Another brilliant Kass piece>

www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-kass-09-aug09,0,2011958.column

chicagotribune.com

Tough queries unleash a terrifying alter ego

John Kass

August 9, 2009

For most of last week, Mayor Richard Daley was doing fine, calmly making pronouncements, issuing sweeping edicts, decrees and commands.

But then he released his inner Mayor Chucky.

And when the terrifying Mayor Chucky persona came out by week's end -- after a Tribune investigation about political insiders poised to cash in on Daley's plans of hosting the 2016 Olympic Games -- it wasn't pretty.

"I just saw it on TV," said a friend on the phone. "A reporter asks him a question about the Olympic land deal, and bingo. Mayor Chucky. Wow. It's scary."

Positively Chuckified.

Days earlier, Daley was publicly relaxed, almost like a normal person. He stood high above his metropolis, perched on a tiny sliver of glass, standing on the Ledge on the observation Skydeck of what I still call Sears Tower. He was master of all he surveyed, staring at the tiny humans on the street far below. The man looked happy.

And he didn't lose his cool when foolish Chicago Public Schools officials selected a popular singer as spokesman for the mayor's big back-to-school push, without telling him the singer's big hit is "Birthday Sex."

But it was inevitable that Mayor Chucky would pop out. On Friday, observers noticed the aggravated facial expressions, then the hand waving, great circular motions from the shoulder, then the sneering, the finger pointing, and finally, the angry lip curling.

It was more terrifying than that little killer doll in the horror movies. But this was no Hollywood fictional character on screen. This wasn't some demonic puppet with 12-inch legs and tiny overalls, scampering down a dark hallway, wielding a butcher knife, and shrieking for blood. No, this was the mayor of Chicago in real life, yelling and trying to bully reporters because he was asked about a Tribune investigation.

The Tribune reported Friday that developer Michael Scott Sr., an insider who is also the mayor's president of the Chicago Board of Education, quietly arranged to develop nearly 20 parcels of West Side real estate right near a planned Olympics site.

Scott also is on a Daley Olympic subcommittee that developed ethics guidelines about how politically connected insiders aren't supposed to cash in on Chicago Olympic gold.

As if.

The mayor didn't want to answer. All he wanted to talk about was how he was providing infrastructure developments for the good of the people. The Scott questions were considered "off topic" by the mayor. Many of you probably don't know that the mayor's office insists that reporters stay "on topic" at most of his public events.

"On topic" means that he'll talk about the stunt of the moment, so reporters can give oodles of coverage to the news managed out of the mayor's press office. Many days, the mayor's schedulers inform reporters he'll only accept questions "on topic." And then you see the stunt on TV, the ribbon cutting or the meet-and-greet with the children or the seniors, and you think you're actually watching the news.

But a few local reporters on Friday, including a young Tribune reporter named Dan P. Blake, figured they should act like reporters, not press agents. So they dared ask "off topic" questions about Michael Scott. That's when the Mayor Chucky came out.

"No," he said. "this is just gonna be on this."

Translation: Shut up. Stay on topic.

ABC-Ch. 7's Charles Thomas asked him, politely, why he would refuse comment on an important story.

"You know, I'm out every day, Charles," said Mayor Chucky. "I'm sorry I can't be feeding the machine every day for you. I have a job to do. ... I'm sorry I can't answer questions every day. Every day. I do it enough. ... You ask me all types of questions. Today, yesterday, you all had the opportunity. There will always be headlines, there will be another headline Monday, another Wednesday on something else, but that's not my job, to fill your headlines."

Another compliant reporter went back "on topic" hoping to appease the mayor, but then Blake politely asked a question:

"When do you think you'll be available next to talk about the deal reported about Michael Scott?"

"Oh, I do it every day," Mayor Chucky insisted. "You've been with me every day. NEVER insult me with that question! You're insulting me because every day I'm here, you're never here. And don't print that! So I know, you'll print it."

Huh? What? All Blake asked was a legitimate question about when the mayor would answer a legitimate question.

On Saturday, the mayor finally talked about Scott, but only long enough to deny, deny, deny and say reporters were making it all up just to hurt his feelings and ruin everything. "You come to conclusions, you're trying to hurt 2016. I don't know why. ...You come to conclusions!"

What will happen if Chicago actually wins the 2016 Olympics?

We'll have lots and lots of insider deals.

And we'll have lots of Mayor Chucky.

jskass@tribune.com

This sums up how it works in Chicago.

John Kass

Vrdolyak always a good judge of power

Published May 11, 2007

The first time I met Fast Eddie Vrdolyak, I was a kid reporter on my first job for a small paper on the Southeast Side, assigned to cover Vrdolyak's big summer political bash.

Every year, Vrdolyak, then the 10th Ward alderman and de facto mayor of Chicago, would open his home to politicians, tough guys with funny nicknames such as "Ox" and "Crazy Joe" and neighborhood people.

It was the kind of party where bagmen would drink with iron workers and bankers. There were no lace curtain pretensions at these parties. They were for drinking and eating and politics, and I'd just been assigned the political beat.

"Want a beer?" Vrdolyak asked me at the door.

He knew that another reporter and I were investigating his role in kinky city scrap metal contracts that cost the city millions each year, but he turned on the charm.

"How about a beer?"

OK, I said.

Off to the side, near large tubs of iced beer, there were a few tired-looking gray men of middle age, in white shirts, attentive, leaning along the wall like waiters with sore feet. He gave one a look, and the old guy's face perked up, the way a dog's face perks up when told to roll over.

"Hey, judge," Vrdolyak told a fetcher. "Get the kid a beer. And make sure it's cold."

"Right away, Eddie," said the judge, who would later be sentenced to 15 years after fixing murder cases for the Outfit. "Right away."

Now Vrdolyak may be facing prison time if convicted on indictments announced Thursday by U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, on bribery, wire and mail fraud charges related to an alleged North Side real estate kickback scheme.

Vrdolyak is old now, nearly 70, a grandfather. But age won't protect him from prison if he's found guilty.

His buddy, the corrupt former Chicago Police Department chief of detectives William Hanhardt, 78, was convicted in an unrelated case of running an Outfit-sanctioned jewelry heist ring. Hanhardt is now going crazy inside and demanding a new trial on the grounds he shouldn't have pleaded guilty in the first place.

Hanhardt's guilty plea spared Chicago a trial that would have gutted City Hall and the Police Department like a fish. A Vrdolyak trial could have the same effect on politics.

Vrdolyak's lawyer, Mike Monico, said the feds have no real case against his old friend and client. "It's a shame the government has seen fit to bring this case," Monico told me. "It's a sad day. The allegations will not withstand the scrutiny of a trial. Ed Vrdolyak is not guilty."

The feds say they can't put the money in Vrdolyak's hand, but I'm told they have tape in which he reportedly schemes. Apparently, Vrdolyak forgot his own advice: "Always assume everything you say is taped."

Fast Eddie has no angels fluttering around him in Chicago, like those hovering over the head of Robert Sorich, the convicted patronage boss of Mayor Richard M. Daley who has been compared in Bridgeport to Christ, though Christ never tossed out hundreds of qualified city job applications to put the mayor's stooges on the payroll.

If Vrdolyak has an angel, it's Mephistopheles, the tempter. He always has reveled in that role, always the dark lord of politics, a guy who gets a kick out of ordering judges to fetch kid reporters a cold beer from deep in the ice, offering a lesson in how Chicago really works.

Virtue is supposed to win out in the end. But this is Chicago, and Mephistopheles has always been the better story and Vrdolyak has been one of its great stories.

So here's what people will write: about the attempted murder charge and the alibi that he was in law school, the screaming matches with the late Harold Washington, his switch from Democratic Party boss to Republican dealmaker and all his time as grand poobah in Cicero, the town of the Spanos and the Infelices. Spanning politics and the tough guys, low-profile for years, Vrdolyak is an archangel of the Illinois Combine that runs things.

He always has worn the black hat, and deservedly so at times because of his style, so abrasive and combative and too slick by half, and that habit of his of always snickering when he wins.

Still, when it came to Chicago politics, Vrdolyak was a brilliant short-term tactical alley fighter, funny and intensely loyal to his friends and family. But he was a lousy long-term strategist, having led the white-ethnic group of 29 aldermen against the city's first black mayor.

Washington didn't consider him a racist. The late mayor used race and so did Vrdolyak. But the scribes paint Fast Eddie as some kind of racist, and that's how he's remembered.

"He's not a racist. He's a bully," Washington was quoted as saying in a book by his press secretary, Alton Miller. "He'll use race, hell, he'll use anything. He'll use his own grandmother to get what he wants, but that doesn't make him a bad guy in my book. Amoral, yes. Racist, uh-uh."

Fast Eddie has been on the edge for so long that I figured he'd take up space in the trunk of a car before he'd ever take up space in federal court. I always thought he was too smart to get caught, too quick, too fast.

But it looks like they finally got him.

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jskass@tribune.com

Dr. Dreyfuss musings

Ford to Get $18 Billion in Financing

DETROIT -- Ford Motor Co. said Monday it plans to get about $18 billion in financing to help fund its restructuring and help make up for anticipated losses in its automotive operations over the next two years.

The No. 2 U.S. automaker also said the financing -- with its domestic plants and other automotive assets used as collateral -- will help protect against a recession or other unanticipated events.

Analysts said it makes the possibility of Ford selling its finance arm less likely but could support bigger restructuring efforts.

Ford said a new five-year senior secured revolving credit facility of about $8 billion is intended to replace Ford's existing unsecured credit facilities of $6.3 billion. A senior secured term loan will total about $7 billion, and unsecured capital market transactions will total about $3 billion.

The revolving credit and term loan will be secured by liens on U.S. manufacturing facilities, substantially all of the company's other domestic automotive assets, certain intellectual property, stock in certain subsidiaries -- including Ford Motor Credit Co. and Volvo -- and up to $4 billion in cash.

Ford spokeswoman Becky Sanch said it was the first time the company had used assets such as plants to secure financing. Earlier this month, Ford had said it was near an announcement on such a deal.

Ford shares fell 20 cents, or 2.4 percent, to $8.32 in Monday morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

Following the transactions, Ford said it will have about $38 billion at year's end to fund automotive operations. That includes cash, cash equivalents, loaned and marketable securities and available credit facilities.

"The additional liquidity should be sufficient to give Ford the ability to fund itself for several years, even with considerable negative cash flow," Rod Lache, an analyst for Deutsche Bank, said in a note to investors.

Dearborn-based Ford lost $7 billion during the first nine months of the year and has said it won't return to profitability until 2009.

The company has offered buyouts and early retirement packages to all 75,000 U.S. production workers and plans to shutter 16 plants to reduce manufacturing capacity to match lower demand for its products as part of its "Way Forward" restructuring plan.

Some Wall Street analysts have questioned why the sale of part of Ford Motor Credit wasn't part of its restructuring update announced in September. Ford has said it didn't plan to sell its finance arm.

At least two analysts said Monday that using assets such as Ford Motor Credit to back the secured loans makes it less likely that Ford will sell the credit arm.

Ford expects the transactions to close before Dec. 31. The senior secured credit facilities will be arranged by Citigroup Corporate and Investment Banking, Goldman Sachs Credit Partners L.P. and J.P. Morgan Securities Inc.

Toyota overtakes Ford in monthly US vehicle sales Aug 01 7:28 PM US/Eastern

Toyota has accelerated past another road marker on its way to becoming the second largest automaker in the US vehicle market, as its July sales overtook rival Ford's for the first time.

The Japanese carmaker announced Tuesday that it had posted a 16.2 percent sales gain in July as sales struck 241,826 units, surpassing the Ford Motor Co.'s 241,339 sales pace, and marking the first time Toyota has surpassed Ford on a monthly sales pace.

Riding smoothly on the strong launch of its Yaris small car and continued strong demand for the Corolla, Toyota said its year-to-date passenger car sales have risen 12.5 percent to 846,561 units while light truck demand has spiked 8.4 percent to 618,807 units.

Ford, meanwhile, continues to lose ground as its profit-rich truck sales lagged 16.2 percent at 1,103,520 units last month, and passenger cars are running a mere 3.5 percent ahead at 689,329 units on a year-to-date basis.

George Pipas, Ford's sales analyst, blamed the fall off in demand on a strong sales pace set a year ago when the US automaker initiated its "employee pricing for all" incentive plan.

Combine the lack of the employee pricing plan with rising gasoline prices and higher interest rates, and the climate looks pretty tough, according to analysts.

"Last July, we had the highest monthly sales in Ford history. What comes around, goes around," Pipas said.

Sales of Ford's profit-rich volume leader F-Series pickup truck were off 45.6 percent during the month and are 12.3 percent lower on a year-to-date basis.

Meanwhile, Toyota is gearing up to launch an all-new Tundra pickup later this year.

"Ford is just beginning to experience the tip of the iceberg. They will continue to decline this year," said Erich Merkle, director of forecasting at IRN Inc. in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Merkle said he is concerned about Ford's future product portfolio, which he said will lack any "quality" for "the next three to four years."

Along with Ford, DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group posted a 35 percent decline in its overall sales, ending the month at 150,349 units, as consumers balked at buying gasoline-guzzling trucks and SUVs.

Truck demand plummeted 40 percent during the month to 121,081 units, while passenger car demand declined 20 percent to 29,268 units, as Chrysler continued to work through launch problems with its new Dodge Caliber and Jeep Compass small cars.

"Fuel prices continue to have an effect on vehicle sales, as well as increases in interest rates and mortgage rates," Steven Landry, a Chrysler vice president, told reporters during a conference call.

General Motors Corp. also reported lower sales of 410.332 units for the month, although its 19.5 percent decline was better than its cross-town rivals.

Through the first seven months of the year, GM's sales were weaker by 14.1 percent at 2,477,289 vehicles, with truck demand sliding 16.5 percent and passenger car demand weaker by 10 percent.

"July was a slightly stronger month than we expected," Paul Ballew, a GM executive director of market and industry analysis, told reporters optimistically during a conference call.

Still, a number of factors continue to cause headwinds for the industry, according to the IRN's Merkle.

"We expected to see a slowdown in the second half. This has everything to do with what the Fed (Federal Reserve central bank) is doing with interest rates, as well as rising gas prices. These are some pretty strong headwinds," he said.

Merkle expects consumers to remain on the sidelines when it comes to new vehicle purchases, especially as borrowing costs continue to rise on credit cards, home equity loans and mortgages.

Dr. Dreyfuss musings
What a way to govern a state>

Gaming halls close as budget crisis leaves state inspectors unavailable

TRENTON — As southern New Jersey dealt with the economic damage of a casino shutdown, Assembly Democrats sought Wednesday night to finally vote on a budget that is six days past deadline. The Assembly Budget Committee will vote this morning on a series of alternatives to offset Gov. Jon S. Corzine's $1.1 billion proposal to increase the sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent. Among them are a $45 million extension of casino taxes set to expire this year and an expansion of the sales tax to include computer services, magazines and other items.

The Assembly budget also would eliminate the tax of hospital beds and the proposal for rural towns to pay $24 million for State Police patrols. It cuts $57 million from the budget, but reduces payments to the public employees pension fund by $200 million.

“This is a balanced budget that does not push our current obligations into a drawer and does not increase the sales tax,” said Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Louis Greenwald, D-Camden.

The Budget Committee also approved legislation sponsored by Assemblyman Jim Whelan, D-Atlantic, that would deem casino inspectors essential, allowing casinos to reopen without a budget agreement. The committee amended the bill to include all state workers as essential. The legislation must still be approved by the Senate before it can head to the governor's desk, where more than likely it will be rejected.

Though the evening committee hearing finally moved the budget process along, it did not necessarily bring the state any closer to a budget agreement. In a morning address to the state Legislature, Corzine dismissed the alternatives under consideration by Assembly Democrats as “an unknown list of several dozen proposals, many of which have never been vetted, several of which have never been tried, and most of which are highly speculative or known to be economically depressive.”

A red-faced Bob McDevitt, the president of Local 54 of UNITE-HERE representing casino workers, told the Assembly budget committee its delay in passing a budget had already cost his members more than a sales tax would.

“We already paid the (sales) tax,” McDevitt said. “Tomorrow, we're in the red. … This game of chicken that everybody's been playing, you lost. You both lost.”

With repercussions from the shutdown mounting, Corzine was considering spending his own money on a television ad to pressure Assembly Democrats to pass a budget. The former Wall Street CEO addressed the Legislature at the start of the day and in a press conference afterward questioned whether Assembly Democrats were moving with enough urgency.

“I don't think there was an all-night meeting of the budget committee,” Corzine said. “I don't think the people did the work necessary to put a bill on my desk. There is not a willingness to sit at the table and talk about this.”

The budget stalemate boils down to a test of political wills between Corzine and Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr., D-Camden (a look at Joe Roberts, Page A6).

Roberts insists his caucus will not support Corzine's plan to increase the state sales tax from 6 percent to 7 percent. Corzine insists the revenue is the most painless way to tackle a chronic budget deficit.

A lynchpin of southern New Jersey's economy is now caught in the middle of the debate. The casinos have been shutdown because state inspectors are considered nonessential.

“We are curious to see where all the legislators are on any casino tax,” said Joe Tyrell, vice president of government relations for Harrah's. “You can't go back to us every year.”

Not that the casino industry is happy with the Corzine administration, either.

“The governor called us non-essential,” Tyrell said. “We're funding prescription drugs for seniors. We're being used as pawns in this whole process, and it's the workers who are suffering.

Whelan, facing pressure from casino worker unions to side with Corzine, released a written statement accusing the administration of using the casinos as a budget-negotiation tool.

“It is unconscionable that hard-working people are losing their paychecks so the Governor can raise the sales tax,” Whelan said. “State workers reportedly will be paid for time lost due to the shutdown, but who will look after the casino workers who now are out of work?”

State Sen. Bill Gormley, R-Atlantic, introduced a similar bill three years ago. He chided Democrats for not allowing the bill to move until now, but said Corzine Chief Counsel Stuart Rabner assured him the bill would receive consideration.

“I waited three years for them to take action,” Gormley said. “Then to cover themselves politically, after they failed, after 45,000 people are laid off, they try to do this. They don't care, and when it counts they don't deliver.”

Legislation to keep casinos open could not come soon enough for southern New Jersey. Union officials estimate the number of employees temporarily out of work could reach 30,000 as soon as today.

“I just feel helpless because the state is totally in control of the casinos,” Atlantic City Mayor Bob Levy said. “They need to do what they are elected to do.”

Aside from casinos, also closing Wednesday were state parks, historic sites, two state beaches and state-owned horse-racing tracks. Hundreds from a group of 45,000 furloughed state workers spent the day in the Statehouse, further crowding hallways jammed with lobbyists, legislators and the media.

Casino workers represented by Local 54 of UNITE-HERE will join the mix today with a rally in Trenton. Local 54 backs Corzine in the budget stalemate and has paid for radio ads criticizing three Assembly Democrats: Roberts, Whelan and Jeff Van Drew of Cape May, Cumberland, Atlantic.

Corzine and Roberts — the two key players in the stalemate — met once in the afternoon and again in the evening but failed to reach an agreement. With no deal in sight, Corzine held a 30-minute afternoon meeting with his cabinet to prepare for the continuation of a shutdown.

State Department of Environmental Protection, or DEP, Commissioner Lisa Jackson said her department managed to get campers and other visitors out of state parks without any incidents. She said DEP is worried, however, about potential abuse of state environmental laws during the shutdown.

Assembly Democrats, meanwhile, worked on a new spending plan. Whelan said the caucus came up with 27 ideas totaling $3 billion and jettisoned a proposal to raise payroll taxes. The budget stalemate left him frustrated and embarrassed, he said, but he rejected charges that Assembly Democrats are to blame for not introducing a budget until July 5.

“The fact that there's not a physical document, I think we're splitting hairs,” Whelan said. “The hope was that out of the conversations, you could cobble together ideas and reach a compromise.”

Corzine is expected to address the Legislature this morning for a third straight day. He sounded increasingly frustrated Wednesday.

“It is deplorable that the people of this state are left in such a painful position,” Corzine said in his morning address. “The people of New Jersey have every right to be angry.”

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