By Steve Rhodes
Bruce Rauner is making my life complicated right now. This is the wrong week to go nuclear while imploding even as compliant TV “news” personalities aid and abet your counterattack on the well-reported facts!
So more on Rauner & Co. to come, but let me get out some other stuff first.
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For example, this:
“Last week’s bitter cold canceled the same two days of school for students across the Chicago area. But when those days will be made up will vary, as some school districts move away from tacking on days in June,” the Tribune reports.
The Beachwood has obtained proposals CPS is considering to make up days lost to the cold as well as other weather-related adjustments:
- Closing schools that are consistently underheated. The fact that almost all of these schools predominantly serve African Americans is in no way racist.
- Kids’ performance at lunch will now be evaluated via standardized testing. To make up for lost testing during cold days.
- Fixing Rahm’s Skype. So he can close schools due to weather from anywhere in the world.
- Summer school for everyone. In buildings without air conditioning only, because by CPS logic, that evens out teaching in underheated buildings during winter and delivers an average annual classroom temperature that looks good to the outside world
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And then, this:
“The billionaire creator of Beanie Babies, Ty Warner, could face up to five years in prison when he is sentenced in Chicago federal court on Tuesday on his guilty plea for tax evasion,” Reuters reports.
TY: I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things.
RED: I’m known to locate certain things from time to time. They seem to fall into my hands. Maybe it’s ’cause I’m Irish.
TY: I wonder if you could get me some pellets.
RED: What are they and why?
TY: You make your customers’ motives a part of your business?
RED: If you wanted a toothbrush, I wouldn’t ask questions. I’d just quote a price. A toothbrush, see, is a non-lethal sort of object.
TY: Fair enough. Pellets, or “beans,” provide a more flexible feel than conventional stuffing.
Red beats Ty’s ass.
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Finally, for now:
“Telling him he had ‘pulled off the corruption trifecta,’ a federal judge Monday sentenced disgraced former Chicago Ald. Ambrosio Medrano to 2 1/2 years in prison on top of the 10 1/2-year term he received last week for a separate bribery conviction,” the Tribune reports.
“The sentence handed down by U.S. District Judge John Tharp means that Medrano faces a combined 13 years behind bars, making it one of the longest prison terms ever for a defendant convicted in a public corruption case in Illinois.”
AMBROSIO: I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things . . .
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Rage Against The E Street Band
Plus: Shut Up, Studs Terkel! In Local Music Notebook.
Meet Ke$ha’s New Home
About Timberline Knolls in Lemont – including its very Chicago history.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: TiK ToK.
Posted on January 14, 2014