Chicago -
By Steve Rhodes
1. About That Cop Conspiracy Trial Judge . . .
If you didn’t see the update yesterday, it turns out I somehow missed a Tribune profile of Domenica Stephenson despite what I thought was a deep archival dive. Take a look – it’s Item 4 and it addresses the sense some – but not others – have that Stephenson has a pro-police bias.
Posted on December 19, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
1. NIU vs. Who?
“If the businessmen had taken an unimpassioned look at the financial fundamentals of the football program at the University of Alabama-Birmingham on a late May day in 2015, they would have left it in the dustbin,” the New York Times reports.
Six months earlier, the president of the university, Dr. Ray Watts, had shut down the debt-ridden program. Now, 25 of the region’s business moguls were gathered on the 14th floor of the university’s administration building with Watts. They did what they were not expected to do, pledging $5.2 million to help bring back the program.
“It was not a UAB thing, it was a Birmingham thing,” said Hatton Smith, a Birmingham native and one of the businessmen in the room.
Now look at UAB football, and Birmingham. In an era when there are routine calls to dismantle expensive, money-losing college football programs and high school students are shying from the game over concerns about safety, the U.A.B. story is the ultimate unicorn. It fits no larger trend, other than football remaining very popular in the South. Still, it is entirely possible this would not have happened at any other university with UAB’s fact pattern.
The Blazers returned to action in 2017, going 8-5 and losing to Ohio University in the Bahamas Bowl. They are 10-3 this season, winning Conference USA, and will play Northern Illinois in the Boca Raton Bowl [tonight].
Posted on December 18, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
1. Packers Move Up To 11th In Projected 2019 NFL Draft Order.
Breaking.
Posted on December 17, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
1A. Sears Gets Court Approval For $25 million In Bonuses To High-Ranking Employees.
1B. Sears Racked Up Nearly $1.9 Billion In Losses Amid Bankruptcy.
Posted on December 14, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
The top of this column will return tomorrow or over the weekend!
Posted on December 13, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
1. Enyia’s Spokesperson Resigns Citing “Several Unknown And Troubling Factors.”
I don’t know what this is about, but I wish someone would vet Enyia’s resume. I keep reading about her expertise as an international municipal consultant without ever seeing a single example of her work. I have yet to hear what she has accomplished as the longtime executive director of the Austin Chamber of Commerce. She claims to be an organizer yet she had four years since her last run for mayor to prepare for this run for mayor and had just sixty bucks in her campaign account before Chance and Kanye came along – and she needed Kanye to settle an astounding $70,000 in unpaid state election board fines. She said she filed petitions with 62,000 signatures when she apparently had 40,000 signatures. She has three bodyguards. I’m not saying there aren’t reasonable responses to these queries, but I am saying I haven’t seen them yet.
Posted on December 12, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
1. Sophia Bush: I Was Assaulted And Abused On Chicago P.D. Set.
This seems to call for a response by the city.
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The Tribune led its coverage with Bush’s difficulty adjusting to Chicago’s weather.
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See also from May: Sophia Bush On Sexual Assault: ‘Women Everywhere Have Been Exposed To This.’
Posted on December 11, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
1. Shhhhhhhhhh.
Note I sent to our very own Jim “Coach” Coffman this morning:
ARE THE BEARS ACTUALLY GOOD?!!!!!
shhhhhh, don’t tell anyone but … they are now a legitimate …. super …. bowl … contender …. aarrrgghhh! i mean … my god … i’m trying to rein it in but … holy cow.
See also:
Rams points by game this season:
33, 34, 35, 38, 33, 23, 39, 29, 35, 36, 54, 30, 6.Six. #Bears
— Christopher Kamka (@ckamka) December 10, 2018
Posted on December 10, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
For completists, there was no column on Friday.
“In the early 2000s, McHenry County’s population was booming – and officials needed a bigger jail. To save money, the county cut a deal: the federal government gave the county millions of dollars toward expanding the jail, and in return, the county agreed to detain undocumented immigrants for the next decade,” the Sun-Times reports.
“But three years after that first contract ended, McHenry County’s population growth has slowed to the point it doesn’t need the extra room in its jail in Woodstock – but it has continued to hold detainees for the federal government.
“And while the number of detainees ebbed and flowed over the years – to the point that some county commissioners wanted to end the contract – a spike in detainees recently has turned the contract into a cash cow for the county.”
Okay, how much?
Posted on December 8, 2018
By Steve Rhodes
The defense rested this afternoon in the trial of three Chicago police officers accused of covering up the facts surrounding colleague Jason Van Dyke’s fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald in 2014. A jury convicted Van Dyke of second-degree murder in October.
I don’t know if it’s just me, or if it’s just the slew of news – particularly the mayor’s race – happening at the same time, but it seems like this trial hasn’t been getting the attention we all thought it would. I’m just catching up with it now. (Maybe it’s because it seems so obvious the officers are guilty, or that it’s anticlimactic considering the slam dunk of the Van Dyke trial.)
But I’m here now to catch you up.
Posted on December 6, 2018
