Free Republic

New study provides insight into 141+ years of political hijinks Cook County has been a "dark pool of political corruption" for more than a century, a new study by the University of Illinois at Chicago says. Nearly 150 employees, politicians and contractors in the nation's second-largest county have been convicted on corruption charges since 1957, according to a report released Thursday by the university and the Better Government Association (.pdf) The 33-page study gives a history of corruption, starting from 1869 when county commissioners were jailed for rigging a bid to paint City Hall. It also details hiring scandals, including...

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. 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...

Terrence O’Brien got his start in Chicago Democratic politics like so many of his peers and the generations that came before him, dutifully ringing doorbells to solicit votes for his state senator on the far North Side. He rose to coordinating other precinct captains for such candidates as a young Cook County state’s attorney and mayoral hopeful named Richard M. Daley. After serving some 20 years as an elected leader of the obscure-but-jobs-rich Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, Mr. O’Brien decided last year that the time was ripe to seek higher office, to run for county board president. So he lined...

Illinois Democrats nominated Alex Giannoulias to run for the Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. As Richard Baehr noted Monday on AT, Giannoulias has substantial weaknesses that could enable Congressman Mark Kirk, the Republican nominee, to take the seat in November. The GOP Senatorial Campaign Committee is wasting no time in focusing on Guannoulias's shady past, something that may resonate with Illinois voters, sick of Democrat machine corruption that has left the state arguably in worse fiscal shape than California.

So, with a headline like that above perhaps you might imagine that I, a conservative, will launch into another attack on a Republican that just isn't Republicany enough for me, right? You might think that this will be just another hard-line blogger attacking another "moderate" Republican, right? Well, by "fake Republican" I mean just that: fake. Putting fake candidates on the ballot is a game that Chicago Democrats play in every election. Every election they put fake Republicans up against real Republicans in primary elections. What the Democrat Party does is put several shill candidates on ballots to drain votes...

Everyone is always talking about how corrupt Illinois politics is. Well, it's been that way since day one. Since I live here (I'll take your condolences) I thought I'd give a brief history of Cook County, the home of the City of Chicago. There is a saying about Chicago’s weather: if you don’t like the weather, wait 10 minutes it’ll change. This, of course, is an allusion to the fact that the weather in Chicago is often unpredictable with every season but winter seeming all too short. The rains come, the winds blow, the snow falls and the chill descends...

The Cook County Democrat Party sent out a direct mail piece early this week that listed all the Democrat presidents that brought "prosperity" to this country. Oh they are all there, FDR, Truman, Kennedy, LBJ, Bill Clinton... uh, wait. Isn't one of 'em missing? You guessed it, Jimmah Carter, the worst president in American history, was left off the list of illustrious "prosperity" bringers. Oopsie. The nitwit that commissioned the flyer, Democrat Party Chairman Joe Berrios, claims that it was the printer that goofed it up and that he had Carter on the original piece before the printer sent it...

A new report on "Judicial Hellholes" arrives just in time, albeit indirectly, to remind Congress that no health-system changes can qualify as real "reform" if they don't include serious lawsuit reforms as well. The annual report by the American Tort Reform Foundation, released Dec. 15, shows that President Obama's own Cook County, Ill., is the nation's third-worst place for lawsuit abuse. Maybe that helps explain why Obamacare, especially as translated by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, discourages lawsuit reforms rather than promoting them. For instance, the Pelosi bill punishes states if they implement the most effective tort reform of all, namely...

I think we need to meet as conservatives to get ideas on how to save our beautiful state. It was going well until Blago took over in 2002. I'm thinking January 9th. Downtown Chicago.

Here is a really fascinating series of tweets from Commissioner Tony Peraica as he participated in the latest Cook County Board meeting. Today (Dec. 1) Board President Todd Stroger tried to cajole the board into upholding his veto of the roll back of his implementation of the highest tax rate in the country. Peraica is against the tax and since the State Legislature ended the four-fifths rule, lowering it to three-fifths to overturn the president's veto, the fight was on. Anyway, here are the tweets that Peraica posted during the debate and they are a fascinating peak inside a board...

OK, say you are running for the Cook County Board. And say your daddy is the village clerk in the very district where you are hoping to get a whole slew of by-mail and early votes. Also say your cousin is running for Governor and he's already the State Comptroller now. Do you think your opponent might casually wonder if the fix is in? ... well, it is Crook County, after all. Naturally, the above isn't just some bad TV script, but a real situation in southern Cook County. In Orland Park where Democrat Patrick Maher is running to unseat...

Chicago prosecutors have subpoenaed the grades and other material regarding the classroom performance of Northwestern University journalism students, according to The New York Times. Seems the prosecutors are tired of being second-guessed by the J-students, who are participants in The Innocence Project. The Innocence Project is an effort by Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism to provide students with real-life experience in scrutinizing the actions of police and prosecutors in old cases. Their work has led to the release of at least 11 inmates who were shown to have been wrongly convicted. It's that success rate that has the local DAs...

The Democratic primary will be bloody. It will take no great political prognostication to figure that out. Todd Stroger, the encumbent, is vulnerable and the Democrats know it. That's why there are no fewer than four challengers ready to take him on. Stroger is best known for sticking the County with the highest sales tax in the country. Local news stations have featured stories of cushy jobs going to friends and family. Then, there's the story of Tony Cole. Cole was his basketball playing buddy when Stroger offered him a job in the County. Not three months into his tenure,...

Vote of Confidence A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape—and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama. By Gretchen Reynolds A huge black turnout in November 1992 altered Chicago's electoral landscape-and raised a new political star: a 31-year-old lawyer named Barack Obama. In the final, climactic buildup to November's general election, with George Bush gaining ground on Bill Clinton in Illinois and the once-unstoppable campaign of senatorial candidate Carol Moseley Braun embroiled in allegations about her mother's Medicare liability, one of the most important local stories managed to go virtually unreported: The...

The federal monitor over Cook County government hiring issued a progress report on patronage problems today -- *snip* Some workers for the county are actively undermining efforts to take politics out of personnel practices. Read the report here.

There's a smell test that I usually use when a politician invokes the deity into a political debate. Does it seem out of place? Is this something that the politician does consistently or are they suddenly invoking the deity? For instance, Bill Clinton could be found at church only when there was political heat on him. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, evokes the lord a lot and so if she were to evoke the lord I wouldn't be quite as skeptical. (though, I understand that this would give her more license)

The Chicago Sun Times has the latest in a string political corruption revelation in an area in which this appears common place. Patronage workers with the Cook County Forest Preserve District are seeing more green these days -- in their paychecks. With people everywhere facing tough financial times, the 28 forest preserve patronage workers who've been on the payroll since 2006 all got hefty raises in the following two years, an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association has found. They're among 38 forest preserve workers who are exempt from the Shakman court order that bans political...

The Chicago Sun Times has the latest in a string political corruption revelation in an area in which this appears common place. Patronage workers with the Cook County Forest Preserve District are seeing more green these days -- in their paychecks. With people everywhere facing tough financial times, the 28 forest preserve patronage workers who've been on the payroll since 2006 all got hefty raises in the following two years, an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association has found. They're among 38 forest preserve workers who are exempt from the Shakman court order that bans political...

Patronage workers with the Cook County Forest Preserve District are seeing more green these days -- in their paychecks. With people everywhere facing tough financial times, the 28 forest preserve patronage workers who've been on the payroll since 2006 all got hefty raises in the following two years, an analysis by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Better Government Association has found. They're among 38 forest preserve workers who are exempt from the Shakman court order that bans political hiring in city and county government.

The state is freezing $2.35 million in grant money for Cook County President Todd Stroger's job training program after a probe raised questions about spending and accounting practices at the office.