Chicago taxpayers are being robbed blind
Here’s a tune that you can sing to the melody of Graham Nash’s 1970 hit “Chicago.”
If your wallet’s low on cash but you have airfare for a trip
Won't you please come to Chicago
There’s plenty here to grift.
If you are a dishonest and greedy person looking for some easy money, then move to Chicago.
But hurry up — this is, as TV pitchmen love to say, “a limited time special offer.”
Affordable housing that is expensive
So called “affordable” housing is fertile ground for Chicago con artists.
Last year Block Club Chicago reported on an apartment building on Fifth Avenue in East Garfield Park on the West Side that cost a staggering $884,000 per unit to build. Meanwhile, on Redfin, there is not a single condo unit in East Garfield Park for sale that comes close to that amount.
The Fifth Avenue complex is graced with on-site composting and, it’s hard to believe, charging stations for electric automobiles. Remember, EVs, new and used, are much more expensive than standard gasoline-powered cars. And call me a cynic, but affordable housing is supposed to be for poor people, right?
But the people who work for the not-for-profits that fund “affordable” housing can afford such cars.
Who are those charging stations really for then?
Can it get worse than that?
In Chicago it always can get worse and it probably will.
In March, 15th Ward Alderman Ray Lopez, while he was a guest on WIND-AM’s The Real Story with Jeanne Ives and Contrarian’s Amy Jacobson, added more dollar bills to the fire.
“We’ve seen where two-bedroom apartments are going for a million dollars in taxpayer [funds] to create in a unit, especially downtown. That $180,000 difference between construction price and sale price, there’s only one word to describe that, and that’s grift. Because affordable housing is the new patronage in the city of Chicago. We are spending money hand-over-fist to not-for-profits and corner preachers who all put in $100 in equity and then can turn around and be bought out as part of that gap when they are creating these units."
But, as TV pitchmen also say, "That’s not all!" Particularly if you are licensed to practice law.
The criminal-industrial complex
For five straight years during the miserable two terms when Kim Foxx was the Cook County state’s attorney, Illinois led the nation in exonerations of wrongfully convicted criminals, according to the National Registration of Exonerations. Nearly all of them were Chicago cases and most of them were connected to two corrupt Chicago Police officers.
But that does not mean that every case those cops handled was tainted, as Paul Vallas explained in a recent Chicago Contrarian podcast.
“You have a criminal-industrial complex in which trial lawyers are making a fortune in effect, working in concert with Foxx to get individuals released from prison who have been convicted on the grounds that somehow a detective that may have been defrocked for some other reason, somehow, all of that detective’s cases, every case that detective ever worked on was somehow illegitimate. And then getting these individuals released without, in most cases, providing any evidence that these individuals weren’t guilty of the crimes committed. And then, of course, you had Foxx issuing the certificates of innocence, despite no proof of innocence, which of course the trial lawyers would then use in court.”
In 2023, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that since 2000, the city of Chicago, which has been cash-strapped since well before then, paid $700 million to settle cases where victims claimed to have been framed by Chicago Police officers. And of that money, $138 million went to plaintiffs' lawyers.
Few of these wrongful conviction lawsuits go to trial. Instead, the City Council, with the mayor’s blessing, agrees to settle these cases, usually with little dissent. After all it is taxpayer money, not their money, that is being squandered.
As for the motivations for the attorneys who take these cases, some might be Clarence Darrow-style fire-breathing crusaders, while others might be convinced the entire judicial system is corrupt and racist — because nearly all of those who are exonerated are minorities.
And others simply might be in the game only for the money. And there is a lot of it.
But according to the left-of-center Innocence Project, nationwide “a conservative estimate" is approximately one percent of the prison population was wrongly convicted.
After Eileen O’Neill Burke succeeded Foxx as state’s attorney, Cook County exonerations have slowed.
Wrongly exonerated?
But just as is the situation after a flood crests, the damage caused by Foxx, financially speaking, will continue for a while.
In 2000, Arturo DeLeon-Reyes and Gabriel Solache were found guilty of a ghastly double murder, but several years ago they received certificates of innocence from Foxx’s office. The men had been interrogated by a deceitful detective tied to many cases that later led to exonerations.
A month ago, Solache’s attorneys agreed to a financial settlement for him from the city, according to CWB Chicago, which of course will require City Council approval. Solache, by the way, was originally sentenced to death. Meanwhile DeLeon-Reyes, who received a life sentence, “has reached a settlement in principle” to end his wrongful conviction lawsuit.
However, last month in a sworn deposition Foxx said something that upsets this seemingly happy narrative. “We believed that the evidence suggested that the defendants had committed a heinous act of murder,” she testified.
But these men still might be given generous financial settlements by the city.
If that doesn’t make sense, then you’re not from Chicago.
Or, as Nash also sang in his “Chicago” song, “Rules and regulations, who needs them?”
So, there is still plenty of grift for the grifters.
But as I mentioned at the top of this article, the grifting opportunities in Chicago are “a limited time special offer.”
Because of massive unfunded pension obligations and rampant malfeasance — which of course includes overspending on “affordable” housing and copious settlements, some undeserved, awarded to exonerated criminals — bankruptcy is coming to Chicago. It might be called something else, because, under current Illinois law, government bodies cannot file for bankruptcy, but the end is near.
So, if you are a grifter looking to finagle some quick cash, hurry to Chicago.
And if you are in a big hurry, then grease the skids by making campaign contributions to some powerful Chicago politicians, particularly aldermen. They’ll tip you off to where the money is.
And just as the human mind is capable of infinite possibilities regarding science and the arts, so it is with grifting.
You can do it!
