Who Screwed the Pensions?

We guess it actually wasn't the worker bees:

• Illinois' pension system was in precarious enough shape in 1994 that Democrats and Republicans came together to solve a crisis threatening the state's financial future.
  
  The agreement they forged was supposed to take politics out of pension funding by requiring a steady stream of payments over the next 50 years. The law was billed as an "extraordinary measure" that would finally force the Legislature to fulfill its "constitutional responsibility" to hundreds of thousands of state workers past, present and future.
  
  The promise proved to be an empty one.

The politicians did it? Who would have guessed?

Go read the entire article. It's a long piece but it explains a lot of what went on the last seventeen years.

Not Again?!?!

Please let this be a joke:

• The superintendent met last night, Wednesday night, with about 60 parolees at the Relectory in Columbus Park. He asked them not to shoot at each other. Every boss in the department was there which meant they out numbered the parolees. I hope he asked them not to shoot at us, or did he forget that part. Parole agents rounded them up and ordered them to show up or it would be a violation of their parole. Complete joke of a meeting, please don't shoot. On a side note, is the superintendent's driver from Chicago? Does he really need a gigantic GPS on his dashboard. At least throw it on the seat before you pull up so it looks like you know what your doing!

If true, we're going to have to start calling this guy McJ-Fled.

Captains Sell Out Again

No idea what they got for their vote, but it looks like they've managed to screw lieutenants, sergeants and police officers from ever earning Out-of-Grade pay again.

They also sold out all the promotion lists since the city isn't going to promote to fill vacancies anymore to save themselves money. They can just order people to work as Acting Desk Sergeants, Acting FTO's, "Station Supervisors" (formerly Watch Commanders) and lord knows what else.

Who's got the scoop on this one?

Never Enough

Shortshanks lands another high paying gig:

• Former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley has joined Coca-Cola Co.'s board of directors effective immediately, the beverage giant announced Thursday.
  
  "Mr. Daley brings significant public policy expertise and experience in creating sustainable growth opportunities for businesses and communities to our company," Coca-Cola Chief Executive Muhtar Kent said in a statement.
  
  As a non-employee board director, Daley's compensation will amount to $175,000 a year, with $50,000 in cash and $125,000 in deferred stock units.

And we actually used to like Coke.

Thanks For Not Shooting?

Can you imagine thanking a gang banger and wishing them a Merry Christmas for not shooting at you, your co-workers or your family? Or how about teaching your kid that these gangssters are worthy of any sort of respect, despite the fact that they traffic in poison, degrade the neighborhood and deal in death?

This woman is doing exactly that in Uptown:

• I have lived in Uptown since the mid eighties. It is different now. Back then it was a bonified ghetto, with burnt out buildings, drunks to step over on the sidewalk and children of drug addicts playing on the streets in rags. Over the years it has changed. Like much of the North side of Chicago it has been gentrified. Starbucks and Borders, condos and a Target. Only there are still gangs.

  [...] The Black P Stones are a few blocks away on Magnolia, and they battle the Uptown Vice Lords who live on our street. In the summer the Vice Lords hang out near our building, behind the school. I hate that they are selling drugs, I hate that their leaders send younger members like so much cannon fodder to kill one another. Lives ruined, mothers crying for dead children. Gangs are easy to hate. It is easy to see the insanity of what they do.

But this woman isn't hating them. She's teaching her kid to respect them:

• In the summer my family walks to where the P Stones hang, a park across the street from Starbucks that has a big water fountain. They are there with their families. The dads play basketball and the kids play with my kids in the water. The adults get a kick out of Jude, my big autistic son flapping and laughing in the water, and Eden, my eight year old, runs around with the other kids. Once one of the men made a joke about Eden’s bright red hair, and he scowled at the group of men, not wanting to be singled out.

  I brought Eden over and had him apologize. These members of the P Stone nation were incredulous, this lady making her kid apologize to them. “Just trying to teach him to be respectful,” I explained. Not because they were P Stones, or because this was their park. Because they were humans, people, who God loves and have mothers and children and matter. How am I going to teach my son that the homeless man on the corner matters if I deny the humanity of someone in a white tshirt? I didn’t say that. Mr. P Stone smiled at me, and nodded respect to my husband.

Respect? Highly doubtful unless your husband was packing a pistol or a something. And then she's thanking them for not shooting her husband, even though they just shot at least one person on her block:

• Uptown is my home, just like the guy with the white tshirt at the park. Just like him I have sin, and a mother who loves me, and I need some direction, somehow to make sense of this sinful, broken world. Merry Christmas, Mr. P Stone. Thanks for not shooting my husband, and try to stay safe. Hope to see you next summer at the park. God loves you, and I am guessing your mother does, too. Take care.

We realize some people hold out faith in the general goodness of mankind and all, but the naivety on display here is just a-fucking-mazing. Man is an animal - a thinking animal - and will exploit other men to that end 999 times out of 1,000. Thanking a gang banger for destroying your neighborhood, shooting bystanders, poisoning the neighbor's kids, burglarizing your home and robbing you of your hard-earned material possessions? Darwin awaits.

Blago to Rehab

As Scott Fawell suggested, the convicted ex-governor has decided he's addicted to something and needs rehab:

• Convicted former Gov. Rod Blagojevich wants to enroll in a substance-abuse program at a federal prison outside of Denver, a move that could shave up to a year off of his prison sentence.
  
  Blagojevich’s legal team, however, has downplayed the request, briefly mentioning the drug program by only its acronym in court Tuesday, resulting in hardly anyone noticing among a throng of reporters. And then, a day later, the attorneys declined to comment at all.
  
  But the move raises questions about whether Blagojevich suffers from a real substance-abuse problem or is simply angling to reduce his stiff 14-year sentence.

The only addiction we see Rod having is an inability to shut the hell up and stop putting his own foot in his mouth. Which, incidentally, we'd like to see more of so maybe some investigator makes a run at Shortshanks, Madigan or another Machine politico.

Shots Fired at Police in 011 (UPDATES)

No one hit, no one in custody:

• No Chicago police officers were hurt when a gunman opened fire on officers on the city's West Side, authorities said.

  The shots were fired at Harrison District officers at about 10 p.m. Wednesday in the 1100 block of North Keystone Avenue in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood, police said.

  Police had no details, but said the shooter remained at-large late Wednesday.

  Numerous officers, including the district's commander, remained at the scene gathering details on the shooting, according to one district officer.

Be careful out there.

UPDATE: This is the second incident nearby within 12 hours, maybe less. 014 Tact was shot at near Spaulding and Division in broad daylight. That just about qualifies as Humboldt Park proper instead of this "West Humboldt Park."

UPDATE: One in custody:

• Chicago police have arrested a man who they say pointed a handgun at officers on the city's West Side.

  Officers fired shots on the gunman, missing him, but taking him into custody after a brief foot chase at about 10 p.m. Wednesday in the 1100 block of North Keystone Avenue in the West Humboldt Park neighborhood, police said.

Keep safe.

Unholy Alliance

Linked below is the entire Chicago Magazine article outlining the rather cozy and completely corrupt partnership between numerous aldercreatures and Chicago street gangs.

• CLICK HERE for the complete article

It opens thusly:

• A few months before last February’s citywide elections, Hal Baskin’s phone started ringing. And ringing. Most of the callers were candidates for Chicago City Council, seeking the kind of help Baskin was uniquely qualified to provide.

  Baskin isn’t a slick campaign strategist. He’s a former gang leader and, for several decades, a community activist who now operates a neighborhood center that aims to keep kids off the streets. Baskin has deep contacts inside the South Side’s complex network of politicians, community organizations, and street gangs. as he recalls, the inquiring candidates wanted to know: “Who do I need to be talking to so I can get the gangs on board?”

  Baskin—who was himself a candidate in the 16th Ward aldermanic race, which he would lose—was happy to oblige. In all, he says, he helped broker meetings between roughly 30 politicians (ten sitting aldermen and 20 candidates for City Council) and at least six gang representatives. That claim is backed up by two other community activists, Harold Davis Jr. and Kublai K. M. Toure, who worked with Baskin to arrange the meetings, and a third participant, also a community activist, who requested anonymity. The gang representatives were former chiefs who had walked away from day-to-day thug life, but they were still respected on the streets and wielded enough influence to mobilize active gang members.

It names names and pulls few punches. Taxpayer funded venues were used for recruitment and organization. Favors were solicited and promised. In other words, everything Chicago is covered. A good read. We'd even call it a must read.

This Will Show Them!

Thank god the mayor is finally taking the reins into his hands and showing McStreetlights how to run a world class city! If this doesn't keep control of the streets, then we don't know what will:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel wants to raise fines for resisting police as the city gears up for anticipated protests that will come with the G8 and NATO summits to be held in Chicago next May.

  Protesters found guilty of resisting a police officer or aiding escape would have to pay a maximum fine ranging from $200 to $1,000. Currently, the range is $25 to $500.

  The proposal introduced at today's City Council meeting also would allow Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to deputize officers with other agencies, including the FBI and Illinois State Police.

And pay no attention to this little paragraph:

• The proposal also would appear to give the mayor greater power to sign contracts related to planning security and logistics without City Council approval.

Chicagoans can sleep peacefully in their beds knowing that the Ramn-inator will be fining protestors and anarchists back into the Stone Age. It's almost revolutionary.

Guess Who's Out?

Again. And still up to his old tricks:

• A man who once knocked out a woman’s teeth in the South Loop when she refused to give him a cigarette was arrested again this week when he threatened to kill a man while panhandling in the Uptown neighborhood, according to Chicago police.
  
  Derrick King, 50, was cited by critics of the state’s early prison release program when he threatened a woman in 2009, a day after getting out of prison for the brutal attack against Jennifer Hall on her birthday in August 2008.
  
  King was sent back to jail after the second incident and was released late last year. He has been arrested on misdemeanor charges three times since then.

This piece of garbage is a poster child for "Three Strikes," Concealed Carry and a ready-made poster child for a law-and-order type campaign to beat Quinn and any other soft on crime liberal asshole who believes in rehabilitation for someone like Derrick King is worth the time, effort or cost.

And look where he's hanging out. Uptown!

Prepared for Disaster? Ha!

From Yahoo News, this gem:

• Disasters come in all shapes and sizes. Tornadoes and tsunamis, hurricanes and hail storms. The list of natural disasters is long, but the list of non-natural disasters is probably longer. Nuclear meltdowns, terrorist attacks and pandemic flus.

  Hurricanes have recently hit New York and New England, heat waves have descended on Moscow and massive floods have occurred in Australia. Let’s face it: life is a dicey proposition. In the context of catastrophes, you can run, but you cannot hide. That’s the bad news. The good news is that society has pioneered a powerful survival strategy. It has three parts: planning, more planning and still more planning.

  In this department, some U.S. cities are more equipped than others to survive the full spectrum of worst-case scenarios the universe has in store for them.

The least well prepared cities:

• Pittsburgh; Fresno; Birmingham; Seattle; Albequerque

The best prepared?

• Washington; Albany; Chicago; Dover; New York

Chicago? Seriously? With a grade of 97.3 out of 100? Who the hell is running this bullshit? The criteria must be set pretty low. We honestly can't remember feeling less prepared for a disaster, especially in light of the upcoming G-8/NATO summits with a mere 8 hours of training to prepare over 75% of the department.

Parking Tab Climbs

This is great. Shortshanks is going to be screwing taxpayers for the how many years?

• If Mayor Rahm Emanuel was looking to score political points using Chicago’s widely despised parking-meter lease, he’s found a platform in Chicago Parking Meters LLC’s demand for $13.5 million in compensation for motorists’ use of disability placards and license plates to park for free.

  “I just don’t write blank checks to companies that say that’s what we owe. I’m gonna be the taxpayer watchdog,” the mayor said Tuesday. “Now, they may say that’s what we owe. But, just because they submit it doesn’t mean that’s what we’re gonna pay. We’re contesting that right now in a series of discussions with the company.”

  Whether the issue might end up in court is unclear. An Emanuel spokeswoman said that the city has come up with an estimate that’s “significantly less” than $13.5 million. But both the city and parking-meter company have refused to discuss the negotiations further.

What's truly hilarious (and truly ought to be the subject of a recall or concerted challenger to every alder-asshole who voted for this abortion of a lease) is that Chicago Parking Meters LLC gets to choose what dates they count used parking spaces and how they "estimate" the total cost over the total year. We mean, it's not like they have a vested financial interest in their own estimated bill or anything like that, right? Fox guarding the hen house indeed.

015 Demolished

Someone sent us this from the other day. We aren't sure if the job is done yet, but it tugged at our nostalgic side:

If you were lucky enough to serve in one of the tiny, cramped, ancient stations of yesteryear, you know exactly what we mean.

Even More Crime

They're stacking them four at a time on the west side:

• An acquaintance of a man slain on the West Side last night reportedly came back to the scene this morning and shot four men in retaliation, one of whom died tonight, police said.

  The unidentified 34-year-old man lived in the 4400 block of West Jackson Boulevard but he was pronounced dead at Mount Sinai Hospital, police said. His condition was initially described as "grave,'' according to police.

  A lone gunman who is an acquaintance of 18-year-old Onay Lundy who died in last night’s attack shot the four men today “in retaliation’’ for his killing, police said.

So one dead last night, friends go get their guns, four more get shot with one dying at the hospital. The behavior seems so..... so..... so....

If there was only a word that Neil Steinberg could teach us to use in situations like these.

Rahm Apologizes in Advance

Not to the Police and Fire Departments that are going to get a royal screwing next summer. No, he apologizes to everyone who might be inconvenienced by the G-8 and NATO summits:

• Mayor Rahm Emanuel is apologizing ahead of time for those who may be inconvenienced when NATO and the world leaders of the G8 gather in Chicago next spring.

  WBBM Newsradio [...] reports the mayor acknowledged Tuesday that some people who scheduled weddings, bar mitzvahs, ordinations and other events downtown next May might feel compelled to change those dates because of the NATO and G8 summits and the expected protests.

  Emanuel said he’s sorry for any disruption the summits and protests might cause, but he also said he believes normal activities can take place during those days and any disruptions will be worth it.

  “For our city that is trying to attract investments and companies; that’s a big opportunity. I apologize up front for any disruption,” Emanuel said. “But I think also we are a big city, a big metropolitan area; people will … be able to be accommodated with their events.”

You think he finally sees what we've been seeing for months now?

Politicians Hooked Up With Gangs?

Not in Chicago!

• In light of the recent gang violence in Uptown, Chicago Magazine could not have picked a more relevant time to publish their investigation of Chicago politicians and their connections to gangs. In the recently released January 2012 issue, the article details several different Chicago alderman and their connections to gangs, in addition to publishing a map of gang territory in Chicago.
  
  The 46th ward is featured prominently in this article. Former 46th ward Alderman Helen Shiller is the one of the primary aldermen featured in the article. The article spotlights Helen's connection to twin brothers, Rahiem and Rahmon Ali, two leaders of the Gangster Disciples. Rahiem had over forty arrests before his death. What attorney was defending him in court? The former 46th Alderman's son, Brendan Shiller.

Well this would explain more than a little of the violence currently wracking the Uptown neighborhood.

Quoting Rudyard Kipling

This is as amusing as it is timely:

• “I have struck a city - a real city - and they call it Chicago... I urgently desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages.” Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936; Nobel Prize for Literature 1907)

We didn't realize that we and Mr. Kipling shared a Nobel Prize in our pasts. And that Mr. Kipling was evidently an astute observer of the Chicago condition.

Are Cameras Worth It?

We're pretty sure that the answer is no. At least in any reputable study, that's what the answer would be. This article seems to rehash some of the stuff we covered months ago, but it's a slow news day and we need some filler:

• In May 2010, a 30-year-old Pakistani-American drove his Nissan Pathfinder into one of the most scrutinized urban spaces on the planet and parked along the curb.

  In the hours that followed, more than 80 city surveillance cameras – as well as dozens of private cameras, constant media feeds and amateur tourist videographers - failed to capture an image of Faisal Shahzad and his suspicious, fertilizer-packed SUV in Times Square. All those electronic eyes couldn't even provide police investigators an image of the suspect

Without some to watch and interpret the video feed, all you have is a lot of taxpayer money pissed away to no end. Some other points:

• London city data revealed that police were no more likely to catch the perpetrators of crimes committed in camera-dense areas than in other boroughs, suggesting no link between more cameras and better crime solving.
  
  
• In Chicago, the country's most extensive, integrated network, cameras in Humboldt Park correlated to a 12 percent decline in overall crime, including a 33 percent reduction in drug offenses and robberies and a 20 percent drop in violent crime. Meanwhile, a second Chicago area of study, West Garfield Park, saw no crime drop.

The study never addressed a couple of issues:

1. The FBI won't accept Chicago statistics in their annual report on crime. Why would the camera study people trust anything coming out of these bean counters?
2. Most importantly, what role did gentrification play in the crime reduction around Humboldt Park? If you price the gang bangers out of the neighborhood, they aren't around to do robberies, burglaries and murders.

Smoke and mirrors, but the mirror is cracked and the smoke is rapidly dissipating.

More Crime

And the weather just keeps getting nicer. We might have ourselves a bloodbath:

• Two men and a woman were wounded in a Monday afternoon shooting on the South Side. The shooting happened about 3:55 p.m. in the 1900 block of East 73rd Street, said police News Affairs...
  
  
• A teenage boy is dead and a woman was seriously wounded Monday evening during a shooting in the Albany Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side. The shooting occurred at 7:46 p.m. in the 3100 block of West Montrose Avenue, said police News Affairs...

Crime is down across the board though.

Suicide by Cop Incident

No cops injured, so all is well on that front:

• Chicago police shot and killed a man at an 'L' station Sunday night when they said he pointed two pistols at officers.
  
  A spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police said it appeared to be a gunman may have committed "suicide by cop."
  
  The incident began with officers responding to calls of a man with a gun at the Western/Cermak Pink Line station in the 2000 block of South Western Avenue at about 8 p.m., according to police and FOP spokesman Pat Camden.
  
  When officers from the Monroe District arrived, they found the 55-year-old man holding a gun to his own head, Camden said. The officers tried calming the man into dropping the weapon and ending the standoff. But the man then pulled a second handgun and pointed both at officers, Camden said.

  The officers, put in a "defensive posture," fired their weapons, striking the man. He was later pronounced dead, Camden said. His identity wasn't immediately released.

The officers came to no harm and no innocent member of the public was injured. These situations are too common so always be aware. Well done officers.