GOP offers 10K for Daley

[southsider2k5]

This is from John Kass of the Trib

 

When it comes to publicity stunts, I'm on Mayor Richard Daley's side, I think.

 

The Cook County Republicans offered a $10,000 bounty to anyone who provides information that puts Daley behind bars on corruption charges.

 

How rude. Naturally, the mayor's upset because he has a family. And I'm with the mayor on this one.

 

As a stunt, it sure got the Republicans some publicity, but it also gave Daley the opportunity to make a moving public appeal for sympathy, quivering his lip and trembling on camera, as if he's some kind of victim.

 

I've seen the boss of Chicago angrily reach out and crush little city workers who had spouses and bills and sick children who were in need of medical attention, but that wasn't the one seeking sympathy on Wednesday. It was the other one, the quivering Daley, the one unsure and afraid.

 

Not that Daley is above publicity stunts himself. The latest stunt is that civic and business leaders hope he'll bring the Olympics to Chicago when he's in his 70s. This is designed to reassure us that business leaders aren't panicky just because federal corruption investigators are swarming around the mayor's office.

 

"I understand in this atmosphere that everything appears to be fair game," the mayor said of the bounty, his voice choking, as everybody at City Hall predicted when news first broke about the $10,000 finders fee for crooks.

 

"But this stunt was below the belt. It was deeply offensive to me, my family and I do not appreciate it. I have children. I have a wife. I have nieces and nephews and other family members, and for them to be exposed to that kind of hatred to me is patently unfair.

 

"... I just can't understand why anyone would ever have that much hatred in someone. I have been doing this for a long time and ... things can get real ugly and dirty and messy, but I think this really crosses the line."

 

So I called Gary Skoien, the new Cook County Republican chairman to find out about all his hatred for Daley's family. But he's got other problems--his organization doesn't even have the $10,000 it is promising for the snitches.

 

"We'll get it," he said.

 

Then I asked him what Daley suggested in his almost blubbering remarks. Gary? Are you evil?

 

"What about all the people who pay taxes and send their kids to school, and work hard, and his administration gives out hundreds of millions of dollars to insiders and phony minority contractors," Skoien said. "We didn't discuss his family, his children. This isn't about them. It is about him."

 

But why do it as a stunt?

 

"What's a bigger stunt, us offering a reward for whistleblowers or him standing up there and telling the people that he doesn't know, that he can't remember, that he doesn't know what's going on? Whose families are better off?

 

What's a bigger stunt?

 

"Yes, what's a bigger stunt?" he asked.

 

OK, a bigger stunt is Daley drinking with white guys at the Como Inn and a short time later he transforms them into blacks and females and they receive $100 million in city affirmative-action contracts. And Jesse Jackson pretty much keeps his mouth shut.

 

Then, in federal court, Daley's pals become white again, but Daley doesn't know how it happened. Then U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. opens his mouth to criticize.

 

That's a bigger stunt.

"You get the idea," Skoien said.

 

After we hung up, I couldn't stop thinking about some stupendous political stunts, although the Republicans probably wouldn't go for them.

 

Like a $10,000 bounty for those Republicans who predict the number of times indicted former Gov. George Ryan will be compared to Abraham Lincoln before his corruption trial, scheduled for September.

 

Or how about another $10,000 bounty to figure out why local Republicans kept their mouths shut when now-indicted city water boss Don Tomczak was using tainted Hired Truck campaign money and an army of Daley political payrollers to elect his son as the Republican state's attorney of Will County?

 

While the mayor got so emotional at City Hall, a strange thing happened a few blocks to the south, in federal court, where Daley's patronage chief, Robert Sorich, was facing federal charges in the job-rigging investigation.

 

Michael Goggin, lawyer for Sorich, admitted that he inadvertently leaked the names of dozens of confidential FBI witnesses who had talked about the City Hall scams. Those witnesses have families too.

 

Goggin gave the list to Mara Georges, Daley's City Hall lawyer. Goggin said he didn't realize that the list was under federal court seal.

 

There were no cameras in the courtroom, and I'm sure that the mayor's emotional outburst will garner more attention than the leaking of City Hall witnesses' names.

 

But that sure was some stunt.

 

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[OldRetiredGuy]

There is still corruption in Chicago government? I'm shocked. I would have thought that was all solved back in the 70s after the Shakman Decree. I worked for the city during the patronage days in the late 50s and early 60s. We took it for granted as the way of life. You got a job by knowing someone who usually won an election.

[JUGGERNAUT]

I saw that as well as the glitzy ad against the Gov. Apparently the GOP think both of these guys are very vulnerable. Isn't it a little early to be spending campaign $'s like this?

[Yossarian]

A half a century of Daley rule has been catastrophic in Chicago. Downtown and the north Loop are prosperous. Neighborhoods that used to be no mans lands are gentrifying, those two I'll grant you. However taxes, which were high in the 60's are now beyond obscene. The number of manufacturing jobs lost since the first Daley took over in 1955 numbers in the hundreds of thousands. I could literally name dozens of once solid neighborhoods that are either languishing in decline, or have become too expensive for normal working families. This is good? I thought the Democrats were for the little guy. It would make me joyous to see Richie Daley in prison garb. It probably won't happen however he may be unelectable in 2007, opening the door to Jackson the junior. Chicago has been able to avoid the more severe fate that other rust belt cities like Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Cleveland and Detroit suffered. With a Jesse Jackson Jr. administration in the mold of the late Coleman Young, the Detroitification of Chicago might really begin in earnest. I always thought that the machine dumping of Martin Kennelly in 1955, which opened the door to the reign of the Daleys and their politburo style government big city American style was a terrible mistake.

Edited July 28, 2005 by Yossarian

[southsider2k5]

The guy who offered the bounty on Daley just got fired as COO of Prime Groups Inc over this mess.

 

http://www.nbc5.com/news/4784452/detail.ht...994&dppid=65192

[Rex Kickass]

Bring back Jane Byrne! LoL

[juddling]

The guy who offered the bounty on Daley just got fired as COO of Prime Groups Inc over this mess.

 

http://www.nbc5.com/news/4784452/detail.ht...994&dppid=65192

 

 

in the news this morning, i think it was WLS, they reported that the guys' boss said that Daley was a friend of his, Daley was embarrassed, and the guy was fired. The guy's boss didn't say "he embarrassed the board" he did it to a personal friend of the boss and got fired for it. Personally, i think Daley is eye deep in ALOT of the s*** that happens in chicago and will get busted someday. Besides...why doesn't Daley just do what he does at his press conferences concerning his corrupt buddies and just snort, smirk, and say "i'm just the mayor. I can't know everything that goes on."

 

I would love to see that guy sue his boss and win.

 

 

juddling