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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn Mayoral Runoff, Rahm Emanuel’s Corrupt Governance Has Finally Caught Up With Him
Perhaps what turned some voters against Rahm at the last minute or motivated them to go to the polls in the first place on a cold Chicago day that started out in the single digits was an Election Day exposé that appeared in the British paper the Guardian by investigate reporter Spencer Ackerman. The Disappeared revealed the existence of Homan Square, a forlorn black site that the Chicago Police operate on the West Side.
There, Chicagoans learned many for the first time arrestees are locked up for days at a time without access to lawyers. One victim was 15 years old; he was released without being charged with anything. Another, a 44-year-old named John Hubbard, never left he died in custody. One of the NATO 3 defendants, later acquitted on most charges of alleged terror plans during a 2012 Chicago protest, was shackled to a bench there for 17 hours.
It struck legal experts as a throwback to the worst excesses of Chicago police abuse, with a post-9/11 feel to it, the Guardian reported. And for a candidate, Rahm Emanuel, who ran on a message he was turning the page on the old, malodorous Chicago way, the piece contributed to a narrative that proved devastating.
Indeed, the mayor faced a drumbeat of outstanding journalistic exposés all throughout the campaign. The Chicago Sun-Times reported on Deborah Quazzo, an Emanuel school board appointee who runs an investment fund for companies that privatize school functions. They discovered that five companies in which she had an ownership stake have more than tripled their business with the Chicago Public Schools since she joined the board, many of them for contracts drawn up in the suspicious amount of $24,999 one dollar below the amount that required central office approval. (Chicago is the only municipality in Illinois whose school board is appointed by a mayor. But activists succeeded in an arduous accomplishment against the obstruction attempts of Emanuel backers on the city council to get an advisory referendum on the ballot in a majority of the citys wards calling for an elected representative school board. Approximately 90 percent of the voters who could vote for the measure did.)
The Chicago Tribune reported that of Emanuels top 106 contributors, 60 of them received favors from the city. Another in-depth investigation discovered that City Hall had lied repeatedly about a signature initiative of the Emanuel years, automated cameras that issue tickets for the running of red lights. The administration insisted the cameras led to a 47 percent decline in T-bone crashes, when the true number was 15 percent and they also caused a corresponding 22 percent increase in rear-end collisions. That reinforced suspicions that the cameras werent installed for the safety of the children, as Emanuel sanctimoniously insists, but are a revenue grab, a regressive tax that falls disproportionately on the poor.
more emanuel coruption
http://billmoyers.com/2015/02/26/mayoral-runoff-rahm-emanuels-corrupt-governance-finally-caught/
Stuart G
(38,439 posts)The article and the link say more than I can.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)and was repaid $$$ enormously.
For instance, Rauner donated $300,000 to former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendells 2002 campaign. GTCR was, at that time, managing $110 million in pension funds for the states employee retirement system. After Rendells election, the state doubled its stake in GTCR funds to $226 million. Rauner had previously donated $40,000 to the DNC while Rendell was party chair.
According to IBTimes.com, Rauners firm has made millions managing state pension funds, including the $39 billion Illinois Teachers Retirement System (TRS) and the $13 billion State Board of Investment, conveniently run by gubernatorial appointees. He still has an ownership interest in fifteen GTCR entities, the report says, though he says he will put this in a blind trust.
Rauners firm also employed Rod Blagojevichs political fixer Stuart Levine, now serving five and a half years in federal prison, and paid him with a $25,000 per month consulting contract. Levine once testified that it was his job to get work for GTCRs CompBenefits by whatever means necessary, including paying bribes. He steered a $50 million contract to the company, paid a bribe for Chicago Public Schools pension work, and even conspired with Antonin Tony Rezko to get county contracts.
Rauners connections with Democrat political insiders run far and wide and even short, as is the case may be with Chicagos diminutive Mayor Rahm Emanuel. ...
http://spectator.org/articles/60914/think-twice-about-illinoiss-crony-republican-governor-elect
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)...majority the Dems have on the Illinois legislature. Many are crooked as a dog's hind leg and can be bought for a price...
cantbeserious
(13,039 posts)eom
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)Clearly this is the sort of misdirected Dem-hate that needs to be banned on DU.
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)We must be loyal no matter what!
Anansi1171
(793 posts)...whipping boy for conservatives, and rightly so. This Homan Square stuff - listen loudly to the pundits who say if you think this behavior is about a "black site", think again.
tech3149
(4,452 posts)I hope the fool is handed his hat and never considered for a voice of authority in any public sphere for as long as he shall live.
BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)Let's hope that Chicagoans get an epiphany and don't do the "vote for the devil I know" bit, and vote for Jesus Chuy García as their next Mayor.
RiverLover
(7,830 posts)2/25/15
...Lloyd Grove, writing in the Daily Beast in October 2011, detailed the vindictiveness between the two: "As White House chief of staff, Emanuel made sure to publicly humiliate Dean by banning him from the DNC announcement ceremony when Obama appointed Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine as Deans replacement. Media guru [David] Axelrod was equally scornfuland an April 2009 White House lunch did little to bury the hatchet." Once Emanuel left as chief of staff in late 2010 to run for his current post, Dean told Grove since Rahm left [to become mayor of Chicago], I get over [to the White House] a fair amount.
While the two mens' distaste for one another went into hibernation once Emanuel took over as Chicago's top elected official, it never went away. "We obviously have a difference of opinion about how you get people elected," Dean said at the University of Chicago in the fall of 2014. "When I came to the Democratic National Committee we didn't control the House, the Senate or the presidency. When I left after four years, we controlled the House, the Senate and the presidency. So I would say the results speak for themselves."...
...Dean and DFA claimed a partial victory in their long-running battle against Emanuel on Tuesday and promised to finish the job in the April 7 runoff. "In the weeks ahead, Democracy for America will not only work hard to help Chuy Garcia defeat Rahm...but harness that grassroots energy into a broad-based progressive movement that will bring Elizabeth Warren-style, populist progressive reform to Chicago in the years to come," Dean promised.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-fix/wp/2015/02/25/the-long-and-amazing-feud-between-rahm-emanuel-and-howard-dean/
BlueCaliDem
(15,438 posts)"In the weeks ahead, Democracy for America will not only work hard to help Chuy Garcia defeat Rahm...but harness that grassroots energy into a broad-based progressive movement that will bring Elizabeth Warren-style, populist progressive reform to Chicago in the years to come," Dean promised.
Thanks for the article. It's time I make another donation to the DFA.
Get'r done, DFA!
Then, hopefully, Rahm can join the snake-pit of the Republicans Party - right where he belongs.
HappyMe
(20,277 posts)They never wanted this crook in the first place. This guy has to go.
marym625
(17,997 posts)Ichingcarpenter
(36,988 posts)obxhead
(8,434 posts)He never could have won without that national spotlight.
jimruymen
(22 posts)What do you expect from an anti-union, pro Wall Street Democrat bully; with "Democrats" like this, who need enemies? Emanuel has made more than $18 million while in office with special privatization deals, working in concert with the newly elected right to work Republican governor.