The ostensible reason for the interview is that Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who had promised an open and transparent administration while campaigning for office, has been withholding internal communications, including emails, and otherwise denying Freedom of Information Act requests. The administration’s position is that the communications are confidential and privileged and are, therefore, not subject to disclosure. The stonewalling has backfired in a big way as journalists have begun to ask more basic questions along the lines of “What exactly is Emanuel hiding?”

It would appear that the brief Emanuel honeymoon with the press is over after less than ten months or so. Trampling upon the Bill of Rights and constantly seeking to raise taxes, fees and water rates will do that for you. Emanuel apparently does not like responding to questions. The former Tsar of Russia held the title of Supreme Autocrat, but when I last looked Emanuel was elected to serve as mayor, not as an emperor.

Less than one year ago, Rahm Emanuel (D-Wilmette) was elected to succeed Chicago’s longest serving mayor, Richard M. Daley, in a campaign that went to great lengths to show Emanuel was a really calm, collected and capable Chicagoan and nothing like his perceived public persona of a profane bully. Special emphasis was placed on Emanuel’s idyllic city childhood since his chief rival, Gery Chico, a graduate of the Chicago Public Schools, had referred to Emanuel’s actual background of suburban privilege as a wedge issue. In a poorly attended election, it did not matter.

2011 was not the first time that Emanuel had to conflate his biography. Rahm’s few brief years in spent in Albany Park had to be expanded upon ad nauseam when Emanuel placed the winning bid and secured the party blessing to succeed his erstwhile friend Rod Blagojevich in Congress in 2002. Running in the Illinois 5th Congressional District nevertheless had its advantages: the 10th Congressional District, where Emanuel had spent most of his life, was a competitive district that actually had an incumbent Republican (Mark Kirk) and, perhaps more importantly, some long time residents of New Trier Township actually knew and remembered Emanuel. In the 5th District, Rahm was unknown and could safely construct his own back story and narrative.

What could possibly have been a complaint against Emanuel in the North Shore district? It has been alleged that one point of adolescent commonality existed between President Obama and his first former Chief of Staff. Both men were labeled as choosing to hang with the burnouts and stoners in high school. Gary Aldrich’s now forgotten political expose’ “Unlimited Access” painted an unflattering picture of a foul mouthed Emanuel and some of the other staffers in the Clinton White House. Aldrich’s thesis was that many of these individuals would not have been granted security clearances to work in the White House under prior administrations for a variety of reasons. The casual morals and laissez faire attitudes of the Clintons made such concerns archaic. Obama has been much more open about his former wasted days and wasted nights than the ambitious Emanuel. Another factor may have been that Emanuel was not considered popular at New Trier High School owing to his general obnoxiousness. Similar rumors from Union City, Michigan, where Emanuel maintains a Summer vacation home, paint him as a less than beloved neighbor. Still, he is welcome up the road at David Axelrod’s lake cottage.

Thus far, Emanuel has proven as unpopular with the rank and file members of the Chicago Police Department as his predecessor. Many cops resent having another out of town applicant appointed to serve as police superintendent. Some officers have taken to calling His Honor “Tiny Dancer” and “Old Raccoon Eyes.” Maybe he should drink less coffee and try to get some more sleep.

Returning to the interview, I felt positively embarrassed for the mayoral staff member, Sarah Hamilton, who had to sit through the ordeal of their boss alternately praising himself, evading questions, criticizing the media and denying knowledge of whether or not he has a city owned cell phone. The distinction is that calls placed on a publicly owned telephone might be subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.

Emanuel conducted himself with all of the charm and diplomacy of the late Howard Cosell. Space limitations do not permit an analysis of all of the surly remarks, but two really seemed over the top. As he thrusted and parried with the Tribune reporter, David Kidwell, Emanuel made the following statements:

“I have been in an executive position, and — I mean this (is) insulting so get it right — you haven’t,” said Emanuel.

“I’ve been the chief of staff to the president of the United States, I have been a congressman, I have been elected four times. I have been in the leadership of the United States House of Representatives. I have been a senior adviser to the president of the United States, Probably the most public person, and this is in the record, who has been accountable along the way.”

I wondered if Rod Blagojevich would have had the audacity to tell Judge James Zagel that he was entitled to sovereign immunity on the basis of having been elected seven times. Using Emanuel’s reasoning, Blagojevich had to be bleeping golden since he was elected more often than Rahm, himself, right?

Emanuel continued in this vainglorious vein by crediting himself for a host of Democratic legislative and policy accomplishments since 1993. He stopped short of claiming credit for having perfected sliced bread and pasteurized milk.

Reading the entire transcript of the interview, I experienced a strange sense of déjà vu. It was as if I recalled the same thing having been played out as a dramatic and maudlin scene before. I was not imagining all of this. Compare the embarrassing portions of the Emanuel transcript to a lengthy monologue delivered by Jerry Lewis in Martin Scorsese’s “The King of Comedy,” which was released to theaters in 1983:

I’m sure you can understand. Doing the kind of show I’m doing, it’s mind-boggling. There’s so much stuff that comes down… you can’t keep your head clear. And if that’s the case, I’m wrong. You’re right. I’m wrong. If I’m wrong, I apologize. I’m just a human being… with all of the foibles and all of the traps… the show, the pressure… the groupies, the autograph hounds… the crew, the incompetence… those behind-the-scenes you think are your friends. You’re not sure if you’ll be there tomorrow… because of their incompetence. There are wonderful pressures that make every day… a glowing, radiant day in your life. It’s terrific. OK, if all of that means nothing… if I’m wrong, in spite of all that… then I apologize. I’m sorry. If you accept my apology… I think we should shake hands. We’ll forget the whole thing. I won’t press charges. You could be in deep trouble… but I will not press charges.

With careful editing, some of the movie script could be inserted into the interview transcript and no one would know the difference.

The Tribune interview was one part of an overall bad press week for the increasingly embattled mayor. Other reports questioned whether or not, Emanuel operatives have been compensating activists and protestors attending meetings of the Chicago Board of Education to publicly support the mayor’s proposed school reform agenda. Worse still, it seemed as if the Emanuel administration appeared to have had exploited the death a child to promote a new program to install even more traffic control cameras to detect speeding in school zones.

The distortion was the child, Diamond Robinson, named in talking points had not been killed while en route to school. The tragic accident actually occurred on a weekend. While the overall purpose of the initiative was to promote greater pedestrian safety and to reduce traffic fatalities, some of the pedestrian accident fatality facts and numbers used by the administration did not quite add up when subjected to close scrutiny either.

The lobbyist for one of the camera companies that would stand to benefit from an expanded camera program, which would also generate an estimated $70 million in increased ticket revenue for the city, happened to be Michael Kasper, who is also counsel to Illinois House Speaker Michael J. Madigan. Kasper, a man who wears many hats, is also one of the leading election law attorneys in the state. Approximately one year ago, Kasper helped Emanuel survive a nasty residency challenge to his mayoral candidacy by citing an obscure 1867 quo warranto action concerning a nominee for a judicial appointment that somehow trumped the plain meaning of the Illinois Municipal Code as to candidate residency requirements for elected officials.

Kasper’s wife, attorney Laura C. Liu, was appointed to a position on the Circuit Court of Cook County by the State Supreme Court on December 17, 2010. Since that time, Emanuel has endorsed Liu for election to a full judgeship on the court and helped her raise tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions. Such is the circle of life in the Cook County Democratic Party.

Drive safely.

Daniel J. Kelley is a recovering cinema patron and a contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer.”

image The Damned single “Neat, Neat, Neat”

Just twenty or so years ago, Barack Obama wouldn’t just have supported the Occupy protests.

He would have organized them.

From Stanley Kurtz’s essential Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism, pp. 117-8:

In fact, Obama personally helped plan one of UNO’s most confrontational actions of the eighties [in 1988]: a break-in meant to intimidate a coalition of local business and neighborhood leaders into dropping a landfill expansion deal.

Here’s UNO today, working insider deals and supporting Mayor Emanuel

In his ruling, available at the Thomas More Society website, the judge did not rule on the Dioceses’ claims of religious discrimination, but instead declared, in only about two pages, that the plaintiffs are not entitled to contract with the state.

The judge seems to have missed the point, possibly in trying to find an “easy” way to resolve this case. It is illegal for Illinois to discriminate against Catholic Charities on the basis of their religious practices about marriage, regardless of whether they have an independent “property right” in contracts.  Once the state decides to contract with agencies, it can’t religiously discriminate, and it is not excused in doing so on the theory that no one has an absolute entitlement to a contract.

Read more at Catholic Vote Action

image Pilgrims being chastised at World Youth Day in Madrid by anti-Catholic protestors

Don’t you think this outlaw bit has done got out of hand?
What started out to be a joke, the law don’t understand.

Waylon Jennings, the “Outlaw” Country legend, wrote the above in 1978, in a self examination of his public persona vs. the fact that he really didn’t like being arrested. Making himself out to be an “Outlaw” artist tended to attract not only other real outlaws, but law enforcement as well.

Wednesday night, aging Hip-Hop Artist Common visited the White House in what sounds like an excruciating evening of poetry reading along with former poets laureate Billy Collins and Rita Dove, singer (Sean Penn’s Sister-in-Law) Aimee Mann and comedian-musician Steve Martin and his bluegrass group the Steep Canyon Rangers.

Common’s poetry/lyrics feature the usual subjects of love, lust, violence, gunplay and per Karl Rove a call for violence against police officer, and called for killing the former president of the United States George W. Bush. Sean Hannity, Mike Medved and good chunk of the conservative media has condemned the invitation as a promotion of the negative aspects of American culture, with the implied connections of the Hip Hop and Rap Industry to the gangsterism and thuggishness.

Never fear, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney has defended the decision to invite Common.

“It’s ironic to pick out those particular lyrics and – about this particular artist, when in fact, he’s known as a socially conscious hip-hop artist or rapper who has done a lot of good things,” Carney said.

Carney also said the president opposed offensive lyrics.

which is perhaps the most striking to me. Why should the President of the United States have an opinion whatsoever on the lyrics of a particular artist? When Paul McCartney sang, “I used to be cruel to my woman/I beat her” did anyone need to care if LBJ opposed Paul’s meanderings, or was Lyndon’s silence an implied approval of Paul’s woman-beating?

I find it troubling that neither the Conservatives nor the Leftists can separate artistic work from real life. Not every song, not every movie, not every poetry reading needs some type of disclaimer on it to protect the customer from the unpleasantry of the art, nor is there much of any reason for the Government to be promoting one type of art over another.

I have enjoyed Waylon Jennings music for 30 years plus now, and I don’t plan to change to make Jay Carney and Karl Rove happy.  I have not listened much to Common, though I will if I want, and so can the President, without my objections.  I suggest if he objects to Common’s lyrics, that our Grammy winning President can try writing his own uplifting lyrics and can easily win another coveted award.

Here’s a little Cocaine Blues from 4 time White House visitor Johnny Cash (as played by Joaquin Phoenix) to get you through the day.

Early one mornin’ while makin’ the rounds
I took a shot of cocaine and I shot my woman down
I went right home and I went to bed
I stuck that lovin’ .44 beneath my head

**

John Powers is President of the Chicago Daily Observer.  He does not endorse the lifestyles portrayed by Waylon Jennings, Common, or Johnny Cash.

We need increased revenues at virtually every governmental level in the nation. It’s utter nonsense to believe we can or should cut spending enough to pull us out of our financial holes—though ending military excesses and the fiscal hemophilia of our ongoing wars would be giant steps in the right direction.

Obviously, we should end the Bush-Obama tax cuts for the very rich. But there is yet another tax that can be imposed—here in Chicago and on the national level—that can provide impressive new revenues without touching a dime of most citizens’ pocketbooks.

It’s the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT)—a very low sales tax on certain specialized financial “products” on various exchanges. No, it won’t affect ordinary stock, bond, option or mutual fund purchases—or retirement programs. The tax would apply only to exotica such as index futures, options on index futures, currency futures and related speculative investments—the kind of fancy money manipulations that helped put us in the hole in the first place.

Buyers and sellers of those speculative investments would pay a small tax on each contract, which would be collected by the Chicago Board Options Exchange or Chicago Mercantile Exchange the way ordinary merchants collect the sales tax.

Bill Barclay, a 22-year veteran of Chicago exchanges and a founding member of the Chicago Political Economy Group, calculates that a municipal tax of ten cents per contract traded on the two exchanges would have netted the city $607 million in 2008 and $462 million in 2009. Goodbye $655 million deficit, hello tax relief!

While mayoral candidates Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico snipe at each other about whether to tax limousine services or gymnasiums—quietly hoping for a casino to generate new revenues—only Miguel del Valle has mentioned a local FTT. Unfortunately it’s not a centerpiece of his campaign.

The FTT is not a radical new soak-the-rich idea. This country had various forms of stock transfer taxes between the Civil War and 1960. New York has an FTT but strangely rebates it to Wall Street’s fat cats.

Meanwhile, Iowa Senator Tom Harkin and Oregon Rep. Peter DeFazio have introduced a federal version to the Congress. Nobel Laureate economists James Tobin and Paul Krugman support the concept to control speculation—as does the more Wall Street oriented Larry Summers. Conservative heads of state across Europe, including Germany’s Angela Merkel also favor it.

The complexities in devising a local or federal FTT are immense. The most powerful financial interests in America will fight it tooth and nail. But it’s an idea whose time has come again.

**

Don Rose is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer

“if bill brady wakes up and he is not the governor  i think it is because he has really taken for granted that all he needs is a certain segment of the population to win this election and not doing enough to go out and court the minority vote to show he is able to understand the what the issues are outside of the communities of his own. I think he has done a poor job bringing together a constituency other than those he already has”

which made me scratch my head a bit.  I am in contact with someone on the Brady for Illinois  campaign pretty much every day, and have heard quite a bit about the outreach efforts.

A group of volunteers has recruited over 500 new Republicans to be election judges in Chicago this year, giving the Republicans a full slate of election judges for the first time in memory.  These same volunteers have distributed over 100,000 election fliers, 20,000 door hanging sets and 1500 yard signs, walking the streets in many South Side neighborhoods.

I interpret that there is a predominatnly African American Tea Party movement on the South and West Sides of Chicago that are not going to support Democrats this time, and may form the backbone of a new city-wide Republican party.

This Sunday, Bill Brady (and Pat Quinn) will appear at Rev-Sen. James Meeks House of Hope for Sunday Service.  Brady has campaign alongside Rev. Meeks on various issues, such as school choice and Wal-Mart openings.

Rev.  Issac Hayes has also campaigned alongside Brady in his battle against the entrenched Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.  Roger Keats has campaigned along with Brady in many South and West Side Districts previously written off as unwinnable by Cook County Republicans.

So aside from an higher level of support for Republicans not seen in over 50 years, Brady has done a poor job bringing together a constituency.  Perhaps it is Mitchell who is doing the poor job in understanding 2010′s election.

**

John Powers is  the President of the Chicago Daily Observer

O’ DemiLords Durbin and Burris, beseech us with your wisdom of phototherapy and discernment of the shame which our eczema has brought. Make us worthy of your mercy and deliver our tanning beds from clutches of the vain to save us from the unsightly blotch.

The spouse of Rep. Michael Zalewski (D-Chicago) nearly doubled her state salary when Quinn named her to a $117,043-a-year spot on the Illinois Pollution Control Board.

Read more at the Sun-Times

“So, instead of fading away into the weekend, the story kept going strong. Editorial boards and columnists weighed in. Reporters started combing through what they had for more tidbits, and in the meantime they wrote stories about Brady’s refusal to provide them with copies of his returns as Gov. Quinn had done.”

Especially Rich Miller, who is marketing this story as both a testimonial to his lack of understanding of basic accounting principles or a partisan attack against the Republican candidate.

In Illinois, we have S type corporations and LLC’s both of which allow corporate losses to offset personal taxes.  If you lose more money than gross, you don’t pay income taxes.  It is not a loophole. It is a well established rule that income taxes are assessed against Net Income, not Gross Income.

You still pay State and Federal employment taxes, withholding tax for employees, sales tax, property tax, and any number of other taxes, and in the building industry permits, variances, and fees associated with the ability to run your business.

Running a small (or a big business for that matter) business is hard enough without the sniping of media types who are willfully ignoring tax accounting to smear an opposition candidate.  If the media wants to change tax laws to hit gross income rather than net income, go ahead, but don’t fault a candidate for following the current law.

**

John Powers is the Chairman of the Editorial Board of the Chicago Daily Observer

image Hacking Shaquille O’Neal, or a Hack-a-Shaq

Becker said the financial crisis did not undermine his belief in free markets. When asked if he agrees with arguments about the inevitability of US economic decline – as Lilliputian government activity ties the economy down with protectionism and redistribution – Becker remained hopeful. “If you have competing interest groups you don’t end up with a systematic bias toward bad policy.”

As an example, he talked about the outrage Americans felt toward the Wall Street bailout. He believes the outrage stemmed from a “belief in individual responsibility—the belief that people ought to be free to make their own decisions, but should then bear the consequences…” He said this underlying philosophy “…remains very powerful” and added, “The American people don’t want an expansion of government…. They want limited government….I expect them to say so in the elections this November.”

We hope he is right. We have expressed similar beliefs and while we agree that the November elections could be a major watershed, we are still worried about the future. No matter which party is in control, government seems to grow. In fact, even though they stand in opposition to recent action, Republicans are certainly responsible for the drift of policy. Republicans voted for the $180 billion Bush stimulus bill in February 2008 and a $700 billion dollar bailout of the banks (TARP) in September 2008. By doing this, Republicans implicitly argued that the system could not heal on its own. And if the financial system must be saved by government, why not the health care system? Let’s not kid ourselves, if John McCain were President, the US would have enacted a slightly less aggressive health care bill (and maybe even cap and trade) – with Republican votes.

Becker argues that the Fed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, deserve a heap of blame, but then he adds an interesting twist, saying “economists paid too little attention to the systemic risks—the risks [new financial] instruments posed for the whole financial system—as opposed to the risks they posed for individual institutions…..I wasn’t surprised that we had a financial crisis. But I was surprised that the financial crisis spilled over into the real economy.”

While difficult to do, this is where we disagree. Inadvertently, Becker is blaming technology (in this case, new financial instruments) for the crisis. But as our readers know, it was an accounting rule (mark-to-market) that pushed the crisis onto the real economy. Despite tons of government action the markets did not bottom until March 2009, when mark-to-market accounting was finally corrected.

With this in mind, we pensively wait for November. Let‘s hope Becker is right: When a bunch of scrappy American voters get to the polls they can straighten out these politicians.

**
Brian Wesbury is a regular columnist for the Chicago Daily Observer.  Read more from Brian at FT Portfolios