“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
Longwell: That's when you get change elections. Now the one thing in this election in Chicago in particular...
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.
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?
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?
Miller: Yeah, yeah, yeah.Longwell: I kept seeing people refer to him as a Conservative. They must mean a Conservative Democrat.
Miller: Yeah, this is the very online Libs, y'know, trying to smear him.
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...
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.
"This is a Big Fucking deal!" -- Vice President Joe Biden to Joe Biden to President Barack Obama
"Let's not be overconfident, we still have to count the votes." -- Harold Washington
High-rise in a ‘hellhole’? Republican Bailey living on North Michigan Avenue to ‘immerse’ himself in the city he keeps dissingThe GOP gubernatorial nominee, a downstate farmer and state senator, confirmed he’s living in Chicago while holding an impromptu news conference Tuesday. His campaign later confirmed he is renting in the building formerly known as the John Hancock Center.
From ArchPundit:
What amazes me about the Bailey 'campaign' is that the sheer amount of gaffes cannot be adequately covered. Every time I go to this Facebook page I find some new gaffe. He's literally just running around the state taking pictures and has no political operation.
— ArchPundit (@archpundit) September 13, 2022
And if you don't know who Lar Daly was, well let's just say he was the ideal Forward Party candidate 65 years before there was a Forward Party.
For more information on Daly, either look him up or ask your cool uncle who lived in Chicago for years and years.
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.
...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...
Lesson One: ElectionsAnd today, as we mark Rahmses' ignominious exit from the Fifth Floor and the honorable Lori Lightfoot takes the Big Chair --
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
In Historic First, Lori Lightfoot Inaugurated As Chicago's Mayor-- 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.
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...
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...
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.)
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...
Axelrod on Brooks: ‘true public thinker’
No it’s not.— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) January 4, 2019
#MTPDaily— driftglass (@Mr_Electrico) September 7, 2018
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
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
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?
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.
Audit slams oversight of Quinn anti-violence programsThree 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....
...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.
But return to Washington in the early nineteen-nineties, when a grateful Clinton awarded his young charge a prominent White House role. There, Emanuel’s prodigious energy, along with his contempt for what he called “liberal theology,” rocketed him higher and higher into the Clinton stratosphere. “He gets things done,” Clinton’s chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, enthused late in 1996, when Emanuel usurped George Stephanopoulos as senior adviser for policy and strategy. Among his special projects was helping to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 crime bill. He also tried to push Clinton to the right on immigration, advising the President, in a memo in November, 1996, to work to “claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.” These all, in the fullness of time, turned out to be mistakes.
Brown: Rauner endorses recall bill; 'very disappointed' in RahmFresh from a Saharan Desert holiday where he says he and his family rode camels and slept in tents, Gov. Bruce Rauner did nothing Monday to quell the shifting sands beneath Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Rauner told reporters he would sign a bill allowing Chicago voters to recall their mayor from office if it reaches his desk.The governor also said he was “very disappointed” in Emanuel and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez over their handling of Chicago police misconduct cases.
Perhaps more important, Rauner reiterated that he will stand firm against providing increased financial assistance to Chicago Public Schools until Emanuel and Chicago Democrats help him achieve his legislative goals, even as he predicted that financial “disaster” at CPS is now only months away....
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.
...
Garner died because he dared interfere with government reach and government muscle that didn't want to lose tax revenue to independent operators....A dying man's last words become a hashtag. The political Left accepts it, so much of the media accepts it without question, and "I can't breathe" becomes an organizing tool.The odd thing, of course, is that Garner sold black market cigarettes for a living. And cigarette smokers often say, "I can't breathe" as they die of lung cancer....And while there may be elements of race and police hostility in this, there is an inconvenient truth:Garner died because he cut in on the government's action.He made a living of sorts selling black market cigarettes called "loosies." And the city didn't get its tax money from those sales....
Chicago generated 77,000 additional red-light tickets by shortening yellow-light times, report says POSTED OCT 10, 2014 11:09 AM CDTBY DEBRA CASSENS WEISSThe 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....
