Layoffs, Nephews And Da Family Bidness

Today, Da Mare got to fire another 1,500 Chicagoans because the city is dead ass broke. (It's not, but that's another story.)

Yesterday, Da Mare got to whisper out a paragraph of carefully lawyer-wordsmithed remarks about how he din’t know nuffin about his nephew -- Robert Vanecko -- at whom the City threw $68 million in pension dollars for no explicable reason.

Why are these stories related?

Because Chicago is a hereditary monarchy, and to understand how things roll here you really have to understand the difference between The Royals and The Vassals.

If you’re a vassal -- whether you’re a genius technocrat or a court jester, a baron with a private army or a foot soldier with a kid in college, a wizard or a wastewater treatment engineer -- you are ultimately expendable.

Now of course if you’ve done some favors for the Royals in the past, you can expect those chits to offer you some protection when the seas get a little rough and the time comes to start jettisoning a few warm bodies to keep the Machine from capsizing.

But when the going gets scary, Edmund Fitzgerald-ugly and the lifeboats start hitting the water with Royals and their favorite pets and courtiers aboard, then every vassal is just another dreary fuck from steerage, and nobody cares if you said nice things about Da Mare at some Rotarian dinner in 2003 or got your picture taken with him at Millennium Park that one time.

In really ugly times, things that vassals have been taught since childhood were genuine coins of the realm -- whether it be flattery, or hard work, or proximity to power, or an obsessive focus on getting every ridiculous detail of some trivial project just so “because Da Mare would want it dat way” -- suddenly turn out to be so much fairy gold.

Which is exactly why everyone knows the story of Da Nephew who wanted to play Mogul stinks like the proverbial whorehouse at low tide.

In a city where grown men have nervous breakdowns over whether or not they’ve used the right font on a three-line memo that Da Mare may or may not ever glance at before it goes into the shredder, it is inconceivable that word of a decision to toss the Bridgeport Halfling Prince $68 million in city pension dough never reached the 5th floor.

And in a city where a word from Da Mare can obliterate airports, smash stadiums and axe thousands of men and women, it is preposterous to suggest that -- having heard that Da Nephew was standing on the porch waiting for a multi-million dollar handout -- a word from the 5th floor could not have killed the deal dead.

Or, as Steve Rhodes put it so neatly in today's "Beachwood Reporter":

See, that's the problem with Fran Spielman's stenography today: if the family is as close-knit as she wrings her hands over, how could this deal have gone down without the mayor knowing about it?

Add in Daley's microscopic knowledge of city business and it's just plain unfathomable.

Of course, the mayor could have cleared all that up but he refused to take questions on the matter.

Nobody else is talking either.

Besides -- regardless of how various “inside sources” spin their little tales of how Da Nephew was warned not to run with multi-million-dollar scissors now that the it has all gone to shit and landed on the front page -- back when he was pressuring his uncle's underlings to buy $68 million dollars worth of his

shitty Girl Scout Cookies, what possible grounds could Da Mare have had for objecting to Da Nephew dilettanting around with other people's money?

That slouching after a buck in the private sector was bad? (From local NBC):

On Wednesday, Daley had said, “'They’re not customer-related. They’re gonna leave at 5 o’clock. They’re gonna leave at 4:30 or 4:00. I’m sorry. We’re on a time clock. They walk out. But, in the private sector, when you have a customer, you’re gonna stay there making sure they’re happy and satisfied."

That the real estate business was shady? (From the Chicago Reader):

…
Then there was the Michael Reese deal, approved 47-0 in the City Council on December 17. Daley unveiled this proposal in July, when he told reporters the city intended to borrow $85 million to buy the 37-acre hospital site from Medline Industries, the current owner. Medline would then—follow me now—make a $20 million “charitable contribution” to cover the cost of demolishing the hospital and cleaning up the site. Sounding a little like one of those old Celozzi-Ettleson Chevrolet ads, Daley and planning commissioner Arnold Randall assured us that the deal would cost taxpayers nothing: Unnamed developers were lined up to purchase the property for the full $85 million so they could build as many as 7,500 units of housing, which would be set aside for about 15,000 athletes during the Olympics. The developers could then sell them off later at a profit. But the deal would go through even if Chicago didn’t get the Olympics, Daley and Randall said, because apparently it was just too good for any sensible developer to pass up.

It seemed the city had discovered the secret that has eluded so many other great deal makers: how to buy something without spending any money. “This is a very creative financing solution,” Randall told reporters.

The City Council was set to approve the deal—and by the way, I don’t think Brezhnev got as much support from the politburo as Daley gets from the council these days—when estimates for the cleanup came in at well over $20 million. The administration hit the brakes, and the city and Medline returned to the table. After about four months, they announced what’s supposedly an even better deal for taxpayers. Instead of $85 million, the city would borrow $86 million, and Medline would hike its charitable contribution to at least $27.5 million.

But little has really changed from the first deal, at least as far as taxpayers are concerned. It’s still a speculative real estate deal, and if things don’t go just right, the city—in other words, taxpayers—could be saddled with all or part of the loan.

...

The emphasis on the donation is sleight of hand. The real issue, which you could well miss for all the distracting details, is not whether the city’s getting a good price, but whether buying this property makes sense in light of Chicago’s many pressing needs.

Moreover, the mayor has not explained how the city—which is apparently not astute enough to operate parking meters—has suddenly dev­eloped the expertise to succes­sfully develop real estate
...

That using insider contacts to get rich in real estate was naughty? (From the Chicago Sun-Times via Congressman Jackson's website):

$1 Billion O'Hare Pact Gets City Council's OK

By Fran Spielman, Chicago Sun-Times
Thursday, March 8, 2001

Without a word of debate and no formal commitment to bolster minority participation, the City Council on Wednesday approved the largest contract in Chicago history to build the first of two new terminals at O'Hare Airport.

The vote allowed Mayor Daley's newly retired political enforcer Victor Reyes to deliver a $1 billion contract to his client, T-6 Partners, in his maiden voyage as a Chicago lobbyist.
…

No, like our Corrupt Ex-Governor, all Young Robert was doing was following a trail blazed for him years ago by his elders, paved for him by generations of Street-‘N-San guys with “borrowed” asphalt, and neatly fenced off for him by construction firms like G.F. Structures:

“A clout-heavy contractor who made millions from Mayor Daley's affinity for wrought-iron fences has been awarded a pair of contracts worth $10.6 million to convert a vacant military building at O'Hare Airport into a new home for city employees.

“That makes G.F. Structures the big winner in a $22.5 million move designed to free up 500,000 square feet of lucrative terminal space for new concessions.
…”

In a state where converting votes into power and power into dough has long been da family bidness of the Royals, Young Robert's problems did not come from his acts nepotism, but from their timing and volume. And so, before vanishing for a few months down the memory hole until it is safe for him to sneak back and start turning his uncle's Rolodex into Big Cake again, Young Robert will now suffer a ritual public spanking, while his uncle will somehow endure seeing a few more embarrassing headlines in the rear view mirror as he jets away to Lausanne, Switzerland next week.

All of which is cold comfort to the 1,500 men and women who just got sacked today right into the teeth of the Great Recession.

1,500 vassals who have no retinue of press agents, clout-rich relatives and well-connected captains of industry standing ready to catch them when they fall.