Monday, October 31, 2011

Happy Halloween

Lets keep the children safe. Trick or Treating in the neighborhood is until 7 P.M.

Friday, October 28, 2011

What's up with Tom Dart?

My opinion of Tom Dart has begun to change during the past year. He has 5 PR and 10 lawyers on his payroll. Perhaps it's time for the Cook County Board to start taking a hard look at his payroll.


From Detective Shaved:

Cook County Board - Homeowners must pay an additional $150.00 per house for Sheriff Tom Dart Police Patrols


Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle doesn’t think residents of unincorporated Cook County pay as much as they should for police protection from the county sheriff’s department.

Her assertion isn’t going over well in the Kimberly Heights subdivision, an unincorporated area near Tinley Park.

Preckwinkle’s proposed 2012 budget includes a plan to have residents of unincorporated areas pony up — about $150 more per year for the average homeowner — unless they want to contract out for police services or annex into a neighboring town.

Preckwinkle argues that those residents, an estimated 98,000 countywide, make up 2 percent of the county population and the other 98 percent are paying taxes for police services they don’t use.

“They should pay their fair share,” Preckwinkle said.

Hearing about the plan made Kimberly Heights resident Jackie Oziemkowski roll her eyes.

“Where do all our taxes go? It’s ridiculous. I’m pretty upset,” she said. “I don’t think eight grand a year (in property taxes) is not a lot of taxes. We pay a lot. Now they don’t want to give us police? So we have to get our own police force? Wow. How nice.”

“I think it (stinks),” fellow subdivision resident Don Foege said.

The proposal already has met opposition among county commissioners, too.

Elizabeth Gorman (R-Orland Park) said providing for the public safety of all residents of the county is “one of the main statutory responsibilities of the county of Cook,” and unincorporated residents pay the same taxes as everyone else.

Two Republican commissioners who represent the northwest suburbs, Tim Schneider and Gregg Goslin, pointed out the fairness statement could be made about many county services, saying their constituents could argue they pay for services they never use, such as Stroger Hospital.

Preckwinkle conceded “there’s an inevitable unevenness in the use of county resources and services, but I think everybody should pay their fair share.”

Many residents of Kimberly Heights want to continue being served by the sheriff’s police.

“I see them almost every day,” Karl Maerz said of the patrols. “We don’t like to be incorporated because the taxes go up, the water (rates) go up. It’s not why we moved here.”

He said paying a special fee to the county for the patrols or hiring Tinley Park police would be too expensive.

“I don’t know what to make of this idea,” Maerz said. “Politics?”

Foege, who has lived in the Kimberly Heights subdivision for 34 years, said he doesn’t want to incorporate — “I don’t want anybody telling me when I can water my lawn,” he said — and he doesn’t want to lose the sheriff’s police, either.

“We had a rash of car break-ins earlier this year,” he said. “Someone broke into my Hummer and got into the garage, going through my wife’s car. ... I called the county sheriff and they were out here in two minutes. Another one was here a minute later.”

Tinley Park Mayor Ed Zabrocki said he wasn’t sure how the village would determine what to charge residents of the unincorporated area if they wanted to hire Tinley Park police.

Village police already assist the sheriff’s police on life-threatening calls, Zabrocki said.

Kevin Kellar, a resident of an unincorporated area near Palos Park, said that although he doesn’t want to pay more taxes, he understands Preckwinkle’s reasoning.

“She may have a leg to stand on. It sounds fair. But I wouldn’t want to be incorporated,” he said.

Back in Kimberly Heights, Norman Patterson seemed resigned to paying more eventually.

“We should just incorporate now and get it over with,” he said.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Rahm nonsuits his own ticket?

From Detective Shaved
During the evening of Oct 12, 2011 Mayor Rahm Emanuel's leased vehicle (the official mayoral limo) was ticketed for being parked ILLEGALLY on Michigan Ave in Downtown Chicago... The parking ticket appears to have been written by a person working CTA Special Employment who was unaware that Rahm Emanuel has a leased vehicle with no designators on it to show that it is the mayoral limo.

Now we all know that Rahm Emanuel made $18 million dollars in one year working for the Fannie and Freddie Mortgage Company ontop of millions of dollars in his war chest... So does Mayor Rahm Emanuel do the right thing and pay the ticket???

NO SIREE! HE CALLS AND YELLS AT A CERTAIN COMMANDER AND HAS IT QUASHED AFTER THROWING A SHIT FIT LIKE A THREE YEAR OLD KID WHO HAD HIS CANDY TAKEN AWAY!

Mayor Emanuel who is chasing city employess to pay their parking tickets and who now wants speeding cameras... Has his parking ticket quashed, killed, non-suited!.....

Detective Shavedlongcock has the parking ticket citation number... would the officer who wrote it please e-mail me please???? shavedlongcock@yahoo.com

The amazing part is had Rahm just paid the parking ticket and then had the incident "leaked to the press" he would have look like a regular guy doing the right thing...Now he looks like, well you know what he looks like....


What gives?

Monday, October 17, 2011

22 and Mt. Greenwood library update.

I would like to acknowledge the efforts of Ald. O'Shea who was able to head off the possible closings of the 22nd District and the Mt. Greenwood library. Tough times call for tough measures but .........

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Chicago in 2017 ?

Do you think it won't happen here? Don't kid yourself. Look at Chicago's track record. Look at all the triple dipping public servants we have. There will be nothing left after they get theirs.

Seeking to stave off a state takeover of its beleaguered budget, the city of Harrisburg, Pa., filed for a rare Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy on Wednesday.
Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania capital that previously defaulted on its debt, cited a “continued erosion of its finances,” in a resolution that was passed late Tuesday approving the bankruptcy.
According to Bloomberg News, Harrisburg listed liabilities of $500 million, compared with assets of $100 million. A clerk at the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania confirmed receiving a physical copy of the filing.

The resolution to authorize the Chapter 9 filing passed by a narrow 4-3 vote, Kirk Petroski, the acting city clerk of Harrisburg, told FOX Business. The resolution said bankruptcy will provide the city with “the necessary protection from its creditors while it develops and negotiates a plan for adjusting its debts.”
However, acting city attorney Jason Hess said the measure wouldn’t be binding because the city council didn’t follow procedure, Bloomberg News reported.
The city's fiscal troubles have been triggered by an overhaul of the budget and a trash-to-energy incinerator that didn’t increase revenue by as much as expected, Bloomberg reported. The move comes as the state had been mulling a takeover of the city’s finances and forcing the installation of a fiscal rescue plan.
Chapter 9 filings by municipalities are very rare. According to Alan Gover, a partner at White & Case who has advised municipalities on restructuring options, there have been just 35 such filings since 1981.
"The reason is that Chapter 9 cannot do for municipalities what Chapter 11 can do for troubled businesses -- smoothly downsize and if necessary redo the balance sheet by converting debt to equity," Gover said in an email. "The business of municipal government is providing basic civil services that cannot be easily eliminated without serious repercussions...Unless the citizens want to become a company town by privatizing all their public assets, the bargaining table will serve them better than the courtroom."

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Biggest scandal since Graylord

THE FEDS HAVE LAUNCHED THE INVESTIGATION. PEOPLE ARE GOING TO JAIL!
In print or online Wednesday, this newspaper's latest expose of rampant public pension abuse ought to stir your fury, and your sympathy: fury that pension officials enabled this corruption, and sympathy for the rank-and-file union members, as well as the taxpayers, who are victimized.

You'll learn how Chicago labor leaders eligible for grossly inflated city pensions also stand to receive union pensions for the same work periods. One labor leader stands to collect about $450,000 a year from three pensions — a city fund for laborers, a union district council fund, and a national union fund — all for the same stretch of his career. The actuarial computation is that his three pensions, over his expected lifetime, will pay him some $9 million.

What you won't learn from the news story is what we hope federal investigators will explore in lavish detail: Why did some of City Hall's top finance officials allow these outrages to occur? How could they, in their oversight roles at city pension funds, expose union members and taxpayers to future calamities? How could they permit themselves to have fiduciary responsibility to protect the public purse and responsibility to pension funds that draw vast sums from that same public purse?

We're talking about a city pension system that is underfunded by approximately $20 billion, maybe more.

We're talking about public officials in positions to realize that the implosion of city pension funds (1) would profoundly hurt union workers who expect to collect stable pension payments, or (2) would extort vast sums from taxpayers to cover the obligations of empty pension funds, or (3) would do both.

We're talking, then, about the abandonment of professional and personal responsibility by pension fund officials who had to know the real story here: A foolishly loosey-goosey interpretation of state law permitted de facto public pension payoffs to union leaders who, in return, delivered labor peace to City Hall.

That state law attempts to prohibit double- and triple-dipping from public and union pension funds. If you're a union official who draws a city pension, you can't earn a separate pension from a "local labor organization." The way city pension fund officials have been reading the law, though, it's OK for you to draw that second pension, and maybe a third, if they come from your union's district council or national headquarters. Those, you see, aren't … labor locals.

A lawyer for city pension fund overseers says the law is vague. Maybe so. How did fund officials react to that vagueness? Did they sound an alarm and demand clarity? Did they tell labor leaders that the law's intent to block double- or triple-dipping is obvious? Did the fund officials, in short, act to protect pension funds for future retirees and act to protect taxpayers from future obligations?

For now the answers appear to be: No, no and no. Instead, the pension fund overseers — they're all city officials and union officers — aided and abetted this scandalous looting of city pension funds.

With each new revelation, the need for independent investigation of egregious pension-rigging grows more obvious. We'll stick with the tripartite recommendation previously prescribed on this page:

FBI agents can assess whether any pensioner fraudulently claimed benefits when he or she asserted eligibility for a public pension. The feds also need to probe the conduct of city pension fund officials, and of city officials who directed payments into these funds.

• The city of Chicago's inspector general has authority to explore the use, and potential misuse, of city funds. We'll be watching Wednesday to see whether Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposed budget for 2012 increases or decreases funding for that office.

• The U.S. Department of Labor has responsibility to protect union pension funds. This situation screams for investigation by Labor.

These authorities can decide whether any of this conduct is illegal. But even a dictionary knows it meets the definition of corrupt: contaminated, morally unsound, debased, venal.

Who should pay for this? We're counting on three prompt and aggressive investigations to provide that answer.

Copyright, Chicago Tribune

Monday, October 10, 2011

We need some speed limit enforcement.

I was southbound on Western ave this am between 111 and 115. Another vehicle on my ass. I speed up to 40. She passes me on the right and cuts me off. She was doing 55 MPH while passing me. All I could do was flash my lights. 30 seconds later, here comes a Beaner, same maneuver. Why are they driving like this? Because they know that there is no enforcement. I doubt very much if they would drive like that in EP.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

111th and Kedzie

I have to say, it is starting to look good. Now if they can start to fill some of those vacant stores.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Tax Bill

Ouch, my bill went up $250.00 for no reason. I called someone that knows and he told me it's because of the Board of Education.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Coming traffic problems?

A developer is proposing to build a 500,000 square foot shopping center at 91st and Western. Imagine the congestion on 95th street and Western after it's built. Is this good for our neighborhood?