Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Thursday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“North Korea said on Thursday it would carry out further rocket launches and a nuclear test that would target the United States, dramatically stepping up its threats against a country it called its ‘sworn enemy,'” Reuters reports.
The best reporting on North Korea lately, though, was done by the daughter of Google chairman Eric Schmidt. See Sophie in North Korea.


Rahmley Field
“Mayor Rahm Emanuel indicated Wednesday that he’d like the various parties involved in Wrigley Field renovation talks to reach a compromise but doesn’t want to negotiate his end of the deal in public,” the Tribune reports.
That doesn’t mean the mayor isn’t for transparency in the process, though. After all, the public will be to see the results of any deal unfold right before their eyes.
Missing Media
“A moving truck was seen outside former Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr.’s home on the South Side on Wednesday,” CBS2 Chicago reports.
“While it was initially believed the Jackson family might be moving out of their home in Washington, D.C., and back into their home in Chicago, it turned out the movers were bringing items from his former Congressional office on Capitol Hill.”
Oops, a couple words accidentally got edited out of Jay Levine’s report. I’ll restore them:
“While it was initially believed by the media who could think of no other reason for a moving van to be there that the Jackson family might be moving out of their home in Washington, D.C. . . . ”
To wit:


–
Just Another Police Lawsuit
“Chicago police killed a man by running him over and shooting him twice in the back, then told his grieving mother it was ‘just another nigger dead,’ the mother claims in court,” Courthouse News Service reports.
“Riots broke out on Chicago’s South Side after police shot Jamaal Moore to death on Dec. 15, according to Chicago newspapers. The Tribune and others reported that the shooting came after a police chase, and that Moore, 23, and others, were suspected of robbing a truck driver.”
*
Sam Adam Jr. is representing the family, DNAinfo Chicago reports.
*
Also from DNA:
“A Freedom of Information Act request from DNAinfo Chicago was returned by the Chicago Police Department redacted in its entirety.”
Just like in North Korea.
Regrets, They Should Have A Few
“A South Shore alderman whose ward includes a condo building where two people died said Wednesday she has ‘no second thoughts’ about having spearheaded a move to give the owners of that building and other pre-1975 high-rises until 2015 to make fire safety improvements,” the Sun-Times reports.

The 16-story building at 6730 S. South Shore Drive was not equipped with a sprinkler system. Nor did it have a hard-wired alarm or communications system to disable elevators and alert condominium owners.
It’s one of 759 pre-1975 residential high-rises exempt from the sprinkler requirement, but that were supposed to make other, less-costly ‘life safety improvements’ by Jan. 1, 2012.
In December 2011, Ald. Leslie Hairston (5th) joined North Side Ald. Tom Tunney (44th) in co-sponsoring an ordinance giving building owners three more years to make the improvements. At the time, they argued that struggling owners were having trouble footing the bill.

The delayed safety requirements may have put some building owners out of business, but now some of their tenants are out of their lives.
*
“Just over a year ago, Tunney was facing the same questions after a 32-year-old woman died in a high-rise fire at 3130 N. Lake Shore. Her neighbors had left the door to their burning 12th-floor apartment propped open because their cat refused to leave.
“Like the South Shore condo, that 21-story building was a pre-1975 high-rise that was not equipped with a sprinkler system, nor did it have hard-wired alarm or communications system to disable elevators and alert residents of the roughly 300 apartments.
“Like Hairston, Tunney said at the time he had ‘no regrets’ about pushing back the deadline for life-safety improvements.”
The Political Odds
Updated.
Awfully Beautiful
The Noir Of New Poetry Foundation President Robert Polito.
Lupe Loves Hebru
So does Jay-Z.
Shoe Fest
It happened and it will happen again.
–
The Beachwood Tip Line: We the people.

Permalink

Posted on January 24, 2013