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WATCH: Man ‘Tied Up & Tortured’ on Facebook Live in Chicago Published 6:40 pm EST, January 4, 2017 Updated 8:11 pm EST, January 4, 2017 7 Comments By Tom Cleary 6.3k

An alderman indicted on corruption charges while he sat in a City Council meeting is merely the latest in a rogues’ gallery of elected officials to face such allegations in Chicago, a city that over the years became saddled with a national reputation for corruption. Willie Cochran — who pleaded not guilty Friday to bribery, extortion and wire fraud charges — received word of his indictment last week while he sat in the City Hall chamber, fellow aldermen stopping by for hushed conversations. According to Illinois corruption researchers Dick Simpson and Thomas Gradel, more than 30 Chicago aldermen have been...

Illinois losing 1 resident every 4.6 minutes, could fall behind Pennsylvania in population Jobs + Growth / Article December 20, 2016 Illinois has record loss of 114,000 residents to other states in 2016 as population shrinks by 37,500. Imagine the entire population of Peoria, Illinois’ seventh-largest city, all picking up and moving across state lines in one year, never to work, pay taxes or create jobs in Illinois again. That’s equivalent to what happened to Illinois over the past year: New migration data from the U.S. Census Bureau show that from July 2015 to July 2016, Illinois lost 114,000 people,...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel met with President-elect Donald Trump in New York on Wednesday morning, using the discussion to urge Trump to reconsider his positions on immigration. During his 45-minute meeting with the president-elect in his personal office high above Manhattan in Trump Tower, Emanuel hand-delivered a letter from the mayors of some of the nation's largest cities urging Trump to continue protections offered to young immigrants instituted under President Barack Obama's administration. The two-page letter asked Trump to continue Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the provision that protects young, so-called Dreamers who came to the country before the age...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Friday kept up his postelection push to position himself as a protector of immigrants against President-elect Donald Trump, announcing the creation of a $1 million "legal protection fund" to help those fighting possible deportation. The fund was created in partnership with the National Immigrant Justice Center to "provide immediate legal information, screenings, consultations and representation to individuals who may be at risk for deportation," according to a news release from Emanuel's office. The money will come from the $20 million the city set aside for Emanuel's property tax rebate program, according to city spokeswoman Jennifer Martinez.

November was another bloody month in Chicago, ending with more than twice as many homicides as during the same month last year. The 77 homicides recorded in November 2016 mark the highest death toll for that month in nearly a quarter century. The increase comes as the city and police department scramble to bring the number of killings down with initiatives targeting high crime areas and a plan to add 970 new police positions. …

Last year, the Emanuel administration slipped through a tax on streaming video and cloud computing. Now, again without public hearings, City Hall is targeting bars and restaurants with a surcharge on satellite TV feeds. Earlier this month, the city served notice that its 9 percent amusement tax applies to businesses that subscribe to satellite TV services. The impact likely will be felt most by public spaces that buy premium subscriptions for NFL and college games that can easily run $5,000 to $10,000 a year, meaning their annual taxes would come to at least $450. "This is obviously a huge concern...

The president-elect's former agent is said to be hoping to discuss some of Trump's initial appointments. Is the president-elect soliciting help from his former Hollywood agent in selecting a cabinet? Ari Emanuel, the co-CEO of entertainment and sports powerhouse WME-IMG, was spotted at the Trump National Golf Course in New Jersey on Sunday, and a WME-IMG source confirms to The Hollywood Reporter that a meeting is set for this afternoon. The exact nature of the sit-down is unclear, but the Democratic stalwart Emanuel is said to be uninterested in a job in the Trump administration and instead hopes to discuss...

The mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, has announced that Chicago will remain a sanctuary city and that it will not cooperate with ICE and defy any orders given by a President Donald Trump. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel promised Monday to defy President-elect Donald Trump’s deportation orders and vowed that the city will always be a so-called sanctuary city. Chicago laws prohibit government workers and police officers from asking the locals about their immigration status, according to the Chicago Tribune. Emanuel reaffirmed that the policy will continue. "To all those who are, after Tuesday's election, very nervous and filled with anxiety...

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio promised illegal immigrants living in New York City that they need not fear Donald Trump's deportations plans. He plans to resist President Trump's immigration policies at all costs, whatever that means. Now, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is echoing De Blasio's declaration. Speaking at a press conference at the Lurie Children's Hospital on Monday, Emanuel said Chicago will "always be a sanctuary city." "To all those who are, after Tuesday's election, very nervous and filled with anxiety as we've spoken to, you are safe in Chicago, you are secure in Chicago and you are...

Leaders from three West Side gang factions allegedly met last week to discuss plans to shoot members of the Chicago Police Department in response to the fatal police shooting of Paul O’Neal. The meeting took place Thursday between higher-ups from the Vice Lords, Black Disciples and Four Corner Hustlers, according to an alert issued to department members the day after the meeting. The Four Corner Hustlers “provided guns” and have “a sniper in place” though authorities do not know where, according to the alert. The Four Corner Hustlers also are supplying the other two gangs with automatic weapons, which all...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday called for a new tax on city water and sewer bills to stabilize the city's largest pension fund, a move he portrayed as his latest tough decision to secure Chicago's financial future. Emanuel's plan, which would increase the average water and sewer bill by 30 percent over the next four years, was quickly met with resistance from some aldermen who argued the city would be better off adding business taxes or even raising property taxes again to come up with the hundreds of millions of dollars a year needed to keep the city's municipal workers'...

he city recorded its 300th homicide this weekend and went on to record six others over a 60-hour period that saw 59 people shot, 13 fatally, from Friday afternoon through early Monday morning. So far this year, about 1,800 people have been shot across the city and more than 200 of those wounded have died of their wounds, according to records kept by the Chicago Tribune. A total of 306 people have been killed this year by shooting, stabbing or other means, Tribune records show. A 3-year-old boy was among the wounded who survived the weekend shootings. Police said he’s...

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton is making her second fundraising visit to Chicago on Tuesday, attending an event at the home of securities trader Rajiv Fernando. In 2011, Obama appointed Fernando to serve on the International Security Advisory Board, a panel that was charged with advising then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on sensitive security matters. After the appointment, ABC News raised questions about Fernando’s qualifications for the panel. Days after the report, which also noted Fernando’s contributions to the Clinton Foundation, the trader stepped down from the board, saying he did not have time to serve. Clinton is asking...

Hollywood agent Ari Emanuel has offered to take charge of a film celebrating Donald Trump's presidential campaign that would air next month at the Republican National Convention, Trump said in a new interview. "He's a very good friend of mine," Trump said about Emanuel in a story posted online Wednesday by The Hollywood Reporter. "He calls me a lot. I call him a lot and we talk. He's very political. Even though he's not political, he's political. He gets it." . . .

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday blamed his dismal showing in a New York Times poll on “40 years” of financial neglect of Chicago’s South and West sides — not on disenchantment with him. One year after the mayor’s second inauguration, 62 percent of those surveyed disapproved of Emanuel’s performance as mayor. Only 25 percent approved of the job the mayor is doing. ... Without mentioning former Mayor Richard M. Daley by name, Emanuel laid the blame squarely on the doorstep of his predecessor and political mentor.

The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Congress Supports Judicial Watch Taxpayer Lawsuit against DC Government What Does the FBI Have on the Obama Gang? The Fight over Financial Aid to Illegal Alien Students Continues Too often, politicians at every level will ignore the clear language of a law if it doesn’t let them do as they wish. This is evident on two fronts this week: in California and here in the District of Columbia. First California. You will recall that we filed a taxpayer lawsuit in August 2014 challenging a decision by the University of...

CHICAGO — Thousands of Chicago teachers plan to walk off the job for one day on Friday, shutting down schools in the nation's third-largest district in what could be an early glimpse of a more prolonged strike still to come. Some 27,000 Chicago Teachers Union members have been working without a contract since June. They've overwhelmingly authorized an open-ended strike like the one that closed schools for more than a week in 2012, though that would still be weeks away. The union and its allies say Friday's action is an attempt to draw attention to their fight for a new...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered up a warning Monday to Donald Trump after the Republican presidential front-runner failed to denounce an implicit endorsement from former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. "I think playing with dark forces [will] come back to haunt you," Emanuel said after casting his vote on the first day of in-person voting in Illinois. "This is not a joke." When asked whether Democrats should underestimate Trump, Emanuel gave what he called a larger statement on the issue. "Donald Trump, in 'The Apprentice' show, that was kind of a faux reality show, where you auditioned for a job,"...

As controversy swirls over high profile police killings in the city, hundreds of protesters blocked streets in downtown Chicago on Wednesday as part of a citywide walkout to demand Mayor Rahm Emanuel resign from his position. Hours earlier, Emanuel had publicly apologized for the 2014 police-involved shooting death of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old black city resident, and pledged to fix the broken Chicago police practices.