House of the rising Moonglum

In fact the first major study done on them concluded that they are a hidden tax on drivers. Study after study shows that red light cameras cause an increase in accidents. So the tax is paid out to: city governments, auto body repair shops, and insurance companies. Interestingly the only body that generated studies that believed that red light cameras did any good were funded by the insurance companies which stand to profit from them. So they do not work.

Or do they….

Tin foil theory: the government in its infinite wisdom is trying to wean us off of automobiles as early as possible in anticipation of peak oil, and red light cameras are just another way of making car ownership more prohibitive. Ok, probably not, but I like it.

The Trib recently ran an excellent five part article on the zoning situation in Chicago. It is a bit long, containing way too many personal anecdotes for my preferences, but it does go into a good amount of detail on how the zoning process is supposed to work, and how it actually does work. Some of the Rogers Park bloggers show up in the final part. One of the most elucidating quotes from the entire series though, points out what I think the real problem with the zoning situation in Chicago is:

City officials in the Zoning and Planning Departments review proposals and issue recommendations before aldermen vote. That review involves determining if new construction would be an “intrusion” to the neighborhood.

But aldermen pay little heed. City staff objected to about 40 percent of the zoning changes that the council approved over the last three years, city records show.

If the city’s zoning department actually managed to form official objections to 40% of the zoning changes, but only 10 or so didn’t go though, there is a real problem in this city. We pay professionals to determine the proper city planning, but then they are simply ignored. If the aldermen are just going to have the final say, why do we even bother with the city planners in the first place? Save some money and get rid of the whole department.

It appears that the federal marshals shut down a fake diploma ring. I am personally excited about this because it should make a significant dent in my junk e-mail. But the article is great. They not only shut down the ring, they also have a list of 10,000 people who bought the fake degrees. I am personally hoping for a nice housecleaning coming the Chicago direction. Plenty of government jobs pay according to the degree you have. I could see lots of demand for fake degrees in our state, county and city governments.

There was a recent attempt to repeal the Cook County tax hike. It failed of course (same people same time, not sure how they expected it to go through), but we got a great Stroger quote out of the deal: “Until this place falls apart, then I’ll step up and say ‘I screwed that up.’ Until then, I’m doing a damn good job.” There is a world of difference between “good job” and “screwed up”. Couldn’t he at least say he is doing ok? A damn good job though. The man is completely deluded.

Edited to add: And the hits keep on coming.

I’m glad to see that the CTA is trying out serial hybrid busses. While cars are really too small to use current technology in, busses are large enough that the different drive train makes sense. A similar system has been in use by trains for years. The addition of a moderating battery and regenerative braking turns the diesel electric drive train into a true serial hybrid. The advantage of this over a standard hybrid is that you only have one drive-train and the gas powered engine can always run at optimal efficiency since it is just running a generator. This also means no more busses idling downtown for a half hour at a time.

I appear to be on a gun ownership kick lately. In any case it appears that in the most anti gun city in the country, city council members own guns. Not only that, but since the laws they passed on gun ownership are impossibly difficult to comply with, when they screw it up they change the laws so that they can keep their guns.

The only thing that surprises me about this is that anyone is surprised.

Well, that’s one way to prepare for the coming oil apocalypse. I would highly recommend getting your FOID card however, before stocking up on weapons.

Also, if you are going to go all road warrior, you might want to pick something a little more wieldy than the 80 pound M2HB. When the world is out of gas, you have to carry your own guns.

I’ve been a big fan of Obama for president for a while now. There are some pretty specific reasons for me. First he is local and I have seen him work across the aisle in Springfield, which is certainly a better example than anyone else in Washington right now. Of course given that poisonous atmosphere he might not be able to continue in that vein. Then there are the policies. Sure he has done his share of pandering (highway bill anyone?) but generally his votes are fairly well defended based on the effect on the country. More importantly he seems to actually think about the implications of his votes, beyond just who stands to make money off of it. His vocal stance against the gas tax holiday is a good example. Guess what people, supply and demand has set a price. That price will stay there even if we cut the taxes. Those funds will just go to the oil companies rather than the federal government.

Which brings me to another of his issues, energy policy. While he isn’t a peak oil doomer like me, he does have a cohesive energy policy that fits squarely with my belief structure. And the best thing about it is that he doesn’t lay claim to knowing the answer. That allows funding to go to alternative promising programs that we can’t even think of yet, instead of pumping all the development cash into turning corn into gas.

And while we are on the subject of gas, lets talk about being elitist. Clinton claims that he is being elitist by not backing the gas tax holiday. Is it elitist to assume that the average american can understand that basic economics says they aren’t going to get anything from a tax holiday, or is is being elitist to assume that the average American’s vote can be bought with a promise that will never come true, because they won’t realize it won’t help until it is too late? I know which one insults me.

And finally, lets talk personal connections and experience. Obama - Wright, worst case scenario? Embarrassment. Clinton - McDougals, McCain - Keating, worst cast scenario? Jail. Maybe a lack of experience is a good thing. I have a conservative neighbor with a lot of pro gun bumper-stickers, and possibly my favorite bumper sticker ever: “All politicians should serve two terms: one in office and one in jail.” I’m starting to believe that. Blago. Stroger.

Update: Apparently the ads in Indy are making me pissy.

So I have written about zoning in the 49th ward quite a lot in the past, but it looks like this might be the first time that it is close enough for me to actually care. Interestingly it appears that this one will go through without ever having seen the light of ZULAC (according to MHH). I saw a few notices up a couple months ago about meetings, but I think that was for the new condos down the street a bit. In any case, this is a change from B3-2 to C1-2. Not a major change, although B3 is supposed to be more of a destination, whereas C1 can be in the middle of a street. The fact is most of western is B3-2 anyway, except for the strip mall with Eng’s and the Blockbuster, and some B3-3.

Clearly there is some business that wants to go in there, but 7429-7435 is such a small stretch of street, it must be a specificbusiness. This is especially odd since there are some pretty good businesses bracketing it to begin with. Mainly, Lynn Dry-Cleaners, Computech, Phat Fades and the still trying to figure out what they are Alwayz Official Fashions. I admit I don’t go to those last two, but it seems like they do reasonable business. I wonder what they are going to put in that requires a stealth rezoning? I’ll be excited to see. I just hope it isn’t another Morse and Western “For Lease” building. Seriously, why would you build a business rental place without lining up at least one business ahead of time?

The Trib has a fun Test your Barack Obama IQ form that you can fill out. It is interesting to see a quiz like that with an angle. (In particular Q15.) But my favorite is reading the obviously wrong answers. (d. Stealing Bob the Builder’s phrase: Yes we can!) Things I learned: Rezko was the first political contributor to Obama! Knocked all his opponents off the ballot in 95?! I even voted in that election and I don’t remember that (the unopposed ones always piss me off, but maybe they didn’t back then).

Did you vote for Stroger? You reap what you sow. Judge Nowicki (why does that name sound familiar? I think I might know her from somewhere.) The report itself makes for pretty good reading, but apparently Stroger hasn’t read it. In perhaps the most arrogant statement I have ever seen in Illinois politics (and that is saying something, Daley is our Mayor!) Stroger said, “I haven’t read her report yet” and “We have cooperated with her office, but the way the report was written, it makes it appear there have been things that have been going on that are illegal in hiring since I’ve been the president, but it’s not the case.” from the Trib. So having not read it, he is now qualified to have an opinion on how it was written? The Trib is even a bit sarcastic on that point. After he indicated that he “is educated” and “can read the paper” the Trib says, “On that basis, Stroger criticized the report”.

Nice little dig, you don’t normally see subtlety like that nowadays in reporting.

Updated: Reading the actual claims… OMG this is horrifying. And this is the same asshole who wants to raise our taxes enough to drive all the business out of Cook County? I wonder if they can arrest the entire HR for Cook County? Reading this report, I think that is what it will take. Then the new HR would need to start firing all the political appointees. Even if they could do it, it would take forever!

Thank you Suffredin, thank you Stroger. Chicago now has the highest sales tax of any major US city.

“This tax increase is unjustified for too many reasons to mention at 10 minutes to midnight,” said Commissioner Forrest Claypool (D-Chicago) during debate.

Key to resolving the impasse was a deal between Stroger and Commissioner Larry Suffredin (D-Evanston), who agreed to provide the crucial ninth vote to get the tax increases approved. In return, Stroger agreed to turn over control of county health services to an independent oversight panel for three years.

Well, at least Stroger is turning the health services over. One good thing came out of this. Too bad those thousand county jobs Stroger is saving are going to things like his high school buddy doing PR for him. Man I wish Claypool won the election.

A Public Relations department. They are the FREAKING GOVERNMENT! All they do is relate to the public! Maybe instead of spending that money on his childhood friend, Stroger would be better off spending that money on actually doing the work of the government. Hard work + good results = Happy public = reelection. That’s how I thought it worked. Apparently here you get: right name + incompetence + clout (machine backing) = reelection. I guess Stroger is afraid that that old equation won’t work, so he needs to multiply the power of his name with a PR campaign. He doesn’t have any military force at his disposal, right? That is just the governor? Because this is really starting to sound like we are headed to a dictatorship. We the people apparently just don’t understand the great leader, and need to be reeducated.

As the price of oil continues to rise, there are a number of solutions that are slowly being put in place. In my humble opinion, corn based ethanol is not the solution. If we are going to have an ethanol solution it will have to be a cellulosic one. I do not want my energy supply competing with my food supply. Especially not with the farmers can make much more selling corn as ethanol than as food. Plus corn is a terrible crop for other reasons.

So, these guys came to my door about two months ago. They kinda freaked me out since, well, I don’t like people coming to my door. It was just before I went on vacation so I was nervous about them casing the joint, as it were. In any case, they announced themselves as representatives from ComEd. They had uniforms and badges and clipboards (Fletch anyone?). But I locked myself out just in case.

Suffice it to say, they gave the real hard sell. Interestingly they gave enough information to realize that as a company they couldn’t possibly make money in the long run. If you took the time to sit down and run the numbers that they were pitching that is. Those numbers were quite different from the numbers that their literature actually gives. The funny thing is, since I believe in the long term increase of the price of oil, even with their inflated rates, I think they would still have lost money in the long term. Still not worth it to buy in though because they will go out of business long before you actually get your money out of them.

So to cut this boring story short, RPB reports that they actually are scam artists. Lisa Madigan is taking them to court. And here when I was starting to lose my faith in her. The press release is pretty good, and clearly points out the flaws in their offer. The thing it doesn’t point out is that if the energy prices really did spike, US Energy Savings Corp would most likely have gone out of business paying off the more expensive gas prices having blown all the extra cash from when their prices were higher. That is if they just didn’t all run off to Aruba long before then.

I am not looking at this until I have finished my big push that I am doing for one of my clients right now.

You, however, may feel free to enjoy the mapstavaganza.

A good look at one reason Clinton won’t have good transparency. Also: Obama’s shady land deals are much less shady than her’s and he lives in his shady land deal, it’s not like it was some crazy investment scheme.

I don’t know why I find this so funny, but a backup application that I use regularly, called SuperDuper! finally released the latest version today. They have been working on this update for months and months now, but I have to believe that once they realized the release would be near the end of January they must have timed it to be on Super Duper Tuesday. I hate that name for the big primary date, but it does make a great pun for software releases.

I haven’t had nearly enough time to read up on this election, but I did at least look up info on the judges. In any case, here are some updates, including some thoughts from comments on my first post.

President: Obama, Clinton, Edwards, Richardson, Kucinich, Dodd, Biden.

Well this field narrowed up a bit. The more I hear the two of them talk, the more I like Obama. The world we are moving into is a truly different world. I think that I would like to see some real change moving forward. Also listening to the Republican side, I am starting to think that they would try their hardest to make life miserable for Clinton.

Senator: Durbin only.

Congress: Shakowski, Nocita

Well, this can’t be good. Another recommendation for someone I really don’t want to vote for. Also, I saw a bit about Nocita, and he really looks pretty good. ed: update Turns out some of the stuff that I was reading about Nocita was a bit misleading. There are a number of items I agree with him on, but quite a few that I don’t as well. Still Shakowsky backing Stroger and now Suffredin? Ugh.

State Senate: Silverstein only.

State Rep: Lou Lang only.

Metro Water: Spyropoulos (environmentalist), Meany (inc., been there forever), Avila (inc., likes poop), Maragos (party man), Santos (inc., married to govt worker), Jones (ran for city treas. and lost), Podgorski, Stinson

df left an awesome comment that I am using as the grist for this position. Check it out on the last post to decode what the above comments mean. The incumbents are marked above, and I often like to vote against them, however as the daily hearld points out, they really have been doing a good job, with some very large projects going on that could have easily been mismanaged. For change the Herald likes Stinson. The trib likes Spyropoulos, Stinson and Avila. I couldn’t find the sun times endorsements, but I have to say, I like the Trib’s. Sure Water is doing a good job, but some new blood with some old seems like a safe bet. And besides, who doesn’t like poop jokes?

States Attorney: Allen, Alvarez, Brookins, Suffredin, Milan, Brewer.

Alvarez and Milan both worked under Devine, and that scratches them in my book (though the north coast likes Alvarez. Brookins has had legal problems in the past, which I don’t think will work in this position. Suffredin could be the best candidate and I still wouldn’t vote for him, but his lobbying past makes him not the best candidate in my opinion. That leaves Brewer and Allen, and unfortunately I really don’t know much about them so I am stuck with the Trib’s recommendation which is Allen.

Clerk of the Circuit Court: Dorothy Brown

Another uncontested race. She seems pretty competent at least.

Recorder of Deeds: Moore and Smith.

Stroger backs the incumbent Moore. Nuff said. Daily backs ald. Smith (in this, not normally) meaning that he might be able to get something done. Like closing the office.

Board of Review: Berrios, Deratany

Wow do people hate Berrios. The couple things I read about Deratany didn’t really impress me, but good lord. Read the comments from the last primary 08 post for more info.

Judges:

Finally got around to looking these folks up. I note only the number of votes that aren’t ‘qualified’. There are 10 bar associations used. e.g. 5 good means 5 qualified votes and 5 highly qualified votes. No note is all bar associations say qualified. If you have any mitigating factors about any of these judges, please let me know!

Burke - 5 good.

ONeal (3 bad), Greiman (6 good), Coleman (4 good)

Steele (2 good), Walsh, Gardner (10 bad) Woah! Don’t vote for gardner!

Wolfson (1 good), Burke (6 good)

Reyes, MacCarthy (4 good)

Kirby, Curielli (10 bad)

Johnson (2 good), Papavero (10 bad)

Rogers, Byrne (3 good)

Walker (2 good), Wilson, Doran

Kristyna Ryan (10 bad), Lingo, Frank Ryan (10 bad)

Sexton (2 good), Kardas (1 good), Murphy (3 good), Hyman (5 good)

Oneill (1 bad), Powell (1 good), Mulvhill (10 bad) , Riley (1 bad)

Ward Committeeman: Fagus, only one. Not checking the box.

Via the broken heart, I see that Chicago area slumlord, Kakvand just got 9 years in prison for being the ringleader in “a mortgage scheme that resulted in abandoned, crime-ridden Chicago apartment buildings”. Well that explains a lot. I wonder how many other greedy people like him are out there, ruining people’s dreams. I find it interesting that there are two elements to this story.

The first of course is that it does immediate damage to the neighborhood. When a bunch of supposedly rehabbed condos go up, maybe the ones next door do the same thing, but instead of a condo for a neighbor, you get an empty shell of a building which crime spills out of. Consider:

Kakvand bought 33 apartment buildings in Rogers Park and on Chicago’s South Side between 1997 and 2004, but didn’t renovate them. Units were sold as rehabbed condos at inflated prices, using straw buyers who defaulted on $29 million in loans. The plot displaced renters, and left decaying buildings prone to squatters, drug dealers, fire and water damage.

Which leads me to the second part of this that I find interesting. One man single handedly caused $29 million in real estate loans to go south?! That certainly can’t have helped the mortgage market! But it is an interesting insight into the system, because for that to work (and, well, the less illegal scams that have been put over on unsuspecting home buyers for the past few years) you also need help. “Also charged were Syed Ali Mohammed Razvi, a fugitive, and real estate appraisers Thomas M. Groh, Eric L. Dorsey and Britt J. Pierre, who earlier pled guilty.” Wow. Fugitive real estate appraisers. “Haggerty said Kakvand’s continuing legacy is the reduction in the amount of affordable rental housing in Rogers Park, and the artificial inflation of area home prices.” And here I just thought is was condo conversions. Who knew it was also fake condo conversions. What a world.