Is U.S. attorney post a reward for putting George Ryan in prison all those years?

It was intriguing to me to learn that both the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times on Sunday reported about the likely person to become the new U.S. attorney for the Chicago area.

RYAN: Name back in the news

It seems that one of the prosecutors who handled the case that got former Gov. George Ryan convicted, and incarcerated, is now the front-runner to replace Patrick Fitzgerald – the U.S. attorney whose name will always be associated with putting Ryan away for all those years.

A PART OF me is sarcastic enough to dream of calling up Ryan and see if he has a reaction – just to see how irate a comment he would spew before hanging up on me!

But it would seem that Ryan is the plum in the resume of Zachary Fardon that him ahead of the other people who were supposedly in the running to replace Fitzgerald – who resigned the post last year.

It makes me wonder if the people who actually handled the prosecution of Rod Blagojevich are now going to be entitled to something resembling a promotion for the work they did in turning Milorod from a governor into a de facto history teacher of prison inmates who didn’t have the benefit of the same education that Blagojevich obtained during his lifetime.

But back to Ryan – who has tried to maintain a low profile since the day back in January when he was released from the federal work camp in Terre Haute, Ind., and spent just a couple of hours at a half-way house in Chicago before being allowed to return to his house near Kankakee.

I’M SURE HE isn’t pleased this morning seeing his name crop back into the newspapers and on their websites in conjunction with Fardon – who most recently has been an attorney in private practice with the Latham & Watkins law firm.

But in his career, he also has worked in the U.S. attorney’s offices based in Chicago and Nashville – reaching the level of the second-in-command in the “Music City” office before coming to the Second City office and having to handle the ordeal of prosecuting Ryan back in 2006.

BLAGOJEVICH: What reward for him?

To read the newspaper accounts, Fardon beat out Lori Lightfoot – who was another of four people who were supposedly the finalists in the process that will still take a few months to complete before there’s a new person working at the Dirksen Building who can go about calling himself the “USA” (as in U.S. attorney).

Lightfoot -- who could have been the first African-American woman to get the top federal prosecutorial post -- used to be with the police department’s Office of Professional Standards – the entity that is supposed to investigate Chicago’s police department to ensure that its officers behave in accordance with the law, but often gets denigrated for allegedly turning their head to instances of police malfeasance.

WHILE I’M SURE they handle many of the cases that come before them in a completely legitimate way, they also get much public grief for those few cases where it turns out that a police officer misbehaved and they were not as aggressive as they should have been in terms of discipline.

In fact, I already have stumbled across some Internet comment (anonymous, of course) claiming that anyone affiliated with city government in any way ought to be disqualified from the federal prosecutorial post that has become an unofficial watchdog over Chicago’s municipal government.

There is, however, one element we should keep in mind. Nothing truly is official when it comes to the courts or justice system until it is signed off on.

DURBIN: Has yet to make final say

Who’s to say that the “vetting” process (that both newspapers report is still ongoing) will come up with something about Fardon that will be construed as a negative?

I’M NOT SAYING there is such a thing, or that if something does turn up it won’t be something completely trivial and stupid that doesn’t deserve to be a disqualifier.

Even then, there’s always the possibility that the process will be bogged down in partisan politics. The Senate has to confirm any appointment that President Barack Obama makes with the consultation of Illinois’ two senators (Richard Durbin and Mark Kirk).

Which means that presuming we know now for sure who will be the U.S. attorney might be a risky bet. You might be safer betting on the Chicago Cubs to not completely embarrass themselves this season!

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Will it become series of family affairs?

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, gained national attention on Friday when he became the only Republican in the Senate willing to say that he’d support the concept of gay couples being able to legally marry.

PORTMAN: Taking a stance

Why? It seems that Portman has a son who has “come out.” He has a son who is gay. Which led the senator to write in a commentary published by the Columbus Dispatch newspaper, “I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married.”

REGARDLESS OF WHAT one thinks of the issue, perhaps it is merely fact that we shouldn’t presume every single political geek with a “D” following his (or her) name will support the issue.

Or that every “R” is rigidly opposed.

Take the Capitol Fax newsletter out of Springfield, which earlier this week reported about a Democrat in the Illinois House of Representatives who wants his name in the “aye” column when/if the issue eventually comes up for a final vote in that legislative chamber.

But the legislator in question is married to a woman who is a devout Catholic who, as the newsletter describes it, “is absolutely, completely dead set against” gay marriage being legitimate.

PORTMAN’S VIEW ON the issue is influenced by the fact that he wouldn’t be able to face his son if he kept up his opposition on the issue – which he admitted he once legitimately felt.

As for the Democratic legislator? He probably wouldn’t be able to face his wife – who I would hope carries more weight with him than any of his constituents.

Those kind of family ties can have an influence on a public official. It is the reason why reporter-type people get pushy on occasion when trying to find out about a politician’s relatives.

There will be the instances where it matters – even if the other 99 percent of the time it is irrelevant.

WHAT INTRIGUES ME about this particular issue is the fact that it has become such a “yes” or “no” type of matter. There really isn’t a middle ground, particularly for those gay couples who feel like anything less than being able to marry deprives them of some sort of “right” that everybody else has.

Which is why I was amused by the unnamed Democratic legislator, who says he’s trying to figure out some sort of middle ground that would appease more conservative elements.

The Capitol Fax newsletter reported that the legislator would want to make for a stronger exemption in the law for religious organizations.

Although the measure that made it through the state Senate and is now pending in the Illinois House already contains legal language specifying that churches are not required to perform marriage services for those couples who don’t fit their vision of legitimacy.

IN SHORT, ONE can’t walk into a Catholic church and demand a marriage service. But the church can’t take actions to stop that person from going somewhere else in order to obtain the rites that make two people into one couple.

Attempts at compromise may well be futile!

Portman has the better position, in that the matter at the federal government level is before the Supreme Court of the United States. He won’t have to put himself on the record with a vote anytime soon. The anonymous legislator will!

It literally will come down to one of those issues where one will have to try to figure out which side they’d rather be on, and accept the fact that nobody can please everybody at any time – no matter how they vote.

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If I didn’t know better, I’d think there was a transportation-related conspiracy

As expected, the Chicago Transit Authority gave its approval this week to the implementation of a new system by which people would pay their fares for bus and elevated train rides.

Too costly a place to ride to, or park near?

One that would encourage people to pay larger sums of money up-front to purchase contactless cards. The way to persuade people to quit thinking in terms of paying for individual rides is to raise the fare – from the current $2.25 to $3 – for those customers.

OF COURSE, THOSE people catching an el train at O’Hare International Airport would get hit with a $5 fee for that single ride – all part of the rhetoric that says the only people who will really wind up paying the higher fare are those out-of-town tourists who decide to use the “el” during their Chicago visit.

As I wrote earlier this week, I sympathize with those activists who object to this new system, believing that people who rely on mass transit but don’t have the kind of cash to put up front into purchasing a card will get hit with the bulk of the higher fares.

I wasn’t shocked with the CTA approval. I would have been amazed if they could have been swayed.

But now I learn about how city officials also are considering changes in the fees that people pay when they use a downtown parking garage or lot.

AS IF THOSE fees weren’t already enough.

I know that the last two times I was in a situation where I had to drive an automobile into downtown Chicago and park it, I got hit with $34 fees – for leaving my car in a garage for not more than two hours each time.

CTA officials defended their own changes, in part, by saying that the new fare schedule will be complex – and that it is overly simplistic to portray anyone as having to pay an increased fare.

But after reading about the proposal made this week by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, I’m wondering if he’s determined to out-complicate the CTA.

FOR WHAT THE city has in mind, according to the Chicago Tribune, is to alter the taxes on parking fees from an escalating fee to a percentage-based system.

The people who literally are using the garages to park their cars for just a few minutes (or maybe up to 1 hour) could wind up paying less.

Like I wrote, my recent parking experiences in the downtown garages weren’t all that long – yet I still got whacked with what I consider to be a ridiculous fare. A fare that likely will be even higher when/if I get stuck paying it again.

All I know is that it truly discourages me from wanting to have my automobile with me when I have business to take care of in downtown Chicago.

YET THE THOUGHT of using mass transit to go downtown is something that could also become an expensive proposition.

I find Chicago’s downtown district too intriguing a place to want to avoid altogether (and I pity those people who claim they never set foot in or near the Loop). But it almost seems like certain people are determined to put financial obstacles to our ability to go downtown and stay there long enough to enjoy it!

You’d think these people with an interest in propagating the image of the city so as to bolster its economic potential to the max would be interested in avoiding moves such as these that wind up discouraging some people from wanting to come here.

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What becometh our Chicago Tribune?

It will be intriguing to see what becomes of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper that likes to think of itself as the voice of the Midwestern U.S. yet at times isn’t even the most important newspaper in Chicago.

How long until all the slots are filled with the same publication?

There are just too many people in our city who want nothing to do with the Tribune and its particular worldview for it to be the all-dominant creature that it believes itself to be. Although certain others swear by it (and sometimes at it, which makes it a part of Chicago's inherent character).

WHICH IS WHY it would be particularly amusing if there turns out to be some truth to the notions being spread about that Wrapports, Inc. (the current owners of the Chicago Sun-Times) wants to buy “Mother Tribune.”

Wouldn’t it be a kick if the Great Chicago Newspaper War ultimately was won by the Sun-Times? After all the generations of talk by Chicagoans that the Tribune (and its broadcast properties) were the great elephant in the realm of Chicago news creatures, the dinky (I mean that literally these days) Sun-Times prevails.

It’s just too bad that the tug boat-like building along the Chicago River is no longer their headquarters. The irony of that architecturally challenging (yet appealing in its own warped way) structure prevailing over the gothic Tribune Tower would just be too much.

Although on another level, a Sun-Times-related purchase would be completely depressing. That company has managed to take over so many of the local newspapers and turn them into a homogenous mass that it feels like there’s hardly any “press” left.

A CHICAGO-AREA MEDIA that consists of a Sun-Times/Tribune conglomerate, the Daily Herald of suburban Arlington Heights and the Munster, Ind.-based Times of Northwest Indiana sounds so miniscule.

Yet the latest rumor in the mill talks of the Koch brothers – those ideologues who like to use their money to try to impose a conservative bias upon all of us living in this society.

Supposedly, the brothers would like to have a few major newspapers with which to put their spin on the news reports we all consume.

We’ll all be reading the reports in coming weeks speculating about how the Kochs will restore the days of Col. McCormick – who until his death in 1955 was more than willing to use the pages of the Tribune to take on all his political enemies (who were numerous).

LEAVE IT TO them, and the Tribune will become the great enemy of President Barack Obama (even though the newspaper actually endorsed him in both presidential election cycles).

Now I realize the brothers have put out a statement that declines to comment about the possibility of their purchase. Although the tone of the statement in the LA Weekly newspaper is more along the lines of a couple of egomaniacs enjoying the attention without wanting to say anything.

So anything could happen, I suppose. We might get the Kochs. Or the Sun-Times crew becomes all-powerful in their efforts to turn the news reports into SPLASH, GRID, a daily Carol Marin video and the Jenny McCarthy we can endure in print!

It became known that billionaire Warren Buffett is NOT interested in including the Chicago Tribune in his splurge to develop a media “empire” across the country – largely because he doesn’t like the idea that the Tribune people are insisting on selling all their publications in one shot rather than splitting them up amongst local ownership.

NOT THAT I'M saying he's some sort of savior. If anything, he wants the publications in smaller-scale communities where no one expects the same type of investment in the product that is required to make a major metro daily paper worth reading.

 

MURDOCH: A 'journalistic' savior?

But when one looks at the possibility of ideologues or trivialogues taking over the one-time World’s Greatest Newspaper, I have to confess that the rumors having Rupert Murdoch come back to Chicago a quarter of a century after he sold his interests in the Sun-Times don’t sound quite so awful. At least he's devoted a life-time to the printed word; no matter how cheesily his publications have displayed it.

Rupert Murdoch as the “savior” of Chicago journalism?!? Who’d have ever thought it possible!

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EXTRA: Francis, the 1st Americas pope

FRANCIS: As American as anyone in U.S.

I have to confess – when I first learned that the College of Cardinals had managed to pick a new pope Wednesday (I was sitting in an auto repair shop and a television set happened to be turned on), my initial reaction was to think that they had reverted back to tradition of picking Italians to head the Catholic Church.

Yet I quickly realized that while the one-time Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio may be Italian in ethnic origins, he is very obviously the first American pope.

HE’s FROM ARGENTINA, and he had been the cardinal based in Buenos Aires to head the Catholic Church in that region of the world.

Which means he’s a reminder that I think people in this country often need – not every European who chose to immigration to the Americas wound up in the United States.

Pope Francis was born in Argentina – but is the child of immigrants who made their way to a new country to try to build a better life for their families (all five of their kids).

One of whom grew up to be the Pope – so perhaps they didn’t do so badly!

OTHERWISE, WE’RE NOT going to be in for any significant change, even though some want to believe that a non-European pope means “radical” change for the church.

It’s not like the new Pope Francis (he gets the “I” added after his name if there ever is a Pope Francis II in the future) has many stances on issues that differ from the official rhetoric of the Catholic Church.

Which means we’re still in for the partisan fights amongst Catholics as to who is legitimately “Catholic” enough to qualify.

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Are cash-less cards unfair for regular users of mass transit programs?

I remember the days when one actually got a reward at a gas station for using cash INSTEAD OF a credit card to pay for their motor fuel, I also recall the day when one dumped a token into the fare box on board the bus in order to get a ride.

So perhaps it is a sign of my advancing age that I see the new way in which the Chicago Transit Authority wants people to pay their fares for a bus or elevated train ride and can’t help but be repulsed by the change.

FOR IT SEEMS that the CTA is joining the ranks of entities that wants to view cash as a problem – largely because it requires real live employees to handle properly.

Having some sort of card that one scans, or perhaps even just swipes, may soon become the preferred way of paying one’s fare – to the point that the CTA may start penalizing people who pay for their individual rides with cash.

The Chicago Tribune has reported in recent days about the new Ventra system that the CTA wants to implement this year. It would entail purchasing special cards that would have credit pre-loaded onto them. Then, you just swipe your card each time you use the CTA for your transit needs.

You’d have to update your card periodically for more credit. But I’m sure the CTA likes the idea of you just giving them large sums of money – without thinking specifically about how much you’re actually spending.

THE FINANCIAL INCENTIVE to sway people to use this new system (rather than just reject it as some hokey, new-fangled gadget)? CTA officials are considering a plan by which the basic fare for a single bus or el train ride would rise to $3 – up from the $2.25 they currently charge.

Heck, I can remember when bus rides were 90 cents, with an extra dime for the transfer. And I know there is the older generation that can remember when CTA rides were even significantly cheaper than that.

I realize that costs increase with time. Inflation, after all. So I’m not necessarily complaining about the rise in price. Although it makes me thankful that I don’t use mass transit as often these days as I used to. I think I’d be perpetually broke if I were a daily user.

But I can sympathize with those activists who are taking up the cause of lower-income mass transit riders who aren’t going to want to have to shell out so much money at once and are more likely to pay for rides individually.

THEY’RE THE ONES who will wind up having to pay more money so that the rest of us will be able to have a “contactless fare card” with which to pay for those rides we take on those occasions when we’d rather not be bothered with having to park an automobile.

Considering the cost of legal parking in Chicago, they may argue that even a higher-costing CTA ride is still a financial bargain!

But it still is cheesy to hit certain people with a higher fare for not using the new device – whose main purpose like I wrote earlier is to reduce the amount of human staff necessary to process all that cash that would otherwise need to be counted out.

I don’t expect CTA officials to be swayed by any of this.

THE CTA’S BOARD is scheduled to meet Wednesday, and likely will vote on the matter at that time. I expect it will be regarded as a vote for technological progress, and all those activists who bother to show up to complain will be dismissed as somehow wanting to live in the past.

Yet there were some things about the past that were preserving – such as the idea of a bus ride and transfer that one could pay for with just a dollar bill (and not having to worry about juggling all kinds of extra change).

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The case that just won’t wither away

Political observers have been so caught up in the pending fate of Jesse Jackson, Jr., that it almost seems like the case surrounding Bill Beavers has withered away.

BEAVERS: Will he speak?

It hasn’t!

IN FACT, THIS particular legal battle will come back to life this week, as the postponed trial of the Cook County commissioner will finally get underway – after having started up back in December, only to be put on hold ‘til this week.

It is interesting for the way that the Jackson and Beavers families have tried to set themselves up as the political powerbrokers for the South Side. Now, it’s like the area is leader-less.

In fact, I recall one political pundit suggesting that the special primary election for the Illinois Second Congressional District seat was influenced by that fact – since local voters for the first time in a long time didn’t have a Jackson or a Beavers telling them who they should vote for.

Could Robin Kelly’s efforts to gain influence in the Congressional post be aided by the fact that she may not have either a Jackson or a Beavers standing in her way to try to keep her from becoming too powerful?

THERE IS A sad aspect to this political situation – mostly that both Jackson and Beavers appear to have been taken down for “criminal” affairs that border more on stupid than venal!

Jackson is the guy who pleaded guilty recently (and faces sentencing some time in June) for using money from his campaign fund to make all kinds of personal purchases.

JACKSON: Awaiting his fate

He’s going to be the guy who took all those financial donations made to his fund and used them to buy Michael Jackson’s hat (too bad he couldn’t get the iconic glove!) and all kinds of other bits of “memorabilia.”

I suppose he could have tried claiming that he was buying them to decorate the Congressional office, and that they would have been passed down to whomever eventually succeeded him in office. I wouldn’t have bought it, mainly because I would think a future member of Congress wouldn’t want to be burdened with such junk.

AT LEAST BEAVERS didn’t bother to accumulate all kinds of junk with the purchases he made using campaign funds that federal prosecutors want to claim are criminal in nature.

For Beavers is the guy who, like many other South Side residents, likes to indulge his gambling tendencies at the casinos in Northwest Indiana.

Not that far across State Line Road, literally, is the Horseshoe Casino, where prosecutors say he spent a good share of the $225,000 in campaign funds that was not properly reported as income (which means paying a share of it as taxes to the Internal Revenue Service).

As though if Beavers had reported the income and paid taxes, there’d be nothing illegal about him using the rest of the money to gamble with.

NOT THAT THE public would feel that way. They’d be just as outraged. But this is the technicality upon which the feds will be out to get Beavers. Which literally does make it seem a bit like Al Capone – except that Beavers’ underlying actions are nothing more than being a political blowhard (not like Capone being the bootlegger in violation of the now-defunct Volstead Act).



KELLY: No Jackson or Beavers in her way



What will be interesting about this case is whether anyone buys into Beavers’ claim that he’s being persecuted by the federal government because he wouldn’t wear a wiretap and help gain evidence against fellow Cook County commissioner John Daley.

I’m skeptical, in part because that “Daley” name is held just a bit too sacred by too many people. Besides, the only way Beavers gets to bring up that claim during his trial is if he’s willing to actually say it for himself by testifying.

Beavers using his sense would keep his mouth shut. But then that turns this trial into a petty tax case that was hardly worth the government’s effort to prosecute – except to the degree that it satisfied the political partisanship of certain people who couldn’t beat Beavers (or Jackson, for that matter) on Election Day.

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