One comes. One goes. (Or maybe not)

Attorneys for George Ryan tried Friday to bring the former Illinois governor back from oblivion, the same day that attorneys for Michael Madigan are trying to send a West Side state legislator off to oblivion.

SMITH: On his way out (for now)?



Perhaps it is some unique balance that must be maintained. Ryan can only consider coming back to society if someone else takes his place in political purgatory!

BUT ONE HAS to admit that the timing of Ryan and Derrick Smith was a bit coincidental – as both managed to pop their way into the news cycle on Friday. And it will be a few weeks before we find out what happens with either one of them.

In the case of Smith, he’s the state legislator currently facing criminal charges in U.S. District Court that claim he was soliciting bribes while serving in the Illinois House of Representatives. He’s the guy who has been the focus of a legislative committee that has been reviewing his circumstances.

And on Thursday, that committee recommended that Smith should be kicked out of the Illinois House because of his behavior – even though he has yet to be convicted of a single offense. Only state Rep. Al Riley, D-Olympia Fields, voted against his removal.

Now, the matter goes to the full Illinois House, where on Friday House Speaker Madigan, D-Chicago, scheduled a session day for Aug. 17.

THE FULL ILLINOIS House will convene that day for just one purpose – the possible expulsion of Derrick Smith, as recommended by a committee. Under legislative rules, at least 79 of the 118 members must vote “yes” for Smith’s removal for it to happen.

Who’s to say whether that many legislators can agree on anything?

Although it always is possible that the Illinois House members will be disgusted enough that they had to return to Springfield for a day (they’re not really supposed to be back at the Capitol building until November) that they may just take it out on Smith and dump him.

Which would be a shame, because I think this whole Smith affair has the potential to make everybody look ridiculous – not just Derrick, who is stubbornly refusing to give up his post even though the fact that he faces criminal charges makes him as weak and ineffectual as any legislator can be.

SERIOUSLY, WHAT HAPPENS if he manages to get himself re-elected come the Nov. 6 general elections? That is always a real possibility. He has the benefits of incumbency.

And even though local Democrats are organizing an independent candidacy to challenge him, Smith’s chances received a boost recently when the Republican woman who also had hopes of running got kicked off the ballot for having insufficient signatures of support.

This is going to be one case that will manage to taint so many people, in large part because of the insistence that Smith be removed immediately – even though the reality of our political system is that many other officials were allowed to remain in office literally up to the point of being sent off to prison.

What makes Smith (truly a no-name, non-descript legislator if ever there was one) so special? Nothing, really!

IN FACT, THIS one day of being paired up by timing with George Ryan may be the most significant moment of the Smith political career.

Although while officials are trying to get rid of Smith, we’ll have to see if they manage to bring back Ryan from the political “dead.”

For Ryan’s attorneys argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago on Friday about why they think some of the charges for which he was convicted should be overturned and thrown out.

With the prison term that Ryan now has, he will be eligible for work-release programs early in 2013, and is supposed to be released on Independence Day. He has nearly a full year with which he must respond to the Bureau of Prisons.

BUT IF THOSE charges can be dumped, then it would reduce the length of the overall prison term. Which means theoretically that Ryan may have already served more than the amount of time in prison for what convictions remain.

RYAN: On the rebound?

A favorable court ruling sometime later this summer could result in Ryan’s immediate release from prison – which at his current age of 78 is a plus. Any amount of freedom is something he’d appreciate.

Even though I’m sure the ideologues will want to claim that it is an injustice he can’t be held for a time period longer than his current 6 ½-year prison term. Some people are going to find reason to grouse no matter what the circumstances.

And as far as the bottom-line is concerned, I remain convinced that Ryan will someday get something resembling a pardon, even if it comes after his time served is complete – making him the GOP equivalent of Dan Rostenkowski.

AS FOR SMITH?

He was, is, and always will be “Derrick Who?”

  -30-

If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again, and again, and again, and …

I’ll give the City Council one bit of credit. They seem determined to pass into local law a measure that they can call a ban on firearms within city limits.

Even though the courts these days are in a mood to provide an overly-broad interpretation to the Second Amendment and has repeatedly gone out of its way to strike down the city’s measures, the City Council is trying yet again.

THE COUNCIL ON Thursday passed a new version of the law they originally implemented in the early 1980s that was meant to make mere possession of a firearm a crime.

It did express the sentiment of a significant majority of urban residents. But it infuriates the NRA-types to the point where they don’t want some other community expressing a sentiment different from those of their rural-oriented membership.

So the broad ban got knocked down a couple of years ago by the Supreme Court of the United States. That got the city to pass a new, somewhat restricted, measure.

But a federal judge in Chicago managed to find flaws with that version, ruling last month that people cannot be denied gun permits just because they have prior criminal records.

THIS NEW VERSION recommended Thursday by the council’s Public Safety committee tries to further restrict that intent – saying that only people with convictions for felonies that are violent can have a lifetime ban on being able to own a firearm in Chicago.

All others would be restricted for up to five years, if their “guilty” verdict is for a misdemeanor violent crime.

The full City Council is expected to give this measure final approval later this month. Although I’m sure it won’t take long for the “gun-nut” types to want to file a lawsuit challenging the legitimacy of any effort to restrict firearm possession.

In fact, I’m wondering if 36^th Ward Alderman Nick Sposata inadvertently came up with the point upon which the NRA types will base their next fight – the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the alderman said it was wrong that 18-year-olds could vote, enlist in the military and live on their own, but would still have to get a parents’ permission to get a gun permit IF they are under 21.

WILL THE NATIONAL Rifle Association find some 19-year-old who claims his “constitutional” rights are being challenged because he’s not permitted to purchase a weapon?

I don’t doubt that they will try to nitpick this issue to the point where city officials lose the will to continue the fight. Or else these ideologues will view the issue the way they all too often view abortion – try to put so many restrictions on it that it becomes next-to-impossible to obtain.

Will they want gun bans so limited that they apply to virtually nothing? I’m glad to see that such a point has not yet been reached.

Personally, I’m inclined to think that the city and its attorneys have scaled this issue back to the point where it fits within the narrow confines that the courts are bringing about.

BECAUSE EVEN THESE same courts have ruled that restrictions on people with serious criminal offenses on their records are legitimate. Which ought to be such a common-sense concept we should all be in agreement!

After all, we allow for people to lose their driver’s license if they show they can’t be trusted. Why should a firearm permit be any different? The circumstances that led to firearms being included in the constitutional amendments (cars didn’t exist back in the late 1700s) have changed so much that I will always believe the Second Amendment is the one obsolete provision.

For those who can’t agree, it would just seem that the homicide rate in Chicago in recent years (on the rise, after having been declining for a decade prior to that) ought to be evidence that perhaps a different solution than what might be applicable in a place like Towanda, Ill., ought to be used.

  -30-

The significance of tax returns, or lack thereof, in the campaign cycle

I recall the first government official who ever showed me his income tax return – it was then-Gov. Jim Edgar.

EDGAR: Not Romney or Plummer



He wasn’t running for anything specifically that year. It was just his habit to let us see the return he filed by mid-April, and it was meant to reinforce the idea that he wasn’t all that different from the rest of us.

SERIOUSLY! I RECALL his returns as showing that while the Edgars had some miniscule financial investments, they weren’t wealthy. For all practical purposes, Edgar supported his family financially on the government salaries he was paid for the various electoral offices he held during his political career.

They weren’t bad salaries. So they lived well. But no more so than many other people.

Edgar always issued the returns so routinely that they ultimately became a non-story. Yet more evidence that Edgar wasn’t the most exciting man on Planet Earth. Or even to walk the halls of the Statehouse in Springfield.

Which is why it always amazes me when would-be government officials make a big deal out of refusing to disclose their incomes. They wind up making an issue out of what should be nothing.

WHEN THE INFORMATION comes out, it gets treated as though it is a major disclosure. If it never comes out, then we wind up thinking that there is some major secret being kept from the public.

It may turn out that the information amounts to a whole lot of nothing. But the candidates treat it as though it is a major something.

Yet every campaign cycle, we get some nitwit who is determined to think that he (or she, I suppose) is special, and that we shouldn’t have some interest in their personal connections.

ROMNEY: Returns becoming an issue



Which is what we gain from getting a look at those returns. Who do they have financial connections to? How do they live? Is this a person who gives a lot to charitable causes?

IF SO, WHICH causes?

It is personal information that we can relate to, because we all ultimately have to fill out those forms.

And while I don’t expect to see anyone running for office who files the 1040EZ, we do learn something from such information.

Mitt Romney’s presidential aspirations are being attacked on this ground. He has only released limited details, and claims he doesn’t want more information about himself out there because he thinks opponent Barack Obama will merely have his staff pick through the information for details that can be used against him.

HE WENT SO far as to tell the National Review, “I’m simply not enthusiastic about giving them hundreds or thousands of more pages to pick through, distort and lie about.”

My guess is that the Romney campaign wants all the distortion and lies to be told by themselves about Obama. Which when thought of that way makes Romney sound like a bully and a wimp!

Locally, we have someone else taking the same attitude. Remember Jason Plummer, the St. Louis-area guy who ran for lieutenant governor paired up with Republican William Brady?

He’s running for a seat in Congress from that part of Illinois that borders St. Louis, and he’s refusing to give up his returns. He claims they’re personal, although he released a statement that says he earns a $55,289 salary as vice president of the family-owned lumber company.

WHICH IF THAT’S all there is would be so much like many other people.

PLUMMER: Really none of our business?



Except that for people like Romney and Plummer, that isn’t all there is. They have business interests that allow them to use various exemptions.

The tales told about Romney are that he has used exemptions and tax breaks so effectively that he literally didn’t owe any federal income tax. Which is something that would make him very unusual, and reduce to rubble any claims he might try to make that he’s just a common guy, compared to “elitist” Obama.

It’s probably the same situation with regard to Plummer. The family business that he has ties to likely make him independently wealthy aside from his actual salary that he reports to the IRS. It’s a shame that he, and Romney for that matter, feels compelled to treat it as a dirty little secret.

  -30-

More scut-work, less ‘news’

I’m not going to join the gathering of people who feel compelled to trash Journatic – an entity designed to do the “scut-work” of putting together local information so it can be published in newspapers.

Will more and more of these boxes be empty?



It’s not that I think much of the type of information the company says it produces. If anything, the company has been fairly honest about what it intends to produce – which isn’t anything of any real substance.

THEY’RE TRYING TO make a profit off the production of all that routine information that readers might want, but is so labor-intensive (and costly) to produce.

And they’re taking advantage of the inherent laziness of some publications in wanting to have people do real work (at real pay) by offering to do it for them.

Among those publications is the Chicago Tribune, which for about a month had a contract with Journatic to produce much of the information that fills the pages of those TribLocal sections that the newspaper inserts into the copies of the paper that sell in the suburbs that they deem worthy.

They used to have a combination of staff and freelance writers to produce the sections, until the Tribune thought it could have the sections at a discount.

SO THE FACT that the techniques by which Journatic operates to produce scut-work sound borderline sleazy doesn’t really reflect poorly on that company – since I never expected much of anything from them to begin with.

I’m bothered by the Tribune management that was looking for a way to cut corners and reduce their costs while pretending to offer some improved journalistic benefit.

And now that they’re trying to be all high-minded and holier-than-thou by saying they will no longer use Journatic content, that is what really offends me.

Tribune-types should have known exactly what they were getting when they signed on with this company. If they didn’t, they were clueless. If they did and went ahead with the deal anyway, that makes all this outrage the company now expresses just a bunch of bunk.

AS FAR AS I’m concerned, phony outrage is more appalling than the idea of Philippines-based “writers” putting Anglo-sounding bylines on their copy to make it look like it was produced in the good ol’ U.S. of A.

It will be intriguing to see what becomes of those TribLocal sites (which some Tribune readers never see if they happen to live in a community or neighborhood that marketing-types believe is unworthy of such an effort), since the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting that the Tribune has no plans to hire more people to do the work.

Which means we’re talking about existing staff having to take on a larger workload. More scut-work for swamped staff – which means less “news.”

Of course, we’re also getting less access to “news” because of the loss of WIQI-FM as a news-format radio station. The news format never caught on with listeners, causing management to dump all the talk on Tuesday and convert to an “adult hits” format.

BUT I WONDER if anyone is even going to notice. The ratings for the radio station were really that low. The most attention they ever got may have been for those nonsensical billboards they ran using Rod Blagojevich’s picture (then pasting over a smiley-face with a funky blue hairdo when Blagojevich’s attorneys objected).

It seems the station had counted on the idea of a clear-sounding FM signal as their gimmick to get people away from long-running newsradio WBBM-AM. Except that the CBS station got its own FM simulcast.

No more!!!!



Which made the self-described “FM News” sound like a flightier take on real news. I heard some people claim the station was “news, with a hip-hop flava.” Although on the few occasions I heard the station, it struck me as a pop station stuck in the ‘80s and thinking it was “hip.” The kind of people who think that "cutting edge" is Eddie Van Halen's guitar solo in Michael Jackson's hit song, "Beat It."

Maybe the radio station’s fate is merely evidence that more serious information will always prevail, and that the real problem is those executives who believe the problem with modern-day “media” is that it wastes so much time on “news.”

  -30-

School negotiations turn to comic relief

Personally if I need a laugh, I’d want to turn to Redd Foxx. Even all these years later, the man is funny.

But some people seem to want to use our public officials and their inanities as a source of humor, and it seems the Chicago school officials and their teachers are going to be willing to play along.

BECAUSE I CAN’T help but find some warped humor in the way negotiations are going toward a new contract. And what is even more pathetic is the fact that officials seem willing to play along.

Talks between the two sides had reached such a stalemate that an arbitrator was brought in to try to negotiate a deal.

That arbitrator, according to the Chicago Tribune, is expected to recommend that teacher salaries be increased for the first year of any contract somewhere between 15-20 percent. Which is a figure that both sides will find completely unacceptable and will refuse to go along with.

Which is going to result in the general populace finding so many reasons to be critical of these people. And I suspect the ideological leanings of people will determine (moreso than the facts) which side they wind up taking.

SOME PEOPLE ARE going to try to spin this as an issue of a Chicago Teachers Union being ridiculous – if not outright greedy. After all, the Chicago schools had been offering a 2 percent pay raise. This is significantly higher.

Why shouldn’t the teachers’ union jump at the chance to accept it – and put the blame on the Chicago Public Schools officials for refusing to go along?

Yet I can’t help but confess that I don’t see the issue that way. In fact, I think the only people who are going to blame the unions are the ones who have ideological hang-ups that always cause them to blame organized labor.

Because I think the people who really are against this deal are the Chicago Public Schools officials. This arbitrator is about to give legitimacy to the claims that the teachers’ union has been making for months – which are flat-out opposed to the ideas that the Chicago Public Schools (and Mayor Rahm Emanuel) have been trying to put in our heads for months.

BECAUSE THE BEGINNING negotiating stance of the Chicago Teachers Union has always been to ask for a 29 percent raise – with 20 percent being for the added hours they’re going to be asked to work as part of a longer school day, and another 4 percent to compensate for a pay hike they had to give up.

As far as what the union was asking for as a pay hike for the upcoming year, it was 5 percent. Compared to the Chicago Public Schools’ offer of 2 percent, it doesn’t sound too far off.

The city has always contended that the teachers’ union was engaging in a stream of nonsense-talk by even bringing up the idea of compensation for a lost past pay raise and more work, in addition to a pay raise for the upcoming year.

Yet this arbitrator is making it clear that the teachers’ union isn’t being ridiculous at all in asking for such things, and that the city may well have to cough up at least a part of these demands if THEY’RE serious about wanting to avert a teacher’s strike sometime this autumn.

WHY DO I suspect that the last time a labor arbitrator upset management so intensely was back in 1975 when Peter Seitz sided with the Major League Baseball Players Association instead of the team owners and made the ruling that created the concept of free agency for veteran players?

No, I don’t expect the teachers of the Chicago Public Schools to become as wealthy as a one-time Cy Young Award winner who only this season is showing anything worth watching while pitching for the White Sox.

EMANUEL: How livid is he these days?



But this kind of ruling does undermine the idea that these teachers ought to be thankful anyone is willing to give them a 2 percent raise. It certainly undermines the hard line that the city officials (at Emanuel’s direction) have been trying to take with the school teachers.

Such as the one they want to spew when they cite studies such as the one that can be interpreted as saying that Chicago teachers are already among the highest-paid in the nation.

IT REINFORCES THE idea that if we do get the sight of teachers walking the picket lines this autumn, Emanuel and his people who have been out to bully the teachers’ union these past few months are going to have to take a significant share of the blame!

And in the end, it would be the students of the Chicago Public Schools who would wind up losing out.

  -30-

A ‘blues’ museum on Block 37? They might as well bring back the ice rink

I like the idea of museums, particularly when they pay tribute to something that so many of us know little about.

I also do not have a knee-jerk reaction against real estate developers. And I appreciate just how harmful the story surrounding “Block 37” has been to Chicago’s public image.

HAVING WRITTEN ALL that, let me also say that I think the idea of a museum devoted to telling the story of blues music to be built right in the heart of downtown Chicago (in the block just east of the Daley Center) could well be one of the dumbest ideas this city has ever contemplated.

Somehow, the idea of paying tribute to musicians such as Muddy Waters by erecting something in the heart of the downtown shopping district strikes me as being more oriented toward selling t-shirts – rather than telling the real human stories of the musicians who gave us the blues.

This is musical form where commercialism of any sorts can only trivialize the art form.

And I just can’t help but think that putting a “blues” museum on Block 37 would create a place that would have repulsed the real-life blues artists – even if I’m sure many of them would gladly have accepted any cash that would be generated by such a place.

KEEP IN MIND that I personally love listening to the blues – and I don’t mean rock ‘n’ roll with a heavy blues beat. Anybody who thinks that Eric Clapton is a bluesman, or that there was anything musically intriguing about the Blues Brothers, is probably the kind of person who would like a downtown Chicago blues museum.

They probably also enjoy the “set list from Hell” asked of too many blues musicians these days – the same dozen or so songs that invariably asks for “Sweet Home, Chicago” to be played as an encore.

I enjoy hearing that song every now and then, and will gladly put on my recording of it as performed by Magic Sam. Anybody else is just stunting the blues as a musical form when they try to play it – note for note – as Sam did. And yes, I know that it was Robert Johnson (who really deserves to be labelled as "God" rather than Clapton) who originally came up with the song.

I also believe that a downtown museum would wind up reinforcing those forces that have turned blues music into a musical museum-piece, rather than a thriving musical form being passed along throughout the generations.

TOO MANY WHITE people merely think of the blues as overly-intense guitar solos, while too many black people think of the blues as the music their great-grandparents listened to way back in the days of segregation.

Which is a shame!

Because when it comes to a recording that can make the hair on the back of my neck stand on end, I’d say it is Elmore James’ performances of “Dust My Broom.”

There’s something about that guitar intro that is so eerie, yet all powerful. And even though I can match it note-for-note when I play my own guitar, mine sounds like a lame copy.

WHICH IS WHAT I would think of a downtown-based blues museum erected on a city block with a shopping center that is trying to be so upscale. It would be such a gross mismatch that the only people I could see going there would be tourists who literally wouldn’t know any better.

That is a real shame. Because the idea of a blues museum ought to be to inform the public about the music – not to spread a distorted, overly watered-down, form.

If there is to be a museum devoted to the blues, it probably is something that has to go in one of the neighborhoods of the great South Side – the place where such music was once the daily noise that could be heard coming from tavern after tavern.

Along with flat after flat from buildings in the Bronzeville neighborhood that once had way too many people jammed into them because the “establishment” didn’t want all those African-Americans living elsewhere – an attitude that spilled over into the music.

SUCH A MUSEUM could even wind up being an attraction to try to get people to visit those areas, and could help bolster their own economic development. If anything, it is why I respect the idea that some officials are trying to develop a museum to tell the story of gospel music.

The proposed Chicago Gospel Music Heritage Museum is scheduled/expected/desired to open by October at the one-time Pilgrim Baptist Church at 33^rd Street and Indiana Avenue – the place where such religious-inspired music allegedly was created.

Maybe the site of the one-time Checkerboard Lounge on 47^th Street is a blues museum site possibility. I don’t know.

All I do know is that Block 37 seems like a stretch for such a facility. And if that’s the best idea that developers can come up with, then maybe we’d be better off if they just brought back that ice skating rink they used to erect every winter in the heart of downtown.

  -30-

A virtual life-sentence for Cellini?

It will be a miracle, of sorts, if William Cellini doesn’t wind up getting a prison sentence that keeps him incarcerated for the rest of his life.

CELLINI: Soon to learn his fate

Cellini is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge James Zagel for sentencing on July 23, and federal prosecutors this week issued the memorandum where they explain why they believe the judge should impose an eight-year sentence.

OR 96 MONTHS in federal-speak, since “the G” always seems to like to make things sound much more ominous than they really are when it comes to criminal prosecution.

The various reports that cropped up following the issuing of the sentencing memorandum all indicate that prosecutors are showing some sense of what they think is compassion.

They’re conceding that Cellini has health issues and that this might be a “relatively rare situation” where Zagel should impose a prison sentence less than the one they have requested/are demanding!

But when one considers that Cellini is 76 years old, has had a heart attack recently and then also has had a blood clot found in his system, you have to seriously wonder if the one-time political powerbroker from Springfield whose clout always came from his ability to get government officials to do his bidding – rather than in holding electoral office himself – is capable of doing any amount of prison time.

I’M NOT WISHING Cellini ill-will. But this could be a case where a one-year prison term could amount to a “life” prison term.

Somehow, that makes the federal prosecution concession that maybe he should get a lesser prison term seem less compassionate.

Because in their memo, they made it clear that they want Bill Cellini to go to prison. What they do NOT want is anything resembling what his attorneys will ask for, and will probably beg for, come the day nine days from now when he has to stand before “da judge.”

BLAGOJEVICH: The benefactor?

Which is probation. They’d like him to get hit with a significant fine, and some thoroughly-humiliating process by which his life will be watched by federal officials.

ISN’T THAT PUNISHMENT enough, for a man of his age?

In my mind, I can already hear all the people shouting out, “Hell No!!!,” or using other choice obscenities to indicate their displeasure – in large part because Cellini is a wealthy man.

Federal officials included in their memo an estimate that back in 2005, he was worth $153 million (which means that being the anonymous guy who tells governors what they should do can be a lucrative field).

After enduring his legal bills to try to fight off (unsuccessfully, it should be noted) a conviction, I don’t know what he’s worth now. It could be significantly less – even though I doubt he’s so broke that he’d be applying for unemployment benefits anytime soon.

WHICH MEANS SOME people will argue he has too much money and could “buy” himself a comfortable stay in probation or supervision.

Besides, when it comes to age, let’s remember that former Gov. George Ryan is a couple of years older than Cellini and still has nearly one full year to serve within the Bureau of Prisons system.

RYAN: Soon to be free?

Although Cellini, if he survives a prison term, would likely be older than the 79 years Ryan will have when he is set free on Independence Day (literally) of 2013.

I’m just going to be a little wary of those people who come off as too eager for incarceration in this case – in which Cellini tried getting a Hollywood producer to make a significant campaign contribution to now-incarcerated former Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

HE DIDN’T ASK anything for himself. Then again, he didn’t have to. Because just think of all the favors Blagojevich would have owed him in exchange for arranging the contribution.

Which is how Cellini gained his influence. He was the guy who helped campaigns of both the Democratic and Republican persuasion come up with the money to pay for all the stunts they had to engage in to gain public attention and get elected.

Many of them likely would not have been elected in the first place had it not been for the help of Cellini and others like him; many of whom are still in existence in the unincarcerated segment of our society.

And because of his age, he has a chance to wither away in relative anonymity – being turned into a mere number instead of a name.

  -30-