Chicago Daily Observer

Only Hours after bringing Chicago Public School Homicides to its knees with a dramatic and well-publicized March around Thompson Center, shots were fired near Morgan Park High School in my neighborhood.

With his usual aplomb, Daley went Old Testament on the City Tax-payers. Daley and Arne Duncan, both proud products of private education, promised to bust a cap- Property Tax Cap – the one that was raised last Fall, if Gov. Blago does not come up with the trump for Arne’s National Laugh, in the ear of Chicago Tax Payers.

That’s me. I take the weather personally.

Public Schools are tragedy and Chicago Public Schools are Blood Tragedy ( Marlowe, Jonson, Ford)- the shockingly violent sister of the genre. CPS kids die from homicide. People kill those kids. The guns do not go off by themselves. People kill other people because they feel comfortable doing so – we live ... Read More...

Newcastle Ltd., which has rapidly amassed a portfolio of North Side apartment buildings in recent years, has acquired a Lincoln Park strip mall for $10 million.

Newcastle paid about $570 a square foot for the 17,514-square-foot building at 801 W. Diversey Parkway. The property is about 81% leased to Dunkin’ Donuts, Performance Bicycle Shop and Back to Bed.

The seller, Chicago-based RN Realty LLC, developed the property in 1993.

“It was a good time in the market to sell,” RN Realty President Leigh Rabman says of the deal, which closed March last week. “This was a well-matured asset for us.”

Newcastle liked the property’s Lincoln Park location and 31 parking spaces, which “is pretty unique in that area,” says President and CEO Michael Haney. Avoiding the turmoil in the credit markets, the firm paid cash for the property but may “place long-term debt on it in the near ... Read More...

When Chicagoans who know Sen. Obama read the columns about him turned out by the national punditocracy, we tend to gasp and shake our heads in bemusement. He has become an ink blot for sick minds, very clever sick minds. Call up realclearpolitics.com and see what I mean. My favorite recent outbursts of hate come from Thomas Sowell, an African-American conservative economist, and from Naomi Schaefer Riley, the “assistant taste editor” of the Wall Street Journal (which title may be an oxymoron). Both write about Obama’s connection with the Trinity United Church of Christ.

You never know what injustice is going to stir the soul of a Chicago alderman.

For instance, a few days ago aldermen Tom Allen (38th Ward) and George Cardenas (12th Ward) were moved to outrage by the $75,000 Shakman compensation award to Jay Stone, son of alderman Bernard Stone (50th Ward).

Federal monitor Noelle Brennan awarded Stone the money on the grounds that his 2003 campaign for 32nd Ward alderman was unfairly torpedoed by the throngs of patronage workers who were dispatched by Donald Tomczak to work for Ted Matlak, the incumbent.

“We’ve got potholes to fix. We spend $20 million on snow removal and the federal monitor decides in her infinite wisdom to give somebody $75,000 because they lost an election? Can I sign up for that program?”