ArchPundit

The Slumlord Candidate

ArchPundit June 27, 2005 No Comments

Most people with a clue would have sold the damn investment or brought in at least a new management team, but no, Ron Gidwitz running on cash infused stupidity thought he could run for Governor and not get called on a scandal involving a low income housing project he is partial owner of and majority owner of the management company that ‘maintains’ the property.

The Joliet Herald News lays down a slapdown that anyone with shame would take as a signal to get out of the race. Fortunately for political humor, Gidwitz has oodles of cash and virtually no shame. So he’ll stick around for a bit until he gets beat up for too long and then disappears never to be seen again except in federal court being sued by Joliet area mayors and residents. Read the whole thing, but it’s harsh:

“We are the laughing stock of the nation. People think of Chicago and they think about two things: the Roaring ’20s and what’s going on now,” Gidwitz said. “We need to make state government, as a whole, open.”

These promises ring hollow around here. Evergreen Terrace has been fiscal drain on Joliet for years, eating up policing money and hampering development of the St. John’s Parish area.

As far as openness, both the owners and Illinois Housing Development Authority have rebuffed efforts by both The Herald News and the city to release the names of the facility’s investors.

Before he runs for governor on a platform of fiscal responsibility and transparency, Gidwitz needs to get his own house, er, tenement, in order.

More Gidwitz fun to come.

Even a Kind word for Weller

ArchPundit June 27, 2005 1 Comment

While I’ll be back at attacking Weller for marrying into a genocidal dictator’s family and ignoring the moral implications of such a move soon, even Jerry Weller hasn’t stood still for the conditions at the Evergreen Terrace Housing Complex in Joliet.

From October 20, 2003 in Crain’s:

Urban eyesore or essential shelter? That’s the question dividing Joliet and pitting a group that includes Illinois GOP stalwart Ronald Gidwitz against federal forces ranging from U.S. Rep. Jerry Weller to Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Mel Martinez.

At issue is the future of Evergreen Terrace, a low-income housing complex part-owned by former Helene Curtis Industries Inc. CEO Mr. Gidwitz, that Joliet officials contend has become a cesspool of crime, filth and safety violations.

With some apparent arm-twisting from Rep. Weller, R-Morris, Joliet city officials were able to persuade Mr. Martinez last month to abruptly scuttle the renewal of federal rent subsidies and loan guarantees for Evergreen Terrace-a move that essentially could force the owners to sell or default on the mortgage.

City officials and Mr. Weller insist that Chicago-based real estate management firm Burnham Cos., whose owners also include Mr. Gidwitz, have allowed Evergreen Terrace to deteriorate beyond repair. The city wants to relocate the residents to other apartments and raze the 356-unit complex.

Mr. Gidwitz, Burnham executives and state housing administrators say the accusations are exaggerated. They’re determined to reverse Mr. Martinez’s order, insisting that the city’s plan for moving Evergreen’s 500 residents to alternative low-income housing is unworkable.

Reputations on the line

They accuse city officials and Mr. Weller of conducting a smear campaign against Burnham and Evergreen Terrace as part of a strategy to force low-income minority residents from areas near the Des Plaines River that have attractive redevelopment potential.

”Unfortunately, the city officials have decided they don’t want this development in the city,” says Mr. Gidwitz, a member and former chairman of the State Board of Education. ”We manage properties at a high quality. We don’t cut corners. We don’t treat people badly.”

At stake in the bitter dispute are the reputations of the civic-minded Mr. Gidwitz and Mr. Weller, whose influence as a suburban power broker is expanding with Will County’s growing population.

Allied with Mr. Weller is U.S. Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., who also participated in the meeting last month with Joliet officials and Mr. Martinez. Meanwhile, Evergreen’s managers have low-income housing advocates and the Illinois Housing Development Authority on their side.

From the AP October 29, 2003

Recounting an Oct. 9 tour, Fitzgerald argued in a letter sent to Martinez late Tuesday that the city of Joliet should be allowed to redevelop the property and place residents in better and safer living arrangements.

“In my opinion, the living conditions at Evergreen Terrace are inhumane,” the Illinois Republican said.

Fitzgerald said was overpowered by the smell of urine, saw exposed wiring and broken elevators, mail boxes and door locks, and heard from residents about problems ranging from rodents to rampant crime and drug traffic.

And while Gidwitz is trying to minimize his involvement:

Halperin said the owners of Evergreen Terrace are several dozen people from across the nation, including prominent GOP contributor Ronald Gidwitz, a member of the State Board of Education, and the Gidwitz family, who hold about a 2 percent share. Gidwitz and his family are also majority owners of Burnham Management, according to Halperin.

Emphasis mine.

Sportsman’s Club Testicle Festival

ArchPundit June 26, 2005 1 Comment

There are actually several testicle festivals including one in Nebraska, but the entire name sort of adds to the thought process in this case.

The drag queen contest adds another new dimension too.

B-1 Bob is Considering a Comeback

ArchPundit June 24, 2005 No Comments

In California he may run for Chris Cox’s seat. No word on where to send donations targeted for the let’s make blogging really easy fund to elect B-1 Bob.

Mike Madigan Was Arrogant. I’m shocked, shocked I tell you.

ArchPundit June 24, 2005 3 Comments

In the category of like he gives a rat’s ass:

This will be interesting only to IL pols:

IL Speaker of the House Michael Madigan was subpoenaed June 17 to give a deposition on what part he played, if any (ha), to stop the Illinois Choose Life license plate legislation last year.

(Side note: Workers at Madigan’s law office told the process server he wasn’t in. But she smelled a rat and barged into his inner sanctum where – voila! – she spotted him and served him. She said he was unpleasant. Actually, she said he was “arrogant.”)

Madigan’s daughter, AG Lisa, is fighting the subpoena.

Another legislator who shall remain nameless for the moment is presently dodging and weaving the server.

“arrogant”

Few things are more annoying than leaving it at this. My guess is the server got in the room, Madigan looked up annoyed (pretty much the same face he always uses with the press), was served, stared at the person and looked back down as the server tried to make uncomfortable discussion about being successful. But instead we don’t get the funny details. We get a cheerleading post about the most dreadfully irrelevant issue to ever hit Illinois politics since Chris Lauzen debated whether he really was a CPA or not.

Via Capitol Fax

Nukem Harvey

ArchPundit June 24, 2005 No Comments

And the rest of the story…

Austin Mayor picked it up and Zorn gets the full text:

After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill said that the American people?he said, the American people, he said, and this is a direct quote, ?We didn?t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.?

That was his response to the attack on Pearl Harbor. That we didn?t come this far because we are made of sugar candy.

And that reminder was taken seriously. And we proceeded to develop and deliver the bomb, even though roughly 150,000 men, women and children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With a single blow, World War II was over.

Following New York, Sept. 11, Winston Churchill was not here to remind us that we didn?t come this far because we?re made of sugar candy.

So, following the New York disaster, we mustered our humanity.

We gave old pals a pass, even though men and money from Saudi Arabia were largely responsible for the devastation of New York and Pennsylvania and our Pentagon.

We called Saudi Arabians our partners against terrorism and we sent men with rifles into Afghanistan and Iraq, and we kept our best weapons in our silos.

Even now we?re standing there dying, daring to do nothing decisive, because we?ve declared ourselves to be better than our terrorist enemies — more moral, more civilized.

Our image is at stake, we insist.

But we didn?t come this far because we?re made of sugar candy.

Once upon a time, we elbowed our way onto and into this continent by giving small pox infected blankets to native Americans.

Yes, that was biological warfare!
And we used every other weapon we could get our hands on to grab this land from whomever. And we grew prosperous.

And, yes, we greased the skids with the sweat of slaves.

And so it goes with most nation states, which, feeling guilty about their savage pasts, eventually civilize themselves out of business and wind up invaded, and ultimately dominated by the lean, hungry and up and coming who are not made of sugar candy.

Biological weapons–the ROAD TO PROSPERITY!

And that, folks, should be the end of the rest of the story.

Down Sick, but back

ArchPundit June 24, 2005 No Comments

Don’t ask–never should have left Colorado. I think my body was protecting me from the first Red Air Quality Day here in St. Louis by making my stomach revolt against food for 36 hours.

Today, it’s 98 degrees of soupy air that I would swim in, but there’s no where to get a breath.

On that note, the must read is Zorn’s column

“I’m surprised. Though Mayor Daley can’t even pronounce Guantanamo–he says it `Gwa-ta-mahn-o.’ And even though he blithely presided over the Cook County state’s attorney’s office during the biggest police-torture scandal in Chicago’s history. And even though he mistily invoked `what America’s all about’ at the news conference in which he announced a `presumed guilty’ program of posting photos on the Internet of people arrested but not yet convicted in prostitution stings.

Coming at this as someone who thinks the analogy was unproductive and wrong, but not in the hyper whining of screaming the TROOPS, this was the greatest irony to me–Daley, who was Cook County State’s Attorney during the Burge torture ring’s days of operations and had plenty of warnings about it, never did a thing and to this day is strangely silent about it. While Dick Devine might be called on it as well, Devine has a very delicate situation since he worked for the law firm defending Burge and has recused himself from the case. But Devine didn’t say that Durbin was out of line and essentially lay a line of defense for the White House from probing such claims with seriousness. Daley not only attacked Durbin for something Durbin didn’t say, he essentially said such questions about the treatment of prisoners was beyond the pale.

What makes that so disturbing is that Daley didn’t stop at criticizing Durbin–obviously I did that though mildly. What he did was say that we should never say that US Soldiers might do something horrific. While it is reasonable to say that our military is one of the better disciplined and humane militaries to probably ever fight, we know individuals within the military also have done horrible things.

Worse, Durbin didn’t implicate troops–he implicated the administration. Many have tried to spin that as being about troops, but while it might involve US active military personnel, it might just as well be private contractors, CIA, or military intelligence that isn’t a typical GI. We know from Abu Ghraib that much of the prison operations were outside of the control of the typical chain of command and shadowy people showed up for interrogations with the typical command structure both overstretched and out of the loop on key decisions.

We also know that we’ve outsourced torture through extraordinary rendition that takes individuals from our custody to the custody of nations that will torture individuals without any rules to worry about. My second criticism of Durbin is that by choosing a bad analogy he sidetracked the conversation.

A Quick Question

ArchPundit June 22, 2005 2 Comments

Why isn’t there a strategic plan and fundraising document at the Democratic Commitment Conference ?

The report Locked Out has some good points and such, but misses some critical points. And the above question points out the issue. When someone tells me they want money to win a bunch of Congressional seats, I want to know how else they are going to raise money and how they plan to spend it.

If you tell me that the 9 candidates didn’t fundraise well, and one of them wants to correct the problem by distributing cash to a wider array of candidates, from where is that cash coming?