By Steve Rhodes

I haven’t gotten to my notes from last night’s mayoral debate, and there’s another debate tonight (already taped), and I’ve got notes from two previous debates I haven’t written up, so while I figure out if/when/how to get those together, I thought I’d post a long reply I dashed off (so it’s rough) today in reply to a Facebook comment about concerns over Lori Lightfoot’s criminal justice record and and where some of her endorsements are coming from.
Let me just add a caveat, which I also flick at in the post: I don’t want to be seen as cheerleading for Lightfoot. I’m calling it like I see it, and as I see it, Toni Preckwinkle has behaved despicably, and engaged in a pattern of lies. I haven’t seen the same in Lightfoot. That’s half the battle with me.

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Posted on March 26, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

Hey, here’s an interesting thing: Not a single person commenting on the Mueller report has actually read the Mueller report.

— Beachwood Reporter (@BeachwoodReport) March 25, 2019

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Posted on March 25, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

For completists, there was no column on Thursday or Friday. Similarly, there is no “top” to this Weekend Desk Report. I’ll jump back in the game on Monday.

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Posted on March 24, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

“[U.S. Rep. Danny] Davis argued that a vote for Lightfoot would be a risk voters cannot afford to take at a perilous time when Chicago is facing a $1.2 billion spike in pension payments and other intransigent problems,” the Sun-Times reports.

“Would you rather take a chance for an individual who has been a great prosecutor, a well-learned individual, an outstanding attorney, a great litigator, skilled professional in the courthouse, but never been elected to anything?” Davis said of Lightfoot.

Representative Davis is right! Let’s all vote for Lightfoot!
I mean, that’s quite an endorsement of . . . his candidate’s opponent.

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Posted on March 20, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

“Chicago mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot is calling for the release of thousands of pages of records from the city’s investigation of an alleged cover-up for Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke after he killed teenager Laquan McDonald,” WBEZ reports.

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Posted on March 19, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

For completists, there was no column on Friday and no Weekend Desk Report. Sorry!
“As Boeing hustled in 2015 to catch up to Airbus and certify its new 737 MAX, Federal Aviation Administration managers pushed the agency’s safety engineers to delegate safety assessments to Boeing itself, and to speedily approve the resulting analysis,” the Seattle Times reports.
“But the original safety analysis that Boeing delivered to the FAA for a new flight control system on the MAX – a report used to certify the plane as safe to fly – had several crucial flaws.
“That flight control system, called MCAS (Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System), is now under scrutiny after two crashes of the jet in less than five months resulted in Wednesday’s FAA order to ground the plane.”

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Posted on March 18, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

Let’s take a day off the campaign trail to see what else is going on around here. In no particular order:
1. Frack Hack.
“Republican state lawmakers from Illinois pushed back Tuesday against a bill that would require more public disclosure from oil and gas drilling companies whenever they use hydraulic fracturing, or ‘fracking,’ in their operations in the state,” Capitol News Illinois reports.

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Posted on March 14, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

Chicago, in one tweet, from the city council meeting today:

Absent today — @AldermanSolis; @AldermanMunoz22; @ALDERMANWBC, all embroiled in criminal cases

— The Daily Line (@thedailylinechi) March 13, 2019

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Posted on March 13, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

I watched the Tribune editorial board debate between Toni Preckwinkle and Lori Lightfoot this morning (via Facebook livestream!) and have a few notes to pass along.

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Posted on March 12, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

“A new round of labor upheaval hit the classical music world on Sunday night, when the musicians of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, one of the finest ensembles in the nation, went on strike in an effort to preserve their defined-benefit pension plan,” the New York Times reports.
“The players – who are among the best-paid in the field, earning a minimum annual salary of $159,000 last season, and often more – began walking a picket line outside Orchestra Hall on Monday morning.”

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Posted on March 11, 2019