Progress Illinois

How did a vulnerable McCain camp rebut attacks about the Repbulican's inadequate real estate knowledge? Drudging up his military service, of course. Because the two are very related.

[Spokesman Brian Rogers] also added: "This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

But that defense wasn't enough for the campaign. They've also decided to attack Obama over his past dealings with convicted political fundraiser Tony Rezko. Politico's Jonathan Martin notes that the McCain camp has released swaths of opposition research on this front, including the following nugget:

Obama Paid $300,000 Less Than The Asking Price For His Mansion, While Tony Rezko's Wife Paid Full Price For A Vacant Lot Next Door On The Very Same Day. "Two years ago, Obama bought a mansion on the South Side, in the Kenwood neighborhood, from a doctor. On the same day, [Antoin 'Tony'] Rezko's wife, Rita Rezko, bought the vacant lot next door from the same seller. The doctor had listed the properties for sale together. He sold the house to Obama for $300,000 below the asking price. The doctor got his asking price on the lot from Rezko's wife." (Tim Novak, "Obama And His Rezko Ties," Chicago Sun-Times, 4/23/07)

It's the same old suggestion: by purchasing the adjacent lot for the full price, the Rezkos allegedly helped the Obamas save $300,000 on the actual house.  Unfortunately, it isn't just the McCain campaign advancing the claim these days. 

Continue reading »

We've already pointed out that EveryBlock rocks. And apparently our local print outlets feel the same.

Recently, the Tribune and Sun-Times both partnered with the Chicago-based hyperlocal news and info aggregator. Each paper's website now features one of EveryBlock's custom city maps, geo-coded with recent news stories from the outlet. This allows readers to zoom into their neighborhood -- or right down to their block -- and browse the area for site-specific news reports.

You can find the Sun-Times' map here and the Tribune's here.

It didn't pop up in a news article. Or even an op-ed. No, the false claim that China is drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico -- peddled at times by Vice President Dick Cheney and GOP Rep. Mark Kirk -- has now been relegated to the letters to the editor section of the Daily Herald:

Why won't they allow drilling wherever there is oil in our country?

Every industry in the United States uses oil in some form to conduct business.

Cuba is allowing China to drill for oil just 60 miles off the Florida coast. I'm sure that reserve extends into our territory.

This is another disconnect that just doesn't make sense at this time. Our representatives see disconnects in others but never in themselves.

Thankfully, they published a rebuttal from another reader several days later. But why print this hogwash in the first place?

Last week, Mayor Richard Daley took the media to task for their coverage of police brutality charges, suggesting that the risk of bad headlines is making Chicago cops timid. During the rant, he said: "Remember how long you kept beating the police? That affects them. They’re human beings. They can’t take it. I’m the mayor. You can beat me up every day. That’s your job." Take a listen:

Internal mp3

But maybe he can't "take it" after all. Yesterday, Daley appeared to ask reporters to pay more attention to their brethren and less attention to politicians like himself:

News media too often portray communities as crime-ridden, Mayor Daley told journalists at McCormick Place on Wednesday. "Don't look at the politician. Look at the journalists and what they are reporting continuously, 24 hours a day, seven days a week," Daley told black, Hispanic, Asian-American and Native American journalists at the UNITY '08 conference."You have to be able to balance." WLS-Channel 7's Linda Yu, co-host of the UNITY '08 ceremony, responded: "Thank you for the reminder."

(H/T Beachwood Reporter)

Yesterday's "Tuesday Commentary" on WTTW's Chicago Tonight went toTribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice, who voiced her hope that Chicago police will "step up" in the face of the city's rising violence without resorting to brutality. She also took aim at Mayor Richard Daley's ridiculous statement last week that fear of unfair media coverage has made officers timid, calling this suggestion "nothing short of shameful." Watch it:

Also of note, in a Sun-Times op-ed last Sunday, Chicago activist and journalist Jamie Kalven (full disclosure: he's my father) responded to Daley's remarks:

It is a first principle of our democracy that public officials in whom we vest substantial power must be subject to public scrutiny. This principle applies every bit as much to the police officer on the street as to the high government official.

We give the police great powers -- to arrest and detain, to use force, and, under certain circumstances, to kill -- and we allow them considerable discretion in performing their duties. Public scrutiny is the necessary antidote to abuses of those powers.

For Daley to suggest that officers must be sheltered from core democratic principles in order to show up for work is a diservice to both the police and the communities they serve.

Bad news for Chicagoans who value the Fourth Estate: Maurice Possley, a Tribune investigative reporter who helped bring about the state’s death penalty moratorium, is resigning from the paper before it trims roughly 60 newsroom staff positions.

From Crain's:

Mr. Possley’s decision was based on what he referred to as the “stunning . . . dismantling of our newspaper in such a short time,” according to his note.

“I always had envisioned retiring from the Tribune, but events of the past year, including (Editor) Ann Marie (Lipinski’s) resignation, convinced me that now is the time for me to seek my fortune elsewhere,” Mr. Possley wrote.

It's been said before, but the decision by Sam Zell and the Tribune front office to focus on a not-so-snazzy redesign of the paper just isn't a sound use of resources. Steve Rhodes elaborates:

Redesigning newspapers, by the way, as the Trib is now doing, will not garner many new readers no matter how snappy. It's too late for that. The cycle of habit has been broken. The purpose of the print product now ought to be as a supplement to the website. And putting consumer and entertainment news front and center is an awful idea. Strip the paper down to news and news only. You can't compete with stale entertainment news. Then develop new print products, like a sports weekly, a photo weekly, a local Onion . . . it's time for newspapers - and their websites - to disaggregate. Ironic, isn't it?

During his marathon session before a City Council committee yesterday, Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis suggested that many of his officers were not doing their jobs properly in part because of intimidation:

"I have heard from many officers that there is a degree of timidness -- that people are not maybe as engaged as they should be because of fears of lawsuits, fears of [complaints registered] being put against them by criminals and by other folks who are just trying to impugn their integrity," the superintendent said.

Mayor Richard Daley came to Weis' defense today, unleashing a nasty rant directed at local media for sensationalizing poor police conduct. Here's an excerpt:

“Remember how long you kept beating the police? That affects them. They’re human beings. They can’t take it." [...]

“This is a very difficult, challenging job and they’re always afraid of beefs because, once they get a beef, you [reporters] write about it. [You say], ‘He has 25 C.R. numbers [complaints registered], all unfounded.’ You say, ‘Why? This fella must be a problem’. And you find out most of them are gangbangers and dope dealers [who] filed charges. And they didn't show up in court or adminstrative hearings. [Yet] you write about it….You beat em up pretty good. Now, you want to be their friend.”

But while Daley's remarks suggest that reporters have ready access to the "C.R. numbers," this isn't the case at all. In fact, the only way the press or citizens can gain access to a specific officer's record of complaints is if a case works its way through the criminal courts and this information is offered as evidence. That is the entire point of the effort by 29 aldermen to gain access to a list of 662 officers with over 10 citizen complaints, which the city is fighting to keep private.

So Daley appears to be railing against a level of transparency that doesn't actually exist.

But that's not to say it shouldn't exist. Indeed, this ongoing lack of oversight sends an awful signal to Chicago citizens that the CPD and other leading city officials don't have their backs, particularly after years of neglecting to address the humans rights abuses taking place right under their noses.

UPDATE: WBEZ has the audio of Daley's press conference. 

Kossacks -- and later the Obama campaign -- erupted yesterday in response to this week's New Yorker cover, which features a cartoon depicting Barack and Michelle Obama "as fist-bumping, flag-burning, bin Laden-loving terrorists in the Oval Office." Both major Chicago papers come to the magazine's defense today, with the Tribune editorial board writing that the cartoon successfully lampoons the smear artists on the fringe right and the Sun-Times suggesting the cartoon "exposes irrational fears and doubts about the Obamas."

Over at Division Street, Steve Rhodes argues the satire lacked proper context and bombed as a result:

But on the cover, without cover language, or without the context of being attached to an article inside, the desired effect is lost. If, as Kelly McBride, head of the ethics faculty at the Poynter Institute has said, the cartoon’s title, “The Politics of Fear,” appeared on the cover as well, there would have been no problem. Or if the drawing was inside the magazine surrounded by an article giving it context. But alone on the cover without context - and with such a dead-on depiction of the way the Obamas are perceived and/or smeared by right-wing nutjobs - is too dry and removed to qualify as successful satire. The New Yorker is wrong, and I can’t remember such an egregious misstep by the magazine.

While I wouldn't go as far as Rhodes, I'm largely in agreement with both Matt Yglesias and Ta-Nehisi Coates, who argue that the satire doesn't work because it's not exaggerated enough; it only encapsulates and reflects what a decent size of the population actually believes about the Obama's. Indeed, it's tough to satirize destructive public perceptions without simply reinforcing them.

In the wake of the Jesse Jackson "incident," there's been a lot of talk about what the reverend meant when he said Barack Obama has been "talking down to black people." Both in private conversations I've had and in discussions I've observed on the airwaves, there seems to be an assumption that Obama has only stressed personal responsibility and good parenting when speaking to black audiences. For instance, check out Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell's claim on WTTW's Chicago Tonight last Friday that this is "not a conversation he has with white America":

But while it's true that Obama tends to linger on these issues a bit longer in front of predominantly black audiences and that he tends to employ a slightly different vernacular in those settings, Mitchell's assertion that he's not telling white audiences to turn off the TV and encourage their kids to study is false.

For instance, here's what he told an audience in Spirit Lake, Iowa, on December 16 of last year:

Parents, you’ve got to turn off the tvs and shut down the video games. [And] our students have to understand that education is not a passive activity. You don’t just tip your head over and have it pour in....You’re gonna hear me as President not just talking about programs--I’m going to be talking about our obligations to our kids.

And here's what the audience looked like:

In Youngstown, Ohio, on February 18, Obama hit on a similar theme.

Continue reading »

On WTTW's Chicago Tonight yesterday, the Sun-Times' Laura Washington echoed the widely-held sentiment that the controversy this week over Rev. Jesse Jackson's comments about Barack Obama represented a "huge favor" to the Democratic nominee. The logic is: A) white working class voters wary of electing a black president will be encouraged to see Obama and Jackson in a fight; and B) the flap preempted the rash of stories about unrest in progressive circles over Barack's perceived shift to the center.

Watch it:

The Reader's Mick Dumke expressed a similar opinion on Clout City yesterday:

The only people possibly damaged by Jesse Jackson's "I want to cut his nuts off" remark about Barack Obama are John McCain and the Reverend Jackson himself.

This is not like the racial-theory sermons of Jeremiah Wright and Michael Pfleger. Those clergymen were tagged as mentors and allies of Obama's at the time they were seen on tape giving extended diatribes about the sins of powerful white people. When you're a black candidate trying to convince skeptical heartland types that you really do love America, that sort of thing is a blow.

But when Jesse Jackson rips you for not being enough like Jesse Jackson, that's a blessing from the heavens.

Dumke goes on to make a convincing case that it was actually Jesse Jackson Jr. who benefited the most from the flap.

But while I see the broader "blessing" argument, I'd have to say the "curse" wins out here.

Continue reading »