Daley, Daley, and more Daley making changes before the end comes

Mayor Daley is going to the Bathroom. Mayor Daley steps into a car. Mayor Daley washes behind his ears. Mayor Daley's wife talks to low income kids in the ghetto. Mayor Daley takes charge. Mayor Daley changes everything that needs changing. Mayor Daley robs Peter to pay Paul. Mayor Daley sits in a highchair. I am wondering what the heck in going on in Chicago as of late. Lots of puff and minor stories of no consequence. It seems the Chicago media is under strict orders to make Daley look like he is doing something.
I will let you know what is really going on so you do not walk around stupid. You, the dope with the silly look like you just got a tax bill. Daley is lowering a head tax. So what, it does not change anything. It is peanuts. Daley is going to fix McCormick Place. McCormick Place is supported by Chicago taxpayers with many fees. You already pay for McCormick Place. Daley is going to fix the budget on the backs of Chicago City Workers. The days off with no pay are making the list of work fall further behind. The work load in the Chicago Water Department is fallen so far behind, Daley will hire private contractor to make up the work this winter. City workers will be asked to work on Sundays for double time off. That means the workload will fall further behind if they refuse. Many City workers will not work in the freezing cold for time off, would you? To pick up the work load, Mayor Daley hired private contractors to mark and locate pipes underground. Many times they are mismarked and Mayor Daley does not charge the company for the mistakes they make. Many City workers are leaving the jobsites early and swiping out near their homes. The Chicago Inspector General does nothing. The Department of Water Management does not care. This action is hours stolen from the Chicago Taxpayers. Chicago private contractors are working with no supervision at all. Example, Mayor Daley sent work crews to repair basins that were cemented over and blocked. It caused a funeral home to almost flood. Mayor Daley brags of the improvements to the streets, but the contractors pave over broken water mains. Chicago City workers stand around doing nothing in almost every department while Daley sends the work to private contractors. The Daley family is hiding family in other countries while they wait for favorable legal rulings. Mayor Daley is hiding Patrick Daley in Russia after Patrick Daley served his country in sensitive positions in the U.S. Army. Do you really think the KGB did not sit him down when he wanted to do business in the former USSR? The bottom line is going to be the weather to decide Daley's fate. If Chicago has a rough winter, Daley is in lots of hot water. The teamsters were smart to not accept the crazy work rules dumped on the other union workers. Not one union reduced dues despite many workers taking a $20,000.00 per year pay cut. Daley is taking money from the sale of assets and handing the peasants little bits of cheese. Chicago is in trouble, big trouble. Illinois is in trouble, big trouble.

11 Replies to “Daley, Daley, and more Daley making changes before the end comes”

  1. December 9, 2009 (CHICAGO) (WLS) — Mayor Daley is announcing a new incentive to create jobs in Chicago. He is proposing to waive the employee “head tax” on businesses, hoping that will inspire companies in the city to hire more employees.

    Right now, Chicago businesses pay $4 per employee each month. The mayor’s proposal comes as the Obama administration also seeks to jump start the job market.

    President Obama says he is hoping for bipartisan support for his plan to use leftover financial bailout money to help small businesses and create jobs. The president met with Republican and Democratic congressional leaders on the issue Wednesday. Although Republican leaders disagree, Obama says unspent money from the TARP program can both reduce the deficit and create jobs.

    “I’m confident we can put our economic troubles behind us. But it’s going to require some work and cooperation and a seriousness of purpose here in Washington,” Obama said.

    Mayor Daley says temporarily lifting Chicago’s expense tax, or the so-called head tax, could be the break area businesses need to hire more workers.

    Mayor Daley hopes congress will follow through with some of President Obama’s suggestions. And the mayor plans to lobby the state for a corporate tax credit for creating jobs. For now, the mayor says the city will do its part to get Chicagoans back to work.

    A meeting of city business leaders produced some interesting ideas about how to create jobs — one of those ideas the mayor hopes to put into action. Wednesday, Mayor Daley announced a proposal to temporarily lift a city tax.

    “It diverts funds that businesses can otherwise use to pay wages or make other investments. In the current economy, we want to remove this perceived barrier to job creation,” said Mayor Daley.

    The employer’s expense tax is commonly known as the head tax. It applies to businesses with 50 or more employees. The employer pays $4 per employee per month. Mayor Daley wants to lift the tax for employees hired during 2010 and 2011.

    “Incentives such as this one we are proposing today, when combined with other incentives, initiatives, can lessen the impact of the recession on our city residents and also on the employer,” said the mayor.

    Some local business owners who attended the meeting with the mayor encourage efforts to help them hire more employees and ultimately help their bottom line.

    “As a business owner, especially in a recession, you look at every single item that you’re paying for, and I think the mayor’s initiative is a good one,” said Peter Hanig, Hanig’s Footwear.

    “We have to watch every dollar that we spend. We’re constantly looking at that, trying to build our revenues, and then hire more people so we can grow our business,” said Kim Oster-Holstein, Kim and Scott’s Gourmet Pretzels.

    Kim and Scott’s Gourmet Pretzels employees nearly 100 people to hand craft their pretzels.

    “They’re made with love and they’re hand twisted. You can tell,” said Scott Holstein, Kim & Scott’s Gourmet Pretzels.

    The West Side company is growing. Its owners are at a point where they have to decide if they can afford keeping all these pretzels handmade by Chicagoans or go with machines. The company’s owners hope the city lifts the head tax.

    “Part of what goes into the decision about whether we automate or use people is the head tax. It’s basically a tax on having people to twist pretzels,” said Scott Holstein.

    The mayor will take his proposal to City Council on December 16. Economists expect unemployment to continue to be high through 2010.

    It will likely be a long tough road to get significant job creation. But this is a step toward helping small and medium-sized businesses, and that’s where we can expect to see much of the job creation.

  2. Mayor Richard Daley goes ‘on a rant’ at 2016 group’s final meeting
    Melissa Harris

    December 9, 2009 When Mayor Richard Daley spoke at the private and final meeting of Chicago 2016 volunteers, he was, according to one attendee, “in rare form.” Another described him as “on a rant. It was straight off the cuff. … He looked angry, and he was angry.”

    Now, we weren’t there. The press was barred from last week’s meeting at the Aon Center and the reception that followed at the private Mid-America Club on the top floor of the building. About 150 to 200 volunteers attended, and four shared their impressions on the condition of anonymity.

    Daley started his remarks by calling on the federal government to financially back all future U.S. Olympic bids. It was too difficult for U.S. cities to raise the necessary funds in such short amounts of time, while their competitors often received financial assistance from their national governments, he said.

    “He started by saying we spent $75 million, and the next city was going to have to spend $100 million, and we didn’t even have a chance,” said one attendee, paraphrasing the mayor, who was the driving force behind the bid. “It was all politics and all money. All politics and all money. (The International Olympic Committee) didn’t care about the athletes, and they didn’t care about the quality of the bid.”

    Another attendee said she came away from the 15-minute speech believing the city never understood the depth of its disadvantage. And Daley reportedly told the group that had the city known from the start that the International Olympic Committee was intent on taking the games to new regions of the globe, they never would have spent the time or the money on the effort.

    “We were seeing the mayor’s real feelings — how he was really disappointed and frustrated,” she said.

    Previously, Daley’s public comments on the loss have been more measured and gracious. Jacqueline Heard, the mayor’s spokeswoman, said she did not attend Thursday’s event, but the mayor’s “disappointment in the outcome in Copenhagen is pretty well known. It’s probably safe to assume that he believes there should be changes.”

    Daley, the audience members reported, refrained from directly criticizing the United States Olympic Committee, which has squabbled with the international body that selects the host city, by remarking: “Don’t get me started

  3. Illinois American will be the new water management in Chicago just watch and see, they already have the southwest suburbs (Response) Maybe, but the unions are over in Chicago when that happens.

  4. AT A TIME WHEN PUBLIC EMPLOYEES ARE STRUGGLINGN TO PRESERVE THEIR JOBS AND QUALITY PUBLIE SERVICES THEY DESERVE TO HAVE A LOCAL THAT IS DEDICATED EXCLUSIVELY TO THEIR NEEDS AND THE CHALLENGES THEY FACE.THIS IS WHY THE INTERNATIONAL UNION HAS VOTED TO CHARTER A NEW TEAMTERS LOCAL TO REPRESENT MUNICIPAL COUNTY AND STATE WORKERS IN ILLINOIS.OUR NEW LOCAL HAS BEEN GIVEN THE NUMBER 700 AND IT WILL REPRESENT TEAMSTERS FORMERLY REPRESENTED BY 714 AND 726.TOGETHER WE ARE MORE THAN 13000 STRONG AND REPRESENT A RANGE OF PUBLIC WORKERS IN THE CHICAGO METROPOLITAN AREA AND STATE OF ILLINOIS.BY COMBINING THE RESOURCES OF BOTH LOCALS WE WILL CREATE A SINGLE MORE POWERFUL AND FINANCIALLY STABLE UNION THAT IS BETTER POSITIONED TO FIGHT FOR THE MEMBERS.

  5. I hope they don’t sell the water department. These governments are doing all short term money grabs without realizing the long term costs because these politicians will not be around to see the people suffer. If they sell the water then in short time the rates will triple and the tax payers will have less and less money filter through the economy and they will have less to spend. There is a long term cost here and it is making everyone poorer and poorer. It’s incredible. There will be states that secede the union and these states will be populated with the people with the money who are sick of it being stolen from them. Incredible just trying to comprehend what we are in for. The money grabs keep coming. I am just stunned. The Democrats are the worst grabbers too. It’s sickening.

  6. The Provocateur

    I bring the unvarnished truth to politics, sports, and any other topics I find interesting. I also hold the powerful accountable when they overstep their bounds and target the weaker among us.

    Chicago City Hal Hiring Abuses
    Monday, December 07, 2009

    A new report tells Chicagoans what they should already know.

    A new report from a court-appointed monitor accuses Mayor Richard Daley’s administration of violating hiring regulations and misleading her about efforts to deal with abuses at City Hall.

    The report filed in federal court Friday by Noelle Brennan contends Daley’s Office of Compliance failed to fully comply with court orders relating to reporting potential hiring violations. Brennan’s report comes just weeks after Daley and his top lawyer said the city is ready to end court monitoring of its hiring system and give Brennan’s oversight duties to the compliance office.

    Brennan singled out Anthony Boswell, the compliance office’s executive director, and Victoria Daniels, the city’s hiring compliance officer.

    The only thing surprising about this report is that it occurred at all. The way things work in City Hall is this. Friends and cronies always get the good jobs. In fact, the way you move up within city hall is to become a political asset. A great example is Michael Tierney. Tierney became foreman of an entire fleet of plumbers within five years. Without getting into too many details, that’s a very rapid rise. His skills in plumbing are unclear. What Tierney was able to do was become an individual that could get judges elected, and thus, he was the beneficiary of all sorts of promotions.

    Beyond this, within City Hall, the so called watchdogs: Inspector Generals, Compliance officers, etc. are themselves cronies always appointed by Daley himself. So, the watchdogs are almost always a part of the machine. So, the sort of hiring that is analyzed in this report never gets discovered since those in charge of discovering it are part of the machine themselves.

    That’s exactly what this report found. Noelle Brennan, the court appointed monitor, found weaknesses in the city’s Office of Compliance. That’s all part of the problem. If the fox is guarding the henhouse, then we have the sort of corruption we have in Chicago. This report says nothing new and yet, it’s remarkable and refreshing to see a report on Chicago’s hiring corruption that tells the truth.

  7. Chicago parking meters: Some machines freeze up, and motorists fume
    Inoperable machines only slightly higher that usual, parking firm says
    By James Janega

    Tribune reporter

    December 11, 2009

    Late for an appointment at the home of a client, personal trainer Meghan McLaughlin recounted how she shivered in Thursday morning’s cold and tried to feed a Gold Coast parking meter. But as she pressed, the dollar button stuck down. Thinking fast, she pressed the quarter button. It stuck, too.

    She threw up her hands.

    “It’s like the next shoe to drop in this parking meter debacle,” said McLaughlin, 37, of Lincoln Park, who called the Tribune on her cell phone as she returned with trepidation to see if there was a ticket on her car.

    Certainly in the minds of some frustrated motorists, frozen meters fed more resentment over the city’s newly privatized meters Thursday. But city and parking company officials objected.

    The problem was not widespread, said Chicago Parking Meters LLC. It was also to be expected, said Mayor Richard Daley.

    “There’s frozen parking meters, frozen water hydrants, frozen doors, frozen cars. They’re all out there,” he said. The old parking meters also froze, Daley said, insisting the problem isn’t linked to the pay boxes that have replaced meters around the city. “No, no, they’ve always frozen,” he said.

    Of Chicago’s 4,200 parking boxes and 600 meters, about 90 weren’t working Thursday morning, said parking meter company spokeswoman Avis LaVelle. The number was slightly higher than a normal day, in part because of “frozen buttons and frozen-over credit card slots,” she said, and is based on complaints. If the toll-free number on the box is called, you can park for free, she added. Without calling, you risk a ticket.

    Yet while the increase in inoperable meters represented a statistical blip, it also revealed Chicago motorists’ readiness to be outraged amid the simmering resentment surrounding the more-expensive privatized meters.

    “People have the mistaken impression that there’s some kind of systemwide failure,” LaVelle said. “It’s not accurate.”

    There is even a way to build a defense in the event you’re mistakenly ticketed, she said. A motorist encountering a frozen or broken meter should call a toll-free number on the meter — 877-242-7901.

    As an additional safety net, parking enforcement officers also are supposed to verify that boxes aren’t working, LaVelle said. She urged people to call on their own anyway. “If you’ve done what you need to do in terms of reporting, then you can park there,” she said.

    But McLaughlin didn’t know that Thursday. With her client waiting and one option left, she stabbed the button for the maximum amount on the meter at Clark Street and Burton Place, but it too jammed and froze.

    She needed 75 minutes; the machine had recorded 40 minutes before it jammed. McLaughlin took a cell phone photo, tucked the partial receipt into her windshield and braced for the worst.

    She didn’t get a ticket. But when she returned an hour later, two out of the three buttons she’d pressed were still stuck down.

  8. The next mayor who gets in will go down in Chicago history books as doing nothing, because the city will be broke and in debt. I am holding my thoughts before I get out of hand on your site! (Response) Cut loose, just watch the cussin!

  9. The Chicago newspapaers write story after story about Daley. What is going on? Is Maggie Daley dead?

  10. Pat : Could you please check out the story I heard today, that Mayor Shortshanks is going to hire 25 laborers each month starting today and add an additional 25 each month until April in the Department of Water Management. This seems crazy to me when City employees are taking 24 furlough days to cut costs and Police officers still don’t have a contract. (Response) Its True, Its True. Current employed workers are starving and dumb dumb hires more.

  11. Daley says city tapping overtime for snow plowing
    John Byrne at

    The city is dipping into its overtime snow plow budget to try to keep the streets clear in the face of a snow fall that started late last night, Mayor Richard Daley said today.

    “You have to,” Daley said of dipping into overtime. He noted the current snow required getting the plows onto the streets late Monday and keeping them on the roads through the morning today.

    “You bring them out at certain times. We do that all year,” the mayor said at an event at which he presented the Chicago Anti-Hunger Federation a check for about $16,000 to to help fund job-training for the food industry.

    Shortly before midnight Monday, Streets and Sanitation officials contacted 175 snow plow drivers, telling them to report to their routes on the city’s main thoroughfares, Daley said. The plows will stay on those routes until the snow stops falling, and then start working on the side streets, he said.

    With the snow predicted to end in the city at midday, Daley said he hoped the plows would be able to get to the side streets by this afternoon.

    After Chicagoans railed last winter against a city policy to slash overtime for drivers, leaving some side streets snowbound for days after the first heavy snowfall, Daley reversed course and provided more overtime.

    He had hoped to contract with a private firm to plow side streets this winter, but when the city failed to find a contractor, Daley said he would spend what is needed in overtime to make sure the streets are clear.
    The mayor urged drivers to take it easy, as the temperatures fall and wet spots turn to ice. “Even arterial roadways that appear to be dry and clean can still be slippery in these types of weather conditions,” the mayor said.

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