By Steve Rhodes
1. Some Chicago schools do not allow brown bag lunches.
It’s a government takeover of school lunch!
But truly, a bit heavy-handed. CPS should focus on its own crappy lunches before taking on the meals prepared by parents.
2. “Jeff Pesek, 38, president of the Morton High School District 201 board, which oversees several thousand students from Cicero, Berwyn and other suburbs, has been partners in business with admitted wholesale cocaine dealer Enrique ‘Henry’ Rendon, according to court testimony and documents,” the Sun-Times reports.
I wonder what their school lunches are like.
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“Jeff Pesek was hired in October 2008 to be the town’s director of services and recreation as well as Cicero’s safety director at an annual salary of $94,322, according to town records.
“The Peseks’ mother, Elaine, was appointed to [Cicero Town President Larry] Dominick’s town literacy office starting in 2006 and has earned more than $38,000 for her service.
“Elaine Pesek, a former teacher, helps promote literacy in town. In 2009, [Jeff’s brother] Craig Pesek won a seat on the Cicero library board. He is also a state Republican central committeeman. Even though he is a consultant and not a town employee, he has received town health insurance since 2007 because Pesek sits on a town committee.”
3. Putting the Blackhawks into the playoffs wasn’t enough to save his job.
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SportsMonday: Hawks Back Into Canucks.
4. “On a Chicago morning in late December, 60 people are lined up outside along a downtown street, waiting for buses headed to Des Moines, Indianapolis, and Kansas City,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek reports.
“It’s 20F, the wind talons, and the travelers sway and stamp. A student of clinical psychology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, standing near four dreadlocked white guys, says he paid $26 for a 200-mile trip to Iowa City, which prompts someone else to brag that his seat on the same double-decker bus cost $5.
“They’re all there to catch rides offered by Megabus, the largest of the private companies to corporatize New York’s ‘Chinatown bus’ model of street-side pickup, express travel between sizable cities, and cut-rate fares. Half a mile from the Greyhound depot and barely on the periphery of Union Station’s Beaux Arts grandeur, the Megabus stop’s only identification is a modest street sign displaying the company name above its mascot, a cherubic, Benny Hill-like character in a yellow driver’s cap.”
5. “When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. hired Margaret Garner in 2005 as the first black woman contractor to build one of its stores, she was hailed as a symbol of the benefits local businesses and minority communities would reap from the retail giant’s push into Chicago,” Crain’s reports.
“Six years later, her company is bankrupt, crushed by cost overruns on Wal-Mart’s first Chicago store, located in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side. A Crain’s investigation shows that the benefits to minority contractors were less than suggested by the hype surrounding Ms. Garner’s hiring.
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“The Austin project casts doubt on the predicted boon in jobs and contracting dollars for minorities from Wal-Mart’s plan to build several dozen stores in Chicago over the next five years. Wal-Mart and supporters, including Mayor Richard M. Daley, used such promises as a rallying cry to beat back opposition to the Bentonville, Ark.-based chain’s expansion in Chicago.
“‘It’s not at all what was promised to residents of that ward and the city of Chicago,’ says Virginia Parks, a professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration, who is co-writing a book on Wal-Mart’s push into urban neighborhoods.”
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“Last month, Mr. Daley stood at a podium flanked by fresh produce to herald six additional sites in the Englewood, Chatham and West Loop neighborhoods. Chiding rivals who fought Wal-Mart, Mr. Daley touted the jobs those projects would create for minority workers. ‘When construction comes, I’m going to see men and women of color on this job,’ he said.”
Daley did more than chide Walmart’s critics; he called them racists.
6. “Those hoping for a daggers-out political tell-all from Gov. Deval Patrick’s new memoir will be sorely disappointed,” AP reports.
“Instead in his book A Reason to Believe, the Massachusetts Democrat tells his version of the American rags to riches story, chronicling what he dubs his ‘improbable’ rise from a broken home and poverty on the Chicago’s South Side to the upper echelons of American politics.”
7. “Libyan visitors to Chicago are being paid visits by the FBI because of fears about a terrorist attack here,” Chuck Goudie reported on Friday.
“The I-Team has learned that over the past two days, in Chicago, FBI agents have started questioning about 100 Libyan visitors.”
8. Chicago Metal Worker At War.
9. The New Jim Crow.
10. Repo Chicago: Lobster joint stakeout.
11. Miley Cyrus in Chicago.
12. The Cub Factor: Starlin Castro’s Defining Moment.
13. The White Sox Report: Attention Mustn’t Be Paid.
14. The Weekend in Chicago Rock.
Programming Note
I’ll be back behind the bar tonight at the venerable Beachwood Inn and it appears that The Chicago Code will back with a new episode as well. We’ll show it from 8 p.m to 9 p.m. and then return to the jukebox for your entertainment pleasure.
If you need to catch up on your Code, here’s a guide.
If you need to catch up on our little Code reindeer games, just remember to groan – and drink – every time a character mentions the Irish Mob, the Nigerian Mob, or an address that is in Lake Michigan.
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The Beachwood Tip Line: Wag the dog.
Posted on April 11, 2011