1/31/19
These are troubling, disturbing, interesting…and not unusual…
times in Chicago politics.
·
Alderman
Ed Burke (14th), the dean of the Chicago City Council, is facing
federal charges involving the alleged shakedown of a Burger King franchisee who
operates a BK in his ward. (See my 1/3/19 post No
Doubt Ed Burke's in Trouble, and..)
·
Alderman
Danny Solis (25th) has been wearing a wire for months now,
taping conversations with his fellow aldermen, including Mr. Burke, and various
other denizens of the sordid politics of our town. While Mr. Solis currently faces no specific
charges, people, and especially Chicago aldermen, don’t wear wires out of a surfeit
of public-spiritedness. Further, the Chicago Sun-Times
somehow got its hands on the affidavit federal prosecutors used to petition
a judge for wire taps and the like. The
affidavit contained allegations of Mr. Solis’s using ward funds and funds
obtained by shaking down people with city business for expenses ranging from
clothes for his children to visits to massage parlors that feature “happy
endings” along with drugs that facilitate achievement of such endings. Ironically,
Mr. Solis’s 25th Ward is the former bailiwick of the late Alderman Vito
Marzullo, whose alleged,
but never proven, corruption looks positively quaint compared to the types of
activity Mr. Solis has been cooperating in trying to prove. But I digress.
·
While the gruel is quite thin in this story as
of now, House Speaker, 13th Ward Committeeman, and chairman of the Illinois
Democratic Party Mike Madigan has
been caught on tape soliciting legal business from a developer interested in
building a hotel in Chinatown in Alderman Solis’s 25th Ward. Did Alderman Solis set up Mr. Madigan in
this case? No one is saying so, but one
could be forgiven for suspecting so; though he wasn’t the guy wearing the wire
in this case, Alderman Solis set up the meeting and was present for much of it.
·
Alderman Willie
Cochran (20th) is scheduled to go to trial in June on charges of
shaking down real estate developers who wanted to build homes in his ward, a
ward that sorely needs new housing, and stealing from charitable foundations he
set up to benefit poor children in his ward.
·
Alderman Ricardo
Munoz (22nd) is facing domestic abuse charges. And
the things his wife, and accuser, is saying about him in connection with the charges
will not be conducive to a fruitful political future should he escape doing
time.
Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of these developments,
though, is that, other than their concentration in a particular period in time,
they are not the least bit unusual in the annals of Chicago politics. Chicago aldermen, and other public servants
in our great city, have for years shaken down people who need or want to get
things done in their wards and beyond and have used the thin veneer of side
employment as the channel for such payoffs.
In the old days, aldermen were often tavern owners so that the pay-offs,
which were trivial by today’s standards, could be passed as tips over the
bar. Later, aldermen and other
connected types became lawyers, insurance agents, real estate agents and the
like so that pay-offs could come in the form of fees and commissions for
services that could just as easily, and less expensively, have been done by virtually
any lawyer or insurance agent. While the legal and related professions are still
the most popular mechanisms for legitimizing the spoils of holding office, some
modern era pols have dispensed with the effort and hard work necessary to obtain
a law degree or an insurance license and simply have had a close relative, friend,
or associate hang out a shingle as a “facilitator.”
These current allegations against our city’s public
servants are clearly cases of life imitating art imitating life. I wrote my first book, The
Chairman, ten years ago and its sequel The
Chairman’s Challenge, the following year. The similarities of the tales told in those
novels to what is going on right now are stunning. As a side note, the near eeriness of the
similarities is compounded by the books’ protagonist, Chairman Eamon DeValera Collins, deriving his
title from his being the chairman of the city council’s Zoning Committee, the
office that Alderman Solis held until resigning from it in the wake of these
charges. And, while the parlor games continue
regarding who is who in my books, be assured that Alderman Collins is not
Alderman Solis. Alderman Collins, like Don Vito Corleone, incorporates aspects
of a lot of people in his world but is none of them specifically.
Carol Marin, who
has been one of Chicago’s premier political reporters for decades, said on last
night’s edition of Chicago Tonight that maybe the
upcoming elections will show that Chicagoans are “sick and tired” of the nefarious
behavior that has so long characterized the politics of the Second City. Maybe Ms. Marin is right; yours truly hopes
she is. But I’m beyond leery. The first chapter of The
Chairman explains why this culture of corruption and chicanery has been
allowed to continue and thrive through several metamorphoses designed to adapt
to a changing political and legal environment.
People were happy with corruption as long as they somehow benefitted
from it and the corruption became a source of great entertainment, even
hair-shirt pride, for many. But perhaps
the cost of this entertainment, which is imprecise but doubtless huge, is
getting sufficiently large that the people will say “Enough.” Even if that is indeed the case, one wonders
how one could register such disgust in the upcoming election given the choices
in this mayoral race, all of whom are related, to varying degrees, to the city’s
power structure, the most salient feature of which is corruption.
Yes, I’m shamelessly hawking my books here, but those
books are especially pertinent to the times and would be helpful, indeed
essential, for those who want to understand what is going on right now. The books also help explain why, at least on
a relative basis, these latest developments might not turn out to be the big
deal that some observers think. While we
can always hope, I’ve been watching the politics of our town long enough that, when
reports of such felonious flagitiousness arise, my first thought is that thus
it was, is, and ever shall ever be. The
people of Chicago, and much of Illinois, keep voting for those whose self-interest
not only comes first but also usually collides with the interests of the
people. I don’t know why; maybe we just
like to complain, or brag, about the rogue’s gallery that constitutes much of
the political leadership in our city and state. Or maybe we don’t pay attention.
See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of
Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge,
A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on
how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.
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