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* Zion to discuss proposal to dismantle nuclear plant
Exelon has hired a private company to move up the timetable for decommissioning the plant, which closed 10 years ago. If the Nuclear Regulatory Agency approves the plan, it will take another decade to return the land to its natural state, opening up 250 acres of prime lakefront property, officials said.
* Beleaguered county hospital chief to quit
Those close to Simon say he has been upset by the damage done to his reputation in the last 14 months. He was blamed for the system’s downfall.
* Hospital chief: I won’t pay
* Getting away from it all on your dime
Yet, on weekends, Simon uses taxpayer money to drive his county-issued car 320 miles, round-trip, to and from his family
home.
* Rezko trial jury selected - not revealed
* Rezko confronts 1st witness today
* Rezko gavel-to-gavel: Opening statements on tap
St. Eve said she hoped to get the government’s first witness to the stand before lunch. That is expected to be Kelly Glynn, director of Blagojevich’s campaign fund during his first successful run for governor in 2002.
* Rezko trial pits government against ‘hard but fair’ defense lawyer
* A judge not blinded by the lights
* Flushing campaign dollars
* Kendall GOP gets new chief
* Cook GOP has new leader
Lee Roupas, committeeman for Palos Township, was elected chairman of the Cook County Republican Party on Wednesday
* City man accused of stealing federal funds
* City committee targets bicyclists, motorists
* Ald. Lyle drives wedge into old boys’ club of party bosses
* Palatine official suggests split from Cook County
* Second City No More
Over the weekend, Chicago lifted itself to the top of a tax dishonor roll: The city’s cumulative sales-tax rate is now the steepest of any major metropolitan area in America, at 10.25%. That blows past the former valedictorian, Memphis (9.25%), as well as New Orleans (9%), Denver (8.6%), and even New York and Los Angeles. Congratulations.
* Attorney general: SD 122 meeting was improper
* Congress vents on FutureGen
* Durbin: Meeting with Canadian National head ‘unproductive’
Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, and U.S. Rep. Melissa Bean, a Barrington Democrat, assailed Canadian National’s plan to spend $300 million to buy the 198-mile EJ&E rail system that runs through the suburbs from Gary, Ind., to Waukegan.
* Durbin: CN not budging with EJ&E
* Illinois superdelegates say presidential race must continue
posted by Kevin Fanning
Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:00 am
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So we have a little used rail line. Somone wants to buy it, and put it to use, which would create jobs maintaining the line, send cash into the US economy for the purchase, create positions for handling the trains etc.
We need to work on developing our rail system as it is. So our response to a private company wanting to buy and utilize rail, is to try and stop them? And we wonder why we have income problems in IL and a poor tranist system. We need to do more to discourage business.
Comment by Ghost Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:12 am
Ganja for all.
“Illinois Senate committee approves plan to use marijuana as medicine”
http://www.sj-r.com/News/stories/26435.asp
Comment by Ghost Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:16 am
Maybe if the approive the marijuana bill they can use its medicinal properties to help pass a budget for next year….oh wait no smoking in chambers.
Comment by Ghost Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:17 am
Does the fact that no one knows about the Chicago Democratic chairmanship just show how much the county Democrats pretty much run the show?
Comment by Levois Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:21 am
re the EJ&E deal
Since my id on here is Train111 and I follow the industry quite closely, here’s my opinion:
Dick Durbin wouldn’t know the EJ&E from a hole in the ground if the people of Barrington weren’t screaming bloody murder about the whole deal!!!
Now that I got that out of my system we need to take a look at this from both sides.
There are very very good reasons to approve the EJ&E deal. Chicago is the most congested point in the nation in terms of rail service and could well lose its position as the top railroad town if something isn’t done about it. Some years back the CREATE program was started to try and secure industry money along with federal money to try and correct the situation. Federal money into the project has been extremely slow in coming and as of today only 1 out of the 50+ projects outlined in CREATE have been finished and that project has been on the table many years longer than CREATE has been around. CN has come along and offerred to use private money to ‘go around Chicago’ and help ease some of the congestion. This not only helps CN’s traffic flows, but it helps all of the others because if CN trains are moved off of various lines in Chicago it creates more capacity to ease the flow of traffic by other railroads in the area. None of the other major railroads in Chicago are opposed to the CN/EJ&E deal. The CN/EJ&E deal would also negate the need for CREATE’s most expensive project which would be the construction of several miles of new/rehabbed track to allow abandonment of the St Charles Air Line running just south of downtown. (Can’t have half million dollar condos next to the tracks–but I digress)
Now before anyone thinks that I am a shill for CN, I believe that they do need to sit down with the local governments and work through all of the environmental problems created by shifting the freight traffic. This can be a win-win situation with the CN getting the route that they want and several suburbs getting the overpass/underpasses and noise barriers that they want. I reside in one of the hardest hit suburbs and there is no way that CN is going to route an additional 20 trains through town without extreme detrimental effects to traffic flow unless there is an overpass/underpass built. CN needs to engage the local communities if they want this to go through. Barrington is going to be opposed come hell or high water, but most of the other communities will probably negotiate in good faith.
Incidentally, if CN wasn’t going to buy the EJ&E but worked out a deal to use the EJ&E’s Kirk Yard in Gary for their trains, they WOULD NOT have to get any federal approval to shift traffic onto those routes. (They already have trackage rights over the EJ&E through Barrington, so the point is moot) So, the NIMBYS better take a little more care in shouting bloody murder because there actually is a scenario in which they will get the trains and there is little they can do about it.
That being said, CN must negotiate in good faith to remediate the environmental impacts of the traffic shifts if they ever want to get this deal approved in some sort of ‘timely’ manner.
train111
Comment by train111 Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:28 am
They can always smoke the weed before they go into chambers. LOL!
Comment by Levois Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:41 am
Dr. Simon was used, abused and then tossed away by a county out of control. How he was treated is a warning flag to anyone out there asked to step in and help Cook County out.
If you get a call from the county, my recommendation is not to answer the phone.
Comment by VanillaMan Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:41 am
SD122’s violation of the Open Meetings Act on October 3, 2007 I believe stems back to a closed meeting in September 2006 (which is also under investigation for possible Open Meetings Act violations) while Baldermann was school board president. That closed meeting involved Baldermann voting on and the board approving some school administrators’ salary increases, including his wife’s.
Comment by Balderdash Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:42 am
Lee Roupas??? A 25 year old in a township with a paltry weighted vote??? Liz, you’ve outdone even yourself.
Comment by Snidely Whiplash Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:44 am
“Cook GOP has new leader”
Kevin,
The DuPage County Democrats have new leadership as well.
From the Daily Herald: ‘Operation: Turn DuPage Blue can no longer be considered an offshoot of the county’s Democratic Party.
‘They’re running things now.
‘The splinter group’s chairman, Bob Peickert, handily defeated incumbent DuPage County Democratic Party Chairman Rob Bisceglie at Wednesday night’s convention in Wheaton.
‘In all, 215 of the nearly 250 Democratic precinct committeemen showed up to vote for new party leadership.
‘”I think what this signifies is the Democratic Party is more united than ever before,” Peickert said shortly after the results were announced. “This is a party to be reckoned with. This is the biggest turnout of elected Democrat leaders in DuPage ever.”‘ http://tinyurl.com/223u4e
DuPage bloggers Hiram Wurf [http://tinyurl.com/2dnsun] and Prairie State Blue’s “Michael in Chicago” [http://tinyurl.com/23lw5o] apparently attended the convention.
– SCAM
Comment by so-called "Austin Mayor" Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 9:58 am
I kmow that youse guys can’t see tha far but out in Kendall County, Dallas Ingemunson, the boss for countless years, proposed a Republican Committee slate for the County. All his folk were soundly thrashed by a reform slate.
Dallas, the puppeteer, is done for. He did achieve revenge by siccing Jim Oberweis on his hated enemy Chris Lauzen and defeating the latter in the primary. It will be interesting to see if Mr. Oberweis can win the special election Saturday. That was carefully arranged by the timing of the Hastert resignation, but it may not work out the way that Dallas wanted.
Comment by Truthful James Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 6:11 pm
City Man Arrested-You might say the Ds can blame the Rs for this one accept for the fact that IDOT Div of TS has hired under contract through EIU the once fired Asst to the Dir of TS who was over the section that handled these grants and had a close workng relationship with this gentleman Mr Sullinger close this place up Blago it reaks!!
Comment by Anon Again Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 7:10 pm
The last time I really focused on the MWRD was a decade ago. On Jan. 5, 1996, I was standing with a camera crew outside its main office at 100 E. Erie. On that ill-fated day, FBI agents and the U.S. Attorney’s office descended on the place, hauling away boxes of records and striking fear in the hearts of at least two of its elected commissioners. One of them, Thomas Fuller, was ultimately convicted of public corruption in the government’s Operation Silver Shovel probe. Another, Joseph Gardner, died before he could be indicted.
Even today, there are questions of whether the tentacles of the current Hired Truck corruption probe at City Hall have reached into the MWRD as well. Have the feds shown up with search warrants or subpoenas within the last two years?
Now Today we have the current President Terrence O’Brien giving back money, more money than what the former President Fuller was indicted for. Fuller and Joe Gardner were black, O’Brien is white. Is this equal justice ?
Yes, sir, all you’ve gotta be is white in America, to get whatever you want. Gobbledy-gook!
Comment by Chance Thursday, Mar 6, 08 @ 8:19 pm
EJ&E - do the deal
The commotion is all about waiting a few minutes at a RR Xing. Everybody screams “move more traffic to rail and save the environment” and then when a firm like CN proposes to do this AT NO COST TO TAXPAYERS then a few NIMBYs scream “OH, THE IMPACTS”.
Please spare me.
Comment by Six Degrees of Separation Friday, Mar 7, 08 @ 12:24 am
One thing in the Terry O’Brien/MWRD article is that one of the donors was MWRD candidate Brendan O’Connor a 40th ward member who got a subsequent job in their legal department. There was a lawyer for 40 years who got passed up for that job and many qualified minorities who were complaining about the shortage of minorities in that office. Brendan O’Connor gives money, Brendan O’Connor runs for MWRD commissioner to try to take out Patricia “Patty” Young–than he gets a spot in the legal department–is that quid pro qou? There was a Cook County State’s Attorney investigation into Commissioners taking money from MWRD employees–the biggest obviously being the President Terrence J O’Brien who gave back $39,000. Maybe Brendan O’Connor should hit those law books harder and review the MWRD Statute created by the legislature when there was real big scandal. Fuller and O’Brien are not that different except in skin color and superficial style–the same substance and approach–power, money and quid pro qou.
Comment by Rob O Friday, Mar 7, 08 @ 12:47 am