Carp Diem

* The Sun-Times asked Rep. La Shawn Ford last week how he felt about his voting button being pressed “Yes” during the “Smart Grid trailer bill” vote when he actually opposed the bill…
Rep. La Shawn Ford (D-Chicago), a rate…

Bloomberg Businessweek

No, not races. Show.

Cook County Forest Preserve staffers who want to live in the deeply discounted government housing dotting the region’s woodlands and wetlands will now have to prove they can work a chain saw and put out a fire. 

* Illinois Statehouse News compiled a list of defeats by Gov. Pat Quinn last week…
Smart Grid
A plan to modernize Illinois’ utility infrastructure through customer rate hikes sailed through the Legislature. Lawmakers overrode Quinn’s veto of…

LAKE COUNTY – Still anticipating confirmation that State Senator Suzi Schmidt has decided to not seek re-election in 2012, Illinois Review received notice this morning that Lake County Tea Party leader Lennie Jarratt has thrown his hat into the GOP…

* My weekly syndicated newspaper column is about an unknown, but very big campaign finance loophole. I told subscribers about this last week, but as yet nobody else has picked it up. So, here it is…
An apparent legislative drafting error has cr…

Mr. Mahajan raised tens of millions in campaign funds for former Gov. Rod Blagojevich, and the bank made a mortgage loan to the wife of disgraced political operator Tony Rezko, enabling her to buy the lot next to then-U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s Kenwood home. The deal was a cause célèbre in the 2008 presidential campaign after it became known that the Rezkos flipped part of the lot to the Obamas.

Read more at Crain’s

Private, unpretentious and humble are a few of the words friends and acquaintances use to describe Amy Rule, the wife of the city’s intensely public mayor, Rahm Emanuel.