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

I wonder if he could distinguish between a middle class person and a banana.

Anyone else get kind of a Gene Simmons/Gallagher vibe from that interview?

I can't even begin to imagine what that vibe would be. Spitting blood on a smashed melon?

Something like that, but verbally.

It's more a desperate-sounding unearned overconfidence combined with dickishly doubling-down when he knows he's completely wrong.

I think he has his own special brand -- everyone who plays as dirty as he does needs to hide it under a unique façade so as not to be confused with other megalomaniacs.
ugh i can't stand this guy!

i agree about the unearned part though for sure

I loved this interview.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/19/chicago-deadly-shooting-guns-rahm-emanuel-2014

Stung by a 16% spike in killings in 2012 that led Moody’s, the ratings agency, to downgrade the city’s debt due to its "unrelenting public safety demands", Emanuel promised a tough response. Amid spending cuts, the former White House chief of staff to Barack Obama has ploughed tens of millions more taxpayer dollars into policing. Sure enough, in January he proudly announced that 2013 had seen the city’s fewest homicides since 1965 and lowest crime rate since 1972.

Yet a startling 7,000-word investigation earlier this month by Chicago Magazine cast serious doubt over the crime-busting miracle of Emanuel and his superintendent, Garry McCarthy. It identified at least 18 apparent murders in 2013 that had either been quietly redefined as “non-criminal deaths” or shunted off the city’s books by other statistical sleights of hand.

Professor Eli Silverman of the City University of New York, an authority on the CompStat-style data systems used by police in Chicago, New York and other major cities, told the Guardian he had been contacted by several Chicago officers concerned about the determination among chiefs to drive down crime numbers at whatever cost.

“The pressure from the top is unrelenting,” he said one had told him. “The defenders of the system always say ‘You can’t hide a dead body’,” said Silverman. “But you can reclassify one.” City authorities deny any impropriety.

They juked the stats.

i think all cities do this, maybe it's worse in chicago b/c of pressure from on high?

man if i have to hear about how mayor rahm is courting tech and brought motorola back to the city and then listen to an audio clip of someone talking about where the xbox lounge is at their new merchandise mart hq
i am going to go bananas

hate this guy

he's pretty hate-able, it's true

also reported today: he has agreed to install air conditioning in the remaining 30% (iirc?) of CPS schools that are currently not air-conditioned. he made that pledge.

that pledge made, he returned to his office and went back to feasting on the organs of chicago's impoverished children while laughing heartily at a joke told by one of his many CEO friends.

http://gapersblock.com/mechanics/2014/04/24/the-new-president-obama-school-even-though-cps-closed-50-schools-last-year/

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-rahm-emanuel-chicagoland-met-20140425,0,2516905.story

ha, one peek at that video series and that's pretty obvious. last thing we need is propaganda airbrushing a huge dick (figuratively) on emanuel.

it's too bad chicago politics are so dysfunctional that he's all but guaranteed another term in office.

i think the combo of being brought up in a north shore enclave, surrounded by the rich and powerful, and having basically ZERO capacity for imagining the thoughts and lives of those different from him — evident in any single interview w/ him — and hence having no real (as opposed to slicked-up, fake) empathy basically means this asshole will never change. i'm half-convinced he's a sociopath.

half convinced? i've been totally convinced for some time.

http://www.wbez.org/news/education/chicago-add-new-barack-obama-college-prep-high-school-110073

of COURSE it's on the Near North Side, you know, where all the disadvantaged students live

(ok, to be fair, Cabrini -- but that's almost gone now)

(or I guess it was all gone in 2011--guess I haven't driven by there for a while)

in the near north side there's already Payton. and there's Jones in the south Loop. there's Whitney Young on near West side.

why doesn't he just put it on the south side, like in the 30s somewhere, or father on the West side?

oh, wait, it's Rahm fucking Emanuel.

rahm will be mayor for as long as he wants to be, unless he's torpedoed by some enormous scandal. i don't think he's on some teflon daley family shit, i just don't see him losing. also he's still a folk hero to a lot of dems despite everything, bc he's basically as big an asshole as a lot of republicans.

he all but IS a republican, except on obvious cultural issues like gay marriage etc.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/marin/27635186-452/could-rahm-lose-race-over-bike-lanes.html

On one hand this is just the Sun-Times trying to stoke controversy with a headline. On the other hand, I like bike lanes a lot but it'd still be pretty funny if Rahm lost as a result of his work on them. If we keep building bike lanes despite that, all the better.

I want my bike lanes and Rahm out of office, too.

the new gun control stuff is good, i'll admit. but any mayor of chicago would do that.

he doesn't do anything for other people -- it's all for him. if it makes sense for him to engage in measures that increase gun control, he will. if it does nothing for him, he'll wait til it does and oh well if dozens of people die while we're waiting for gun control to be worth his time.

well to be honest how many politicians aren't thinking of self-interest above all? he's an exceptionally egocentric politician but i think the different is in degree not kind.

i like to believe that there are some. personal history would indicate that i'm not wrong!

surely it is a no-brainer for the mayor of a big liberal city to push for gun control. but that doesn't mean it's not the right thing to do.

all i'm saying is that he does it when it's convenient for him
like he does everything

http://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20140709/wicker-park/rahm-campaign-donation-from-development-co-raises-concerns-wicker-park

haven't read this closely yet but it looks pretty good

http://crimepreventionresearchcenter.org/2014/07/discussion-of-chicagos-crime-problems-ignore-what-rahm-emanuel-has-done-to-the-police-department/

http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/exclusive-poll-karen-lewis-could-give-rahm-run-his-money/sun-07132014-302pm

If the mayoral election were held today, the lightning rod union leader who was the architect behind a 2012 teachers’ strike would beat Emanuel by 9 percentage points in a head-to-head contest, the survey found.

Lewis was leading Emanuel 45 percent to 36 percent with 18 percent of the likely voters undecided.

HMMMMMM interesting!

Well she needs to shit or get off the pot. And start raising a lot of money.

i don't think she should run, and i don't think she will. i have a lot of admiration for her, but she shares with rahm a difficulty in letting go of personal grudges and an inability when she's being interviewed to avoid taking little snarky potshots even though she has plenty more to say.

That's the problem with most potential candidates. They spend so much energy being anti-Rahm that they don't actually say how they are going to fix things. Just being anti-Rahm isn't going to get them elected.

true. but it will go a fairly long way!

i just met a girl who's office window looks accross lasalle and directly in to rahm's city hall office

just imagining a slow zoom into rahm's office with him standing right by the window giving you the eye of death

apparently the workplace gossip last week was that someone saw "a woman sitting in rahm's chair"

Does the chair face the window? Is he allowed to expose himself to that much light?

http://www.nosferatuscoffin.com/portal/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/noslookingoutwindow.jpg

I dream... of charter schools... everywhere...

Xpost I suppose, I can only speak to my voting tendencies, but I'll vote for Rahm again unless a viable opponent offers a compelling reason that they can do a better overall job.

you know, you don't have to vote if you're disappointed in all the candidates.

True, also an option I would consider.

please consider it!