Endorsements for 2011 municipal elections.

Bring this into your local polling place and give me a few more votes.

Chicago has become a kingdom or, more like one of those Caribbean kleptocracies maybe. Mayor Daley has privatized important institutions left and right that were meant for the public good. He did so with no explanation and with the consent of a city council under his political thumb. He just mumbled and stuttered to reporters as his associates one after another took the fall for him and landed themselves in prison. He learned it from his father. He proved the angry, impulsive, privileged brat Harold Washington said he would be and we pay for it in Chicago. We literally pay for it.

What an opportunity for democracy in Chicago since our benevolent dictator decided to bail out just before his numerous mistakes hit the fan. It clearly is time for change in Chicago. Chicago needs candidates with common sense, an ability to make wise decisions and lead, and someone willing to share the decision-making process with the people of Chicago and the City Council they elect. In the end, it is time to remove the bullies from city government and give government back to the people. The bullies are there with their money and muscle, and Chicago has to block them out and force run-offs to increase democracy in a town where democracy is our only solution.

For Mayor Miguel DelValle

Miguel DelValle is like Mayor Daley in only two ways. He is a veteran of city politics. He is a loyal Democrat. He is unlike Daley in every other way imaginable. He is even-tempered (unlike Braun), open (unlike Emanuel), democratic (unlike Chico), and from the people (unlike all of the above). When it all hits the fan, DelValle is the best candidate to be sitting in the driver's seat of City Hall, mostly because he will not do everything himself.

DelValle will work with the City Council instead of forcing it to do his will. He will put cops in charge of the police department, professional educators in charge of CPS, and so on. He is the only candidate running who will not sell the City of Chicago to big business and political cronies. Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico, the front-runners are ready to do both.

Emanuel, not even legally allowed to run for the mayor's office according to a literal interpretation of state law, managed to bully the courts through the party. He is from the very banks that precipitated our current financial crisis. Most of his millions in campaign cash comes straight from those banks and from out of town. Where one's money is, one's heart is and Rahm's heart is on Wall Street.

When he is elected, in the name of balancing the budget, Rahm will sell Chicago to the highest bidder. Public schools will be closed and corporations will be invited to build new "charter schools" that foster failed corporate mentalities. Rahm has floated the idea of putting advertising on required city stickers and on garbage trucks. Daley's parking meter deal, sale of bus stops, and leasing on the Skyway will look tame compared to whatever Rahm has planned. (It is hard to know what Emanuel wants, since he avoids the press, which, for some reason fawns over him.)The idea of public trust is foreign to Emanuel and the other front-runner Gery Chico, but the public trust is a central theme of DelValle's campaign.

See http://www.delvalleformayor.com/ for DelValle's official message.

For 45th Ward Alderman John Garrido

The 45th Ward race has become a classic in local politics. Words and lawsuits, and even bullets now are flying. Ward politics is tough, gritty, and the 45th Ward has been represented by an imperially-minded bully made for such nasty games, Pat Levar, for almost two decades.

Levar barrels through his ward like a medieval baron, physically picking on his serfs and eating everything in sight. He has made a a habit of using TIF funds set aside for schools and police protection to see to it that shady massage parlors, tattoo shops, pawn shops, and abortion clinics can go up in his working class ward. He sent his kids to private schools while the neighborhood schools starved for help. He rubber stamped everything the mayor sent him in City Council. He was a failure at keeping the streets up, but a master at selling zoning ordinances.

Levar's support was waning and so he decided to get out of the race due to health reasons. This left an open seat in the City Council and sent his opponents into overdrive. Most of these opponents were active community organizers and many had an open ear to the community's needs. Two in particular, John Garrido and John Arena promised increased democracy for a ward starving for it. Fearing the loss of their gravy train, the Democratic Machine set up an obscure union worker Marina Faz-Huppert to run in the ward. Her signatures were gathered at the last minute and many were signatures that appeared on the petitions of other candidates.

Faz-Huppert, however, has voted as recently as 2009 from a residence in Riverside. Her campaign literature until the last days of the campaign were mailed from a downtown office. Her ties to Saint Cornelius Church, a cornerstone in the community, were recent and fleeting. People saw right through this and, despite her concerted efforts to "reach out", she is seen as the machine candidate. She has spent almost a quarter million dollars of party money to send vacuous mailings daily to the voters of the ward and has been an expert at plopping signs throughout the ward. She will probably be in a run-off with one of the other candidates simply because of her machine ties and machine endorsements, but she will sink fast in the final round of voting.

John Garrido, an active Chicago Policeman and lawyer, has come out ahead as the best choice for change. He was a big vote-getter in the race for Cook County president and is a steady voice for democracy and debate in the community. Garrido is no rubber stamp for the machine or mayor and has an open ear to the community.

He has lived and worked in the 45th Ward for many years and has run a grass roots campaign that managed to find great traction despite the ward's many many years of corrupt autocracy by Levar. Garrido has fought the resulting cynicism and delivered a message of hope for the future of the 45th. He would see TIF finds go where they were intended. He will make sure the community is not left to crime by reassessing the organization of the police. He has promised a transparent aldermanic office and I can personally attest that he has the integrity and humility to see this through.

If what the news says comes down and Rahm Emanuel wins in the first round, it will be even more crucial to send an independent voice like Garrido's to City Hall.

See http://johngarrido.com/ to read up on the issues and see him in action around Jefferson Park.

I can't afford Chicago Democrats right now
Hypocrites rob from the poor and give to themselves as economy tanks

Word on the street is that the U.S. is in the middle of a recession. Struggling businesses are laying people off. Ten percent of Americans are reviewing their budgets and cutting their spending because they are facing unemployment. They are going without the movies and trips to Six Flags. Tough times call for responsible spending.... that is, unless you are a Chicago Democrat. When they have trouble making ends meet, they just tap into that "never-ending" pot of money that comes from taxes.

The Democratic party considers itself the defender of the poor and downtrodden. The voice of the weak. The modern-day Robin Hood. A few weeks ago, in a presentation to my students at Taft, our Congressional representative Jan Schakowsky used some very Robin Hood-like rhetoric.

When asked by my student about the economy, she responded that it was high time there was "an evening out" of wealth. Perhaps, that rhetoric is more Marx than Robin Hood, but, whatever the case, all it is is rhetoric and nothing else. In action, she and her fellow Chicago Dems are a bunch of hypocrites and crooks. I will not waste my time delving into the specifics of Schakowsky's lobbyist husband's years in prison for fraud. That kind of corruption costs us a lot of money and I cannot afford it.

Mayor Daley is too expensive.

I cannot afford Mayor Daley and his paternalistic approach to governing this city. I am just sick of it. He has made a mockery of his responsibility and has time and time again sold out his duties. He has been looking for a buyer for our city-run airports. He sold every parking meter in the city to an outside agency and has installed more cameras at intersections to monitor and automatically ticket. (What about when I demand my constitutional right to question my accuser. Will the camera come to court and SPEAK?) He has doubled fees for city stickers and has signed into law a water bottle tax of five cents per bottle. (That adds up, when you buy a case.)

His Renaissance 2010 plan has been a nightmare. Almost $50 million of state funding goes to the Civitas CICS charter schools in Chicago, which consider their private schools when teachers ask to unionize. When Daley and CPS dole out the money, the CICS schools become public schools. Recently an overcrowded grade school in Albany Park was about to be relieved by the building of a new, bigger building. When the new school opened, it was not offered to the community in need, but to another private charter school company. It is still closed off to the neighborhood.

Daley backstabs his constituents almost daily. When challenged, he throws around flippant remarks and snickers with reporters. It is all a big joke to him that his people are leaving the city. It is not important that the people who made Chicago great are having to leave their neighborhoods, often to intruding wine-sipping yuppies from out of state in search of "something authentic." (There is little authenticity to the suburban blandness they grew up with.) The hard-working, beer drinking Chicagoans have to get out of the way. We do not tip as well as these intruders.

Daley has sold out the city. This weekend, he drove me up the wall, when it was reported that the city was going to install new parking meters at $1 per hour in the city parks, most notably in Lincoln Park. Failure to keep up with the meters results in a $50 ticket. But, don't worry, the mayor is going to install credit card machines.

What makes Chicago unique is that its park stretches for miles and miles along the cool lakeshore. This was part of our city charter in 1833 and was realized by Burnham's plan in 1909. This is in our city's design and is part of its spirit.

People go down to the lake to escape the heat and soul-crushing of the city. They spend the day and swim and play and cook out. This is especially true of the poor in Chicago who find relief in the parks and live amiably there with their more wealthy neighbors. So who does this new tax hit the hardest? Who is most prevented from enjoying the park? That's right. The poor. The people the Dems claim they defend.

And Mayor Daley's response? With a self-assured, cocky smile, he explained that this would free up parking so more people could enjoy the park. He did not mention the millions of dollars that he would reap as a result, mostly on the backs of the already struggling poor. Disgusting.

Mike Madigan and Pat Quinn are too expensive.

Even more problematic for the Chicago taxpayer is the corrupt and monolithic state government in Springfield. Now that their corrupt, bribe-taking embarrassment of a governor is gone, they have installed a new embarrassment named Pat Quinn. Quinn used to be a reformer who spoke often of the people and claimed to represent the voters. (It is an easy thing to do when you have no power.) As governor, he has been nothing more than a puppet for the Dem machine run by powerful Michael Madigan.

He says we need to raise "funds", "revenue", and "capital" to balance the budget in Illinois. (He never calls them "taxes.") He claims it is the responsible thing to do. The government, he explains, is piling up debt since we are spending more than we are taking in.

It is not hard for some people to understand that when times are tough, one should try to spend less. But Quinn has taken the Dem approach and has decided to call for major tax increases across the board. He says it is high time since we have not raised taxes in years. So the defender of the voter has gotten started offering up Doomsday scenarios and urging for an orgy of tax and spend. With no opposition party to speak of in Illinois, he will get his way and the poor, once again will pay the most.

Dems responded by considering a state tax on alcohol, an item already heavily taxed at the local level. The poor, once again, will bear the brunt of this tax. They also are considering legalizing video poker machines to pay for schools. (Never mind that the state lottery was supposed to do that years ago.) These "amusement-only" machines, it is well-known, are operated by the Outfit. Syndicate reps come by to collect the money, splitting proceeds with the bartender who offers payouts from under the counter. A big time mob bookie in Chicago applauded the legalization and promised that he would give the state theirs as soon as he collected his portion.

This sort of collusion is unacceptable considering the already shady relationships that exist between mobsters and state politicians like state treasurer and former Syndicate banker Alexi Giannoulias. It is a disgusting way of governing, but they will do anything...

We cannot afford Obama and Pelosi

Chicago Dems reach far now that one of their own is president of the United States. Obama has been pushing for a partial state takeover of the private healthcare system. The American healthcare system is the strongest and most effective in the world, so it must be fixed right away.

One option for paying for this that was discussed enthusiastically by Senate Dems was an excise tax on sugary drinks. It is believed that sugary drinks like pop or beer or juice lead to diabetes, heart disease, and other unhealthy lifestyles. The demonized high fructose corn syrup, used to sweeten drinks in America, is fully subsidized by the government that now wants to tax it in an effort, they say, to modify behavior. They know we have no choice. They know what we are going to drink. Sometimes there are few other choices, especially true for the poor. So they are going to tax it.

And where has this money gone? The lobbyists who run our country made sure that $1.6 trillion dollars went straight to the banks. The defenders of the downtrodden, the Democratic party called it a bail-out. They said they were fixing the economy when they took the money out of the meager paychecks of the poor and send it along to the CEOs and big wigs in America's crooked banking industry.

And while they did it, Obama complained that the taxes benefited the rich. He said that he would be sure to give the poorest people in this country a break. And as he said it and offered them his "hope", his friends in Congress slipped their hands into the wallets of these same, poor Americans.

I cannot afford ignorance

We pay the highest gas prices in Illinois because of local taxes. We pay the highest parking fees in Chicago because of taxes. We pay the highest sales tax in the nation. Our road tolls recently were doubled. The list of taxes we pay is never ending and is growing now that the Dems have little opposition from the Republicans in Chicago, Springfield, or D.C.

Does anyone care? Does anyone remember what freedom was like? Is anyone interested? Will they vote in an opposition to stop this madness or do they buy the line the Dems are selling? That the Republicans have been destroyed, that they have no interest in the working man, that the G.O.P. is a collection of antiquated racists and yokels who miss W, a prty of intolerance. Why do Republicans jist sit there and take such abuse?

The day has come for real protest, like the April protests against taxes by thousands of citizens across America. (An exercise of First Amendment rights that Schakowsky called "despicable.") It is time to do what Americans do and get out our tar and our feathers and go to town on lobbyists, political puppets, and the bankers who took our money. It is time to take back our parks and to tear out the parking meters and throw rocks at the cameras that patrol our streets in place of cops. It's time to get on that phone and that Internet and call for change.

It is time to vote! Vote out the criminals who take our money in our time of most need and who sell us out. Vote out those who call freedom of speech when directed against them, "despicable." Show them who really runs things in our republic.