'd his Foes;
Some secret Cell, ye Pow'rs, indulgent give.
Let —— live here, for —— has learn'd to live.
Here let those reign, whom Pensions can incite
To vote a Patriot black, a Courtier white;
Explain their Country's dear-bought Rights away,
And plead for Pirates in the Face of Day;
With slavish Tenets taint our poison'd Youth,
And lend a Lye the confidence of Truth.

Let such raise Palaces, and Manors buy,
Collect a Tax, or farm a Lottery,
With warbling Eunuchs fill a licens'd Stage,
And lull to Servitude a thoughtless Age.

Heroes, proceed! What Bounds your Pride shall hold?
What Check restrain your Thirst of Pow'r and Gold?
Behold rebellious Virtue quite o'erthrown,
Behold our Fame, our Wealth, our Lives your own.

To such, a groaning Nation's Spoils are giv'n,
When publick Crimes inflame the Wrath of Heav'n:
But what, my Friend, what Hope remains for me,
Who start at Theft, and blush at Perjury?
Who scarce forbear, tho' Britain's Court he sing,
To pluck a titled Poet's borrow'd Wing;
A Statesman's Logic, unconvinc'd can hear,
And dare to slumber o'er the Gazetteer;
Despise a Fool in half his Pension drest,
And strive in vain to laugh at H—y's jest.

Others with softer Smiles, and subtler Art,
Can sap the Principles, or taint the Heart;
With more Address a Lover's Note convey,
Or bribe a Virgin's Innocence away.
Well may they rise, while I, whose Rustic Tongue
Ne'er knew to puzzle Right, or varnish Wrong,
Spurn'd as a Beggar, dreaded as a Spy,
Live unregarded, unlamented die.

For what but social Guilt the Friend endears?
Who shares Orgilio's Crimes, his Fortune shares.
But thou, should tempting Villainy present
All Marlb'rough hoarded, or all Villiers spent;
Turn from the glitt'ring Bribe thy scornful Eye,
Nor sell for Gold, what Gold could never buy,
The peaceful Slumber, self-approving Day,
Unsullied Fame, and Conscience ever gay.

The cheated Nation's happy Fav'rites, see!
Mark whom the Great caress, who frown on me!
London! the needy Villain's gen'ral Home,
The Common Shore of Paris and of Rome;
With eager Thirst, by Folly or by Fate,
Sucks in the Dregs of each corrupted State.
Forgive my Transports on a Theme like this,
I cannot bear a French metropolis.

Illustrious Edward! from the Realms of Day,
The Land of Heroes and of Saints survey;
Nor hope the British Lineaments to trace,
The rustic Grandeur, or the surly Grace;
But lost in thoughtless Ease, and empty Show,
Behold the Warriour dwindled to a Beau;
Sense, Freedom, Piety, refin'd away,
Of France the Mimic, and of Spain the Prey.

All that at home no more can beg or steal,
Or like a Gibbet better than a Wheel;
Hiss'd from the Stage, or hooted from the Court,
Their Air, their Dress, their Politicks import;
Obsequious, artful, voluble and gay,
On Britain's fond Credulity they prey.
No gainful Trade their Industry can 'scape,
They sing, they dance, clean Shoes, or cure a Clap;
All Sciences a fasting Monsieur knows,
And bid him go to Hell, to Hell he goes.

Ah! what avails it, that, from Slav'ry far,
I drew the Breath of Life in English Air;
Was early taught a Briton's Right to prize,
And lisp the Tale of Henry's Victories;
If the gull'd Conqueror receives the Chain,
And what their Armies lost, their Cringes gain?

Studious to please, and ready to submit,
The supple Gaul was born a Parasite:
Still to his Int'rest true, where'er he goes,
Wit, Brav'ry, Worth, his lavish Tongue bestows;
In ev'ry Face a Thousand Graces shine,
From ev'ry Tongue flows Harmony divine.
These Arts in vain our rugged Natives try,
Strain out with fault'ring Diffidence a Lye,
And get a Kick for awkward Flattery.

Besides, with Justice, this discerning Age
Admires their wond'rous Taients for the Stage:
Well may they venture on the Mimic's art,
Who play from Morn to Night a borrow'd Part;
Practis'd their Master's Notions to embrace,
Repeat his Maxims, and reflect his Face;
With ev'ry wild Absurdity comply,
And view each Object with another's Eye;
To shake with Laughter ere the Jest they hear,
To pour at Will the counterfeited Tear;
And as their Patron hints the Cold or Heat,
To shake in Dog-days, in December sweat.

How, when Competitors like these contend,
Can surly Virtue hope to fix a Friend?
Slaves that with serious Impudence beguile,
And lye without a Blush, without a Smile;
Exalt each Trifle, ev'ry Vice adore,
Your Taste in Snuff, your Judgment in a Whore;
Can Balbo's Eloquence applaud, and swear
He gropes his Breeches with a Monarch's Air.

For Arts like these preferr'd, admir'd, carest,
They first invade your Table, then your Breast;
Explore your Secrets with insidious Art,
Watch the weak Hour, and ransack all the Heart;
Then soon your ill-plac'd Confidence repay,
Commence your Lords, and govern or betray.
By Numbers here from Shame or Censure free,
All Crimes are safe, but hated Poverty.
This, only this, the rigid Law persues,
This, only this, provokes the snarling Muse;
The sober Trader at a tatter'd Cloak,
Wakes from his Dream, and labours for a Joke;
With brisker Air the silken Courtiers gaze,
And turn the varied Taunt a thousand Ways.
Of all the Griefs that harrass the Distrest,
Sure the most bitter is a scornful Jest;
Fate never wounds more deep the gen'rous Heart,
Than when a Blockhead's Insult points the Dart.

Has Heaven reserv'd, in Pity to the Poor,
No pathless Waste, or undiscover'd Shore?
No secret Island in the boundless Main?
No peaceful Desart yet unclaim'd by SPAIN?
Quick let us rise, the happy Seats explore,
And bear Oppression's Insolence no more.
This mournful Truth is ev'ry where confest,
Slow rises worth, by poverty deprest:
But here more slow, where all are Slaves to Gold,
Where Looks are Merchandise, and Smiles are sold,
Where won by Bribes, by Flatteries implor'd,
The Groom retails the Favours of his Lord.

But hark! th' affrighted Crowd's tumultuous Cries
Roll thro' the Streets, and thunder to the Skies;
Rais'd from some pleasing Dream of Wealth and Pow'r,
Some pompous Palace, or some blissful Bow'r,
Aghast you start, and scarce with aking Sight,
Sustain th' approaching Fire's tremendous Light;
Swift from pursuing Horrors take your Way,
And Leave your little All to Flames a Prey;
Then thro' the World a wretched Vagrant roam,
For where can starving Merit find a Home?
In vain your mournful Narrative disclose,
While all neglect, and most insult your Woes.

Should Heaven's just Bolts Orgilio's Wealth confound,
And spread his flaming Palace on the Ground,
Swift o'er the Land the dismal Rumour flies,
And publick Mournings pacify the Skies;
The Laureat Tribe in servile Verse relate,
How Virtue wars with persecuting Fate;
With well-feign'd Gratitude the pension's Band
Refund the Plunder of the begger'd Land.
See! while he builds, the gaudy Vassals come,
And crowd with sudden Wealth the rising Dome;
The Price of Boroughs and of Souls restore,
And raise his Treasures higher than before.
Now bless'd with all the Baubles of the Great,
The polish'd Marble, and the shining Plate,
Orgilio sees the golden Pile aspire,
And hopes from angry Heav'n another Fire.

Couid'st thou resign the Park and Play content,
For the fair Banks of Severn or of Trent;
There might'st thou find some elegant Retreat,
Some hireling Senator's deserted Seat;
And stretch thy Prospects o'er the smiling Land,
For less than rent the Dungeons of the Strand;
There prune thy Walks, support thy drooping Flow'rs,
Direct thy Rivulets, and twine thy Bow'rs;
And, while thy Beds a cheap Repast afford,
Despise the Dainties of a venal Lord:
There ev'ry Bush with Nature's Music rings,
There ev'ry Breeze bears Health upon its Wings;
On all thy Hours Security shall smile,
And bless thine Evening Walk and Morning Toil.

Prepare for Death, if here at Night you roam,
And sign your Will before you sup from Home.
Some fiery Fop, with new Commission vain,
Who sleeps on Brambles till he kills his Man;
Some frolick Drunkard, reeling from a Feast,
Provokes a Broil, and stabs you for a Jest.
Yet ev'n these Heroes, mischievously gay,
Lords of the Street, and Terrors of the Way;
Flush'd as they are with Folly, Youth and Wine,
Their prudent Insults to the Poor confine;
Afar they mark the Flambeau's bright Approach,
And shun the shining Train, and golden Coach.

In vain, these Dangers past, your Doors you close,
And hope the balmy Blessings of Repose:
Cruel with Guilt, and daring with Despair,
The midnight Murd'rer bursts the faithless Bar;
Invades the sacred Hour of silent Rest,
And plants, unseen, a Dagger in your Breast.

Scarce can our Fields, such Crowds at Tyburn die,
With Hemp the Gallows and the Fleet supply.
Propose your Schemes, ye Senatorian Band,
Whose Ways and Means support the sinking Land;
Lest Ropes be wanting in the tempting Spring,
To rig another Convoy for the K—g.

A single Jail, in Alfred's golden Reign,
Could half the Nation's Criminals contain;
Fair Justice then, without Constraint ador'd,
Sustain'd the Ballance, but resign'd the Sword;
No Spies were paid, no Special Juries known,
Blest Age! But ah! how diff'rent from our own!

Much could I add, —— but see the Boat at hand,
The Tide retiring, calls me from the Land:
Farewel! —— When Youth, and Health, and Fortune spent,
Thou fly'st for Refuge to the Wilds of Kent;
And tir'd like me with Follies and with Crimes,
In angry Numbers warn'st succeeding Times;
Then shall thy Friend, nor thou refuse his Aid,
Still Foe to Vice forsake his Cambrian Shade;
In Virtue's Cause once more exert his Rage,
Thy Satire point, and animate thy Page.



These lines seem to tell us all, or at least they do for me -


. . . This mournful Truth is ev'ry where confest,
Slow rises worth, by poverty deprest:
But here more slow, where all are Slaves to Gold,
Where Looks are Merchandise, and Smiles are sold,
Where won by Bribes, by Flatteries implor'd,
The Groom retails the Favours of his Lord.


God Bless you, Dr. Johnson!

Monday, October 24, 2016

I am Voting Today - Deplorable, For What It's Worth

Image result for Voting Booth Great McGintyYeah, that's right Hickey. With two Rs. H.I . . .Rockwell.


People get their shorts in a knot because I will not vote for Hillary R. Clinton, Jill Stein, or Gary Johnson. That leaves only Mr. Deplorable Himself, the Gettysburg Groper.

I do not care for whom you vote; you vote for thee - not me.Image result for Proud Voter Poster

This is the terrible truth of a republican democracy - we must choose. Maybe, we will choose wrongly.

In my career as a voter ( 1972- Present)- here are my votes:
 1.( W) Richard M. Nixon: I worked for the 18th Ward Regular Democrat Organization to help elect McGovern Delegates.  In Miami, Jesse Jackson, Abner Mikva, Michael Shakman and Bill Singer challenged those delegates and the DNC tossed them - my first Progressive Rig-job. The Roe V. Wade easily put America on its death spiral.  I voted for Tricky Dick, who resigned and good old Gerald Ford pardoned the crumb - that nixed any vote for Jerry. I went to GOP dominated Kankakee, IL and began teaching in 1975.

2. (W)Jimmy Carter: Boy was that fun and then Mr. Peanut put on sweaters and gas went through the roof and Iran went crazy and rabbits attacked him and Brother Billy brewed beer and took bribes from the Libyans and I thought Ronald Reagan was scary and so . . .well, Ted Kennedy who drowned a girl popped up every election cycle like a legacy whack-a-mole and teased Gov. Moonbeam and Jimmy.

3.(L) Jimmy Carter got smeared and Ronald Reagan softened the hearts of blue collar Catholic voters, by fighting for the unborn, fighting the Reds, taking a bullet and behaving with dignity, but he was still a GOP, Protestant left-footer. Abscam, the Ruskie Afghanistan bleed out, Star Wars, Commie in Central America and Grenada, Lebanon and now , (l)Fritz Mondale

4. ( L) Fritz Mondale, sweet guy.  Road kill.  The Reagan Years - Pax Americana.

5. Then George Herbert Walker Bush emerged from the shadows of the Vice Presidency, CIA and Huge Oil and sounded like Aunt Nancy from Chebanse and we had TED Kennedy again, and finally   ( L) Mike Dukakis - Snoopy Drives an Abrams and the  Desert Storm of Poppi of Kennibunkport and then Bubba showed . . .upin 1988 at the DNC!   I had taken a job in Indiana and watched the world get goofier  beyond the pines and spring fed lake of La Lumiere School.

6. ( W.W.)William Jefferson Clinton and Albert Gore were the first two non-WWII veteran, baby-boomers to run for President and they seemed like great guys - one with a homely wife and one with a stunner. The guy with the pooch-Frau was the top of the ticket and word got around that he was quite a hound himself.  I remember pushing my son Conor in a stroller at the 1992 South Side Irish Parade and seeing Gore and Clinton work the crowd on Western Ave. two tall good looking guys in black topcoats. I voted Clinton over Dole in 1996

7.  Bubba had the chops and his two terms mired by repeated scandals about money and sex and finally the national humiliation of unveiling the truth about a President who could eat a pizza, enjoy a fellation from a young White Staffer and chat with a congressman about Bosnia all at once. Our moral soul fit like OJ's gloves.  I needed a shower. and ( L) John Kerry did not help with his I Had an Abortion  pinking up the Boston DNC, while he wind-sailed to the camera's - What and A$$hole!. GW Bush was gearing up for a royal coronation, because Kerry was as lame as he has been as Secretary of State and got hammered.  We went to War on Terror and I like the way GW Bush responded to the 9/11/2001 attack on America, until he took Poppi's phone call and allowed the Saudis to jet away scot-free and then sent our kids to Afghanistan and then Iraq.

8. (L) Al Gore 'invented the internet' and brought all of the excitement and energy of a glutton at Weight Watchers to a challenge to GW and my vote for the last Democratic Presidential Candidate of my career in the polling booth ended on the hanging chads.

9.( L) John McCain should have easily beaten Barack Obama in 2008: he had a great VP choice in Governor Palin, a great message, experience and the media behind him for the most part against a callow, not-very-bright, prickly, self-absorbed community organizer who was whiter than Clarence Thomas and pals with the very people who made me cast my virgin vote for Nixon.  The Mortgage Investment Bubble blew and the economy tanked.  McCain who had endured horrible dangers and excruciating torture at the hands of Communists, ran away from a capitalist bump in the road and all but stopped campaigning after September 2008. He allowed Sarah Palin and her entire family to become a target for ridicule and never stood up for her.  Obama handed him his ass.

10. Barack H. Obama with Valerie Jarrett handing him orders and orchestrating his every move is the most protected, petted and pitiful President in our nation's history.  Obama is the 501(c) 3 President and PAC powerful clothes-horse.  The GOP is a party of cowards, sycophants, martyrs and zealots interspersed with a few genuine men of integrity and ability. (L) Mitt Romney, the Walter Mondale of the GOP, was offered up in sacrifice to Obama, in order to save and even increase numbers in House and Senate.

Bringing me to Election 2016.  I really need a shower.  I would have voted Democrat for Jim Webb, Republican Scott Walker, or Independent Rand Paul.  Instead we have the current choices, a Shameless Abortion Happy Medusa and a Shameful Braggart and Groper.  The others are toys for the Never/Never crowd of moral fiber eaters.

I am voting when the early polls vote. I stand at 4-7.

W - Nixon, Carter, Clinton (2) = 4
L. Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Kerry, Gore, McCain. Romney =7

Here goes my ballot 2016!






Thursday, February 16, 2012

Progressive Polonius -Thundering Dick Simpson on Corruption? When the Statutes of Limitation Run out?

Now, Here's A Pair of Aces to Draw to! Simpson of UICC follows Shaw of BGA -"Two Guys Corruption Plumbing" - Open for Bids!

‘Hath there been a time — I would fain know that —
That I have positively said ‘ ‘Tis so’,
When it proved otherwise?’
Polonius - The Master P of Hamlet

Alderman Dick Simpson was 44th Alderman between 1971 and 1979 - the tumultuous fin de siècle of Mayor Richard J. Daley's Rule of Chicago.

Eddie Vrdolyak and Ed Burke were the Young Turks. Billy Singer and later Marty Oberman ran the 43rd Ward. Radical eminence gris Leon Despres, who, along with Marty Oberman were the last lions of genuine integrity claimed by Progressives, continued as the voice of Hyde Park. Ald. Depres was the real deal and genuine gentleman.


Dick Simpson was part of the 44th Ward encompassing Lakeview from Diversy to the Cemetery and the Lake to Clinton - jogging in and out some. It is an affluent, transient land of restaurants, amusements, nightclubs and apartments, so attractive to single, childless and cash-handy professionals, students, activists and boutique capitalists.


The 44th was run at one time by John Merlo who could trace his political lineage back to Al Capone, which Dick Simpson artfully noted in his latest 'study.'

Dick Simpson tossed off the mortal coils of politics in 1979 and paved the way for Bernie Hansen, who begot Tom Tunney at the say so of Mayor Richard M. Daley, in order to don the gown at Cement City - University of Illinois Chicago Campus UICC -in order to articulate his political wisdom to kids needing a Poly Sci credit.

Dick Simpson, whose public record is buried Googlishly somewhere in the cybersphere, or in the dusty but pricey archives of our great metropolitan newspaper, surfaced on occasion to burnish his Progressive Street Cred and take picture s with Billy Ayers. Dick Simpson wrote pieces for the Sun Times under Cheryl Reed's Spanish Civil War Reenactment phase and occasionally trotted out studies of his own, like that dandy one a few years ago trumpeting the new age of Aldermanic Independence in 2006.

For frame of refernce, dear reader, Ald. Joe Moore is Dick Simpson these days, at least until he gets that new gig with the State. See? Okay.

The always accurate Russ Stewart noted Daffy Dick's fatuous 2006 study of Chicago's Fighting Bob LaFollete City Council, after Stewart had noted that the Joe Moore-varietal aldermen were as compliantly perky as the hungry puppies under Daley Père ( 1954-1976):

Dick Simpson, a University of Illinois professor and a former 44th Ward alderman, thinks otherwise. He has released a seriously flawed study that heralds a "newly found" council independence. Citing resolutions on such nongermane matters as the Iraq War, slave reparations and the Patriot Act, the Simpson study mixes the symbolic votes with the substantive. "We're the Chicago City Council, not the Council on Foreign Relations," said Alderman Tom Allen (38th). "It is not our job to make foreign policy."


Wasn't That a Time? A Veritable Golden Age of NPR Goodness! Brought Bush to his knees and added more Vitamin C to our diets!

Now, thunderous Dick, post Daley Le Fils of course and no doubt with the tacit nodding approval of current Mayor Racoon Eyes, proclaims that Chicago is the Most Corrupt City in America! Thunderous Dick trots out the glaringly obvious with his latest Jeremiad bouillon.

Simpson and Jim Nowlan, a senior fellow with the University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs, released the report as Mayor Rahm Emanuel's ethics task force prepared to hold its first public hearing Wednesday night.

Simpson generally praised Emanuel for early steps on ethics, but said the city's top attorney should release documents he has refused to provide to the city's inspector general on the basis of attorney-client privilege.

The professor also wants the inspector general to be able to investigate aldermen and their staffs. And he would like to see better city ethics training.

"The city's ethics training is a joke," Simpson said during a City Hall news conference. "We need real ethics training because people in this building don't seem to have it."
(emphasis my own)

ETHICS TRAINING???????? Gee, could our Progressive Polonius have a pre-packaged Political Ethics Adjunct Professorship cum Grease and Lube Job behind the curtain . . .'for a fee, always for a fee . . .Pestas! Siempre!'

The news media today operates on collective memory loss and the repetition of memes and themes. We remember Dick Simpson as a camera happy ineffective hack of an alderman. The expensive media archieves should bear that fruit, children, if you care to partake of it.

Grey old gummers like me don't really need such reminders of the fatuous ninny, the Progressive Polonius whose mitts are now out trolling for more public dough - The Dick Simpson Ethics Coalition and Bed and Breakfast Summer Camp.

One Question,, Thundering Dick! Where the . . .where the . . . where the Helen Shiller were you back when the pies were getting cut up and dished up to every jackal with a tongue and teeth?

Shakman killed the Machine, Bub. Corruption is rooted in the Gordian knot created by the Progressive over the last forty years. Corruption . . . adds millions in Federal Housing dollars to lefty lawyers who now snatch up housing project bones and mill more fertilizer for Green Growth Industries, as well as pad sinecures for mopes who run our buses and trains off the rails, buy parking meter slot machines and one-eyed bandit traffic cameras.

Thundering Dick, our Chicago Progressive Polonius! He is a giggle. Unless of course you absolutely are void of any memory, historical and political context, or common sense . . .not to mention a smidgen of Ethics.

http://www.russstewart.com/2-06.htm

Sunday, December 10, 2017

Question for the 'Watchdogs' - How Soon Will the Feds Fell Forrest?


                                      December 8, 2017 - The Great Fellation of Forrest

“Issues over which you should leave go to corruption or profiteering. What you have here is a guy who wanted to get the best possible representation for the kids of Chicago and was overzealous in making that happen, . . .   Rahm, from my conversations with him, appreciates the progress the system has made in terms of dealing with its horrific financial problems and educationally on Forrest’s watch.” David Axelrod in The Maroon

I read the Maroon, the paper published by University of Chicago, home of Richie Daley, Dave Axelrod and the Hyde Park Mafia.

Let's the head of an organization shops six and settles on his college roomie to justify the Federally funded salary of lawyer with a huge conflict of interest and covers-up his tracks in a conspiracy to defraud the children he has sworn to serve is overzealous?

Yeah, Dave and that  Old Joe Stalin sure was vexed by them Ukrainians, some.

Comb Over Dave is really good at salting the soil with meaningless words - masterful.  Eight years of Obama and people still think he was better than . . .mildly adequate.

That's what a link to University of Chicago will do for your rhetoric. Dave is a wheel at U of C.

The University of Chicago is and has been tightly allied to City Hall and the County Board from the time that Richard M. Daley chiseled away at his Bridgeport foundation and built policies upon the sand dunes of the Midway.  His wife made him move out of the neighborhood and away from the people who put him in office, toss childhood friends under the buses and embrace effete political tyros cadre-ed and marshaled by Abner Mikva and funded with the many millions of dollars attached to 501(c)3 strings in the progressive web.

University of Chicago embraced every political grifter and every Marxist ambulance chaser hell-bent on power and social engineering.   Richard M. Daley - formerly Richie - wanted to please the bride and best his old man.  He was nice guy when he was Richie Daley.  Richard M. Daley?  Not so much.

Power and cover he got and did his minions - Rahm Emanuel, Forrest Claypool and David Axelrod the Three Amigos of the room temperature I.Q. generated wit of Michael Sneed.

The old Ward Democratic Party was chopped up with the Shakman axe, set fire with Harris, Pritzker, Woods, MacArthur and Polk kindling and bellowed with hot air from The Tribune, Sun Times, Chicago Reader, WTTW, WBEZ, WBBM, NBC and Disney's ABC for decades.

The new Progressive Democratic Oligarchy was unstoppable.

Claypool hopped from six figure salary, screw-ups, scandals and sophistry to bigger piles of pension wampum - unexamined, unchallenged and celebrated by our media Watchdogs, the BGA and all of us.

Axelrod leaped to the White House.

Rahm Emanuel oozed onto the 5th Floor.

The Litulone, Cuchulain and Kutoyis of Cook County, Illinois, America and our globalist world, Barack H. Obama magically appeared in the 1990's from a clot of blood dropped from a wounded buffalo and rose via the magic of 501(c)3 boodle, a compliant media and seedy world created in Hyde Park Laboratory Schools, Slum Real Estate Ventures and Policy Parties.

The Progressive Democratic Oligarchy hugged, petted and foisted the University of Chicago approved John Henry upon our consciences and Barack Obama went from sic and fetch at the Woods Fund for Billy Ayers, to adjunct instructor ( Constitutional Law Scholar) to State Senator, US Senator to 44th President of United States and the Nobel Prize!  Check Please!

The simple fact that this 'life-long Sox Fan' could not name one White Sox player (1900-present), much less, could not under stand that one gets into a boxing ring by climbing through the ropes, is and remains a talisman for people's consciences.

More significantly POTUS '44's administration covered the dealings of Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel with impunity immunity for eight happy years.

Now, the onomatopoeic bully is in the White House and the Justice Department is no longer the cattle prod of Eric Holder, or candy dish of Loretta Lynch.

Forrest Claypool might be the G-string in this striptease.

His resignation said more about the hot breath of Feds on the white collar criminals with Progressive pedigrees, than the purchase of airline tickets to Cuba, or Montenegro,  most non-extradition countries are 'emerging nations' and PBS approved - all but the Vatican, but too is changing.

The timing ( Friday News Cycle), the fellation (Rahm's CPS Love Fest) and media feather bedding ( Tribune and Sun Times editorials with some serious Trump thumping) lead me to believe that the Progressive Democratic Oligarchy of Chicago has pooped the bed, one too many times.

You can't make a desert with felling the forest and Forrest is about to make a sandbox of Chicago's preening plutocrats.

Dry times ahead.

Okay Watchdogs!  Sic 'em!






Thursday, February 16, 2017

American Media - Our Own Oroville Dam: Thank You, Mrs. Conway!

Image result for  kelly anne conway with kids
The Conways




The American Media

News hucksters paved Donald Trump's path to the White House and wasted every brick trust in so doing.

People who wanted to see an end of to the global corporatist oligarchy built by Progressive Democrats during during the Clinton years and tuck-pointed by GOP mavericks and Skull and Bones opportunity trowel masters, hoped for Scott Walker or Rand Paul, or James Webb, or Ben Carson to emerge from the political hair-ball that was 2016 Election, but due to CNN, MSNBC, New York Times, Washington Post and  Internet-pockets of pimply Journolism at Salon, VOX and Daily Beast bet that Donald Trump would suck all of the air out of atmosphere and blow life into Hillary Clinton.

These people, me included. turned to Donald Trump as the only choice and hoped that he would be better than he seemed.

He was and sure seems to be - Michael Flynn notwithstanding.

I read that Morning Joe, as well as CNN has banned Kelly Anne Conway.  Good.  Kelly Anne Conway makes sense and confounds airheads like busty Mika and vapid Joe.

Mrs. Conway belongs to my crowd of people. People who shop main street, send the kids to Catholic school, speak plainly, understand the nuances of bullshitters and respond in kind, work for a living and care about the truth.  She does not 'only watch PBS, read the New York Times, or admire David Brooks.'  Mrs. Conway reads everything and also speaks with people who can not put a dime in her purse. I am getting to like Trump, because of Kelly Anne Conway.

My neighbors feel the same way.  I mean my neighbors who do not have Shakman exempt jobs with the City of Chicago, or the County,  Those folks say little, except " Can you BELIEVE Trump is President ?"  Why, yes.  Yes, I can and do. Most others say, " Trump's doing what he said he'd do.  This could work."

The media has become the Oroville Dam. That creaky California concrete weir poised to collapse at the next drop of rain.

For years Jerry Brown and other unicorn collectors have allowed the infrastructure to rot, while they pumped millions of dollars into human give-away programs and feel good unfunded mandates.

The dam is busting.

For decades the American journalism has worked the cult of personality and befogged debate with memes/

The dam is busting.


Kelly Anne Conway can not go on CNN, or Morning Joe.Kellyanne Conway “does not need to text our show,” Mika Brzezinski said Wednesday. - Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Well, done, Mrs. Conway!


Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Rahm Emanuel's Sophisticated Snow Finances



Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to raise fines against businesses that don't shovel sidewalks as part of his 2016 budget.
The proposal, part of the annual city management ordinance, would hike the potential fine from $50 to $500. Emanuel also wants to increase fines for anyone piling snow in a fashion that blocks the public way — including bike lanes and racks, bus stops or building entrances — from a minimum of $25 and a maximum of $100 to a minimum of $50 and a maximum of $500.
Such penalties are rarely enforced, however. The city issued just 226 tickets for snow removal issues during the winter of 2014-15, according to the Department of Transportation. Ninety percent of those were issued to business owners or multiunit residential buildings.
Emanuel also introduced language to tie fees for heavy truck permits to the consumer price index, so they would increase or decrease each year depending on the rate of inflation. Currently, the cost for an overweight truck permit is $50 to $150 for a single trip or $500 to $2,250 monthly, according to city records.
The full City Council is set to vote on Emanuel's overall budget plan Oct. 28.( emphases my own) Chicago Tribune


Last Spring Chicago had an opportunity to bid Rahm Emanuel a hearty and genuine God Speed!  The Chicago media, Axelrod Productions, The Shakman Blessed  Exempted Executive Appointees City and County level and their families ans retainers  at command, ginned up a perfect storm of I AM WITH RAHM beat down on the opposition candidate for mayor, Jesus Chuy Garcia. 

So egregious were these Axelrodian memes and tropes that even the complacent and complicit Chicago Tribune seemed shamed enough to offer this non-apology.

The mayor and his allies have criticized Garcia for not offering enough specifics on how he'd lead the city. Despite that, the ad opens by claiming Garcia has "made $1.9 billion in spending promises," suggesting that amounts to "$1,900 in additional taxes for the average homeowner." The commercial then raises the question of how Garcia would pay for the alleged promises and ends with clips of Garcia saying his campaign was conducting research on city finances and would look at "creative sources of financing."
The ad closes by flashing the text, "Creative sources of financing? Uh-oh."

"Uh-oh" indeed.

I never once heard Garcia offer to increase taxes on City services, much less do away with them.

Nor, do I recall his, in Bruce Rauner's mewling sop to his wine-purchasing pal Rahm, offer of 'sophisticated financing' via our Parks, natural resources, or human caused terrorism against Bike Lanes.

Rahm Emanuel won, after telling each and every mope in Chicago that he was a changed man.

Yep, changed up a storm.

Chicago's Lake Michigan Lake water costs us much more to drink, wash, rinse and flush.  Our Parks were handed over to Marty Nesbitt, George Lucas and other corporatist bundlers of Rahm and Obama to come and snow that avoids the manual labor and sweat of eighty year old Mrs. Wanda Skutnik owner of Pierogi Queens' Eats of 1440 N. Greenview, Apt Z-Frank will cost old Wanda a lung.

Violations will be ZipCode Cited and fines will be politically analyzed for activist blow back.

For the last twenty years, my route to Leo High School has been the same - from Morgan Park to Gresham - via north on Western Ave. to 87th Street; east on 87th Street to Racine; north on Racine to 79th Street; east on 79th to Sangamon and a sharp right hand turn into the Leo Faculty and visitor parking lot,  after I unlock the gate, of course.

Racine from 87th Street to 79th Street is the home of no less than twenty eight (28) churches located in buildings that used to house businesses.  There is a smattering of businesses ( two bars: The Junction and Holloway's Hideaway) a dollar store, a liquor store, two car washes, an auto repair shop, an urban clothing store, a gas station, and the Paul Cuffee Elementary Academy) - all of the remaining buildings house churches and most only offer services on Sunday.

In winter, the sidewalks disappear under snow and ice until the Spring thaw.  Residents walk between the east and west curbs of Racine - at their peril and if the 17th Ward managed to plow Racine.  I am very careful not to hit people trying to get to the CTA bus turn-around on east side of Racine at 86th Street in the cold, windy dark of a Chicago morning.  Very often I will offer pedestrians a neighborly ride to 79th Street ( Hookers/Trannies and ne'er-do-wells of unaffiliated gang membership excluded) - working folks.

The reason why, the sidewalks remain uncleared of snow is due to the fact that the Pastors of the 28 store-front churches do not live in the 17th Ward.  Their parsonages are in Flossmoor, Orland Park, New Lennox, Matteson and the less-successful in Country Club Hills. If it snows on Monday, there is good chance that there are six layers of frosty precipitations layering the sidewalks and easements on Racine Avenue.  Snow removal? Not until the pastor, or his sons have an opportunity to check in on the church.

These Pastors will be considered business owners? Uh-Oh!  Churches comprise the bulk of this Racine Avenue Business community.

Well, Rahm is sophisticated enough to parse "businesses" with homeowners - "Chicago is ALL of Our Business!"  I can hear Coon-eyed Mayor hiss.  " Ticket 'em all!" He will and shortly.

You can make book on the fact that the 50 City Council Nodders and Windbags never gave a thought to Racine Avenue ( 87th-79th Streets inclusive), nor could care less.  Rahm wants the tax and the tax will happen, because Chicago was With Rahm.

I would venture to say that  the 28 pastors of the Racine Avenue churches ( 87th-79th Streets inclusive) will remain un-ticketed for Rahm's new Force Majeure  Taxation on Snow.

No, I fully expect that business owners and very shortly homeowners from what deemed to be middle class-ish Zip Codes will be ticketed and summoned to court.  TS, as Chicagoans are wont to say.

Justice has nothing to do with Progressive Global Sanctuary City like Chicago.






Monday, March 24, 2014

Gov. Pat "Everyday People" Quinn - The Champion of Liberal Apartheid and My Trip to Women's Roller Derby



"The vast expanse of economic decline in the midst of unprecedented, but very narrow urban luxury has been characterized as “liberal apartheid. ” The well-heeled, largely white and Asian coastal denizens live in an economically inaccessible bubble insulated from the largely poor, working-class, heavily Latino communities in the eastern interior of the state. "- Joel Kotkin
My old Pappy used to say, " When some goof says he's a Reformer, put your hands on your wallet."   Dad knew what he was talking about in most cases with the only possible exception of the value and quality of Carnation Instant Powdered Milk.  That stuff would gag a maggot.

He walked picket lines up to and including the Chicago Printers strike and a few hotels hiring scabs and strike breakers. He had no use for the folding chair labor commandoes who went to strike site armed with only collers full snacks and beers, who sit on their asses and shout out at passersby threats and maledictions.

"If you are on a picket, get off your asses and walkI"  He never accepted the notion of an evolved working man.  Times change to be sure, but virtue should not.

We have evolved.  Me, not so much.  I admire the virtues that created the dying American Standard of Living.  I still try as best I can manage to give my employer a 'straight eight, or better,'  Corner cutting reforms to the work ethic are just excuses for laziness, or beating The Man . . .whoever she is.

Politicians define everything from virtues to doctrine.  Class envy is all the rage.  The defenders of the working man are not working persons themselves, but job hopping grifters with more political clout than any Machine Boss could envy. The idiotic and oily Shakman Drecreesdestroyed jobs in Cook County, because it took hiring preferences out of the hands of department heads and into the hands of Progressive commissars armed to the teeth with policy.

The result is the vanished craftsmanship of competent workers in the public sector work force in favor of massive placement of the unskilled, the unqualified and unconcerned in key positions over the skilled, the qualified and concerned.  That does not do much for worker morale.

When was the last time, you have heard about life-long railroad man, engineer, electrician or structual engineer heading up the CTA, or the RTA? (cricket chirps)

Instead, the great cops, the great teachers, the great mechanics put in their time and the papers for retirement ASAP.  They sell their bungalows in Edison Park, or Marquette Park, or Washington Park and beat it out of the State with the shreds left of their looted pensions.

SEIU steps in where the motivated and the qualified once roamed to fill the ranks of the old political get-out the vote armies.  Low-wages for life, with time out at election time for a boost to the minimum wage scam or a millionaire tax.

Fronting this 'right side of history, are politically persistent pests like Pat Quinn who has managed to evolve from the Sunday Gadfly Harangue and Harrumph with Pat to signing legislation redefining what marriage has meant for millenia on Lincoln's desk at Uof I Pavilion.  Everday People.

My Dad was everyday people, he was a great stationary engineer who showed to work up at Illinois Med Center during Great Blizzard of '67 and all through the West Side Riots of '68.  He did not need to be the boss, because he already knew what the boss needed to know about the physical plant operations.  So did his six brothers.

I went to the U of I Pavilion on Saturday and took in the Windy City Rollers - Chicago's great women's roller derby athletes.  What put that bug in my labyrinthine bonnet, was meeting the two of the WC Rollers at the downtown St. Patrick's Day Parade on March 15th.  They chatted with our Leo students, marching in the Big Shoulders Fund contingent.  They were smart, funny, lovely and athletic.  I recalled watching Women's Roller Derby on black and white TVs with coat hanger antennae broadcast from the same oddball UHF stations that feature Ben's Auto Sales Wrestling.  The gigantic Joan Weston of New England Bombers was the ferocious foe and fiend who would toss the tiny Filipina with raven tresses knotted in a ponytail deep into the cheap seats.  My brows can go as low as any man's.2013 Windy City Rollers All-Stars of Chicago, IL

Everyday people enjoy roller derby, as they do minor league baseball, because they can afford to take the kids.  Everyday people can not afford the Bulls, the White Sox, The Bears, or The Cubs, unless they take out a loan from Red China and go into debt like the Obama White House.

I went to the U of I Pavilion on Saturday March 22 and watched the skating Amazons get the two thousand or so fans up out of their chairs through every Jam.  Alisin Chains, Chokehold Chanel, Beth Amphetamine,  Sargentina and the tall goddess # 81 Ruth Anasia streaked, bumped and blocked up a storm.

I noticed that the crowd was demographically diverse (Breeders and non-Euclidian, Asians, Latinos, Crackers and African Americans), but obviously totally 99%ers.  No camel hair top coats, no furs, no Hickey-Freeman brogues, or Jimmy Chew go-to-Hell stiletto heels to be seen any where within my 20/20 field of vision.  I had on my neatly pressed Dad 'n Lads strides, my Marshall's oxford cloth buttoned down shirt and sweater from the sale hopper at Sears and shod in my Thom McCann old guy shoes.

No Pat Quinn anywhere!  Everyday people, every where to be seen and huckstered with Class envy encomiums and liberal apartheid sloganeering. " Rauner has nine mansions!  He Has Nine Mansions!" All Pat Quinn owns is the condition of the State of Illinois and a disgraceful place in history - Pat Quinn  knows not what do, but he will do it anyway.

Liberal apartheid is the result of good people having anything to do with a Progressive.  The Middle Class is screwed and will disappear altogether thanks to the Pat Quinn's of American.

Pat Quinn really believes in Progressive Doctrine.  He can not help it.  He serves the rich and anonymous Progressive overlords like Dr. Quentin Young, Abner Mikva and their money changers.  

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Real Power Has No Public Face , Nor Wants One. Chicago Magazine Notwithstanding - These Eight Determine the State


Judge Richard Posner is easily my pick as the most powerful person . . .anywhere around here. Numero Uno! El Jefe!

"Power is a measurement of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities."

"Power is not alluring to pure minds."
Thomas Jefferson

"All things are subject to interpretation whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth."
Friedrich Nietzsche

"If any place breeds power, it’s Chicago. “Clout” and the city have gone together since the early 1900s, when our Irish Catholic forefathers clapped a stranglehold on the levers of authority that they have been loath to relinquish in modern times." -Chicago Magazine

Christ have mercy! Who wrote this? Ald. Dick Simpson? Well, he says the same thing in his latest prouncement on Corruption . . .Bad.
Chicago Magazine listed series of people believed be the most powerful in Chicago and the Illinois hinterlands. It is a vanity piece.

Only one face of the 100 persons in the article is what I would call powerful and that is # 67 Federal Judge Richard Posner. He should be # 1. - the most powerful single individual in the Federal Northern District. Judge Posner is the force in business, moral and legal policy. Everyone else is a piker.

Judge Posner scares the breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner out of every Black Robe, and I don't mean Jesuit, within a tankful of Premium of Lake Michigan.

Judge Posner overturns any other judge's ruling ( the sentencing of Eddie Vrdolyak e.g.) with a call to the editorial boards of our great metropolitan newspapers.

Absent as well are the Progressive Political Machine* that have so thoroughly dismantled the Democratic Political Machine that most people think snitching nickels is corruption. Policy, Law and of Course Wealth is power.

Along with Judge Richard Posner at # 1,


These folks should be in the magazine's top ten and are my Huge Hickey Eight.

2. Terry Cosgrove - The President of Personal PAC commands the political muscle and money of Planned Parenthood, LGBTQ Activists and owns Governor Quinn.



3. Dr. Quentin Young - Progressive leader of Hyde Park and Health Policy foundation architect of Obama Care



4. Arthur Loevy - Leftist Labor and the architect of Police Abuse Lawsuit Policy - Loevey made the marriage of left-wing public labor and politics a reality


5. G. Flint Taylor- Peoples Law Office - From Fred Hampton to tommorrow's Burge Headline this lawsuit lootery lawyer has helped bankrupt Cook County and Chicago, but has undermined any and all public faith in law enforcement and law itself.




6. Abner Mikva - The Progressive King of Policy and Progressive Government - if Mikva gives no imprimatur it does not happen - Abner Mikva is Michael Shakman's Chinaman - Now THAT is clout. No one in Cook County can ever say, " I'll call my guy!" " My Guy, or any Guy" is now an exhibit at the Field Museum.



7. Dawn Clark Netsch -from the ERA to Personal PAC every piece of legislation that has been an unfunded mandate on education, health and labor begins and ends with DCN>



8. Tie Fred Eychaner
and John Rogers -
Money Talks and now owns the TelaPrompter - Ariel Capital Management and Fred Eychnaer created Congressman Mike Quigley, CTA's Forrest Claypool, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and President Obama, as well as powerful GLBTQ political operatives - Debs Mell & Shore and Greg Harris, yet only Rogers' Ex gets the props in Chicago Magazine? Desiree , for real?

Whether it is the fees we pay, how safe we are from thugs, what our kids learn and not learn in public schools, our ability to petition for redress of grievances from government, who gets elected and our very freedom to worship is determined, not by Irish Catholic whitemen, or Swedes.

The Democratic Party exists in name only. Illinois, Cook County and Chicago are corrupt, or really wonderful places to live, because of eight powerful people

"Arriving at one goal is the starting point to another." John Dewey

They have the power.



Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/john_dewey.html#ixzz1mSMSjv1I
*Throughout the twentieth century, middle-class progressives embraced visions of democracy rooted in their relatively privileged life experiences. Progressive educators developed pedagogies designed to nurture the individual voice within egalitarian classrooms, assuming that collective action in the public realm could be modeled on the relatively safe small-group interactions they were familiar with in their families, schools, and associations. Partly as a result, they remained blind to (and often denigrated) the democratic aspects of working-class organizations, such as unions and community action groups, which found strength in solidarity. In this article Aaron Schutz argues that progressives must integrate into their models the often brutal lessons about power learned by those with less privilege. Until they do so, their approaches to democratic education will continue to have limited capacity to support social transformation and empowerment in the world as it is.
from POWER AND TRUST IN THE PUBLIC REALM: JOHN DEWEY, SAUL ALINSKY, AND THE LIMITS OF PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATIC EDUCATION
Aaron Schutz*