Archive for July, 2021

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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#69 in a series)

Friday, July 2nd, 2021

A corrupt Chicago alderman? Quel frommage!

Under a cloud for two years since her ward office was raided by federal agents, 34th Ward Ald. Carrie Austin was indicted on federal bribery charges Thursday along with her chief of staff.

…

Between them, they allegedly got new kitchen cabinets, granite countertops, bathroom tiling, sump pumps and an HVAC system for free or at a discount.

Remember, it was granite countertops that brought down Ray Nagin.

Austin, 72, was charged with one count of conspiring to use interstate facilities to promote bribery and other charges, according to prosecutors. She became the third sitting Chicago alderman currently under federal indictment and the second to face charges this year.

Sun-Times:

It also leaves the council’s two most senior members facing federal criminal charges. Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) is the council’s longest-serving alderman and faces a 2019 racketeering indictment that accused him of using his position on the city council to steer business to his private law firm. Austin, appointed to the council in 1994, is second in seniority to Burke.
In late April, a federal grand jury also indicted Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th), the nephew and grandson of Chicago’s two longest-serving mayors. Thompson faces charges involving what prosecutors say was a massive fraud scheme at a Bridgeport bank, Washington Federal Bank for Savings.

I had the Burke story, but I missed the Thompson indictment.

This is…interesting.

Told of Austin’s indictment, Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) said, “Oh, no. Her and Chester both? I have great relationships with both of them. Known them for way longer than I’ve been on the council. I wish nothing but the best for them. I hope she’s OK.”
Sawyer called the outspoken Austin a rare breed in politics who says what she thinks and never stabs anyone in the back.
“I love her candidness and her straight talk, if you will. She’s not gonna tell you something just to make you feel better. She’s gonna tell you the truth,” said Sawyer, son of former Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
The epitome of old-school Chicago politics, Austin didn’t hesitate to put her relatives and friends on the city payroll and made no apologies for it.
Sawyer said he respected that quality as well because, as he put it, “They got the job done.”

Perhaps the time has come for adult supervision in Chicago.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 1, 2021.

Thursday, July 1st, 2021

As promised, Donald Rumsfeld: WP (through archive.is). NYT.

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

There WASN’T supposed to be an earth-shattering KA-BOOM!

Thursday, July 1st, 2021

Over a dozen people were hurt when an LAPD bomb squad truck was blown to smithereens during a planned detonation of illegal fireworks on Wednesday night.

From the LAT (through archive.is):

At a news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said officials responding to a home on the 700 block of East 27th Street had found several thousand pounds of illegal fireworks as well as improvised explosive devices that were “more unstable.”
An LAPD bomb squad transferred the improvised devices into the iron chamber of a semitruck that’s meant to contain such explosive material, he said.
Police detonated the devices at 7:37 p.m., believing that the vehicle would be able to contain the explosion, but there was a “total catastrophic failure of that containment vehicle,” Moore said.

…

At the residence’s patio, officers found several thousand pounds of commercial fireworks stacked 8 to 10 feet high in boxes, and bomb squad personnel spent the day moving them to be stored at another location.
Officers also found improvised explosive devices with simple fuses — about 40 the size of Coke cans and 200 smaller objects of similar construction — and conducted X-rays to determine their contents.
Less than 10 pounds of the devices were transferred into a semitruck, which Moore said was rated, with its outer containment shell, to handle 18 pounds. Officials established a 300-foot perimeter behind the vehicle and evacuated the north and south sides of 27th Street.

According to reports, none of the injuries are “life-threatening”.

FotB RoadRich can correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a memory of APD’s bomb squad telling us (when we were going through the Citizen’s Police Academy) that the most dangerous thing a bomb squad does is…disposal of fireworks. I don’t know if that’s because they do more fireworks disposal than anything else, because people get blasé around them (“It’s just fireworks!”), or if because fireworks are more volatile than anything else they deal with.

Edited to add: Lawrence sent over this tweet from CBS LA: their helicopter was directly overhead when…

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Explosives, Law | Comments Closed

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