Dr. Dreyfuss musings
Another Brilliant John Kass take on how Chicago really works.


John Kass
Quiet guy lifts the lid off hiring machine


Published May 26, 2006

Picture a red beet in a suit perched in the witness box in federal court, and you can see Jack Drumgould.

He's a quiet little guy who worked at City Hall for almost 30 years and who, on Thursday, explained how Chicago really works.

From the witness stand in the patronage corruption trial, with Mayor Richard Daley's underlings staring at him, Drumgould was established as an expert in the hiring business.

How do you become a hiring expert at City Hall so you can retire with a $6,000 monthly pension? You do what the mayor's office wants you to do when it comes to hiring some people and not hiring others.

You hire the guys they want you to hire and give them a good rating score. And you downgrade others after interviewing them because that's what the bosses want, even if those downgraded are more qualified.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Julie Ruder wanted to know about the hundreds of people he had interviewed for the jobs of truck driver and laborer. She asked: Didn't the interviews matter?

"No," he said. "Because the interviews are not going to decide who is going to receive the position."

In an earlier exchange, she asked why he bothered with the interviews.

"Because the union contracts required it," he said.

But what about the rating forms?

"The rating forms were irrelevant to who got the position," Drumgould said.

What was relevant?

"The list of names from IGA," he said.

IGA means the Mayor's Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. But it really means the mayor's office of patronage and machine politics, and Drumgould acknowledged as much.

He spoke in a little voice, but what he said was devastating to Daley underlings Robert Sorich, Patrick Slattery, Tim McCarthy and John Sullivan.

Every city worker understands. They're made scapegoats by those TV news exposes that shriek about three men on a shovel. Meanwhile, hundreds of millions of dollars in asphalt and trucking contracts go out the back door.

The aldermen ignore the big stuff because the aldermen are afraid. But they're brave when it comes to ginning up phony racial issues involving the naming of streets for dead Black Panthers, the better to boil the blood and get out the vote.

And they've stopped the selling of goose liver pate in gourmet restaurants. That's good government in Chicago: Defend the rights of geese while taxpayers get butchered.

Yet aldermen can always be counted on to cause a media distraction, as with their newly proposed $20,000 pay increase, to compete with bad news out of the federal building. They happily play the bobo.

In court Thursday, Drumgould sat there chatting, a political survivor who worked in Streets and Sanitation as a clerk of sorts, never sweating, wearing a tie. He testified that he retired to take a union job, then came back to City Hall on his own time to help phony up a few hundred more job applications.

He's out of the 19th Ward Democratic Organization. The boss of Streets and San for years was Eileen Carey, sister-in-law of one of Daley's political brains, 19th Ward boss Jeremiah Joyce, king of airport concessions, building supplies, lots of stuff.

Drumgould said he would get names from Sorich or others and make sure the employment forms were rigged. Those favored by the mayor's office always got the highest scores, he said.

It's the way it is here. There are always guys like Jack Drumgould who make sure the paperwork matches up for political hires. And other Drumgould types who made sure the paperwork matched for what I figure are untold tons of missing asphalt.

Under cross-examination, Cynthia Giacchetti, representing Sullivan, went after Drumgould, making him out to be a rat for testifying to save himself. She accused him of fudging his testimony, of not closely reading job applications. But he kept shooting back the theme of this trial so far: Politics trumps qualifications every time.

"I did not read the applications because I knew the applications had nothing to do with who would fill the position," he said, again and again.

The Daley underlings perked up during the cross-examination phase. Sorich sat straighter, as did the others. Their family members and friends sitting behind them seemed encouraged.

What do you tell them? Do they honestly believe that Rich Daley would fall on his sword for his underlings, as they're falling, now, for him?

During the lunch break, out on State Street, I ran into a man who knows the mayor extremely well and has made millions of dollars on political deals. I asked about the Daley underlings falling on their swords.

"They're fools," he said. "They're lackeys, taking orders and it's too bad."

I asked: Will Rich Daley help them?

He laughed, waved off the question and drove off. He knows the mayor is a one-way street.

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jskass@tribune.com

Dr. Dreyfuss musings

MOSCOW (Reuters) - A speech by Vice President Dick Cheney strongly critical of the Kremlin marks the start of a new Cold War that could drive Moscow away from its new-found Western allies, the Russian press said on Friday.

In shocked reaction to the harshest U.S. criticism of Moscow for years, commentators said Washington had created an anti-Russian cordon of Western-aligned states stretching from the Baltic almost to the Caspian Sea.

The Kremlin, in a reaction within hours of Cheney's delivery in Vilnius, said the speech, which was full of accusations that Moscow was limiting human rights and using its energy riches to blackmail the world, was "completely incomprehensible."

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov declined to comment directly on Friday when asked about Cheney, but said the meeting of former communist satellites that the vice president had addressed appeared to be "united against someone."

The Russian press agreed, comparing Cheney's words to a 1946 speech by British statesman Winston Churchill in Fulton, Missouri, when he said Europe was divided by an "Iron Curtain."

"Enemy at the Gates. Dick Cheney made a Fulton speech in Vilnius," said business daily Kommersant's front page headline.

"Vice President Dick Cheney made a keynote speech on relations between the West and Russia in which he practically established the start of the second Cold War ... The Cold War has restarted, only now the front lines have shifted," it said.

Washington and Moscow have largely ignored differences since the hijacked airliner attacks on U.S. buildings in September 11, 2001 and concentrated on joint interests in the fight against international militant groups.

But ties between the former rivals have cooled recently.

Cheney's harsh criticism injected fresh tension that is likely to be still felt when Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts President Bush and other world leaders at a summit of the G8 club of rich nations in St Petersburg in July.

RUSSIAN SELF-CONFIDENCE

Commentators said the speech was an answer to Russia's new self-confidence, which has stemmed from high oil prices and a shortage of energy supplies giving it new influence.

Cheney was addressing a group of former communist and ex-Soviet states including Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova which have infuriated their former master by turning toward the West.

Komsomolskaya Pravda (KP), Russia's top-selling daily, showed what the meeting meant to Moscow by coloring in the states that met in Vilnius to show a purple cordon separating Russia from the rest of Europe.

Reaching for another historical analogy, it compared the meeting to that between the anti-Nazi allies Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josef Stalin in the Soviet town of Yalta in 1945, at which they divided up the map of Europe.

"Yesterday in the Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, like in Yalta in 1945, the map of Europe was redrawn," KP said, raising the specter of Russia being isolated from the mainstream.

"What can Russia do? It would appear it will have to strengthen ties with Belarus and Central Asia. And get close to China, to balance this Western might."

Commentators said Russia was being expected to knuckle under and follow the U.S. lead.

"At the same time, Moscow's partners are not prepared to sacrifice anything, keeping their "correct" patriotism and their own policies," said official daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta in a lengthy commentary.

Dr. Dreyfuss musings

Just when you thought it was safe to go outside, this>

Bush says fight against terror is 'World War III' May 05 6:07 PM US/Eastern Email this story

US President George W. Bush said the September 11 revolt of passengers against their hijackers on board Flight 93 had struck the first blow of "World War III."

In an interview with the financial news network CNBC, Bush said he had yet to see the recently released film of the uprising, a dramatic portrayal of events on the United Airlines plane before it crashed in a Pennsylvania field.

But he said he agreed with the description of David Beamer, whose son Todd died in the crash, who in a Wall Street Journal commentary last month called it "our first successful counter-attack in our homeland in this new global war -- World War III".

Bush said: "I believe that. I believe that it was the first counter-attack to World War III.

"It was, it was unbelievably heroic of those folks on the airplane to recognize the danger and save lives," he said.

Flight 93 crashed on the morning of September 11, 2001, killing the 33 passengers, seven crew members and four hijackers, after passengers stormed the cockpit and battled the hijackers for control of the aircraft.

The president has repeatedly praised the heroism of the passengers in fighting back and so launching the first blow of what he usually calls the "war on terror".

In 2002, then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer explicitly declined to call the hunt for Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group and its followers "World War III."

Dr. Dreyfuss musings

Wow, the US looks like a banana republic compared to Canada>

Maybe the grass is greener on the other side of the fence.

A country with 10 years of fiscal surpluses, booming growth, a trade surplus with the world, a national health-care system, a strengthening currency, billions of dollars in proposed new tax relief and in transfers from the federal government to the provinces, and only token entanglements abroad--no Iraq malaise.

Sound good? Maybe the next mass demonstrations will be Americans marching on the streets of Canadian cities, asking to be welcomed.

The principal stock index at the Toronto Stock Exchange has returned 50 percent in the last 12 months, in U.S. dollars, compared with 15 percent for the U.S. benchmark Standard & Poor's 500 index.

The Canadian currency on Tuesday broke above 90 cents per U.S. dollar for the first time since 1978. (That makes it better when we come back to the states to shop.)

On Tuesday, Jim Flaherty, Canada's minister of finance, proposed $20 billion Canadian in tax breaks for individuals, as well as a new "universal child care" benefit of $100 per month per child under the age of 6.

The Canadian story is almost too good to believe right now. There's a simple explanation.

"Canada is the world's commodity producer par excellence," said Peter Frank, senior foreign exchange strategist at ABN Amro in Chicago.

From oil and natural gas to gold, silver and industrial metals to meat and lumber--"It's a bit of everything," said Frank.

"Global growth, particularly from Asia, looks to be expanding at a faster rate," he said. "You see a lot of shortages of supply of commodity goods, pushing up energy and non-energy prices."

Unlike the greenback, the Canadian dollar, known as the loonie, is in short supply as well.

"There's no government debt," Frank said. "The world is not awash in Canadian dollars. There is hardly any to go around."

Like the U.S. central bank, the Federal Reserve, the Bank of Canada has been raising interest rates steadily to pre-empt inflation. Higher rates have done little to stall the economy and have made the Canadian dollar even more attractive.

"What's not to like about the country, unless you're a [Canadian] manufacturer. Then you're in trouble because interest rates are going up, and the Canadian dollar is going up," said Andrew Busch, foreign exchange strategist at Bank of Montreal/Harris Bank in Chicago.

"I would imagine that the manufacturers up there are going to scream bloody murder."

Busch said that in past years the Bank of Canada appeared to fight unwanted currency strength by reducing interest rates.

Maybe so, but higher rates and a stronger currency are the byproducts of commodity-based prosperity, and there's no sign that demand for commodities will slow anytime soon, Frank said.

Bush and Frank predict that the U.S. dollar will fall to $1.05 Canadian by the end of the year from $1.106 Canadian.

"We're trying to figure out whether the Bank of Canada makes any change in its monetary policy based on the much stronger currency," Busch said.

"If the Bank of Canada keeps matching the Fed [rate hikes], we'll go to [dollar] parity very easily."

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/columnists/chi-0605030048may03,1,6715751.column?coll=chi-navrailbusiness-nav

Bill Barnhart