Chicago Fire Department brass does a pretty damn good job considering what they have to contend with every day. They are totally surrounded by corruption on the part of city officials. Officials that only care about their money, their pensions and what job their relative is getting next. It's a political climate that dictates the ultimate outcome of all of this will not be pretty. Consider a system where:
- Thousands of vacant and abandoned buildings like 75th Street, are in housing court every month. The cases are continued over and over and over for no reason except the corporation counsel is either overworked or disinterested. Either way, a push to demolish these buildings needs to be made, but isn't. At the same time, heavy fines need to be assessed against owners and lenders, but aren't.
- At the same time, resources which could be used to rid the city of abandoned buildings are depleted by multiple city contracts are given out to Daley associates from the 11th ward. Names like Tadin and Barbra keep coming up.
- More resources are wasted when Daley nephews are given contracts to help manage our pension funds. They wind up paying top top dollar for a building on south Michigan ave., which is currently worth only a fraction of the purchase price. Other Daley nephews collect commissions for their work on the Grant Park garage sale and the Chicago parking meter sale.
- And a Chicago alderman sends a letter to Governor Quinn asking him not to sign legislation which would mandate that local government become current on their pension obligations, while her husband is busy working on his second government pension.
- While many of the local pols enjoy "Defined Pension Benefits", which is different than the pension given to most government employees or anyone in private industry. (THERE WILL BE MORE ABOUT THIS WRITTEN SOON)
- Finally, numerous local families having 5 or 6 or as many as 14 local government jobs. Many of these families have people working on their second or third government pension.
Does anyone think this system is working? Try telling it to the families, when you go to those wakes this week.
