POWIP Piece of Work In Progress

A Chicago Real-Estate Scandal That Deserves National Attention [UPDATE]

Nothing that belongs to the public is not convertible into payoffs for the criminal class of politician that has metastatized out of Chicago and onto the national scene. My friend Tom Bennett, who visited with the B-Cast, brings us the latest (not block indented). Read it in the light of the recent revelations regarding Arne Duncan's favored list of folks whose kids "deserved" to get into the best Chicago area schools:

This past Thursday, March 18th, a federal jury found a Chicago developer -- Calvin Boender (pronounced Boon-der) -- guilty of all five counts against him including bribery, federal election law violations and obstruction of justice charges.

While personally observing portions of the federal jury selection process as well as both the opening and closing statements in their entirety during the Boender trial, the following question came forcibly to mind: When is the local U.S. Attorney going to indict the parties involved with the steering of the Chicago Housing Authority?

With respect to relevant background on the Boender trial, here's what I can tell you ---

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Manufactured Hate Criminals

I agree with Dan Riehl:

After what we've witnessed by corrupt, power-hungry progressives like Clyburn, these fools think they can back us down with the same old song and dance they've been doing for years. We'll it isn't going to work, Clyburn. Get used to it. We aren't going away and it's time for us to get in your face for a change.

"I have seen this before," Clyburn told CNN. "These kinds of things happen when people in positions of authority do not do what they do to tamp this down."

One day they're thugs, raping the Constitution to steal our liberty - the next, they try to turn around and play the victim.

Jehuda the Rhetorican has more:

Expect lots more cases of “hate libel” from anyone invested in Obamacare’s passage, especially as November approaches. Some will be pathetic straw-grasping like the “coffin incident”. Others may sound more plausible like the “spitting” one, but they will all have the same objective: painting the Democrats’ opponents as monsters so as to make Democrats look good by comparison: the lesser of two evils. “Sure we’re awful, but look over there: hate!”

They're playing with a deck comprised entirely of race cards.

Ruffing.

If you missed yesterday's B-Cast, they disgussed the practice of bearing false witless.

And thanks for the linkage, too. It makes a big difference. Dan's, for instance, generated 5/6th of the visits this morning. I do wish that more people commented, though. Suggestions?

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Pussy Gaoler

Pussy Per Se may seem terribly reductive, but when the synecdoche is self-applied, and when it is less humiliating than being categorized by the state, perhaps one can make an exception. Contrary to legend, it is not Mordred and his minions who slew King Arthur, but lawyers armed with a prong:

It was clause 2 that slew King Arthur’s, and which threatens many businesses in the commonwealth as well as individuals trying to make a living on their own. Is stripping within “the usual course of the business of the employer?” This is a no brainer. Strippers are not IC’s under this prong. Everything in a strip club, from the neon outline of a naked woman outside to the cover charge to the overpriced drinks to the peculiar architecture (lap dance areas, champagne rooms, a stage, for crissakes) is based on bare pussy. King Arthur’s argued otherwise, that it sold liquor and the dancers were the equivalent of TVs and pool tables in sports bars. The judge chided the defendant: “A court would need to be blind to human instinct to decide that live nude entertainment was equivalent to the wallpaper of routinely-televised matches, games, tournaments and sports talk.” Thus, a strip club may hire electricians and plumbers, for example, as IC’s, because they are outside the “usual course of the business.” But strippers must be employees.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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The Ice. Dong. Cometh.

Protein Actual:

I see that a freshly-moistened James Wolcott once again defied gravity’s odds and managed to jowel his way from divan to keyboard, where with fat pink powdered fingers he pecked out this description of Darleen’s comic: “a desperate, ghoulish plea for attention (now that even right wing sites are no longer linking to [protein wisdom])”. I can’t say that I agree with Mr Wolcott’s rather overwrought assessment of Darleen’s work, but on the second point I can’t offer much of an argument.

Frankly, I’m just glad someone besides me noticed.

I noticed. Read the whole thing.

Wolly the Outrage Seal

Thanks to Jimmie Bise for the kudos, and here he considers the green-eyed monster that fungibles the meat it feeds on.

Stacy references Horton Hears a Who, with regard to Ann Coulter, but omits to link. UPDATE: Stacy redeems himself.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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More Whining About ObamaNomics at The Daily Caller

From the NYT via The Dolorous Chronicle:

The bursting of the real estate bubble and the ensuing recession have hurt jobs, home prices and now Social Security.

This year, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Stephen C. Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that while the Congressional projection would probably be borne out, the change would have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees would keep receiving their checks as usual.

See? There's nothing to worry about. Yet here is how The Daily Whiner describes the situation in its email:

CBO fails to predict future -- For the first time ever, reports the New York Times, Social Security "will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office." Ever the optimists, the Times writes that this marks "the first step of a long, slow march to insolvency, unless Congress strengthens the program’s finances." Which it will have no problem doing while also juggling the cost of a $1 trillion something-or-other bill.

Have they not heard President Obama's promise that nobody making less than a quarter million dollars per year will find his taxes raised during Obama's administration? Does that not argue that Social Security is solvent?

I, for one, am tired of this partisan alarmism.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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All of Cablinasia Awaits Tiger’s Return

The remote island nation of Cablinasia eagerly---and somewhat nervously---awaits Tiger Woods' return to the golf tour. Racked by a still-ongoing sex scandal, the greatest ever Cablinasian professional athlete and most recognizable Cablinasian in the world put aside his career for several months to focus on family matters and sex-addiction rehab after embarrassing revelations regarding a number of mistresses, but now is poised to return to the links and gather up more historical records. He admits to some jitters, or 'yips' as they are called in golf, on his own part regarding his reception by fans of the sport.

Cablinasia, bounded on one side by the Sea of Negritude and the other by the Albino Straits, was originally populated by sea-faring Goldenesians about 3000 BC, whose comparatively relaxed sexual mores were chronicled with repugnance by European mariners, including the famous Captain William Bligh, whose crew stranded him and several loyal officers on the uninhabited Eggplant Archipelago after mutinying, then returning to the Cablinasian main island of Bonk for "sloppy seconds." As Bligh noted in his logbook:

These people, if we can call them so, do engage in the abhorrent practice of vaginal intercourse with members of the opposite sex, after taking of an herb they call ambien. I fear that these bestial customs may in course corrupt my crew and adversely affect morale.

During World War II (eventually won by the Green Bay Packers) Cablinasian women were highly valued as "Comfort Girls" by the occupying Japanese. They shipped off many of the men to the German front lines, where they performed a similar role for Nazi officers.

Cablinasia won its independence after a bloodless revolution against the Angevins in 1949.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Kass Whales On Corrupt Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan

Socialist elitism:

Daley's school system is a brilliant political enterprise. Except for the first-tier minority, the educational product is a failure. But that's not what's vitally important to the Illinois political class. What's important are votes. The bureaucracy gets the budget and the jobs. The elites get top prep schools.

When human beings are seeking what's best for their children, they're not exactly interested in complaining about how City Hall runs things. Dealing with entrance exams, lobbying for school placement, writing appeals to the lords of the magnet schools is difficult enough. Naturally, they're not eager to be seen by City Hall as beefers.

If any group understands how bureaucracy can sting, it is the city's professional class. They know that in Chicago, there's no percentage in shouting the emperor has no clothes. So they behave.

Daley didn't exactly force parents at swordpoint to bend their knees and kiss his regal garments. His genius here is more coercive, not the force of the warrior, but the subtle work of the arborist. They eagerly graft their branches to his trunk.

The first-tier kids go on to top colleges, the parents sing Daley's praises. The second-tier workers are rooted firmly in the status quo. And the tree blooms and bears fruit, mayoral election after mayoral election.

So no matter what he said on Tuesday, Daley clearly has a big role, in the sense that there is a role.

Even if he insists he doesn't have much to do with that clout list kept by his own guy, Arne Duncan.

As was the case when Obama was helping the Annenberg Challenge waste $150 million not improving Chicago schools, the issue is payoff and control, not efficacy.

Obama. Proudly combining the worst of Carter and Nixon.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Prehistoric Woman Was a Lot of Fun

'X-Woman' Coexisted With Neanderthals, Modern Humans

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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Joe Biden Reads Roald Dahl Classic

The Big Fucking Dope.

(an Enoch_Root joint)

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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They’re Caught in a TARP, They Can’t Walk Out

because they're stuck on stupid, baby:

President Obama's foreclosure prevention program will likely fall far short of its goal and may even do more harm than good, a government watchdog said Tuesday.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program said the Treasury Department set targets that weren't "meaningful," mismanaged the implementation of the program, and now risks a substantial number of "re-defaults," with many participants ultimately losing their homes anyway.

Why can't they see/ What's clear as can be?/ Is it their ideology, maybe?
You can't go on this way/ With fictitious minds,/ And yeah we're really pissed:/ You'd better watch your behinds.

Dan Collins

Dan Collins is a dude who blogs. He used to blog elsewhere. Now he blogs here.

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