Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Wednesday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

The next Papers column will appear over the weekend.
To follow up, sort of, on part of yesterday’s column, there is a third person in the race for Cook County Assessor: Andrea Raila.
Raila seems like a worthy candidate except for the fact that she got in the race relatively late – after Fritz Kaegi – as noted by the Beachwood Bookmaking Bureau. The Bureau sees things like this:

Joe Berrios gets the Dem nomination for Cook County Assessor: 50 percent. He shouldn’t, of course, but he is the Machine.
Fritz Kaegi gets the Dem nomination: 30 percent. Got started early, though hasn’t picked up much traction. Still.
Andrea Raila gets the Dem nomination: 20 percent. Her second shot at Berrios; could become the better alternative.

Raila ran against Berrios in 2009. Here’s a blog post I wrote about her then, noting, among other things, kind words about her from Ben Joravsky and Studs Terkel.


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Raila didn’t get to Election Day back then. Berrios forced her off the ballot.
“The Machine will assess your taxes,” I wrote. “Barring a surprise Republican insurgency, Cook County Democratic Party Chairman and Machine Monster Joe Berrios will be the next Cook County Assessor. He will value your property for the purposes of taxing it to fund government operations and Machine shenanigans.”
I also argued then for a change in balloting rules, which has not been forthcoming.
For a deeper dive, see one of the pieces I’m most proud of: Rahm’s Rules: Part 1.
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The good news today is that it looks like Kaegi will survive a ballot challenge by Berrios.
Raila, too, is expected to survive a challenge by Berrios, according to the Tribune. But Kaegi has also challenged Raila’s ballot petition signatures and, in the Trib report, sounds more aggressive about it than the Berrios camp. Of course, it would be to Kaegi’s advantage – and Berrios’s disadvantage – to get the incumbent in a one-on-one match-up instead of Raila possibly dividing the anti-Berrios vote, as the Trib notes.
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Meanwhile, the Cook County ethics board (yes, there is one) has fined Berrios and Kaegi has filed a defamation suit against him.
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P.S.: I missed this from October, just came across it today: “Berrios Opponent Plagued By Fake Websites.”
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Reminder: Joe Berrios is the chairman of the Democratic Party of Cook County. Rahm Emanuel and Toni Preckwinkle and a whole lot of other Democrats continue to stand by him after years of nepotism, cronyism and all-around malfeasance.
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New on the Beachwood today . . .
Media Hyperreality
If journalists ever engaged in self-reflection, they would show more interest in people like media theorist Jean Baudrillard.
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ChicagoGram


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ChicagoTube
Chicago Dude Plays Bongos Over “Everyday I Write The Book.”

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BeachBook
One Way Sanctuary Cities Are Safer Than Non-Sanctuary Cities.

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MSNBC Ignores Catastrophic U.S.-Backed War In Yemen.

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Standard Depression Survey May Not Work As Well For Black Teens.

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For Some In America, Including Chicago, China’s Looming Surveillance Nightmare Is Here.

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Kadner: Don’t Just Close Veterans Home, Close The Whole State.

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TweetWood
A sampling.


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Some have said this is a shameless way of denying accountability for a tragic situation and turning it into political opportunity. Let me be crystal clear. It is.


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Who is behind him – Rahm?


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If there’s ever been a party structured around race and gender, it’s the modern-day Republican party.


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The Beachwood Tronc Line: Hypersurreality.

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Posted on January 10, 2018