By Steve Rhodes
“A Chicago charter school franchise often touted by Mayor Rahm Emanuel has pocketed some $387,000 in fees over three years by issuing demerits for ‘minor infractions’ ranging from not sitting up straight to openly carrying ‘flaming hot’ chips, parents and students charged Monday,” the Sun-Times reports.
Emanuel is considering expanding the fee schedule to the citizenry at large.
*
“It was kind of funny to see a ‘team’ from Noble charter network trying to crash our press conference, working the media in full-out damage control mode,” PURE writes.
“The principal of Noble’s Muchin campus was there with a parent who was set in front of any reporter who would listen to her to say how happy she was to pay the $140 fines just so that her child would be prepared to go on to college.
“Gee, how on earth do all those parents out in the suburbs manage to get their kids into college without the Noble ‘secret sauce’?”
*
A classic Rahm tactic. Don’t you dare disrupt his message and get in the way of his agenda. That right he reserves to himself to do to others.
*
“Critics say the network is using the fines to push out troubled students so it can boost graduation rates, but school leaders say tougher discipline has led to a safer school environment,” the Tribune reports.
Koschman Case Goes From Bad To Worse – Again
“Facing the possibility of coming under scrutiny by a special prosecutor, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the Chicago Police Department are, for the first time, offering an explanation for why, just hours into the case, detectives abruptly dropped the David Koschman investigation and didn’t pick it up again for 15 days: The two detectives assigned to the case went on vacation,” the Sun-Times reported on Monday.
“Hours after detectives Rita O’Leary and Robert Clemens had learned that Koschman was in a coma, with a fractured skull and swollen brain, the police stopped talking with witnesses – apparently, a top police official now says, in hopes that Koschman would recover and would be able to talk with detectives about his confrontation with a man later identified as Richard J. ‘R.J.’ Vanecko, a nephew of then-Mayor Richard M. Daley.
“As a result, detectives interviewed only two of the eight known witnesses in the 11 days before Koschman died. One of them was a Vanecko friend who lied to the police on two separate occasions, concealing Vanecko’s involvement. Friends who were with Koschman weren’t interviewed.”
Mr. Peanut
“Jerry Manos was the envy of a lot of men, his sister-in-law Sheila Meyer said,” the Tribune reports.
“As a peanut vendor outside Wrigley Field for nearly 30 years, Mr. Manos worked just 81 days a year – Chicago Cubs home games – then spent the rest of the year driving across the Southern and Western U.S. in either his Volkswagen Vanagon or Ford diesel conversion van.
“‘He had very little overhead,’ Meyer said. ‘And he lived very well.’
“Mr. Manos, 70, died Saturday, Feb. 4, of a degenerative muscle disease in Seasons Hospice & Palliative Care at Weiss Memorial Hospital in Chicago, Meyer said.”
A life well lived. Go read the rest of it.
Airport Clearing
“These are rough times, as of late, for buildings designed by architect Edward G. McClellan,” Lee Bey writes on his WBEZ blog.
“This month, the city demolished a beautiful but vacant three-story corner building designed by McClellan at 79th and Halsted after a portion of the structure collapsed and injured four passersby. And now, an occupied corner commercial building – designed by the same architect – in the Southwest Side neighborhood of Clearing would be razed under a plan to create a safety buffer around Midway Airport.
“The 84-year-old Crane and Moreland building, 63rd and Central, sits across from the western edge of the airport. City officials fear that proximity places the building – and four properties surrounding the airport – in danger of being hit by planes landing or taking off.”
I wonder why they suddenly decided this now. (At the same time, I’ve often said the city has no business operating an airport in a crowded neighborhood and – instead of pouring resources into it as Richard M. Daley did – it should shut it down and help build Peotone instead. Still, the timing seems suspicious.)
“In a Chicago Sun-Times report last November, a city aviation official said acquiring the building ‘is quite critical – not only for runway protection zones, but also to improve the navigation approach path for aircraft to that runway.’ The building was completed the same year Midway opened.
“Clearing neighborhood residents are protesting the planned demolition and it’s easy to see why. The three-store Baroque Revival building is rich in architectural details. much like McClellan’s now-gone 79th and Halsted building. A drugstore anchors the building’s corner and there are a variety of other small businesses there.”
Click through to see Bey’s photos.
Hammy Grammy’s
“True to form, the 54th annual Grammy Awards Sunday night chose to sidestep its mission ‘to honor artistic excellence’ and instead heap prizes on artists who, amid the ugly death throes of the old-school record industry, continue to sell mountains of product the old-fashioned way: through a blizzard of hype,” Jim DeRogatis writes on his WBEZ blog.
“[O]n the most egregious errors list: an astounding five Grammys for the Foo Fighters, who, despite dumping a true load of crap on the market in 2011 with Wasting Light (it earned a double ‘trash it’ on Sound Opinions), provided conservative voters at the Recording Academy with evidence that soulless, corporate, over-produced guitar rock still matters.”
Go read the rest of it.
When Adele Played Martyr’s
We dug up the video.
Meet Wheaton’s Golden Glove
The dude chose boxing over Wall Street.
A Beachwood Valentine’s Day
In three ugly parts.
–
The Beachwood Tip Line: Heartless.
Posted on February 14, 2012