Saturday, December 17, 2011

My Future State Rep? -OR- Pol Asks; Please! Indict ME!?

We be Pirate Country! We here in Twp 39 North, Crook County, Illinois are just heading into the next primary election cycle. With the legacy of pay to play, elected privilege, opposition retribution, sleazy dealings (all legal of course!), cronyism, cover-ups, voter apathy,disqualification,intimidation,fraud, andonandon you'd think the list of indictments would be just as long. But Proviso Township only rarely attracts the attention of our legal watchdogs. This video clearly shows how things work. It's just politics... Scummy, community destroying, corruption plagued politics that are seemingly coated in teflon and kevlar.


Proviso Employees Perform Political Work on Taxpayer's Dime: MyFoxCHICAGO.com



The candidate in this incident is making his second run at a seat in the state legislature from his current position as President of the failed institution locals call Proviso High School District 209. He controls a board majority, so he decides who shares in the $80 million annual budget's "discretionary" bonanza.

His list of accomplishments, education wise, are funding creation of a magnet high school via bond sales to bypass voter approval, then funding the schools operations out of the budget for the two existing campuses. Last year he fired all of the Principals for a shot at "Race To The Top" funding and to avoid the NCLB consequences of failing to meet standards. Provisos East and West are textbooks for how to run "good enough for them schools of last resort.

The district Chris Welch is running to represent has no media coverage to speak of, it spans all or parts of 15 communities just west of the city. An inner-ring frontier that still has many charms. The lack of press limits exposure to the ugly to the point that you can almost ignore it. Easily, a majority of the residents are blissfully ignorant to who's running things or the bizarre things that they do.

The obvious question is why anyone would live in this ongoing nightmare. I don't think I have a rational explanation for that except location, location, location.
Anyone with means simply bypasses the scum and hopes that somebody does something about it. That hope is mostly half-hearted since things have been this way for a long, long time. Despite the nonsense, it's still a mostly good place to live. Civic pride is compensated for by great neighbors who share the faint hope that things will be fixed...soon...eventually and then things will be perfect!

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