Sorry, Tom

This ain't Roma and you ain't Caesar.

You live here for awhile, you read the papers, you learn to sift out the significant news from the fluffernutter news. Winnow the water-skiing squirrels from the Operation Gambats. The White Sox starters from the Greylord line-up. It was a service that the irreplaceable Mike Royko used to provide all of us hungry, little news-nibblers. His column inches and his alter-ego – Slats Grobnik – would cut through the day-to-day bunko, bunkum and bungholery that you’re going to find in any Big City, and go right to the meat.

And like the featured eats at his beloved RibFest, his words practically fell right off the bone and tasted like smoky, slow-cooked verdad going down.

So as a service to those of you not living within sight of the Sears Tower, and who think Block 37 is just what goes between Blocks 36 and 38, lemme tell ‘ya, this article made us locals sit up and go, “Uh oh.”

This from the Tribune:

Key figure pleads guilty to Hired Truck charges
By Matt O’Connor and Dan Mihalopoulos
Tribune staff reporters

July 29, 2005, 8:37 PM CDT

A former high-level city official admitted Friday he participated in a widespread fraud scheme that awarded jobs, promotions and overtime to city workers who campaigned for Mayor Richard Daley and the mayor's favored candidates.

Donald Tomczak, who was the top deputy in the Water Management Department, became the highest-ranking Daley loyalist to plead guilty in the ongoing federal probe of City Hall corruption. He is also the first former official to admit in court that the city rigged the hiring process to favor the politically active in violation of long-standing court orders against patronage.
...
In return, prosecutors are backing a sentence of just under 4 years in prison for Tomczak, 70, of Crest Hill. He faced more than 7 years in prison if he hadn't cooperated. Sentencing was postponed indefinitely.

Tomczak's age, as well as heart problems he and his wife have, were instrumental in his decision to cooperate, said his lawyer, Patrick Tuite.
...
Tomczak admitted that he extorted bribes from at least 10 trucking companies seeking business in the Hired Truck Program and didn't report those payoffs on his income tax returns for four years.

"I was involved in the illegal hiring process at City Hall," Tomczak also declared when U.S. District Judge Samuel Der-Yeghiayan asked him to state the wrongdoing in his own words.
...
The "principal purpose" of Tomczak's political street army was to campaign for politicians blessed by "top political operatives of the political organization supporting the mayor of Chicago," the plea agreement said.
...
To lobby for rewards for his political workers, Tomczak would meet at intergovernmental affairs offices in City Hall also while on city time.
...
The plea agreement noted that Tomczak, ironically, knew the Shakman [federal consent decree] regulations well because he had once unsuccessfully sued the city. Tomczak, who retired as first deputy commissioner, contended that he had been fired in violation of the federal decree for supporting Jane Byrne's re-election bid in 1983.
...

You might have heard of the local GOP dumbass who offered 10K for information leading to the conviction of etcetera, etcetera. The only reason I mention it is this: You gotta love Illinois Republicans.

Just when you think they might not publicly humiliate themselves as horribly as humanly possible, they go all-in and decide that a multi-layered fuck-up is better than a singleton. So, for example, instead of sticking with Jack Ryan for the Senate and losing honorably, they decide to not only dump him, but replacing him with a straight-up, ranting mental-case in the person of Alan Keyes. Nasally, smarmy, and so Christopatically Right Wing that Jesse Helms has to squint to make him out on the far, right horizon of rabid, self-ass-chewing fucknuttery.

Oh and he’s Black, because the GOP here apparently thought that only one ‘a them “coloreds” could beat Obama, thus not only showing themselves to be racist and foolish, but also pissing off all nine black Republicans who actually live here by telling them that only imported Negroes need apply for any of the Big Jobs.

Genius!

It appears that it’s always Amateur Night at Lincolnland’s Party of Lincoln Kegger and Cow-Pie Tossing Gala. Like this “reward” idiocy: a bush-league, one-shot headline grabbing designed to burnish the resume of the mope who dreamed it up. Just another man-bites-dog spasm from the twitching corpse of the Illinois GOP.

What is not trivial are the events outlined in this article.

Note his age: 70. Note his former position. Note the clarity of his public attestation.

What we locals understand is that the prosecutor has now found his own Frankie Pentangeli.

(Google Godfather II if you don’t know the name. Better yet, go rent it. Right now. It is indispensable to understanding politics – especially family, dynastic politics – in America.

I mean, Je-sus! You’ve never seen Godfather II?

Lord help me, I’m among the heathens.)

They’ve found their own Frankie Pentangeli...and they’ve flipped him.

One of the men for whom there was no buffer between him and the Godfather. One of the men who did not live off the orts, tossed third hand from the Grown Up’s Table, but who pulled up a chair and supped there every day.

And in this case, there’s no brother to bring in from the Old Country to hold over his head and shut him up.

In this case, they didn’t even drop his sentence to zero; just from seven years to four. That’s a very important metric for measuring exactly him much of his Jimmy Stick they have in a vise. That means the lever the prosecutor is leaning on is veeery long, and the fulcrum of the short end is practically wedged under Mr. Tomczak’s wedding tackle.

In Godfather II, Frankie was paid a visit by family consigliore Tom Hagen. Tom waxed poetic about the glorious Old Days, and the part Frankie had played.

“You were around the old-timers who dreamed up how the Families should be organized, how they based it on the old Roman legions and called them Regimes, Capos, and Soldiers. And it worked.”

Frankie took the hint and opined, “They, they went home and sat in a hot bath, opened up their veins and bled to death. And sometimes they had a little party before they did it.”

And right now, just from what little the average Chicagoan can glean from the papers, nothing short of a hot bath and a straight-razor is going to stop this most Rara of all Avises from opening up his lungs to Sing! Sing! Sing!