Rahm Emanuel: C/D? (probably going to be a Chicago politics complaint thread too)

Schakowsky is my mom's district. she's good (except on Israel, which she coddles too much, but maybe she has to in order to retain Rogers Park Jewish vote?). i doubt she's interesting in running the city. i could see her running for senator, although her husband's political scandal would be an impediment.

although honestly who wants to be in the senate?

I'd give it a whirl.

http://www.wbez.org/news/take-peek-mayor-emanuel%E2%80%99s-tax-returns-107527

Tax returns!

State of the city, 2013:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mayor-spends-tax-dollars-on-sports-arena/Content?oid=9769374

God, I'd totaly run for Senate if ILX financed it.

what would be your platform?

Untrammeled sexual relations with Jake Gyllenhaal clones and compulsory Bryan Ferry listening parties

that might get you Ft Lauderdale

Brooklyn and San Francisco too.

Think I' ll try for a seat in three states.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/mayor-emanuel-locks-in-parking-meter-deal/Content?oid=9931786

http://www.buzzfeed.com/bennyjohnson/the-most-yolo-congresman-on-facebook

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/16/rahm_emanuel_is_losing_control_of_his_city/

thread needs:

http://i.imgur.com/JduZ79i.jpg

thing is, if there's no well-organized opposition with a charismatic candidate (there isn't), rahm'll still be reelected.

fuuuuuuuuuuuck

note that i heartily approve of anti-rahm graffiti.

btw they closed my mom's old elementary school (she went there in the 1940s/50s)

they even sent in some folks to start stripping the WPA murals from the walls while class was still in session

someone posted this link to a comment that jon/via/chicago made on facebook about the school closings - it's probably the clearest and most damning refutation of the government's claims about why it closed schools: http://www.wbez.org/news/fact-check-chicago-school-closings-107216

thanks -- saving for next semester's "check your facts" lesson
if you can read the word "schools" and not hear Lind@ Lutt0n saying it, i envy you

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/07/01/illinois-appellate-court-tells-city-cough-up-public-records

i hope dumke has protected himself

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/teachers-fired-vienna-beef-gets-tif-subsidy/Content?oid=10294370

On June 11 Mayor Emanuel officially recommended giving about $5 million to Vienna Beef to move its hot dog factory from the north side to Bridgeport. The mayor hailed it as a shrewd investment that will keep at least 250 jobs in Chicago for the next 15 years.

I was gonna post that yesterday but it was so depressing I just stared at it and thought about what I would say if I ever ran into this guy.

is he dead yet

he deserves boiling hot dogs poured over his head

Musically Smearing Rahm Emanuel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgyn5DpVeak#at=15

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgyn5DpVeak#at=15

saw this like 5x and lol every single time

He's frottering the heck out of tha chair.

have we discussed this?

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/rahm-files-teachers-and-hoards-tif-funds/Content?oid=10422212

what a sick fuck he is

just a little slice

My guess is that Mayor Emanuel deliberately timed the release of the TIF portal announcement to gain a little positive PR on the day he was firing a couple thousand of school employees, in part because of the millions of TIF dollars he's hoarding.

It doesn't get much more cynical than that.

Just so you know—it wasn't the mayor who broke the news of the latest firings. No, it seems the mayor's never around when the bad news has to be announced.

He was skiing in Utah when CPS announced which schools were being closed. And he was vacationing in Europe when the early round of budget cuts were announced this summer. For all I know, he was skinny-dipping in the Bahamas when word broke of Friday's firings.

He wasn't seen in public that day. Most of the teachers got the bad news in calls from central office bureaucrats who were reading from scripts.

Now that the cuts are official, Emanuel is blaming them on the teachers—or at least the $400 million contribution he has to make to the teachers' dastardly pension system. Speaking of cynicism.

so deb mell huh

amaya pewar just said on facebook that his tif accountability ordinance (discussed here: http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20130719/downtown/city-post-tif-district-information-online) has passed

EZ just posted this in the Chicago thread, but I thought it deserved a place here. This shit makes me furious.

http://www.salon.com/2013/09/20/privatization_fetish_grows_how_corporate_stooges_are_costing_cities_millions/

more tif fuckery

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/09/25/mayor-rahm-finds-92-million-for-his-south-loop-deal

He's disgusting.

more tif fuckery

Misread this.

C on my Tifs

Serious question: do TIFs ever work? Like, they almost kinda sorta make sense to me, but then I feel like the money must always get wasted and funneled to politician's lovers, etc.

i think they work ok in rogers park?

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/09/27/at-saint-sabina-basketball-and-boos-for-mayor-rahm

And yet from what I understand, there are no viable candidates to run against him on the horizon. Although I say that with caution, since the media approached his victory as an inevitability and that may be happening again. Not to mention Chicagoans being well-trained to view mayoral elections as something that happens to them as opposed to something they ultimately control.

Anyway, somebody good run against this clown. I'll pass out flyers for you.

Maybe Tio Hardiman will run. He's definitely not going to be our next governor, but he would be an interesting mayor.

http://www.chicagoreader.com/Bleader/archives/2013/11/01/mayoral-ally-thanks-police-for-ignoring-the-pot-decriminalization-law-he-sponsored

Solis was the chief sponsor of the pot decriminalization ordinance that went on the books in Chicago last year, making international news. At the time, he called it a good first step toward ending the vast racial disparities in who's busted while freeing police for more serious issues.

It hasn't played out that way. Officers have barely issued any tickets—just 1,117 between August 2012 and this October. Meanwhile, they've made more than 13,000 arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession so far this year, a rate of more than 44 a day—higher than in 2012, records show.

...

The alderman has expressed his displeasure repeatedly over the last few months. In June he told me that he was going to demand that McCarthy publicly answer questions about what's gone wrong. "It's time to sit down and have him give us an explanation of what's happening," the alderman said at the time. "Why are certain communities still targeted? Why aren't we ticketing? What's it costing us?"

As recently as last week, he told the Sun-Times that he would urge McCarthy to get officers to "take it more seriously" and start writing tickets instead of hauling offenders to the station.

But Solis is one of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's key allies, and what happened next was what usually happens when aldermen who depend on the mayor gripe to the media: somebody sat him down for a chat.

By Thursday, Solis had seen the light. "Let me thank you for the meeting we had last week," he told McCarthy. "I think it's important to point out that what we have done has been very effective. I'd like you to explain to the rest of my colleagues and to the media what has been accomplished by this ordinance."

Jesus.

I talk abt Chicago politics with people out here sometimes and alot of them will say "chicago's a really liberal city huh" and I have to explain it's the most Democratic big city you'll ever come across but about as far from liberal as you'd imagine from that long held status.

I don't understand this really but it doesn't seem good: http://apps.chicagotribune.com/bond-debt/

It's always sadly funny to me when really Chicagoy civic booster type people sneer at Detroit and other cities as if that kind of thing couldn't happen here.