My throat hurts from laughing.
Blog
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FOID Card Requests Sink Police
Illinois has so many requests for Firearm Owner’s Identification cards that state police can’t process them in a timely manner. In addition, people calling the state police to ask why they haven’t received their FOID cards are put on hold for as long as 35 minutes, if they’re lucky enough to get through to an answering machine that puts them on hold. I tried the number 12 times, received a busy signal 11 of those times and got the answering machine once. After 20 minutes on hold, I hung up.
Under law, the state has 30 days to process FOID card requests. I’ve been waiting 50 days for a response to my application. …
According to Monique Bond, spokeswoman for the state police department, Illinois had a record number of FOID card applications in the last three years. Last year, 321,437 people applied for FOID cards, 287,552 in 2010 and 326,008 in 2009. … ”There has been a 16 percent increase in FOID cards applicants in Chicago, which Bond attributed to a Supreme Court decision overturning the city’s gun ban.
Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, laughed when I asked if he had heard complaints about the state’s tardiness in responding to FOID card applicants. “The governor isn’t staffing the FOID processing center of the state police department,” Pearson said. “He’s not replacing people as they retire. And that’s because he’s not enthusiastic about the idea of gun ownership.
via Southtown Star.
Would anyone believe that politics is not playing a role?
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Team Crane Unveil Turnaround Plan
Crane is not a school; it’s voluntary daytime detainment for youth. It can’t die soon enough. If only parents had a real choice of schools they would never send their children to Crane. But some refuse to let it die.
A coalition of Crane teachers, students, parents and Near West Side community activists unveiled a plan Friday night to turn around the 109-year-old high school at 2245 W. Jackson Blvd., focusing on adding programming and services to the school. …
After an hour of testimony in support of keeping the school open from neighbors, teachers and students (including the basketball team), the Crane coalition took the stage with a rap music video created by Crane students in an After School Matters program in 2010.
Then they showed off their plan. To improve Crane, they said, programs need to be added to make it more appealing. Add an International Baccalaureate program, add trade-focused classes like cosmetology and video game programming, and reach out more to Crane’s feeder schools.
via Chicago Journal.
Video game programming? Do these people have any idea of what kind of education it takes to program video game? Knowledge of vector graphics. Understanding of electronic inputs and outputs. The ability to develop very complex logical structures. And yet:
In addition, since 26 percent of Crane’s students have special needs, and 87 percent of Crane students are from low-income households, more outreach programs are needed, they said. Solutions, they said, should include mentoring, tutoring and social services.
An IB program? Ok, will someone get a bus and drive these people straight to the men with the white suits. Medication is not going to be enough, they need to be admitted.
Also worth mentioning, one day I get a chance to write about the locals who are collection millions from the city for after school programs. They have a financial self interest to be served; this has nothing to do with saving the children.
If we really want to help our children we’ll inject some competition into the education marketplace and give parents a real choice of where to send their children. Right now CPS (a/k/a CTU) has a monopoly on public education and it’s failing miserably.
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Your Water Bill Doubles For What?
God bless Ben Joravsky.
All summer long, in press conferences and at public hearings, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget refrain remained the same: no more accounting gimmicks and no new taxes.
“We have been doing smoke and mirrors on the budget and avoided taking control of our own future as a city,” he said at a public budget hearing in Englewood in August. “That moment of reckoning is here.”
But the mayor who vowed to bring honesty to the budgeting process continues to rely on one of the oldest tricks of them all: the water/sewer fund sleight of hand.
That’s the one where the mayor says he’s jacking up your water and sewer bill to pay for infrastructure and environmental protection—but then diverts millions of dollars a year to finance other city operations that have little direct connection to water, sewers, or protecting the lake.
In this case, Emanuel is proposing to double water and sewer fees over the next decade, an eventual increase of about $500 a year for the average household. Yet how much of that money will actually make it to the water and sewer system is hard to determine, since, despite Emanuel’s promises of transparency, his first budget obscures what’s being diverted.
A conservative estimate is that the mayor’s 2012 budget will siphon off at least $70 million in water and sewer fees to cover other city spending, according to our analysis of budget documents and interviews with current and former city officials.
via Chicago Reader.
Another amazing piece from the Reader. A must read.
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Taxpayers Pay for Political Payback
Kudos to Crains on this unbelievable story:
Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan cost taxpayers nearly half-a-billion dollars by blocking repeated efforts to restructure McCormick Place bonds and finance a much-needed second hotel at the convention center, a Crain’s investigation finds.
Between 2005 and 2010, Mr. Madigan stopped five refinancing bills, ignoring declining interest rates that would have saved hundreds of millions. At the time, he never explained why, but his reasons seem petty and political: McCormick Place CEO Juan Ochoa, an appointee of then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich, had fired a Madigan ally at the convention center, and lawmakers from both parties say the speaker wanted retribution.
“It was no secret that Madigan had a beef with Ochoa and wanted him gone,” says state Rep. Angelo “Skip” Saviano, an Elmwood Park Republican who sponsored refinancing bills in 2005, 2007 and 2009. “As long as Ochoa was there, Madigan wasn’t going to give McCormick Place anything.”
But politics may not have been Mr. Madigan’s only motivation. By holding up refinancing, the speaker also denied McCormick Place the money to build a new hotel. That bought time for clout-heavy developers Gerald Fogelson and Cleveland-based Forest City Enterprises Inc. to push a controversial land swap and hotel deal with McCormick Place on property just north of the convention center. Both were then clients of Mr. Madigan’s law firm, Madigan & Getzendanner, but the speaker denies any connection.
via Crain’s.
Five Hundred Million Dollar hit to the taxpayers. Hundreds of jobs directly in the balance. Total economic impact of $8-billion and 66,000 jobs all used as toys by Madigan.
My question is when will someone ask our State Attorney General Lisa Madigan when she’s going to investigate a politician?
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Ward Map Gerrymandered
Really? We didn’t know.
Residents in this area had hoped Chicago’s new ward map would put homogeneous communities in the same ward. Those hopes were dashed on Jan. 19 when the Chicago City Council passed one of the most gerrymandered maps in its history.
Second Ward resident Barbara Burchjolla summed up local frustration when she said, “After the Jan. 19 City Council meeting, I am embarrassed to call myself a Chicagoan. The council action memorialized Chicago’s decades long reputation as the most segregated city in America. And I’m tired of living on the plantation we call Chicago electoral politics.”
via Gazette Chicago.
Worth reading.
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1 Block Away 2 Arrested
The wife and daughter head over to the Walgreens about 3 blocks away. The daughter wants to walk; the wife insists on driving — smart move.
Two men have been arrested in connection with the robbery of a man’s iPhone outside a dry cleaning business in the Wicker Park neighborhood, authorities say. …
The Thursday robbery happened about 5:15 p.m. when a 26-year-old man was texting on his iPhone outside a dry cleaning business at Wabasnia and Western avenues, according to police. Two men approached him, at least one of them armed with a gun, and asked for the iPhone, police said. …
Police were able to track the phone by its locator app to the area of Madison Street and Ashland Avenue, a few blocks from the United Center, police said. The officers spotted the suspects in a car that was reported stolen, but one of them jumped out around the time police began pursuing it. That man was taken into custody near Ashland and Washington Boulevard.
The other suspect headed west in the car on Madison, police said. The suspect stopped near Madison and Leavitt streets and abandoned the car, police said. He was arrested about a block away.
The perp was taken into custody at Madison & Oakley. How do I know? Because the wife saw the police running down the alley with their guns drawn catching the dude. A txt message from someone on the job later confirmed two in custody.
Hardly the end of the story:
Detectives have been looking into a string of robberies that occurred recently in an area bounded by Ashland, Central Park Avenue, Division Street and Diversey Avenue.
A police alert about the pattern gave the following locations for the 12 attacks:
–3100 block of W. Fullerton, Dec. 4, 2011, 5:20 a.m.
–1800 block of N. California, Dec. 17, 2011, 6 a.m.
–1700 block of N. Central Park, Dec. 21, 2011, 6:15 a.m.
–1900 block of N. Western, Dec. 22, 2011, 11 p.m.
–2100 block of N. California, Dec. 24, 2011, 7:30 a.m.
–2000 block of N. Kimball, Dec. 31, 2011, 11:20 p.m.
–1500 block of N. Hoyne, Jan. 3, 2012, 3 a.m.
–1700 block of W. Wabansia, Jan. 4, 2012, 4:32 p.m.
–2600 block of W. Wellington, Jan. 6, 2012, 8 p.m.
–2100 block of N. Milwaukee, Jan. 8, 2012, 12 p.m.
–1500 block of N. Maplewood, Jan. 20, 2012, 8 p.m.
–1500 block of N. Milwaukee, Jan. 21, 2012, 2 a.m.via Chicago Tribune.
In the 1980’s Wicker Park was a terrible place to live. The park itself was one of many Heroin Squares that existed in the city (the “Midnight Express” still passes out clean needles on Saturday nights there.) Over the years the place has gotten better. But from the looks of things it’s beginning to slide back into the hell hole it once was.
This is disappointing for everyone. The increase in the value of those homes provided a massive influx of tax revenue for the city (and county) which is used to support programs that help everyone; not just the rich. Many of those who live there are single or married couples without children. These are the “net givers” in the system who pay tons of taxes into CPS (it’s 2/3 of your property tax bill) and yet don’t have any kids in school.
We (the royal we, i.e. we all, myself included) need these people to stay in the city. We need them to like where they live and feel safe. If they move everyone suffers. CPD really has to step-up it’s game and begin making more arrests for these sorts of crimes. The State’s Attorney must begin to demand longer prison sentences for the perpetrators. Probation is not enough for these types of crimes. These guys have to do time.
There’s too much riding on it. Crime must be brought under control.
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Let’s all Welcome ThyssenKrupp to Chicago
As ThyssenKrupp plans to dramatically increase its presence in Chicago it’s finding out just what life here is really like:
… [T]he German-based ThyssenKrupp manufacturing company is facing allegations that company supervisors in the city created a hostile and intimidating work environment for an African-American employee.
A superintendant at ThyssenKrupp used the N-word “routinely” around African-American sales representative Montrelle Reese, according to a November finding by the state Department of Human Rights.
Another supervisor applied brown make-up to his face to make his skin tone darker during a skit at a sales conference in Indianapolis, according to the report, which concluded that there was “substantial evidence” that Reese was harassed because of his race.
Though the supervisor later claimed he was impersonating a rapper of Asian descent from the musical group Linkin Park, the skin-darkening showed the company “fosters an environment of accepted racial intolerance,” the report states.
via Chicago Tribune.
It goes without saying that there’s just no room for this. We don’t care what flies in Germany; welcome to America.
That said… doesn’t it just seem like every time there’s some good news it’s immediately followed by a story about some moron doing something stupid? We’re going to have to keep an eye on this story to see where it ends up. If ThyssenKrupp is found not guilty in the end then it stands to reason that this Reese guy should get run out of town.
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ThyssenKrupp (w/ 100 jobs) Coming to Chicago
We actually rock (and we kinda know it.)
Germany-based ThyssenKrupp, a diversified manufacturing company that makes elevators, auto components and carbon steel, will establish a regional headquarters for North America in Chicago this summer….
The company did not seek financial incentives as it considered more than 20 cities around the U.S. for the regional headquarters.
“We’ve learned not to run where the incentives are or where there is the lowest tax rate,” Gessner said. “We need the overall picture. “Weighing in Chicago’s favor are its extensive air service and a highly skilled profession labor pool, Emanuel said.
via Chicago Tribune.
Any way you want to twist this it’s good news. But sometime we forget the Chicago is a major player globally. Yes, we have a political problem; and a pension problem; and a crime problem; and a few other little problems. But so does every other major city on the planet.
… ok, our political and pension problems exceed anywhere else. But sometimes we need to be reminded that we live in a global city with talent and opportunity that simply doesn’t exist anywhere else. Well, that and it helps to be located in the middle of the country and have a really really big airport.
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Illinois, the Greece of America
It all started with this story:
Even though the legislature and Gov. Pat Quinn last year imposed a temporary 67 percent state income tax increase, Quinn’s office expects to have a $500 million budget deficit this year.
Quinn is calling for a 9 percent cut in most areas of state government, except education and health care. But even with cuts at that level, the state would have a projected $800 million budget deficit for fiscal 2015, the year when most of the tax hike expires. …
Looking at the bigger picture, the state has a backlog of about $8.5 billion in unpaid bills and owes about $27 billion in outstanding bonds. And then there’s the roughly $80 billion owed to the state’s public employee pension funds.
Think about that: One Hundred Fifteen Billion Five Hundred Million Dollars. I’m told there’s about 12.9 million people in Illinois. So were looking at $8,953.50 per person. That’s pretty astonishing!
And that story led to this story:
[W]hy aren’t we more worried about Illinois? It’s more or less the same size as Greece, its finances are in the same generally catastrophic shape, and its leaders are just as feckless and dishonest. It owes tens of billions of dollars to various investors and stakeholders and will clearly have to stiff many of them at some point. …
How a state with a constitutional mandate to balance its budget can do this in the first place — and how an “unpaid bill” can be excluded from the annual budget — is a question for future prosecutors. But for investors it’s a clear sign that some sort of default is coming.
via: Dollar Collaspse.
Dare to dream that someone (cough cough Madigan) would go to jail on this mess.
Hat tip to SCC.