By Steve Rhodes

Yes, I have something to say about the Chicago News Cooperative suspending operations. I just haven’t finished writing it yet. Please be patient, there’s only so much tomfoolery I can get to in a day, a week, a month, a lifetime.
1. If I could just let this column by Curtis Black for the Community Media Watch’s Newstips stand in for mine today, I would.
2. “Gov. Pat Quinn’s plan to slash $2.7 billion from Medicaid to save a program ‘on the brink of collapse’ could prove fatal for some Chicago area hospitals that mainly treat the poor and already are struggling to survive amid rock-bottom reimbursement rates and costly federal health care reform,” Crain’s reports.
A) Pat Quinn is a Democrat.
B) Federal health care reform is costly.

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Posted on February 23, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

Seeing as how the Quinn administration has already leaked the governor’s budget plan, why even have him give a speech today?
Just post it online and get to work.

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Posted on February 22, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

“With two days left before the Chicago Board of Education votes to close or restructure failing schools, community groups staged a candlelight vigil protesting the dramatic measures and marched to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home on the North Side,” the Tribune reports.
“With the headline ‘CPS statement on CTU rally’ implying the rally had been staged by the teachers union, spokeswoman Becky Carroll said in the statement: ‘CPS is breaking away from a status quo that has failed our students year after year. What has been tried in the past has not worked and going back to the same failed policies is not in the best interest of our students.'”
So the policies of Richard M. Daley and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan failed? That’s what we’ve been saying!

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Posted on February 21, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

“About 11,000 prisoners, a mix of suspects awaiting trial and those convicted of minor crimes, are housed at the [Cook County Jail] at any one time, which is like stuffing the population of Palos Heights into an eight-block area on Chicago’s South Side,” the Chicago News Cooperative reports. “The Cook County sheriff, Tom Dart, estimated that about 2,000 of them suffer from some form of serious mental illness, far more than at the big state-owned Elgin Mental Health Center, which has 582 beds.
“Dart said the system ‘is so screwed up that I’ve become the largest mental health provider in the state of Illinois.’ The situation is about to get worse, according to Dart and other criminal justice experts. The city plans to shut down 6 of its 12 mental health centers by the end of April, to save an estimated $2 million, potentially leaving many patients without adequate treatment – some of them likely to engage in conduct that will lead to arrests.”

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Posted on February 20, 2012

By Natasha Julius

See, this is why we’re the Weekend Desk and not the Completely Irrelevant Desk.
Market Update
Analysts are not entirely convinced Sanity will rally after a brutal takeover bid from Reality.

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Posted on February 18, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

“As with so many aspects of the musical Walmart on the Lake, Lollaplooza likes to have its cake and eat it too when it comes to trumpeting each August’s 130-band lineup,” Jim DeRogatis writes on his Pop n Stuff blog for WBEZ.
“The concert has maintained from the start of its reinvention as a Chicago-based ‘destination festival’ seven years ago that people come to Grant Park because of the event, regardless of the particular acts on the bill. Then the promoters rant and rage at any reporter who dares to publish any of the acts they’ve booked in advance of their official lineup press release.
“When this blogger broke the news of the lineup in 2008, Lollapalooza corporate figurehead Perry Farrell lashed out and called me ‘Pepe LePew.’ The last few years, my Sound Opinions colleague Greg Kot had the scoops, and though they were more circumspect in public, the promoters were no less angry behind the scenes. Now, they’ve got a new public enemy number one: the person claiming to be ‘an anonymous Lollapalooza insider’ behind the @LollaLeaks Twitter account.”

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Posted on February 17, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

“Ahead of this spring’s NATO and G8 summits, four influential aldermen on Wednesday proposed prohibiting audience members from waving signs or engaging in any ‘demonstration of approval or disapproval’ during City Council meetings,” the Chicago News Cooperative reports.
Disapproval by the aldermen themselves has already been prohibited for many years.

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Posted on February 16, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

“Gov. Pat Quinn says he doesn’t know if he would support legislation that would give same sex couples the same rights as heterosexual couples,” AP reports.
He’s not sure. After all, it’s a new issue.
“The Democrat supported same sex civil unions, which became legal in Illinois last summer. However, he said Tuesday he wants to study issues surrounding same-sex marriage before he makes a decision.”
He wants to study up. After all, it’s a new issue.
Pat Quinn is a Democrat.

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Posted on February 15, 2012

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.

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Posted on February 14, 2012

By Steve Rhodes

The Beachwood offices will be closed today because we’re sure that’s how Abe Lincoln would have wanted it.
Which reminds me, we used to have a fairly frequent customer at the Beachwood Inn whom we called Steve Lincoln Jr. He was, we posited, the great-great-great-great-grandson of Abe Lincoln. We never actually talked to him, though, to confirm this. He just looked the part.
Anyway, just because HQ is closed doesn’t mean we don’t have some awesome new posts to offer today, because we do:

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Posted on February 13, 2012