Hi, 'Careful.' Are you Doug Kutcha, also blogging on the taxpayers' dime? Don't feel obligated to answer: Chicago Indymedia will always respect your right to anonymity. I'm sorry you keep missing my point, which is not that any politician -- Stroger, Daley, Claypool or whoever -- should be exempt from public scrutiny and public accountability, but that they should all be judged by the same journalistic and civic standards. Too bad that's not the case in Chicago, but that won't prevent people -- on and off the public dime -- from calling out this hypocrisy at every opportunity.

On the other hand, if your goal is to paste a particular individual -- myself -- for having a day job that doesn't comport with a particular approach to politics, well, that's your prerogative.

But what’s your point? That the system is crooked? Duh. Just be sure you remember that no one single politician – from Obama on down – is sacrosanct under the terms of this analysis. People should be rebelling – against a predatory economic system that has seen AND CONTINUES TO PERPETUATE the largest transfer of wealth to the already too rich from the rest of us, an economic system that is designed to destroy the planet because the quarterly bottom line is more important in this economic formulation than any other consideration including planetary survival, and that tolerates the most egregious forms of injustice in the interests of corporate profits.

The infrastructure is backed up top to bottom by a political dynamic that thwarts openness, transparency and accountability. Let me point out that the system dodges this by periodically throwing one of its own to the wolves and then acting like the exception proves the rule. It does not. Hypocrisy anywhere in this system helps perpetuate the whole system – and that includes a handful of white male fake ‘progressive’ politicians suggesting they’re more pure than their fellows who happen to hail from the south side. Let me remind you of the potency of divide and rule. That’s what’s at play in local County politics, and it’s a sad commentary on the lack of political sophistication locally that many on the north side don’t see how they’re being steered – and why their manipulators are able to get away with it..