“My bosses aren’t interested in tackling the story.”  That’s what a top investigative reporter at a major Chicago newspaper said when I asked why the story of Annabel Melongo – former Save A Life Foundation employee turned whistleblower – wasn’t being covered. “We’d have to spend a lot of time to get it right.” The reporter explained how, with a limited staff of investigative reporters tasked to write one “investigative story” each week, there aren’t enough resources to focus on the Melongo case.

And besides, it’d be “covering ground on someone else’s story.” In other words, bloggers have already told the what of Melongo’s incarceration in the Cook County Jail – a nasty place – under a $300,000 bond for “eavesdropping.” The reporter was right about that. But ferreting out the why of her imprisonment as she awaits trial is a different task.

If the Chicago print reporters were interested, they’d follow the money. If resources are so tight, here’s an economical way to do it:

First, add up all the government grants listed by the Chicago suburb-based Save A Life Foundation (SALF) in their Form 990s. That’s the yearly paperwork that 501(c)(3) nonprofits submit to the Illinois Attorney General (AG) and to the IRS. A simple email FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request to the AG for SALF’s 990’s from its birth in 1993 until it folded last year takes a minute, and the information is free. Their reported government grants total $7,850,777.

Next, add up the dollar amounts of state and federal grants obtained via FOIA requests and email exchanges with agency officials. That number is considerably more than $7,850,777.

So what’s up with the discrepancy? (more…)

Global warming skeptics like me are often asked how the mainstream media could have been so wrong about the “climate change” issue for so long. The answer is that the MSM’s fascination with global warming alarmism is nothing out the ordinary; it’s part of a decades-old pattern. The old media has been consistently, often laughably, wrong when it comes to covering environmental topics because they invariably stick to the green narrative: anyone associated with industry is ill-informed at best, or –- more often –-  just plain lying. On the other hand, the environmental movement is, in their world, the only reliable source of information.

An example of this phenomenon came to my attention recently. In a March 21 story the Chicago Tribune and the paper’s chief industry hit-man, environmental reporter Michael Hawthorne, slammed a small business located in a poor Chicago suburb over supposed ecological transgressions that make the plant sound like the second-coming of Chernobyl. For the benefit of those of you who are not fellow technological weenies, I’ll limit this summation to a couple of the broad themes. But, should you be a fellow propeller-head, a few scientific details will follow as well.

Hawthorne attacked Geneva Energy, a small power plant located in Ford Heights, which is, as he admits, “one of the poorest suburbs in the U.S.” The plant burns old tires and, while recovering energy from worn-out rubber might seem like a pretty good idea to you and me, it represents a grave threat to the citizens of Ford Heights and mother earth as far as Hawthorne and the environmental groups he champions are concerned. The supposed “problems” fit into two broad categories: (more…)

The Better Government Association, a busy Chicago-based watchdog group that has its work cut out for it, recently released its “Hall of Shame” report that details the nearly 150 county officials who have gone to jail for corruption in Barack Obama’s Cook County. And that doesn’t even include the more than one hundred Chicago officials who have also gone to jail over the last few decades.

Because of the high level of corruption and the large and ever-growing roster of jailed county officials, in its press release, the BGA bitingly asks, “[I]s it any surprise this multi-billion dollar labyrinth of governmental entities is referred to disparagingly as ‘Crook County?’”

The scams took place over the past four decades in the courts; the offices of the Assessor, Sheriff and Treasurer; and the President’s Office of Employment and Training. They involve bribes, payoffs, rip-offs, padded contracts, ghost payrollers and the wholesale subversion of the judicial system. The perpetrators include elected officials at the highest and lowest levels of city, county and state government; judges, lawyers and lobbyists.

(more…)

Chicago Tribune reporter John Kass is an old school journalist. He’s one among a cadre of Windy City reporters, most from the Sun Times and the Tribune, who routinely expose the hooligans and shenanigans of the Chicago Political Machine.

Kass says the national MSM ignored the political environment that gave birth to Barack Obama.

While Kass calls Obama “a Chicago political guy,” he knows the Machine is multi-layered. While the hub is Chicago, spokes extend throughout Cook County, and reach deep inside the state capital at Springfield.

Because the MSM ignored the Machine from which Obama emerged, the electorate didn’t realize that voting for Obama meant endorsing politics the Chicago way. Consequently, those outside Illinois knew little about the Machine, how it cleans up its messes, and how the clean-ups can impact individual lives. For example: (more…)