Professional Left Podcast Episode 999: The Patron Saint of Corruption

“Chicago ain't ready for reform yet!”  -- -- Chicago 43rd Ward Alderman Mathias "Paddy" Bauler, 1955

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Professional Left Podcast Episode 975: The "C" Word.

"I decided I would go to Chicago and try my luck as a writer after those eight months as a fireman" --  Carl Sandburg

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Professional Left Podcast Episode #757: No Fair Remembering Chicago Parking Meters and Fall of the Bridgeport Empire

“This town was built by great men who demanded that drunkards and harlots be arrested, while charging them rent until the cops arrived.” -- Mike Royko

 

Links:  

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The Professional Left is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Dear Savvy Pundits Who Learned Everything They Know About Chicago Politics From a Fast Glance at Wikipedia

Keep the name of my beloved former home out'cher goddamn mouths.

After a long disquisition about how different Washington D.C. is now than how she fondly remembers it five years ago...

[Note to self:  Remember to send Sara Longwell the complete works of George Pelecanos and David Simon.]

... we join Ms. Sara Longwell of The Bulwark and MSNBulwark sharing her deep political knowledge of Chicago with listeners.

Longwell: That's when you get change elections.  Now the one thing in this election in Chicago in particular...

Fairly sure the only thing Ms. Longwell knew about Chicago in particular before this was how much a whiskey sour will set you back at the O'Hare airport Jazz Bar.  

Longwell: ...in particular, it's clear they don't want HER.  But she had somebody running to her left.  And then there's, like, a Republican that won.

The last Republican mayor of the City of Chicago was "Big Bill" Thompson who served in that office from 1915 to 1923 and from 1927 to 1931, and was the loyal stooge of Al Capone, about whom I'm sure even Sara Longwell has heard.

At that time one could not get a whiskey sour at O'Hare Airport because, A) the Volstead Act would not be repealed by the 21st Amendment until 1933 and, B) O'Hare did not exist.  

At that time, that location was known as Orchard Place.  It later became a manufacturing site for Douglas C-54 Skymasters during World War II. And was not opened as a commercial airport until 1955, during the first term of Richard J. Daley, about whom I'm sure even Sara Longwell has heard.

Longwell: ...And then there's, like, a Republican that won.  And I guess my question is, is it possible Chicago elects a Republican mayor in this environment? 

No.  

For two reasons.  

First, Paul Vallas is not a fucking Republican.  He has run for many public offices in Illinois, and lost, as a Democrat, which is not exactly Curs'd Sekret Knowledge available only to the elect.  

Second, the GOP has been dead as Dillinger (look it up) in Chicago since forever.  The closest any Republican has come to the Fifth floor (look it up) was when when Harold Washington won the Democratic party's nomination  in 1983 and ethic white voters and 29 ethnic white Democratic alderman had a huge and openly racist freakout and fled in panic to a Republican cipher named Bernie Epton, whose campaign motto was "Epton: Before It's Too Late!"

In fact, The Professional Left did a whole, No Fair Remembering Stuff podcast about it here.   

Surprised the Bulwarkians didn't listen to it before opening their gobs.

Longwell: ...is it possible Chicago elects a Republican mayor in this environment? And I'm not positive that's the case.

Tim Miller:  Yeah, see if Brandon Johnson is the one you were talking about that was running to, I guess, her left.  And Vallas... is a... is not a Republican.  The guy won the most.  He's a Democrat, but I think...

Longwell: Oh he is?

Yes.  Yes he is.

Miller: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Longwell: I kept seeing people refer to him as a Conservative.  They must mean a Conservative Democrat.

Caution:  Deep political thinkers at work.

Miller: Yeah, this is the very online Libs, y'know, trying to smear him.  

Golly, recently-former Republican Tim Miller, why would you think accurately referring to Paul Vallas as a "Conservative Democrat" constitutes a "smear"?

Miller: No, um, he ran for governor as a Democrat, uh, he ran for lieutenant governor as a a Democrat.  So no, very, uh, very much a Democrat but, uh... look, I do think that the messaging about unions coming from him is maybe why he's sorta see this, oh if you...you wanna criticize the teacher's union or whatever then you're a Republican.  And so, uh, no, he...uh, ran as a Democrat back in 2002.  So it's been 20 years at lest he's been a Democrat...  

Then comes a life-preserver, as Miller swiftly if awkwardly pivots away from Mr. Longwell's embarrassing political ignorance, to a word salad of internet and tribal bubbles and such.

Miller: But look, I... I think that sometimes it's hard to tell, like in this... in this Surround-Sound information environment, like, what is real.  Like what is just... in my feeds.  Right?  Like, what is being blown out of proportion.  And I think that that breeds an idea a lot of times of people who are in one... their tribal bubble of being, like, no, this is bullshit. Right? Like, crime isn't really that bad.  

Miller then disappears into a cloud of words about Oakland, California, where he actually lives, to talk about politics there.  

And thus we leave "Republican" Paul Vallas and the Chicago election behind.

So how is it that a savvy political professional like Ms. Longwell knows nothing, and Tim Miller knows next to nothing, about the political and civil history of third largest city in the United States?  The home town of Barack Obama and practically the second home to Bill Clinton during his administration?  The engine that drives the entire midwest, including our big, blue state in a sea of red?  Y'know, the Land of Lincoln?  Where the first Republican president is buried?  Where we are currently being governed by the most popular Democratic governor in America?  

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd guess it's because Chicago isn't D.C. or NYC or L.A., and Illinois isn't California or Florida or New York.  And coastal elites like Miller and Longwell have no real interest in or understanding of those of us here in flyover country.

For relief from these recently-former Republicans projecting their talking points onto my former hometown, let us now turn to that other, weekly Bulwark podcast where...

...oh fuck my life.  

Never mind.  

Unless you're hungry to hear about how Paul Vallas represents the sort of Sensible Centrism to which all Democrats should aspire.  

Or how Brandon Johnson is a "perfect caricature" of crazy, out-of-touch Liberals.  

Or how this election will be a test for national Democrats to see if Sensible Moderates can wrest control of the party away from those crazy, out-of-touch Liberals.  

Or if it's been too long since you've heard a Conservative sneeringly resurrect the term "limousine Liberal".

If that's the content you're looking for...leave here immediately and never return.

'cause I don’t want nobody nobody sent. (Look it up)

I Am The Liberal Media

Ep 689 No Fair Remembering Stuff Podcast: Healthcare -- It's a Big Fucking Deal, Part 1

"This is a Big Fucking deal!"  -- Vice President Joe Biden to Joe Biden to President Barack Obama 

Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for her invaluable support!

No Fair Remembering Stuff is a Professional Left podcast production and is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Ep 687 No Fair Remembering Stuff Podcast: Here's Harold!

"Let's not be overconfident, we still have to count the votes."   -- Harold Washington

Don't forget to visit our website -- http://www.proleftpod.com -- for all those sweet bells and whistles:  there are links to donate to our podcast work at that site, as well as links to our swingin' Zazzle merch store,  our respective blogs, Twitter, Facebook, Kittehs! and much more. Many thanks once again to @theologop for her invaluable support!

No Fair Remembering Stuff is a Professional Left podcast production and is brought to you by our wholly imaginary "sponsors" and real listeners like you!

Before Barack There Was Harold

One of my prized political possessions.

On the occasion of his 100th birthday we pause to remember one of the greatest mayors that a great city ever had.  Hizzoner Harold Washington, who served a term and a half in the Big Chair on the fifth floor before tragically passing away on November 25, 1987, just as he was really hitting his stride.  

Barack and Harold (if you're from Chicago, such first name familiarity is legally permitted) share a lot of political DNA.  Both men were almost always the smartest guy in the room in any room they were in.  Both of them loved language and deployed it surgically and beautifully.  Both men were running against long odds to hold jobs that had never been held by an African American before.  Both men were incredibly charismatic, and when they radiated that joyful confidence in the future, you just wanted be on that team.  

But more instructive are the differences between them.  Barack began running for president at the age of 46 after spending about a minute in the U.S. senate, and a few years in the Illinois state house.  He was a Constitutional law professor who understood how government worked...on paper and in Springfield, Illinois.  He was a young man on a very fast track trying to get through a very narrow political window.  

Harold began running for mayor of Chicago at the age of 60, about the same age as Barack is now, and sporting about the same shade of dignified gray that now salts Barack's crown.  After spending his entire adult life in politics (from ward heeler to terms in both chambers of the Illinois statehouse to U.S. Representative) and working within the constraints of Chicago machine, Harold knew the system intimately and knew what it took to win.  He knew the assholes would come for him hard, and they surely did.  From me a few years back:

God bless Adam Doster over at Chicago Magazine (although you can stop sending me offers to "Win Dinner and West Side Story Tickets!" already) for disinterring what Mr. Doster aptly describes as "one of the great ledes in Chicago journalism history", penned, you will not be shocked to discover, by the late Mike Royko:

”So I told Uncle Chester: Don’t worry, Harold Washington doesn’t want to marry your sister”

Which, in one sentence, describes with machine-lathe precision exactly what was galloping 'round and 'round through the terrified minds of hundreds of thousands of Chicago's ethic white "Uncle Chesters".

Royko went on to explain just how much Harold's experience had differed from the ethnic white Chicagoans who loathed him on-sight, and just how extraordinary it was that Harold had not allowed their hate to drag him down to their level:

First, Washington was born in an era when they still lynched people in some parts of the United States. By “lynched,” I mean they took a black man out of his home, put a rope around his neck and murdered him by hanging. Then they went home to bed knowing they were untouchable because the sheriff helped pull the rope. Washington suffered through it. God knows how he did that. I think that most of us–white, privileged, the success road wide open to us–might have turned into haters. Washington didn’t turn into a hater. Instead, he developed a capacity for living with his tormenters and understanding that in the flow of history there are deep valleys and heady peaks...

It's a cliche, but the crucial difference between the men comes down to the fact that Harold understood and played politics "the Chicago way" -- 

-- and Barack either would not or could not.

Harold was battle-tested by years in the business, so when the "Vrdolyak 29" set themselves up as an openly racist opposition party dedicated to obstructing and sabotaging Harold's administration at any price...and then running against him as a dictator, he stepped right to them.  He knew who his enemies were and knew that trying sweet talk and back-slapping were a waste of time, so he pounded on them mercilessly in the press and from behind his podium at the city council.  

Barack, on the other hand, worshiped at the altar of Process and Compromise.  After all, it had always served him well in Springfield.  Even after it was painfully clear to the rest of us that the playbook Republican's were going to run against Obama administration was going to be virtually identical to the playbook that Vrdolyak and his gang ran against the Washington administration-- relentless racist sabotage followed by endless whining that nothing was getting done and that the Scary Black Man was acting like a tyrant  -- Barack kept playing into their hands.  He had never been battle-hardened like Harold had, and had never learned the political knife-fighting skills Harold had learned.  And so, over and over again he deployed his greatest weapon -- his intellect and his massive vocabulary -- in one doomed attempt after another to appeal to the Republican's better angels.  

It never worked, because it never does.

So crack open a Goose Island Bourbon County Stout or a Daisy Cutter Pale Ale or any of the hundreds fine local Chicago beers and hoist a cold one in honor of a better mayor than the Windy City deserved --

-- and who left us long before his important work was done.

Burn The Lifeboats

Dateline Chicago: This Story Will Come as No Surprise...

 ...to anyone who was reading my blog a decade ago.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Chicago parking meter investors rake in $13M in profit despite pandemic

The profit came out of $91.6 million in meter revenue in 2020, down 33% from the year before, a new audit shows. With 62 years to go on a 75-year lease, the private company has already recouped its entire $1.16 billion investment and $500 million more.

Allow me to repeat that for those in the back:

With 62 years to go on a 75-year lease, the private company has already recouped its entire $1.16 billion investment and $500 million more.

Parking meters in Chicago are a license to print money.  A money-machine which we tax payers paid for.   A money-machine which Da Former Mare of Da Great City 'a Chicaga sold off for pennies on the dollar after making sure some of his nearest and dearest made out like fat rats on the other side of the deal.  A money-machine he sold because he needed fast cash to prop up his administration for one more year so he could beat his daddy's record.

All of which you would already know if you were reading this then-Chicago headquartered blog ("Castle Driftglass") back in the day.

From me in 2009:

The Clout Burglars

If you’re not from around here you may not know that the City of Chicago recently sold off its parking meter franchise to private contractors for a billion dollars and change. The deal was cut secretly, hurriedly (almost frantically) and for a fraction of what the meters are worth. And instead of allowing a decent, figleafing interval to pass to allow Da Mare to get all red-faced and pretend that He Din't Know Nuttin! the parking company instead jacked rates through the roof before the ink on their sweetheart contract had even dried, thus thoroughly fucking over the very citizens on whose behalf the deal had allegedly been rammed through, and stranding City Hall without a plausible alibi.

Which, for anyone who has not grown up under the pervasive, ethically smothering pall of the Chicago Machine, would raise some obvious questions. Like, f’rinstance, where in the Hell did an elected official ever get the balls to think he could hock public assets for a quick buck in the first place?

Because that is all this is: boosting something that you and I already paid for and fencing it like a hot car.

Outsourcing public services makes a ruthless kind of sense only when those services can be provided to the citizenry more efficiently and at lower cost. But a parking meter isn’t some high-end web design project or complex social program. It is a pure revenue-generator already; an iron box that exists solely to move money from your pocket into the City’s coffers. And without a coherent ethical framework or theory of government, the prudent outsourcing of a few services quickly becomes a mindless, piecemeal fire sale of every damned thing in a desperate rush to raise quick cash (and occasionally kneecapping a local union).

And that is exactly what is happening in Chicago...

I used to write a great deal about the ins and outs of Chicago and Illinois politics, which I knew very well.  Blago and Daley and Rahmses.  

Seems like a very long time ago now.

A relic from a different world.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Eleventh Lesson of Rahmses

Longtime readers may recall the The Ten Lessons of Rahmses: your handy index to the complete award-consideration-ready series on the 10 Vital Lessons of Chicago politics as they have existed since the dawn of time.

Lesson One: Elections

Lesson Two: Being Da Boss

Lesson Three: Voters

Lesson Four: Budgets (and how to balance them)

Lesson Five: Fighting Legends

Lesson Six: Enemies

Lesson Seven: Job Stress

Lesson Eight: Employee Morale

Lesson Nine: The Banality of Municipal Gummint

Lesson Ten: Public Service in Chicago

And today, as we mark Rahmses' ignominious exit from the Fifth Floor and the honorable Lori Lightfoot takes the Big Chair --

In Historic First, Lori Lightfoot Inaugurated As Chicago's Mayor

Lori Lightfoot, who won a landslide victory in Chicago's runoff election, was sworn in as mayor on Monday.

Lori Lightfoot officially became Chicago's first black female and openly gay mayor on Monday. She immediately laid out a four-point plan for safety, education, stability and integrity during her 40-minute inauguration speech...

-- we put all that we have learned about the media and privilege and clout accountability into the mighty Blender of Impunity and pour out an Eleventh Lesson, which longtime readers will recognize as the most important lesson of all.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Rahm Emanuel becomes contributing editor for The Atlantic

Rahm Emanuel kicked off his post-mayoral career Tuesday by announcing that he is now a contributing editor for The Atlantic.

The former Chicago mayor will contribute frequent essays to The Atlantic’s Ideas section, according to a statement from the publication. The announcement comes one day after Lori Lightfoot was sworn in as Chicago’s next mayor...

And after a political lifetime spent catering to the privileged, what was Rahmses' very first article under his brand new title of contributing editor for The Atlantic? (emphasis added)

Since late October 2018, Emanuel has written 12 articles — 13 overall since June 2017 — for The Atlantic. His most recent, “It’s Time to Hold American Elites Accountable for Their Abuses,” was published Tuesday.

And what does this teach us, kids?  (sing it with me now.)

That there is a Club.

And we are not in it.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

In Which They Pull Me Back In

Once I put Castle Driftglass and my life in Chicago in the rear-view mirror, I thought I would be out of it.  That when blue gal and I set up housekeeping a couple of miles from where they planted Lincoln and a couple of mile from the governor's mansion, that I was mostly done writing about the down-and-dirty of Chicago politics.

But just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in.  From the Chicago Tribune Tronc the Chicago Tribune:

Feds charge Ald. Edward Burke, allege wiretap on cellphone captures him in attempted extortion

Longtime Ald. Edward Burke, one of Chicago’s most powerful figures and a vestige of the city’s old Democratic machine, has often been considered too clever and sophisticated to be caught blatantly using his public office to enrich himself.

But after years of dodging investigations while watching dozens of his colleagues hauled off to prison, Burke has been accused of crossing the line himself — and doing so in a quintessential Chicago way.

A federal criminal complaint unsealed Thursday charged Burke with attempted extortion for allegedly using his position as alderman to try to steer business to his private law firm from a company seeking to renovate a fast-food restaurant in his ward. The charge carries a maximum of 20 years in prison on conviction.

The complaint also alleged Burke asked one of the company’s executives in December 2017 to attend an upcoming political fundraiser for "another politician." Sources identified the politician as Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who is running for Chicago mayor...

Eddie Burke has been the mad dwarf king of 121 North LaSalle almost since Richie Daley was in short pants.  For half a century he has busied himself in the bowels of City Hall, using his seat in government to mine for treasure ever deeper every year.   Grown so corrupt that he was raided by the FBI not once but twice last month, probably because one of his many side hustles was doing Donald Trump's taxes.

Burke is like some political UXB from two wars ago, excavated almost by accident during an unrelated construction project.  And now that prosecutors have the goods on him and are juicing him like the fresh squeezed at Manny's, don't be surprised if you hear a lot more tales of pity and terror and gangsta shit like this tumbling out of the last survivor of the original Daley Machine.

Behold, a Tip Jar!

The Rise and Fall and Rise and Fall and Rise of the Bridgeport Empire?

Me, a week ago:

#MTPDaily

The same week that Rahmses decided he's not running for Mayor of Chicago again, Bill Daley (brother of Richie Daley) is suddenly on @MSNBC as an "expert" on whatever.@CharlesPPierce @whet @Athenae

— driftglass (@Mr_Electrico) September 7, 2018

From the Chicago Sun-Times 12 minutes ago:

JUST IN: Former Commerce Secretary Bill Daley plans to run for Chicago mayor, a spokesperson says. His brother and father once held the office. https://t.co/pOifiThtL3

— Chicago Sun-Times (@Suntimes) September 14, 2018

When Richie Daley left office, he left a shambles behind.

The mighty Daley clout machine which Richard II had inherited from Richard I had been retooled for the modern age to run on a rubber-stamp City Council and contracting authority money instead of a rubber-stamp City Council and city jobs, but once the Great Recession hit and the city's revenues took a massive nose-dive, the whole machine seized irreparably up. There were city-wide upper management buyouts, which is how your 'umble scrivener accidentally ended up running an entire city department for nearly a year, and pulling some amazing moves and running some groundbreaking projects that ended up being incorporated into the vocabulary of the Obama campaign.

Then there were city-wide layoffs, which is how your 'umble scrivener ended unemployed and unemployable in the teeth of the Great Recession.   And the layoffs didn't end with drones and technocrats likeme who had no political protection, but of men and women with clout er Chrissakes!  Which threw the whole clout system -- which ran on absolute loyalty in exchange for permanent job security -- into chaos.

To stave off the coming collapse, Daley sold off the Skyway for pennies on the dollars, and then sold off the parking meters for a quick cash infusion.  Both were rammed through City Council as long-term, rain-day funds when everyone fucking well knew Daley was gonna spend every nickle of it fast and stupid, like Paul Manafort at the Ostrich Apparel Center.  But none of it was enough and so Daley decided it was time to exit as a legend before the villagers drove him out with pitchforks.

And so it came to pass that da city hired themselves dis guy, Rahmses, to run a caretaker government and say "No" to anyone who asked for anything.  And now that Rahmses has decided to exit as an asterisk before before the villagers drive him out with pitchforks, the question then becomes, does the heir presumptive of the Bridgeport Empire still have the juice to reclaim the ancient throne of the Daleys up on the 5th floor of City Hall.

Back in 1973, Mike Royko, the mighty chronicler of all things Chicago, peered into the the murky bottom of a Billy Goat beer stein and divined the future of the city thus:

Daley has already ruled Chicago for longer than most kings reigned in their countries. At this point, many of his loyal subjects view him as more a monarch than an elected official. It seems obvious that he intends to pass the entire city on to his sons, which is a gesture worthy of a king.

And after an interregnum that spanned the clueless (Bilandic) the hapless (Byrne) and thesaurus (Harold!) that is exactly how history unfolded. And so now the real question is, does the Chicago Machine still have enough functional gears and cams and fuel in the tank to put one more Daley back in charge?

If I had to bet, I would bet against it.  If I had to bet, I would bet the next Mare of Chicago will be named Dorothy or Chuy.  Hell, if the vote is sufficiently splintered, maybe even Paul Vallas gets through this time.  But I am far away from Chicago these days -- no longer within earshot of the boys and girls who work the dark magic of big city politics.  So instead of prophecy, let me share a little history, in the form of the last, large-scale post I did on the reign of Richard M. Daley.

Sun Sets on the Bridgeport Empire: Finale



The corrupt dealings and authoritarian follies of Da Mare's long rule has provided Chicago writers with a treasure trove of material over the years. because however often the bureaucratic deck chairs were reshuffled (about every 18 months) and however much good was done (a lot), under the hood, the instrumentalities of Chicago Cityguv always operated according to two imperatives:

1. Eliminate all potential rivals to Richard M. Daley.

2. Keep the Clout Club intact.

Obedience to these directives inevitably resulted in an Administration characterized by both a high-handed dictatorial approach to government, and a strain of malignant neglect that Da Mare allowed to spread throughout his political domain.

Splashy headline-generating promises were routinely made to about the Great No-Cost/Low-Cost Things that were going to be entrepreneurially unleashed for da good people of da city a' Chicago dat we all love so much... 

... that were later quietly reneged upon in private ("Wireless Perversity In Chicago").

Regulations ostentatiously unveiled to show how reformed and squeaky-clean and not-at-all-like-the-bad-old-days-of-two-weeks-ago things were now...were publicly broken without so much as a peep from the press ("The First Rule of Clout Club").

Public assets were frantically sold off at pawn-shop prices to provide Hizzoner with enough quick cash to prop up the Final Days of his administration...after which all those lovely, lavish assurances about how the proceeds would be carefully set aside as a rainy-day fund were promptly ignored once Daley got his hands on the dough ("The Clout Burglars").

These were the sorts of things about which some of us -- too damn few of us -- ot up in Hizzoner grill about over the years.

Did he care?

Nah.

I mean, yes, Richie Daley was a bully -- charming as long as he got 100% of his way 100% of the time, but with a mile-wide vengeful streak in him and skin thin enough to read the fine print on a dodgy, nephew-enriching leasing deal through ("Layoffs, Nephews and Da Family Bidness")..on a moonless night...under a bridge -- but with a supine press at his feet, the tremendous machineries of the Chicago, Cook County and State governments at his command, a government press corps at his beck and call (including full-time Public Information Officers and Shakman-exempt [did you even know there was such a thing?] political enforcers at the elbow of every city commissioner and director), friends operating at the highest levels of Communist China

(never thought I'd live long enough to construct that sentence), the White House on speed-dial and his brother literally behind the throne, and virtually every civic, charitable and commercial board in the city stacked high with still-loyal formers executives and chiefs of staff...there was never any real chance of serious opposition to his Imperial reign.

Which did not relieve us from the moral obligation to speak out.

And now it is over -- a mayoralty never to be repeated or surpassed ...

 

...in longevity, reach or power, that leaves behind it a demoralized and exhausted government that is heading off a financial cliff... 

 

("Nothing Left to Steal").

And as the Age of R2D2 passes into history, I cannot help but recall how Hizzoner used to handle the shouters who routinely showed up at the city's public budget hearings and demanded answers from Himself.

Da Mare and his crew -- as was his custom -- would sit there stone-faced and let whoever it was yell for his or her allotted two minutes or longer. Then, as the troublemaker's jeremiad started to run long (or as they were escorted away from the microphone) every once in a while Daley would lean into his own mic and drown them out by loudly repeating "Go wit God. Go wit God." until they were well out of earshot. 

And so, in that spirit, go wit God, Mr. Mayor. 

 

Go wit God.

How Democrats Lose

If you want to be the pro-government party then, by God, when you get your hands on actual New!Money! to spend on an actual problem you have an iunbreakable moral obligation to get it right all the way down to the smallest detail.  Or, to quote Ricky Roma, "What you're hired for is to help us. Does that seem clear to you?  To help us, not to fuck us up!" Because when you, as a member of the pro-government party, are given such an opportunityand you fuck that up, you hand the bad guys a sword and invite them to impale every single Liberal out here in the cornfields trying to persuade the good people of flyover country that government can be used to help people here's what happens (from Tuesday's State Journal-Register):

Audit slams oversight of Quinn anti-violence programs

Three anti-violence programs administered by former Gov. Pat Quinn were so poorly monitored that nearly $4 million was lost to questionable expenses or unspent funds never collected, an audit released Tuesday concluded.

The review by Auditor General Frank Mautino included the controversial Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, created by the Democratic governor in 2010 as he was running for election to a full term. Criticism of spending and oversight in news reports and an earlier audit haunted his failed re-election attempt in 2014.

The early 2014 audit lambasted the first two years of the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative, saying money rushed out the door so quickly that authorities had trouble keeping track of it. Mautino's review found that while Quinn responded to early criticism by transferring program administration to the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority, that agency didn't enforce its own rules.

...

In the Neighborhood Recovery Initiative alone, $2.2 million in unspent money was never recovered. Another program, the Chicago Area Project, had $427,000 of unspent money never recovered. 

The audit also questioned the veracity of $1.1 million spent on all three anti-violence programs.

...

Longtime readers of this blog may remember the "NRI" from several posts I wrote back in 2014 based on my experiences working under temporary contract with one of the outfits that was getting funding under this program.  I had prior experience successfully designing and running multi-million dollars programs, so even from my vantage point way down the food chain I could see that this was a massive clusterfuck-in-the-making.

And as has been my experience with very large and insulated bureaucracies since I was but a wee driftglass, no one up in the command center of a Very Bad Idea wants to hear that they are about to run their reputations, good intentions and millions of taxpayer dollars straight into the rocks.

So since this is the only gig where I can say what I want and no one from HR is going to call me 10 minutes later and tell me to clear out my desk, I will indulge myself by re-posting part of what I wrote a few years ago...

...From top to bottom, the problem with the NRI wasn't just that the program was a goddamn mess.

It was -- like many an IT project I slogged through back in the days of old -- depressingly clear from a mile away that it was wired to be a goddamn mess from the start.  The people at the top appeared to be sincere, but had no idea what they were doing.  The cost-controls were zilch.  The project plan was "throw a buncha stuff at it and hope it works out".  There were dozens of complex moving parts, all on different schedules, all run by different people, none of whom appeared to be talking to each other on a regular basis.  Staffing was a nightmare, with everything sub-sub-contracted out as far as possible to spread the money around.

And money was the thing.  

Money and deadlines.

Thanks to the the Great Recession, by 2010 social service organizations of all kinds had been decimated by massive, muscle-and-bone cuts to at all levels. and it was into that resource-starved environment that this a brand-new $55M grant arrived.

Ermahgerd!

New Money!

And deadlines. No concise objectives or well-defined outcomes, but lots and lots of deadlines each of which came with severe penalties.

So here's a pro tip for you kids out there:  When a project combines 1) no clear plan and no overall leader, 2) a high public profile and 3) lots of drop-dead dates...run for the exit as soon as you can plan your escape because

• The thing is doomed.  Doooomed I say.  And
• As sure as God made John Wesley Dean III, the first thing that will happen after the Big Project fails due to incompetent management is that management will go looking for scapegoats among the rank-and-file. And when that happens, you would do well to remember the wise words of Amarillo Slim: "If you’re at a poker table and you don’t see a sucker, it’s you.”

The organization that hired me on as a contract/temp had been hemorrhaging middle-managers for years and so when I arrived they literally had no one else to throw at their portion of this mess, so into the thresher I went as a placeholder until they could hire someone on to take up the task permanently.

Unfortunately their internal hiring procedures were so staggeringly complex and awful -- so completely set up to make sure virtually no one ever got hired as a full-timer -- that I ended up getting stuck with the job.  And right out of the gate, what was supposed to be a 3-day orientation to get all the dozens (hundreds?) of people who had been (often involuntarily) committed to the enterprise suddenly ballooned into (as I recall) nearly two months of full-time, all-day...stuff.

Wheee!

Just...stuff.  It appeared that the people running the thing had just pulled random proposals and white papers that had been gather dust on their shelves for years and tossed them into a pile and, bingo, that was the program.  So for two months we had seminars -- many of them very interesting -- on everything anyone could think of.  

After which the organization for which I worked lost its portion of grant because, in that intervening two months, no one had managed to win the Human Resources Hunger Games and actually get hired to do the job for which I had been seat-filling.  For awhile after that happened it was clear I was being suited up by the company to take the hit for losing them their share of the cursed money from this doomed program, but at this point in my life I know enough to cross every "t", dot every "i", and to document the Hell out of everything.

But eventually my contract ran out, and the people who ran the Human Resources Hunger Games explained to me that, despite the fact that everyone I worked at this shop was begging them to hire me (because I happen to be really good at what I do), it was just impossible because, um, er, uh....

This was not the first well-intentioned project designed to help genuinely needy people which I have seen ruined because it's planning and execution were handed over to political friends instead of competent professionals.  

And it probably will not be the last.

You want to know how to corrode people's faith in government to the point where they finally throw up their hands and say "Fuck it!  Just let the private sector run everything!"?  

This is how you do it.

Let The Purges Begins

Rahmses Wins

Again.

And as unemployed as I am, I can still feel deeply sad for all the good, gainfully-employed people I know in government service in Chicago who will now have to continue to live with Rahm's freshly-emboldened martinets and button men.

In other news, Governor Hedgefund began his week by thoroughly screwing disabled children, the poor and the indigent dead.  Which could come as a surprise to no one who had actually been paying strict attention to and taking seriously Governor Hedgefund's public statements, hiring decision and choice of friends.

State autism program's future uncertain after immediate cut by Rauner

By Dean Olsen, Staff Writer

Posted Apr. 6, 2015 at 7:53 PM
Updated Apr 6, 2015 at 8:27 PM

Hundreds of families in the Springfield area and thousands across the state face the possibility of abruptly losing services for their autistic children after an immediate $1 million budget cut by Gov. Bruce Rauner.

“It was totally unexpected,” Russell Bonanno, director of The Autism Program’s statewide network, said Monday at a news conference at TAP’s Springfield headquarters.

TAP, which is operated by Springfield-based Hope Institute for Children and Families, learned Friday afternoon that its state funding for the remaining three months of the fiscal year was suspended by Rauner as part of the Republican’s efforts to deal with a $1.6 billion shortfall for the current fiscal year.

State funds make services affordable for the 75 percent to 90 percent of TAP clients whose Medicaid coverage doesn’t pay for most services related to autism, a communication disorder, TAP spokesman Mark Schmidt said.
TAP officials said the action was a surprise because they thought they would be spared any cuts the remainder of this fiscal year.

Rauner has proposed to eliminate TAP’s entire $4.3 million in state funding for fiscal 2016, which begins July 1, and TAP officials are working to prevent that from happening by rallying public support.
Lawmakers misled?

House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, told lawmakers on the House floor in late March — before the House and Senate voted on a bipartisan plan to resolve the $1.6 billion shortfall — that state funding for TAP and many other programs for people with mental illness and developmental disabilities would be preserved this fiscal year.

The budget compromise included appropriation authority for TAP to operate through the close of the fiscal year, TAP officials said.

“It appears that Gov. Rauner has turned his back on the budget process for the remainder of this fiscal year, which he and legislative leaders negotiated and passed less than two weeks ago,” Bonanno said. “We can’t understand why he gave his word and then took this action.”

Rauner administration spokeswoman Catherine Kelly said Rauner didn’t go back on his word.
...

The Clout Club

Is getting some serious pushback.



I would love to see Rahmses driven from the throne.



And so would pretty much everyone I still know who works for the City of Chicago.

Chicago is the great engine that powers the state and much of the Midwest.  What happens there matters everywhere.

We Don't Call 'Em "Cash Cams" For Nothin'

I saw this in the Chicago Tribune (last week?  I think?)  and had meant to pass it along but never did, do thanks to Alert Reader "DS" for redirecting my attention back to this textbook example of my former home town's freewheeling approach to generating revenue.  From the ABA Journal:

Chicago generated 77,000 additional red-light tickets by shortening yellow-light times, report says POSTED OCT 10, 2014 11:09 AM CDT

BY DEBRA CASSENS WEISS

The city of Chicago shaved a tenth of a second from a yellow light threshold this spring, generating 77,000 tickets for motorists caught on camera for running red lights, according to the city inspector general.

The unannounced change allowed red-light ticketing when yellow lights lasted a minimum of 2.9 seconds, as opposed to three seconds in the past, report the Chicago Tribune (in stories here and here), the Chicago Sun-Times and DNAinfo. The fine is $100 per ticket. The city has agreed to raise the threshold back to three seconds.

The lower yellow-light minimum was instituted as the city was switching red-light vendors amid a corruption investigation. A former city hall manger of the red-light program, John Bills, was accused of taking bribes to help the first vendor, Redflex Traffic Systems Inc., win the contract.

The report (PDF) found the city mismanaged the red-light program under Redflex. The review by Inspector General Joseph Ferguson was spurred by a Chicago Tribune report that found dramatic spikes in tickets at 12 intersections leading to 13,000 questionable tickets.

...

Today's Lesson is Brought to You by the Letter “C”

The Clout Club Never Dies

Anyone surprised by this needs to hike up their Underoos and get back to playing with Tinkertoys:

Report: Rahm Emanuel aides coordinated with 'Chicagoland'

By HADAS GOLD | 4/25/14 10:49 AM EDT

Aides to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel coordinated scenes with the producers of the CNN series "Chicagoland," emails obtained by the Chicago Tribune show.

More than 700 emails show that the production team, led by executive producer Marc Levin, worked with the mayor's team to develop storylines, arrange specific scenes and review news releases for what was billed as an unscripted documentary series.

In one email asking for more access to Emanuel, Levin wrote they were seeking more time with the mayor not to show his weaknesses "but instead to show the best of who he is and what he is doing."

"I know we still have time to round out the Mayor's story and present him as the star he really is," Levin wrote.

...

By request, I watched the first 1.2 episodes of this series. I even made a buncha notes just in case I was ever inspired to write about it.

I never was.

In Chicago politics, the Press is the Enemy, and to rule Chicago a mayor must know how to subdue an Enemy.  I refer you to Lesson Six of the Ten Lessons of Rahmses:

Enemies:

Keep your friends close, your enemies closer, and the fuckin' consultants jammed face-first right in your crotch every fuckin' minute or they'll bleed you dry.

Also stab anyone who looks at you funny in the fuckin' neck with a fuckin' pencil.

Except for fuckin' Mike Madigan; that bastid's got a neck stabbin' pencil of his own that reaches all the way to Chicago.

Gotta respect that.

Also Lesson Two:

Being Da Boss:

Obey? Moses, Moses, are you fuckin' kidding me?

Bring me a fuckin' pencil so I can fuckin' stab you in the fuckin' neck.

Then say "Thank you, Boss!"

Even though I am a "Chicago writer" of some minor stature, and even though I have written extensively about the grubby, on-the-ground operating realities of Chicago and Illinois politics as they look from inside the Clout Fortress, I was never moved to write anything about "Chicagoland" because from camera placement, to the way each scene was edited, to the way the stories of the main characters were slanted it was painfully obvious to me that it was crafted to be mayoral campaign fodder every bit as much as this much shorter video about a Chicago mayor dealing with schools and gangs and crime:

Somewhere...

...Federal prisoner number 40892-424 is laughing

Ultimately, (as one wag once noted)  Rod Blagojevich’s real-real crime was using his Outside Voice to talk bluntly and stupidly about things which every sentient mammal in Chicago knows you only talk about obliquely using your Inside Voice.

Blago and his crew broke the only hard and fast rule in politics -- "Don't Get Caught" -- and for that he will spend many years in the house of many doors.

Apparently, word of this fundamental rule of Big Time Politics never made it East of the Alleghenies.

From the L.A. Times:

Email scandal mars Christie's chances for presidency; governor apologizes

...
In an explosive story Wednesday, the Bergen Record revealed a cache of private emails that seemed to show Christie’s staff and appointees orchestrated the closure of lanes leading onto the George Washington Bridge to plague the small town of Fort Lee, whose Democratic mayor, Mark Sokolich, had failed to endorse Christie for reelection.

This is dirty politics at its worst. It's like chucking a brick through a window because a shopowner won’t pay you protection money. No one wants a potential president who acts like a mob boss.

The lane closures, starting on Sept. 9, resulted in four days of what the Record called “paralyzing gridlock” in Fort Lee, a small town of 35,000, as folks trying to get across the bridge into Manhattan were stuck in jams that lasted for hours. Here's the money quote in the emails, from the Record's story:

"Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," Bridget Anne Kelly, one of three deputies on Christie’s senior staff, wrote to David Wildstein, a top Christie executive at the Port Authority, on Aug. 13, about three weeks before the closures. Wildstein, the official who ordered the closures and who resigned last month amid the escalating scandal, wrote back: "Got it."

Kelly’s feckless email is bound to go down in history as one of the all-time great political blunders. It becomes the smoking gun that kills Christie’s national political aspirations. Whether he knew about the plan, Christie hired the people and created the atmosphere that allowed this sort of behavior to flourish.

Governor Christie is already deep into the inevitable next step in political fire-control -- the blaming of the underlings:

[Updated 2:16 p.m. PST Jan. 8: In a statement released late Tuesday afternoon on his official website, Christie responded to the scandal: "What I've seen today for the first time is unacceptable. I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge. One thing is clear: this type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it because the people of New Jersey deserve better. This behavior is not representative of me or my Administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions."

Those with a freakish memory for political scandal may remember way back in 2000 when then-Mare Daley made a similar attempt to quickly distance himself from the fucked-in-the-head snow removal plan of  his newly-appointed Streets and San Commissioner, Al Sanchez.  Aides reminded Hizzoner that seeing as how he's known Sanchez for years and had just appointed him with great fanfare...pretending that he'd never heard of the guy or that he was shocked that Sanchez was a goof probably wasn't going to fly.

So Daley, being Daley, threw an arm around Sanchez and declared him a fucking genius!  And there Sanchez would remained, right by Da Mare's side and in-effect running one of the clout-generating engines of Daley machine called the Hispanic Democratic Organization...until a few years later when he got himself indicted for his part in the massive Hired Truck scam, at which point Hizzoner got a brand new mudflap named Ron Huberman to stand between himself and the scandal that was swallowing half of his cronies and went back to "Al Sanchez?  Who dat?"

Eventually Al went away for awhile.  Two-and-a-half years which, considering he coulda been doing 20, was not a bad deal. And now that he has paid his debt to society and is once again an upright citizen, what does Al plan to do next?

What else:

Convicted political boss Al Sanchez running for Cook County board

Former Chicago Streets and Sanitation commissioner rigged hiring to benefit party's foot soldiers 

December 03, 2013| By Rick Pearson and John Byrne, Chicago Tribune reporters

Former Chicago Streets and Sanitation boss Al Sanchez, shown in 2010 before the verdict, was convicted of scheming to rig city hiring. He's now running for Cook County Board.

Former Chicago Streets and Sanitation boss Al Sanchez, shown in 2010 before the verdict, was convicted of scheming to rig city hiring. He's now running for Cook County Board. (E. Jason Wambsgans, Chicago Tribune 2010)

Former Chicago Streets and Sanitation Commissioner Al Sanchez, convicted on federal charges of rigging hiring to benefit political foot soldiers, filed Monday to run for the Cook County Board seat previously held by William Beavers — who is headed for prison.

...

And why in the world does "Convicted political boss Al Sanchez" think he has a hope in hell of landing a seat on the Cook County Board?

Because through it all, Al Sanchez kept his fucking mouth shut.



Here endeth the lesson.