Category: Uncategorized

Just when you thought the stink of Alderman Edfart Burke could not get any worse.

The heat is on a slow boil. Several Governors have allowed Illinois’s injured workers to be shamefully treated by crooked lawyers and insurance agents. Alderman Edward Burke ran a nice scam making big political contributions from lawyers and law firms handling cases at the IWCC. Guess who else is on the slow burn? Michael Madigan’s ass is going to get cooked for fixing cases and getting contributions from firms like Atkin Law. So, you ask, why would a law firm practicing workers comp give massive donations to Madigan?

Madigan makes a call on the workers’ compensation cases so they are settled. Bata Bing Bata Boom. Why did Alderman Burke get at least $43,000.00 in donations from Hennessey and Roach? Well, Hennessey and Roach gets millions in business from Burke to handle no-bid Workers comp cases for Burke. Those donations do not include small personal donations. Burke was funneling money from things he controlled to private vendors for kickbacks. Burke also removed Chicago City Lawyers from handling workers compensation cases because they, “were too stupid”. Also, they did not play ball.

Anyone familiar with the Illinois Workers Compensation Commission knows the Arbitrators are political hacks. The mystery selection process continues. Unlucky stiffs are sent to loan sharks that charge 36% compounded interest on quick loans, then the case takes forever because part of the juice is shared with lawyers.

Many lawyers fail to prepare cases, obtain all medical records, and then settle on the cheap. The real money is made on a cut of the settlement. Arbitrators fail to protect the injured from scam lawyers that cut deals and share envelopes at the 312 Chicago. Video and audio in the right hands now!!

When you look at the inventory of workers at the IWCC you will see whites and the west side outfit.

Two-bit hustlers and thugs.

The IWCC has a new leader and an important meeting is going to be at the Oral Argument Room James Thompson Building 8^th Floor. September 13, 2019 at 10:00 A.M. It is called, “The Chairman’s Update on IWCC Modernization Project”. “Looking forward to 2020”. Lots of changes to get ahead of some unexpected changes coming anyway. Bata Bing Bata Boom.

You need not read this if you want to hear, you are getting all your pension money promised.

Chicago is an absolute mess. Over eight years ago I went after phony Rahm Emanuel when he was attempting to defraud Chicago posing as a resident of Chicago. Amazing how the laws change as the scam master said his wife’s wedding dress was in the basement of a house he was renting. Nice. All Chicago city employees should say they are renting their homes and live in the cozy burbs free from shooting and nonstop crime. Remember all the press fawning over little Rhammy?

I have run the numbers and have concluded the following should be done.

1. Tell the shooters if they fire a weapon in the Chicago city limits they will go to jail for good.
2. Tell the CPD they have free rein to pound the hell out of all criminals. Send the message the city will hide all videotaping and evidence of police abuse.
3. Fire all Chicago employees hired thorough clout. Every one of them. No exceptions.
4. Remove every promotion and transfer made since Rahm become mayor.
5. Jail Alderman Edward Burke. Strip every penny he and his family have made for the last 33 years. Remove Justice Burke and publicly flog her.
6. Double the taxes right now. All taxes should be doubled until all debts are paid.
7. Take 25% off every Chicago city employee’s check until the debt is paid.
8. Stop every Chicago public works program and every freebie. No more food stamps, no more free housing, no more free utilities.
9. Stop every contract immediately with a minority of women’s owned business.
10. Post every penny spent on contracts. Every single contract and every single order.
11. Cancel every auto lease except city police and fire.
12. Stop Rahm Emanuel free police patrol.
13. Shoot on-site every person with a gun in their hand not licensed to have one.
14. Only have 15 Alderman and watch these cats close.
15. Remove every illegal immigrant that is receiving free room and board on the public payroll
16. Beat every free program administrator that receives a paycheck for doing this public work.
17. Shoot all members of the Daley family after a fair and completely rigged trial.
18. Have public support for all newspapers that report corruption and give them a percentage of the money they save the public.
19. Hire an Inspector General that goes after all the white-collar crime.
20. Hire retired Federal Bank examiners to audit the books.
21. Stop the progressive movement and all anti-Trump bullshit until after all the finances are returned to the black.
22. Get rid of the Unions, they are only helping themselves.

Since at least 2017, the City of Chicago Department of Water Management has dealt with issue after issue regarding aging infrastructure and incompetent management of its properties. I have written several stories about how the city refuses to change the way they do business. Promotions are based on politics. Stupidity and ignorance are the way things are done. At Chicago, instead of properly identifying a problem and implementing steps to organize a solution, an egocentric management team bumbles and fumbles project after project.

When I reviewed several documents and interviewed several people regarding the handling the massive washouts at the Sawyer Plant, I really thought a logical plan of attack was needed. If you have sanitary backups in a filtration plant, it is imperative to protect the safety of the potable water supply. I would have taken someone like James LoVerde, former Superintendent of the Central District out of mothballs, and hired him to oversee the project. People like James LoVerde were not always the easiest to get along with, but his skills were impressive. Resolving issues means sticking with the problem, applying engineering skills, practical common sense, and listing to the guys with experience. It means putting down your ego. After the problem is solved, a complete restoration of the property and a safe workplace for all.

In Chicago, I will tell you how it works in real life. First, hire a Commissioner with political connections and no experience. Make sure the person in charge is a close pal of Alderman Carrie Austin or Alderman Burke. Make sure you have people with no experience, no professional engineer’s license, no experience in water distribution, and if possible, makes up a college degree. Make sure that person hires and promotes pals that have the same qualifications or less. Make sure the management team retaliates against workers that know what they are doing. Make sure you keep rigging all promotions with yes persons. Keep team players close and keep lots of fighting and discontentment. Make sure you listen to the companies that really run the water department and pay the consultants handsomely. Cover-up all mistakes, deny FOIA, pay off auto accidents, repeat. Transfer excess profits and excessive billings to political operatives. When ordered, ignore city employees and engineers, and hire private companies to ensure plenty of kickbacks. When the private companies have no safety experience and get busted by Illinois Department of Labor or Federal OSHA, allow a massive overage to pay the bill. Make sure the contractor is a “minority business” to continue no-bid work. Make sure the Inspector General has employees that are just passing through and have absolutely no idea of what is going on. Rinse and repeat. When money gets low, have rate increases. Promote more friends. Have more gift cards spread around! Have concert tickets downtown and paid hotels. Drag lawsuits on for years. Hire law firms that give generous kickbacks to the Mayor and Alderman.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot just placed a hiring freeze, it is months too late. Rahm Emanuel dumped his pals all over the city departments and Mayor Lightfoot will most likely keep all the political hires at the old committee on Finance. Rahm Emanuel and Bill Daley still run the City of Chicago folks. Look at the arrows on the picture, they should be green with all the money stolen.

 Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel sure has a dirty yard and a garage that is filthy with overgrowth. Today we saw the Chicago Police still protecting his house on the taxer’s dime. You think with all the debt Rahm Emanuel left the city; the rat would pay some people to clean his yard. A Chicago Police officer told me; I am not going to clean his plant overgrowth anymore. Rahm Emanuel made his personal Chicago Police detail get his groceries, pick up his items at ABT electronics, and take his wife everywhere. I suggest he call Christy Webber to make that mess under control.

Chicago may be broke, but when you continue to assign police to babysit ex-mayors and clout heavy politicians, you will never get out of the hole. When you think about it, many of Emanuel’s staff is still at work at the city, and Bill Daley’s campaign staff is now on the city payroll. Many of the people Emanuel put on the staff are now placed at the DOWM and other departments. Maybe I got it all wrong about change, maybe you did to. At the end of the month it is all fair game.

When you got time stop by Rahm Emanuel’s house at 4228 North Hermitage and see the mess yourself. I would ask my girlfriend, but she is out of town again. It all sounds too familiar.

Well, stupid rises again at the Department of Water Management. It was chuckles and laughs from my Lake Point crib watching the Chicago Fire Department get locked out by the Chicago Police at the Jardine Plant. As I told you, you have a bunch of clowns under the command of Randy “the Foz” Conner and Ralph “chuckles” Chiczewski run the most embarrassing event in Chicago Water Department history.

 Former John Pope the Rahm Emanuelite leftover from a lost election was going to prove to the world how his new security system, in case of an emergency attack from the Russians, would respond. One member of John Pope’s task force stated: “it looked like a monkey fucking a football”. You could not write a script as city workers pretended to be passed out from a chlorine gas attack and simulated attack from a mental patient’s hell-bent on getting a promotion.

The entire affair was an embarrassment to the Chicago Police, The Chicago Fire Department, and the new “improved bunch of political hacks” that are hell-bent on giving Mayor Lori Lightfoot every reason to privatize. I am contacting lawyers to see if I can post the footage or sell it to a comedy channel. This is an embarrassment of the highest order. My friends at the New York Water Board viewed the video and said,” It is not funny”. (chuckle, chuckle, chuckle)

Chicago will soon wake up to a massive amount of new taxes. I hope you are ready. Many folks enjoy wasted money in Chicago due to waste, payoffs, and corruption. Insider will find a way to game the system. Alderman Burke was the king of skimming. Burke used his position to shake down the Committee of Finance vendors. Massive campaign contributions lined Alderman Burke’s pockets from law firms like Hennessey and Roach. Alderman Burke and his henchman (women) ordered workers compensation claims to Hennessey and Roach when Burke needed extra money to make favors and appear to others as the Godfather. The Chicago Ethics Board allowed this for far too long. Vendors understand pay to play. Just pad the bill and the bill is paid.

We have a series we are making outlining the scams. Due to Rahm Emanuel and his denial of FOIA, things have slowed down. I am giving Mayor Lightfoot a little more time to open city records.

Just recently, John Pope, after making a mockery of the problems at the Jardine Plant, has been given more responsibilities. You think with the DOWM in the newspapers all the time would hire a professional to run the plant, but stupid always trump at the DOWM. It would be funny, but wasted time is par for the course.  I have sent a list of proposed improvements after my meeting with the 5^th floor. The DOWM has layers of management to fix the screwups of the management. It is all smoke and mirrors.

John Pope has designed a new emergency notification system for the DOWM. Employees are subject already to harassment and retaliation and a myriad of ways to get fired when they refuse to buy tickets to political events. Many Chicago employees are stressed out from lack of professional management and weak union response. Times must change. There is no training on City workers that need mental health services and a complete failure to recognize symptoms.

John Pope just started “Swift Reach 911”. I hope Mayor Lightfoot investigates this scam. Basically, John Pope is admitting the Chicago water filtration plants are a dangerous place to work. I agree. When you hire people with no qualifications from the top-down, additional safety is needed. Chicago should have a Professional Engineer running the department. Lori Lightfoot promised to clean house, but we have the same rats stealing taxpayer money.

Swift Reach 911 is a texting and email system to make folks aware of emergency problems. Visitors and employees can sign into the system and if an employee goes cray cray, everyone will be notified. Say, for example, a commissioner is in the Jardine Plant making love to one of his underlings wanting a promotion, and he (she) changes her mind, everyone will know to evacuate the plant. All he (or she) needs to do is “just say no”. If you asked me, this new system is in response to the do-nothing Safety guy, Ralph Chiczewski, and his other retired cop friend paid to drive around and bother watchman.

Also, the system is a blatant attempt to hide the discontent and calling of police when employees get their personal items stolen. The Jardine and Eugene Sawyer Plant have drawn attention since police have been called and emergency services have been called and subject to public scrutiny. The new policy has so many disclaimers that make the policy useless.  The million-dollar question is, who determines what an emergency is and what the response it. Smells like a coverup again. Maybe they can use this system when a Commissioner is drunk and gets into a hit and run car accident with a city vehicle and leaves the scene. Now Ralph can keep his City vehicle parked at home when someone is drunk and gets into an accident. More on this later.

Gay Chicago resident alleges discrimination by city employee
by Carrie Maxwell, Windy City Times August 11, 2019

During the morning hours of April 25, Andersonville resident Leo Meere allegedly heard anti-LGBTQ comments from a Chicago Department of Water Management ( DWM ) employee when he was walking home from the grocery store.

Meere’s neighborhood was having the water and sewer lines replaced at the time. But that morning, one of the DWM employees’ cars turned the wrong way down a one-way street and nearly hit Meere, he alleges.

“I yelled out, ‘Hey buddy, it is a one-way street,'” Meere told Windy City Times. “The driver responded, ‘Fuck off, homo. I am working here.’ As the car got closer, I could see the driver was wearing a yellow vest like the other city employees doing sewer line work on my block. I said, ‘You still have to follow the law. You almost hit me.’ He said, ‘Who are you to tell me what to do? It is people like you who are what’s wrong with this country.'”

Meere took a picture of the DWM employee’s car, which was parked in the wrong direction, to document the alleged incident. The vanity license plate had the person’s initials and last name on it. Meere said the DWM employee got out of his car and started following him down the alley toward his apartment. Meere hurried to his door because he did not feel safe anymore.

The first thing Meere did was call former 40th Ward Ald. Patrick O’Connor’s office to report the alleged incident. They asked that he email the details to them.

“It became obvious that no one in O’Connor’s office was genuinely concerned in addressing the situation,” said Meere. “Although this happened after he lost the election but before his successor Andre Vasquez was sworn in, O’Connor was still being paid by the city to do his job. It was very frustrating to be dismissed when I reached out to my elected official for help.”

Meere also contacted the DWM on April 25 and left a voicemail message, but said the department never called back. It was only after posting about the alleged incident on an Andersonville neighborhood Facebook page the same day that Meere was reportedly able to speak to Vasquez (whom he tagged in the post ) via direct message. According to Meere, Vasquez gave DWM Deputy Commissioner Julie Hernandez-Tomin his contact number; he said she called him that afternoon.

“Julie left me a voice message saying she was sorry this happened, that she would look into this for me, and I would hear back from her the next day,” said Meere. “She never called back and did not return any of my calls over the course of the next two weeks.”

Meere said nothing more happened until he posted about the lack of response when someone asked him for an update on the original Facebook message. He said another concerned 40th Ward citizen called Hernandez-Tomlin to inquire about the DWM response after the update was posted. Meere said Hernandez-Tomlin

 left him an angry voicemail message for having people “harass her” at work, and that she had already turned the matter over to DWM Director of Administration Jackie Toledo—which Meere said was a surprise to him.

When Meere called Hernandez-Tomin back, he said, she never apologized and continued to yell at him. Meere then contacted Toledo, and she told him to send her the narrative and picture. He did so immediately, and Toledo said she would phone him if she had further questions.

Meere emailed Toledo back when he did not hear from her and said she told him the matter would be sent to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG ). She later gave him the name of a contact there, who he said never returned his call.

When WCT contacted Toledo’s office, the department responded that the incident was escalated to City of Chicago Inspector General Joseph Ferguson’s office for further review. City of Chicago OIG Director of Communications and Outreach Natalie A. Kuriata told Windy City Times that complaints are reviewed and assessed according to several factors to see if they will open an investigation, refer the matter to the appropriate city department or decline to investigate. These factors include the complaints’ credibility and investigative and office resources availability, among others.

“After reviewing the complaint, OIG referred it back to the DWM, where it could be more expeditiously handled,” Kuriata emailed WCT. “In addition, given the nature of the complainant’s allegation, OIG recommended that DWM counsel its employees on the City’s Diversity and Equal Employment Opportunity ( EEOC ) Policy.”

“The DWM takes very seriously any allegations of discriminatory behavior on the part of our employees,” DWM Media Affairs Director Megan Vidis emailed WCT. “The OIG referred this matter back to the DWM and recommended EEO counseling for the employee in question, which he has received. EEO training is mandatory for all DWM employees and addresses eliminating harassment and other types of discrimination in the workplace.”

Following responses from the DWM and OIG offices, WCT reached out to Vasquez. However, at the time of this publication, neither he nor anyone from his office had responded.

“I did not deserve to be intimidated and verbally harassed by someone who was on the clock and being paid by my tax dollars to do a city job,” said Meere. “Chicago specifically lists sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes of people, but this government employee chose to use anti-LGBTQ slurs against me and that is not right.”

What disturbed Meere most was the way he was “brushed off every time I inquired about the matter. All I wanted was for them to do their jobs and they did not seem to want to help me. In the end, that was worse than what happened to me when that city employee hurled those anti-LGBTQ comments at me.”

Meere said that he has only lived in Chicago for two years, and that the first time he had to directly engage with city employees he was met with hostility—which is not what he thought would happen in a “supposedly pro-LGBTQ place to live.”

Very soon Mayor Lori Lightfoot will be asking the Chicago Taxpayers for a round of massive tax increases. I fought tooth and nail against Rahm Emanuel becoming a mayor of Chicago because I knew he had no intention of paying down the massive debt left by Mayor Daley. Daley not only left a debt but reduced the income stream.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot needs to address the past administration. Many of Emanuel’s old management teams are still refusing to budge. As a result, many needed changes are stifled. One of the greatest problems in Chicago is misusing taxpayer money and the lack of transparency. Many members of the Bill Daley campaign team jumped ship to Lightfoot and continue to control Chicago finances.

Contracts control the Chicago democrat machine. When Burke is jailed, another crook will replace him. Contracts in the Department of Water Management are automatically updated and have no checks and balances. Extras are almost guaranteed and that is where the payoffs start. Contractors working for Chicago know for a fact, their contracts will never be questioned. The only time they have heat is when they are going to be replaced. IF you wish to contract with the Department of Water Management you must pay off the high-ranking management team. You must pay off alderman and other political candidates you are told to pay off. The payoffs are gift cards, the new choice of doing business. Tickets to events, hotel rooms, travel, and cash are still the way to keep your contracts. The better you are at this game the quicker you get promoted.

How do people get away with this, in this day and age, well? Ask, Ralph Chiczewski, the useless safety cop at the Jardine Plant. It is not in anyone best interest to change things.

FOIA is Chicago taxpayers’ best friend. FOIA has been blocked by Ralph and paid off judges in Chicago. Unions do not want people to know what is going on in Chicago also.

Jobs are fixed, contracts and fixed, promotions are fixed.

The Eugene Sawyer Water Filtration Plant has been a hotbed of activity. The roofs are rotted, and contracts have been separated by different contractors. You think the entire job would have been given to one contractor for accountability, but that failed. The outside of the plant lies a massive money pit. Contractors have made hundreds of thousands repairing the mess. The vault keeps sinking and getting filled in. The City workers wanted to fix it. The taxpayers could have saved millions. Crews with nothing to do could be put to work, get the job done right. Instead, John Pope hired a clout heavy contractor and Julie Tomin approved. That is what happens when you hire people that have no idea what they are doing. Rumors are Commissioner “Coo Coo” Conner has bigger fish to fry.

The rumored contractor is Pan-Oceanic. After making piles of money making a mess with no safety protocols, they were hired to make another round of repairs. So here we go again, fuck up, move up. The next round of repairs for the same ditch could total over a million dollars.
OSHA opened the inspection under the National Emphasis Program for trenching and excavation, which was implemented in the 1980s. The company was placed in the Severe Violator Enforcement Program in January 2014 when it was issued four violations for failing to adhere to trenching standards. The company has contested those violations, which carried penalties of $105,600. Looks like nothing has changed.

Chicago Department of Water Management political hires cost taxpayers billions of dollars. There was a time when Chicago hired licensed legit contractors and there was a sense of purpose to make Chicago better. Now, it is how you can suck the last penny out of taxpayer’s hands. Phony minority companies thrive in Chicago on stupidity. Watch this contract close Lori Lightfoot. This is how the game is played. Let’s see if Ralph Chiczewski can claim “Homeland Security” to hide the contract and extras. Chicago is so broke, they can’t even pay their injured workers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79MflLiCmLw