What a Pleasant Individual

Exhibit #5,319 why we need the Death Penalty back:

• Shortly after an Uber Eats driver was killed while trying to get his minivan back from carjackers outside Loretto Hospital early Monday morning, the woman now accused of killing him fired up her Facebook.

  “The [expletive] we had to do to get home is crazy,” Montoya Perry wrote. “but we made it ** if u missing a car, u can come get it! We don’t want it!!”

  Tragically, Daniel Figueroa, 28, was unable to take Perry up on her offer. Prosecutors on Wednesday said she ran over the young, hard-working father, killing him and leaving his family struggling to make sense of it all.

And guess what?

• ...she was arrested just two weeks ago by Melrose Park police for driving on a suspended license, fleeing police, and, because she allegedly identified herself as her sister, obstructing police...

This time a judge held her. 

Indiana Moving Forward

The Indiana legislature passed and the Indiana governor signed a bill to establish a Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority and lure the Bears over the border:

• The state of Indiana took another step in their effort to lure the Bears to Hammond when, on Thursday, the Indiana State Senate passed the bill to establish the Northwest Indiana Stadium Authority. Gov. Mike Braun signed the bill about an hour later.

  All that’s left is for the Bears to decide between Hammond and Arlington Heights.

  “We sure give the Bears a lot to think about to come here,” state senator Rick Niemeyer said. “I think it’s very serious.”

We still think it's mostly a negotiating ploy - the Bears have a multi-million dollar facility in Lake Forest and are incorporated downtown. 

But the Illinois legislature has been dragging their feet and the Arlington Heights people have been next to useless. Chicago, thanks to Conehead, is a non-player in the entire process and will end up the biggest loser in terms of tax revenue. 

Expect the White Sox to seriously explore leaving before 2030.

Should be a fun few weeks ahead. 

Five Shot

It this the first "mass shooting" of the year?

• Five people were shot Wednesday night on the city’s South Side.

  Information is limited at this time, but the Chicago Fire Department said one person was shot near the intersection of 67th Street and Stony Island Avenue near Woodlawn, while another person was shot near the intersection of 69th Street and Harper Avenue in Grand Crossing.

  CFD also said three people who had been shot showed up at the fire station located in the 1400 block of East 67th Street in Woodlawn, just blocks from the two previously mentioned shootings. It is unclear where these three victims were shot before heading to the fire station.

No one died, so the threshold to be an actual mass shooting was not reached. But it certainly makes you wonder what's on tap.

Warm Friday

Going to get up to sixty-one degrees today.

The only thing keeping the shooting totals down might be the thirty degree drop off into Saturday.

But the warm weather gets the blood stirring....and flowing. 

Grading a Test....How Long?

Someone commented that the recent Lieutenant test was taken nearly six weeks ago and no results have been mailed out yet?

Anyone know why they're fiddling with the rankings? 

Was this the scantron portion? 

Another "Wrong Address" Payout

Are these warrants being written by DEI hires?

• A jury on Wednesday awarded $5.74 million in damages to a Chicago family who accused police of violating their civil rights in a botched raid of their home in 2018.

  Ebony Tate and her family filed a federal lawsuit against the city and the officers involved in the raid, accusing police of breaking down their door in the Back of the Yards neighborhood in August 2018, and pointing guns at them. Investigations found officers were in the wrong house and did not properly vet information from a paid informant.

As to the allegations that SWAT pointed weapons at occupants of the address, that might have happened - no Officer on a Search Warrant enters an occupied dwelling with weapons holstered and rifles slung. That would be tactically unsound to say the least. 

But once control of the residence has been established, weapons ARE holstered and rifle ARE slung. In most cases, SWAT leaves following entry/securing and leaves the actual searching, arresting and paperwork to the teams that wrote the warrant.

In this case, it didn't stop them from becoming Exhibit A, but procedurally, we really don't see an issue.  

Spending Problem

How does the saying go? 

• Illinois doesn't have a revenue problem - it has a spending problem

Example #435,966:

• Developers of Pullman’s historic Hotel Florence and the surrounding area announced plans to create a “mind-blowing entertainment experience” that is mixed with history and a new hub for local artists to showcase their talents — all headlined by a “world class” music venue.

  The roughly $100 million revitalization project will transform the nearly 145-year-old hotel within the Pullman National Historic Park into a boutique hotel with new restaurants. The hotel’s annex will be rehabilitated and a concert hall will be added in the old Pullman Factory across the street.

  Construction is set to begin in March 2027, with its completion expected in late 2028.

  [...] The Illinois Department of Natural Resources provided $21 million in funding, making the project the largest public-private partnership for the department 

That $100 million could likely be used for something else instead of enriching construction companies for a "boutique" hotel in a neighborhood that no one goes to.

Sounds Like CPS

How long until some lawyers here jumps on this bandwagon?

• A Connecticut college student is suing the Hartford Board of Education and the city of Hartford for negligence.

  Nineteen-year-old Aleysha Ortiz says she graduated from high school with honors and earned a college scholarship, but she can’t read or write.

  [...] Ortiz graduated from the Hartford Public Schools system last year, but she says she is now illiterate and still doesn’t know how to read or write.

With less than half of students in CPS reading at grade level, this might be fruitful grounds for massive class action payouts....especially if Police disengage and opportunities dry up.

Whoops - More Money Disappears

Conehead's budget keeps running into problems:

• A Cook County judge has ordered the cash-strapped city to refund $163 million in penalties it tacked onto more than one million vehicle citations, fines that sometimes doubled the cost of a simple parking ticket. Those penalties inflated the city’s already steep ticket prices beyond the levels allowed by state law, Judge William Sullivan found in violation of state law.

  Sullivan’s ruling came Thursday after the case wound its way through the county’s notoriously slow court system for eight years. Sullivan found that Chicago had illegally piled late fees onto citations for routine infractions like parking violations, in some cases pushing the total bill past $500 for tickets that state law caps at $250.

This goes back to the Groot administration and maybe part of the 9.5 Digit Midget's. 

The ruling also affects a bunch of uncollected citation debt dating back years that was never collected, but was almost certainly "spent" over the years as part of the fantasy budget numbers. 

That $163 million was also spent. It doesn't exist any more. So something else will have to (A) be cut from the existing budget or (B) covered with some as yet undetermined tax levy.

So much good news. 

Media Layoffs

It would take someone with a heart of stone not to laugh....and we don't have that heart:

• The axe is falling at WGN-Ch. 9, cutting a wide swath out of “Chicago’s Very Own” TV newsroom.

  Eight veteran reporters and anchors were laid off Monday: Sean Lewis, Ray Cortopassi, Bronagh Tumulty, Judy Wang, Julian Crews, Paul Lisnek, Chris Boden and Dean Richards, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

  [...] The massive downsizing is casting a pall over the newsroom, according to insiders, who say Dallas-based owner Nexstar Media is reducing the station to a shell of its former self.  

That's nothing compared with the "pall" assorted media companies have been casting over Chicago, spouting overly-libtarded bull$hit, anti-law-and-order crap, deliberately slanted "reporting" and opinions that don't resonate with half of their supposed audience.

WGN (and pretty much all Chicago media) embraced that philosophy years ago and this reckoning has been long overdue. 

Fortunately, there are a bunch of coding jobs that have opened up. 

And we heard CPD is hiring - maybe they can demonstrate how much better they can do our job than we did for nearly three decades.

Must be Election Season

And the Machine has begun a low-intensity campaign to thin out the field:

• The chief executive of a major Cook County contractor alleged longtime county Treasurer Maria Pappas repeatedly subjected company executives to bullying, threats and “obscenity-filled tirades,” according to a copy of a letter obtained by WBEZ.

  For months, Pappas has blamed Texas-based Tyler Technologies for technological problems that delayed property tax revenue payments to school districts, local governments and other taxing bodies across the county.

  But in a letter Monday to Pappas, Tyler CEO H. Lynn Moore Jr. bemoaned what he called the “scapegoating” of the company, which has been working for years to upgrade the county’s property tax system. Moore alleged that the treasurer has shown a “lack of accountability” for mistakes by her own office in her efforts to “deflect blame and divert attention to us.”

This is in regard to the property tax bills being months and month late, along with almost $200 million in refunds being delayed because of computer issues with the switchover to a new program. 

Pappas has already replied, saying she's fighting for taxpayers. 

Prickwrinkle says she's referring the complaint to the county Ethics Board.

Allegations like these go nowhere, but do provide juicy gossip for the campaign flyers that will be going out over the summer. 

Pappas is obviously not the choice of the Prickwrinkle Machine. 

This is a New One

We'll echo what the lawyer said in this article - we had never heard of this happening, ever:

• A Chicago police officer was about an hour and a half into a deposition Friday morning over one of dozens of misconduct allegations against him as a member of an embattled North Side tactical team when the officer’s attorney requested a break.

  The officer, [...], left the room and did not come back. A few moments later, per a motion filed aturday, [...]’s attorney told the other lawyers that the deposition would need to continue another time, because a CPD sergeant had taken the officer to police headquarters so that [...] could be relieved of his police powers.

  “This was — to put it mildly — an unusual development,” the motion states.

  The information sent the long-delayed deposition grinding to a halt and makes [...] the latest member of the 1863 tactical team to be stripped of his police powers or reassigned as complaints and lawsuits about the officers have stacked up.

  Attorney Jordan Marsh, who is representing the plaintiffs in the case that brought [...] into court that day, described the interruption in a motion as “unprecedented in the collective experience of Plaintiffs’ counsel, and likely the experience of all counsel in this matter.” He later said he hadn’t seen anything like it occur in 30 years of practicing law.

We're aware that the plaintiff attorney is likely following the pattern of all plaintiff attorneys in suits against the city - amplify the (unsubstantiated) allegations in the hopes of driving a settlement their way.

But being stripped in the middle of a deposition?

Highly unusual. 

Crap Reporting as Usual

The usual anti-police hack over at WTTW:

• Chicago police officers disproportionately used force against Black Chicagoans, even when considering they are more likely to be arrested or suspected of committing a crime in the city, according to the results of a court-ordered, first-of-its-kind study that examined four years of data.

  CPD officers also disproportionately used force against Latino Chicagoans, as compared with White Chicagoans, according to the study. In addition, CPD officers used greater levels of force against both Black and Latino Chicagoans than White Chicagoans, according to the study.

  The study, conducted by social scientists from the University of Texas at San Antonio and the University of Pennsylvania hired by CPD brass and crafted with the approval of a court-appointed monitoring team, blamed “systemic factors” for the disparity, not the actions of individual officers.

  The study also found that the number of times CPD officers used force against Black and Latino Chicagoans “rose significantly toward the end of 2023,” according to the study, which did not attempt to determine the reason behind that increase.

You know who else didn't "attempt to determine the reason behind that increase"?

• the "reporter"

Here's a clue:

 And that's just shootings - the stats hold across most categories of crime regardless.

And when criminals decide to break the law, avoiding apprehension and accountability is at the top of their list, which often involves resisting arrest....you know, using force against Police Officers....who are then required to fill out all sorts of forms which are used by the "social scientists" to claim there's something "disproportionate" about cops defending themselves and using force to defeat an arrest. 

Force that is completely LEGAL and AUTHORIZED by State Law by the way.

And then the media hacks spin it (again) as "disproportionate" while ignoring the inconvenient fact that the vast majority of crime (95%) is committed by two particular groups for whatever reasons and the other group tends to obey police commands when arrested.

You still don't hate the media enough. 

Death Spiral Accelerates

Surprisingly, parts of the media continue to cover the death spiral of downtown Chicago:

• Office towers that once sold for hundreds of millions of dollars are now changing hands at discounts of 70%, 80%, even 90% across major U.S. cities, as higher interest rates and remote work reshape demand for downtown space.

  Few places illustrate the shift more starkly than Chicago. There, the markdowns span every era of development, according to figures first tweeted out by Nightingale Associates.

  A century-old office building in the city’s historic Printing House Row district, 401 S. State St., recently sold for just $4.2 million, down from $68.1 million in 2016, a 94% drop.

  The prominent Loop tower at 311 S. Wacker Drive traded at an 85% discount, selling for $45 million compared with $302 million in 2014.

  Even newer, high-profile properties have not been immune. Boeing’s long-term lease interest in 100 N. Riverside Plaza, not the tower itself, sold for $22 million, down from $165 million in 2005, an 87% decline.

  And at 300 W. Adams St., a leasehold interest in the building changed hands for just $4 million, compared with $51 million in 2012 — a 92% discount.

Those four buildings alone have lost over half-a-billion dollars in value, part of a massive hole in Chicago tax revenues for commercial properties. Guess who makes up the shortfall?

• residential property owners who just got hammered citywide 

This isn't all Conehead's fault and it part of an emerging national trend. But he's done less than zero to ameliorate, alleviate or recover from this downturn....and neither has Fata$$, who wants to run on his "successful" governorship.

Light Posting

Bunch of stuff going on this week, so please excuse any delays in comment moderation or posting.

We'll be around. 

Tunnels to Towers Fundraiser

From our e-mail:

• As you [may be] aware T2T is a national non-profit that helps America's heroes by providing mortgage free homes to Gold Star and fallen first responder families with young children and by building specially-adapted smart homes for catastrophically injured veterans and first responders. To date, T2T has provided support to many first responders as well as families of those who lost their lives across the country and have supported several families in the Chicago area. T2T is currently in the process of providing Chicago Police officer Carlos Yanez Jr. with a customized smart home that will accommodate his injuries suffered in the line of duty. T2T has also paid off mortgages for Chicago Police officers that have been killed in the line of duty.

  This year the Parade is honored to offer a very special commemorative poster and t-shirt featuring an amazing design by local artist and Chicago firefighter Tim McCarthy, proceeds from the t-shirt and poster will be donated to T2T.

Poster and attached QR code are below (click for larger picture):

(comments closed here - informational post only)
 

One Year Left

The next mayoral election is scheduled for 23 February 2027. 

If no one gets 50%+1 then the run off is 06 April 2027.

According to this link, there are four candidates so far:

• Maria Pappas
• Mike Quigley
• Joel Holberg 
• Johnny LoGalbo

Expect more shortly. 

(UPDATE: these are DECLARED candidates. No one has filed Nominating Petitions yet so even these four might not make it to election day. When we said "Expect more shortly" we can almost guarantee that there will be at least ten people running.)

Ghosts of George Ryan

He's not running for governor yet - first he wants to rule over the corpse of Chicago:

• The Illinois official whose agency issued potentially thousands of illegal licenses to truckers, received more than $300,000 in donations from the trucking industry in recent years. The Illinois Secretary of State, Alexi Giannoulias, is in a standoff with the Trump Transportation Department over its review of the state’s commercial drivers licenses (CDLs) which found that 1-in-5 licenses issued by Giannoulias’ office were done so illegally. 

  Giannoulias, a Democrat who is reportedly considering a run for Chicago mayor, is facing scrutiny over his office’s role in issuing those licenses from the Trump administration after a series of high profile big rig crashes across the country that exposed issues in how states issue non-domiciled CDLs to foreign citizens, or in some cases, to illegal immigrants. 

  In Illinois, the U.S. Transportation Department found the Secretary of State’s Office, through the Director of Driver Services, issued illegal CDLs, in some cases, to individuals who have failed to provide evidence of lawful presence, let alone proficiency in managing big rigs.

He already cost taxpayers $383 million from the Broadway bank failure.

Alexi better hope there isn't a Willis family out there somewhere.

What the...?!??

This exists?

 

We were told years ago that the current CPD Star is a copyrighted design, which is why most of the t-shirts and memorabilia that you see all have the 1955 star design - that one isn't copyright protected. We would assume that the shoulder patches were also protected, meaning you can't legally alter them like this.

More importantly, who did this? Because it's either the most arrogant thing we've seen if Heiniken did it himself or it's one of the biggest efforts at ass kissing in the history of ass smoochery. Did someone get a "merit" promotion out of this?

And before someone claims it's a photoshop or A.I., we're told the actual patch it's hanging on the wall of a business establishment frequented by Heiniken himself....at least until later Tuesday (they're closed on Mondays).

Another Conehead Corpse

And it was chilly outside:

• A man was found shot to death behind a Lawndale home on Saturday morning, and Chicago police have no idea when the murder occurred because no one called 911 to report the gunshots that killed him — and the neighborhood’s ShotSpotters were disconnected by the mayor in September 2024.

  Officers were dispatched to the 900 block of South Keeler Avenue around 8:21 a.m. after a 911 caller found the man’s body in a back yard. The victim, who has not yet been identified, appeared to be in his late teens or early 20s and had suffered multiple gunshot wounds.

At least it was in 011 - no one calls the police in 011 and finding dead bodies is a semi-regular occurrence.

It's a Fashion Accessory!

More proof that EM isn't even a mild deterrent to continuing criminal activity:

• A Chicago man was charged Wednesday with illegally possessing a machine gun after allegedly showing up to what he believed was a vehicle repossession job, only to find himself face-to-face with undercover federal agents, court records show.

  Edwin Moreno, 27, also known as “AK,” is accused of possessing a Glock .45-caliber pistol fitted with a machine gun conversion device (MCD) — a device that transforms a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon capable of firing multiple rounds with a single trigger pull, according to a federal criminal complaint. Moreno and an unidentified accomplice were allegedly recruited by ATF agents posing as repo men needing armed security. Neither man knew the purported tow operators were actually federal agents, the complaint states.

  What made the encounter all the more striking, according to the complaint, was what happened when the two men were asked how long they could work: both Moreno and his buddy allegedly pulled up their pant legs to reveal electronic monitoring ankle bracelets and then made a point of saying they needed to be back at their respective homes by 9:45 p.m.

We're surprised that ankle monitors don't come with pre-printed tags that post "Hours of Operation" so that your stupider criminals can check the info against their cell phones so they don't miss the deadlines.

More $$$ Disappearing

The Bears want taxpayers to foot the bill for all sorts of infrastructure improvements around their proposed stadium in Arlington Heights. It's one of the larger stumbling blocks to finalizing the move. Indiana has offered to pay for all sorts of new roads into and out of the Hammond site. 

It's a common ask and is usually granted as it's in the city/county/state interest to have paying crowds move in and out efficiently.

In the meantime, Chicago is spending a couple hundred million of unaccounted taxpayer dollars for the Sparklefart Memorial:

• Former President Barack Obama once declared that his presidential center would be a "gift" to Chicago, but taxpayers are on the hook for hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden costs related to the beleaguered project.

  A Fox News Digital investigation shows taxpayers are now stuck footing the bill for surging public infrastructure costs required to support the project — and no government agency can provide an accounting of the total public cost, despite months of queries and FOIA requests. 

The "endowment" that was supposed to be funded to the tune of $470 million to protect taxpayers from exactly this is currently funded at....one single million dollars. 

We're all for increasing the tax base so as to fund necessary government services in a reasonable and sustainable manner. But driving away a tax and job generator like a major sports team while building a money-sponge of a "library" that isn't an actual repository of archival materials seems counterproductive to say the least.

Sergeants Promoted

Someone said there's a list of fifty floating around?

Email it here and we'll post it.

UPDATE: This is all we've gotten and it's barely readable with a magnifying glass:

We can't post what we don't have and we don't have a good pic of the list. This is a phone picture from a computer screen at a poor angle

If someone has a better version or scan NOT taken from a computer screen shot, pass it along. We used to download a .pdf, email it to ourselves, and convert it to a displayable format.

Hits Keep Coming

Oversight seems non-existent for the connected:

• The Chicago cop who city officials say unintentionally shot and killed his partner during a foot pursuit last summer had previously told his bosses that he “inadvertently” fired his Taser after a high-speed car chase he failed to initially report a year earlier.

  The car chase ended when the driver of a fleeing Jeep hit the train crossing at 89th Street so fast that it flew into the air and then crashed into six cars, according to records obtained by Illinois Answers Project and the Chicago Sun-Times. No one was seriously injured.

This ended up being a momentary hiccup on the path to a Tact spot, stymied but then approved by Heiniken after two recommendations from Tate.

We've got nothing left to say about this walking disaster, but the Department is going to be painted with this failure for years. 

Hope on the Horizon!

And it only took Cleveland eleven years:

• Today, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the City of Cleveland jointly filed a motion to terminate the 2015 police consent decree in the case of United States v. City of Cleveland, marking the parties’ recognition of more than a decade-long, successful effort to reform the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP). CDP now has resolved the DOJ’s 2014 findings about constitutional policing. CDP has implemented court-approved policies and training covering use of force, searches and seizures, misconduct investigations, community policing, and other areas — all resulting in contemporary assessments showing CDP now polices Cleveland constitutionally.

Of course, this was an actual "Consent Decree," not some cobbled-together make-work connected-democrat contractor money waster.

CPD still has twenty or so years to go. 

Jail is Dangerous?

Who would have thought?

• The death of a Cook County Jail inmate last fall is raising questions about whether staff could have done more to save him after the medical examiner’s office ruled his death a homicide.

  Martinez Duncan, 24, died on the evening of Nov. 20 after his cellmate started a fire inside their locked cell according to a Cook County sheriff’s office spokesperson.

  A preliminary review found the fire was caused by a lit wick, or “a smoldering portion of tightly wound toilet paper commonly used to smoke illegal drugs,” the sheriff’s office said.

  Duncan and his cellmate were removed from their cell as jail staff attempted to put out the fire, the spokesperson said in a statement. They were then cuffed and taken to a holding area to receive medical care. After that, the staff left the holding area to tend to the fire.

  In the meantime, “Duncan’s body slumped forward in the holding area and remained in that position until correctional staff and medical staff returned,” the spokesperson said.

So is this a positional asphyxia death or smoke inhalation aggravated by health issues?

And does it count against Chicago's running totals from last year?

We were stretching to find stuff interesting enough to write about, so this made it. 

Where's Barz?

Anyone surprised? We certainly aren't:

• It's a decade-long issue that Chicagoans have sought accountability for: Drivers of color, many of whom have now filed lawsuits, allege they were subjected to pretextual traffic stops, or stops turned searches to investigate a crime that has nothing to do with the traffic violation they were pulled over for.

  Members of one Chicago police tactical team on the near north side - the 1863 tactical team -- have faced the most misconduct complaints surrounding this type of enforcement than any other, according to the city's police watchdog agency.

  And after a year-long investigation into the eight-person 1863 tactical team, the ABC7 I-Team has learned through court and public records that four members have been relieved of police powers, and two others, including the team's sergeant, have been reassigned to other parts of the city, leaving only two members still working in the 18th District.

The one re-assignment (according to comments) is to the usually desirable Gang Investigation Section, so not a penalty by any means.

Missing from any accountability - supervisors who demanded (and got) thousands of street stops, making promises to keep low seniority officers off of midnights in exchange for the TSSSSSSS cards that they passed off as crime fighting and used to grease their way to bigger and better things before coasting to cushy retirement gigs.

All those promises mean diddly-squat now - none survived the career of the now retired exempt(s).

In the meantime, Officers, raise your right hand, and please list your assets for the Court. 

You have our sympathies, but you were warned. 

Threading the Needle

O'Neill-Burke was in a difficult spot. As part of the demo-socialist-communist party, she was under orders to fight everything Trump in service of the party....like a cult.

But being a somewhat intelligent person who knows more of the Law than most, she was hesitant to but into the brainwashed response that blue-state $hitholes are running with. 

She was therefore judged to be insufficiently insurrection-y and was taking a beating in the media. So now she has released a "blueprint" for "accountability" that gets her some cover from the left while couching it in terms that might fool stupid people, but broadcasts to the Feds that there won't be much she can actually do:

• The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office unveiled a sweeping new protocol Thursday to pursue criminal charges against federal immigration agents who use unlawful force, but a close reading of the document makes clear that actually prosecuting a federal agent in state court faces enormous legal obstacles that could prevent any case from ever reaching a jury.

  State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke said her office adopted the Federal Immigration Enforcement Action Response Protocol to prepare for what she called an unprecedented situation: the possibility of bringing state felony charges against a federal immigration officer for on-duty conduct. The protocol’s development was prompted, Burke’s office said, by an immigration surge in Minneapolis in which agents fatally shot two civilians in separate incidents.

  “No one is above the law — including both ICE agents and prosecutors,” Burke said in a statement. “If a federal law enforcement agent commits a crime, my office will not hesitate to act, in accordance with state law.”

  But the new six-page protocol devotes significant space to cataloguing the very legal doctrines that could make the prosecution of a federal agent nearly impossible and candidly acknowledges at least some of those limitations.

It's a nice attempt, but she should expect a number of primary challengers in a few years.

Did S#$% Just Get Real?

A bunch of nervous people at all levels of Illinois government all of the sudden:

• The Chicago Bears have released a new statement on a potential new stadium as Indiana lawmakers moved forward with a bill to bring the team to Hammond.

  The Bears said in a statement, "The passage of SB 27 would mark the most meaningful step forward in our stadium planning efforts to date. We are committed to finishing the remaining site-specific necessary due diligence to support our vision to build a world-class stadium near the Wolf Lake area in Hammond, Indiana. We appreciate the leadership shown by Governor Braun, Speaker Huston, Senator Mishler and members of the Indiana General Assembly in establishing this critical framework and path forward to deliver a premier venue for all of Chicagoland and a destination for Bears fans and visitors from across the globe. We value our partnership and look forward to continuing to build our working relationship together."

  Thursday morning legislators voted unanimously to push a bill out of the Ways and Means Committee. The bill would create the Northwest Indiana Stadium authority similar to Illinois Sports Facilities Authority. This could convince the Chicago Bears to cross state line and build a new stadium.

Fata$$ just wanted them to stay in Illinois, but anything to diminish the power of the Chicago / Cook County pols was fine with him.

Prickwrinkle was fine standing by the sidelines because the Arlington Heights Bears would still have been in Cook County. 

No one was listening to Conehead who continues to cement his place at the bottom of mayoral history and the bottom of the political pecking order. 

And here comes Indiana with tax breaks, infrastructure improvements and a pro-business approach.

We still think it's a long shot, but anything to make Illinois dems nervous is golden. Plus, we can see the political ads being written for the next election painting dems as chasing the most storied franchise out of town and having to raise taxes (again) to make up for the accompanying massive revenue shortfalls. 

Communism Works (as expected)

And as predicted:

• The people of New York City got a good taste of communism earlier this week months after electing Marxist Zohran Mamdani for mayor.

  As Fox News reported, a pop-up shop opened up on Sunday for five days in the West Village to offer free groceries to impoverished New Yorkers and people simply looking for an easy lunch. The outlet notes this comes Mayor Mamdani advanced one of his key campaign promises: city-run grocery stores aimed at lowering food costs.

  The store, which is called The Polymarket, was opened by a cryptocurrency-based prediction market with the same name. The Polymarket offered yellow ticket granting NYC residents entry to the little store.

  Much like communist countries like Cuba, lines grew quite long in a hurry with residents across all five New York City boroughs flocked to get some ‘free’ stuff.

  What happened next was entirely predictable to anyone who understands basic economics. The store ran out of tickets and food, while several individuals decided to cut in line.

Anyone reading grow up in the 60s, 70s and 80s? Remember the video coming out of the old USSR of bread lines and empty store shelves? 

And when someone successfully defected to the USA, their bewildered amazement at the grocery stores here, that someone would have choices of eight types of toilet paper, a dozen different razor blades and forty selections of breakfast cereal.

History might not repeat, but it often rhymes.

Another Conehead Corpse

This time someone reported the gunfire, but the body was out there for a few hours anyway:

• A woman was found shot to death on the side of a gravel road on Chicago’s Far South Side Tuesday afternoon, her body discovered along a remote, wooded stretch near the Little Calumet River — an area that until recently was monitored by the city’s ShotSpotter gunshot detection network.

  A Department of Streets and Sanitation crew found the woman around 12:15 p.m. in the 600 block of East 134th Place.

Ah yes....Alligator Gardens. Many a fond memory of that part of town. 

Nice to see nothing has changed

Get Ready for More Taxes

Here comes another completely avoidable budget shortfall that Fata$$ will fill with more taxes:

• U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy today exposed that the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA)’s review of Illinois’ non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs) program found nearly 1-in-5 licenses to have been issued illegally. Illinois has 30 days to come into compliance and revoke the illegally issued licenses—or risk losing $128 million in federal highway funding.  

  “I need our state partners to understand that they work for the American people, not illegal immigrants who broke the law illegally entering our country and continue to break it by operating massive big rigs without the proper qualifications,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy. “Biden and Buttigieg forced Americans to share their roads with unqualified and unvetted foreign drivers, but the Trump Administration is putting the needs of American families first where they belong.” 

Twenty percent of CDL are issued / have been issued to ILLEGAL ALIENS. 

Here's a novel idea - how about Illinois politicians look out for....Illinois citizens? You know, comply with common sense laws meant to keep roads safe and citizens alive? Instead of catering to ILLEGAL ALIENS who shouldn't be in the Country, let alone having their names and addresses be used for illegally voting.

(oh, did we say that part out loud?)

Porkulous is running on some sort of "affordability" platform with his most recent budget. It's rapidly becoming obvious that Illinois will continue to be unaffordable to live in or run a business model in. 

Big Apple - Big Disaster

Everyone with a brain warned about this - now New Yorkers will reap the whirlwind:

• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is looking to get the Big Apple on a tighter budget, and seems to see cuts to the New York Police Department (NYPD) as a way of getting the city back on track.

  Mamdani's predecessor, Mayor Eric Adams, proposed at the end of his term that the city hire 5,000 more NYPD officers. However, upon entering office, Mamdani moved to cancel all orders signed by Adams following his Sept. 26, 2024, indictment. This included the proposed NYPD personnel increase.

  Under Adams' plan, the NYPD was set to add 300 officers in July 2026, growing to 2,500 in July 2027 and eventually increasing to 5,000 additional officers annually in July 2028. The Adams plan allowed the NYPD to deploy approximately 40,000 officers to the streets, while Mamdani's plan caps the number closer to its current level of around 35,000.

  Additionally, in the preliminary FY 2027 budget, it notes the importance of "significantly reducing current vacancies," which could include reductions in funding for the NYPD based on unfilled positions. The Gothamist, a New York-based publication, noted that Mamdani's budget proposes a $22 million decrease in the NYPD's $6.4 billion budget next year.

NYPD runs through Officers at a far higher rate than CPD does and their Academy churn out thousands of Officers at a time to keep up with the turnover.

Cutting those 5,000 will put the entire Department behind the eight-ball if retirements maintain current levels....or increase (which is expected to do as more of the "progressive socialist" agenda is implemented - decreased prosecutions and reduced sentences).

New York in the 1970s was a disaster. This promises to be worse. 

Wilding Season Already?

We barely got the Valentine's Day decorations down:

• A 14-year-old boy was shot Monday night after a gathering of teenagers turned violent in the Loop.

  The Chicago Police Department had already deployed a unit of officers to the area in anticipation of the gathering when a 911 caller reported teenagers fighting near Washington and Madison streets around 8:35 p.m. Officers responding to that call reported shots fired about three minutes later.

  Police quickly located the victim, a 14-year-old boy, at the corner of Washington and Wabash. According to CPD, the boy was standing in the first block of East Washington Street when someone opened fire, striking him in the left foot. Officers recovered two shell casings at the scene. The boy was transported to Lurie Children’s Hospital in fair condition.

  CPD did not release a description of the suspected gunman, and no arrests have been announced in connection with the shooting.

It seems to come earlier and earlier every year.

Good Read

Has the CTU finally become politically toxic? 

Prickwrinkle is acting like it:

• Illinois primary season is in full swing, with Election Day just a month away.

  The political shakeup is unprecedented in the Chicago area.

  Five open congressional seats, plus an open seat for U.S. Senate, several open seats in the state House and Senate, and a competitive race for Cook County board president.

  All will largely be decided by the March 17 Democratic primary.

  And the latter saw one of the most interesting developments of any race last week, with news of an auspicious endorsement. Or lack thereof.

  The Chicago Tribune’s Alice Yin reported that Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle did not seek an endorsement from the Chicago Teachers Union.

An interesting development to be sure.

Reporter Austin Berg outlines exactly how the CTU has become mired in controversy and scandal with links and charts outlining most if not all of it.

Give it a read. 

Blue State Disaster

Well this is appalling:

• From the State of Washington - 

  Late Friday night, House Democrats voted to raid $4 billion from the law enforcement and firefighter pension plan to cover the multi-billion-dollar budget deficit they created.

  Every Republican in the state House voted against House Bill 2034.

  Democrats plan to deposit $569 million in the Climate Commitment Account.

No idea what their pensions look like, but given it's a blue state and lousy with panti-fa supporters, we imagine it ain't the greatest - and now it just got worse.