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Chicago Tribune reporter John Kass is an old school journalist. He’s one among a cadre of Windy City reporters, most from the Sun Times and the Tribune, who routinely expose the hooligans and shenanigans of the Chicago Political Machine.
Kass says the national MSM ignored the political environment that gave birth to Barack Obama.
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While Kass calls Obama “a Chicago political guy,” he knows the Machine is multi-layered. While the hub is Chicago, spokes extend throughout Cook County, and reach deep inside the state capital at Springfield.
Because the MSM ignored the Machine from which Obama emerged, the electorate didn’t realize that voting for Obama meant endorsing politics the Chicago way. Consequently, those outside Illinois knew little about the Machine, how it cleans up its messes, and how the clean-ups can impact individual lives. For example:
At 3:30 a.m., November 16, 2009, police found Michael Scott’s body face-down in downtown Chicago, partially in the Chicago River, in a hard-to-access location. He shot himself in the head with a handgun.
Scott had been a utility infielder for several Chicago mayors, serving on various public boards. Mayor Daley appointed him President of the Chicago Board of Education in 2001. The Chicago Public Schools (CPS) run under the Mayor’s control, all 40,000 plus staff members, and over 400,000 students. Arne Duncan’s job, before Obama appointed him the Secretary of Education, was CEO of the CPS. (By the way, the current CEO estimates a $900 million deficit for the CPS in 2010. Is a federal bailout coming?)
Scott had been under scrutiny for activities related to Chicago’s bid to host the 2016 Olympics. After he and his wife flew to Copenhagen with the group representing the city, a few eyebrows were raised when it was learned that he’d charged their expenses to his CPS credit card. Although an embarrassment, it could have been whisked away. Also, he’d been summoned by a grand jury the previous July to testify about allegations that clout was influencing admissions into CPS college-prep high schools. But that episode blew over.
There was, though, a more serious matter revealed in a Chicago Tribune piece entitled “Chicago 2016 Olympics: Bid team member has ties to prospective Olympic Village developer.”
A key member of Mayor Richard Daley’s Olympic committee has a long business relationship with a developer vying to build the billion-dollar Olympic Village, the grandest piece of Chicago’s plans for the 2016 Summer Games.
Chicago 2016 committee member Michael Scott also served as a consultant to the developer on a condominium project near the proposed athletes’ village, a development that would increase in value if the city wins the Olympics.
Scott, who negotiated key components of the $1.2 billion Olympic Village plan, said his business relationship with the developer, Gerald Fogelson, does not interfere with his role with the bid team. Chicago 2016 officials declined to say whether Scott’s relationship with Fogelson was a problem, with Daley’s Olympic team poised to spend billions of dollars in coming years.
But Scott’s multiple roles as a private developer, mayoral confidant and member of the city’s Olympic committee raises anew concerns about insider dealings in a city where Daley allies have long benefited from civic projects the mayor champions. City Hall insiders for years have profited under Daley’s administration in myriad deals, from minority contracting to leasing trucks to scooping up prime city-owned land.
On October 2, 2009, Chicago’s bid to host the Olympics was rejected. Six weeks later Scott killed himself.
Many in the Machine were counting on the city hosting the 2012 Olympics. Before the rejection, John Kass explained the city’s push for the games this way:
If you think Chicago’s Olympic push is about sports, you’re mistaken. Sports has nothing to do with this…If Chicago gets the games, the contracts and the grease and immense leverage to reshape a city will be used as originally intended. To rebuild the boss, to give a mayor facing deficits and taxpayer revolts and headaches a much-needed shoring up of his political infrastructure. Surely the Obama White House, run by former Daleyites, knows that a Chicago Olympics will keep the mayor politically secure. That crown was once heavy and uncertain upon Daley’s head, when the feds were raiding City Hall and sending his underlings to prison. Only a few years ago, the mayor ridiculed the Olympic idea. These days, he carries the torch in his teeth.
For Michael Scott, Chicago’s Olympic bid ended in suicide. But exactly why is a mystery.
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Suicide 2:
Christopher Kelly died September 13, 2009, of an apparent over-the-counter drug overdose. Kelly had been a top fundraiser for former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich – “top” as in many hundreds of thousands of dollars.
About a week before he died, Kelly pled guilty to mail fraud in a kickback scheme involving an $8.5 million contract between O’Hare Airport and his company, BCI Commercial Roofing. He’d also plead guilty to tax offenses. On September 18, 2009, he was scheduled to start serving a five-year sentence. Federal prosecutors were reportedly trying to get him to testify against Blago.
Kelly had all sorts of interesting connections, according to this December 2007 article in the Chicago Sun Times.
[A] March 2004 Chicago news conference where [Eric, now Attorney General] Holder and Blagojevich spoke was widely covered because of a controversial 4-1 Gaming Board vote earlier that month to allow a casino to be built in Rosemont. That vote defied the recommendation of the board’s staff, which had raised concerns about alleged organized-crime links to the Rosemont casino’s developer.
Besides that, the Gaming Board’s staff had been concerned that the governor had named his close friend and fund-raiser, Christopher G. Kelly, as a “special government agent” to be involved in official state negotiations about the casino. Kelly, the Sun-Times later learned, was a business partner of Tony Rezko, another Blagojevich fund-raiser who had held an option to lease a hotel site next to the proposed casino site in Rosemont.
Rezko, also a former Obama fund-raiser, and Kelly both have denied any wrongdoing related to the casino, though both have been charged in separate, unrelated criminal cases since 2004.
The Sun-Times disclosed Rezko’s interest in the Rosemont hotel site about three weeks before the news conference announcing Holder would be involved in the casino case. Holder was not aware of the story when he opted to get involved, a source said.
Machine operator Christopher Kelly – dead at 51.
Suicide 3:
Orlando Jones shot himself in the head on September 14, 2008, two days after FBI agents tried to interview him about an undisclosed matter. Jones wouldn’t to talk to them.
Jones was the godson of, and a former aide to, Cook County Board President John Stroger. Jones also once worked for Antonin “Tony” Rezko. At the time of his death, Jones was being investigated for hospital fraud in Las Vegas.
In case you’re starting to wonder how you can make a living working in the Machine, here’s an example from a Chicago Sun Times article dated September 13, 2007 – the day before Orlando shot himself.
These days, Jones is a consultant and lobbyist whose clients include William Blair & Co., a Chicago financial firm that pays him a six-figure “referral fee” every year — for a job he did in 2004. Now, Jones stands to grow even richer from the deal. Here’s how:
The Illinois State Board of Investment oversees retirement funds for state employees, lawmakers and judges. In 2004, the state agency invested $280 million with the William Blair firm. Orlando Jones & Associates is making money off that arrangement because Jones told state pension officials about William Blair’s services. He made the introduction.
For that, Jones got 20 percent of the management fees the state paid William Blair in the first year of the deal. Jones’ cut: $221,852, records show. In year 2, Jones was to get 15 percent of William Blair’s fees. That came to $219,668. Year 3, Jones got 10 percent — $149,609. Year 4 is off to an even better start. Jones is to get 10 percent of William Blair’s fees every year the firm continues to do business with the pension board. This summer, the state board gave William Blair more money to invest, bringing the total to $505 million.
When William Blair gets more money, so does Jones. His referral fee stands to net him about $224,000 this year, his biggest payday yet.
A sweet deal, for sure. Unfortunately, Jones wasn’t around on September 15, 2007, to answer questions about how he landed the lucrative deal with William Blair & Co.
Those are just three short stories of life and death in the Machine.
Former President Bill Clinton reportedly said of Obama, after he became the nominee of the Democrat Party, that he had the political instincts of “a Chicago thug.” The multi-layered influence of the Machine has spread from Chicago, into Cook County, throughout Illinois, and is now reaching into the United States of America. Where’s the MSM?
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