Burrowing Into Some Rabbit Holes
Chicago has a lot of strengths, along with a deserved, well, reputation. The City of Big Shoulders? Perhaps. But legal and illegal corruption have long greased the wheels in the City That Works. Chicago is joined at the hip with the State of Illinois, with no shortage of its own symptoms. Paul Powell, an Illinois Secretary of State who passed away while in office in 1970, just before $800,000 in cash (nearly $5 million in today’s dollars, given the inflation since then) was found stuffed in a shoebox and other places in his hotel room, along with 49 cases of whiskey. George Ryan, a former governor still in jail on corruption convictions. And they don’t seem to learn. Rod Blagojevich was elected to the governor’s seat after Ryan, and Blagojevich now stands to be sentenced following his conviction on corruption charges earlier this year.
The longer-term financial consequences arising when public institutions are used to fleece the public can be seen in the fiscal status of the City of Chicago, as well as the Land of Lincoln. Last year, interest rates and credit default swap costs for Illinois state debt climbed above California, suggesting the market considered Illinois the worst credit quality among the 50 United States.
The latest nasty recession hasn’t helped, but long-festering inefficiency and corruption have been a major factor in financial deterioration. A recent study led by Dick Simpson of the University of Illinois/Chicago estimated costs of $350 million a year in Chicago arising simply from waste, theft, patronage, nepotism and contract rigging. And speaking of waste, an illuminating symbol comes from the cost of garbage disposal in Chicago. A recent Wall Street Journal article reviewed the city’s finances, and found Chicagoans paying far higher costs per ton of garbage disposed than any other city in the country, nearly twice as much as the second highest.
In light of the environment, and the seeming inability of public institutions to reform after scandal after scandal, the prospects for ethical and cultural renewal in Chicago in the new administration led by Mayor Rahm Emanuel might best be viewed cautiously.
Here’s another reason for caution on that score.
A 2009 article/interview published in The American Conservative summarized some of Sibel Edmonds’ testimony in a court case in Ohio. This venue allowed her to speak about topics where this former FBI translator had been silenced by a dubious legal constraint called the ‘state secrets privilege.’ The 2009 article included shocking material about corruption and influence peddling. And the city of Chicago was surprisingly prominent, given the scope of her material.
Edmonds closed her 2009 article / interview with the following observations:
As soon as Obama became president, he showed us that the State Secrets Privilege was going to continue to be a tool of choice. It’s an arcane executive privilege to cover up wrongdoing—in many cases, criminal activities. And the Obama administration has not only defended using the State Secrets Privilege, it has been trying to take it even further than the previous terrible administration by maintaining that the U.S. government has sovereign immunity. This is Obama’s change: his administration seems to think it doesn’t even have to invoke state secrets as our leaders are emperors who possess this sovereign immunity. This is not the kind of language that anybody in a democracy would use.
The other thing I noticed is how Chicago, with its culture of political corruption, is central to the new administration. When I saw that Obama’s choice of chief of staff was Rahm Emanuel, knowing his relationship with Mayor Richard Daley and with the Hastert crowd, I knew we were not going to see positive changes. Changes possibly, but changes for the worse. It was no coincidence that the Turkish criminal entity’s operation centered on Chicago.
In our coming series, we are going crawl into a few of these rabbit holes.
This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .
And so the notorious Ahmed Wali Karzai (A.W.K) is dead, killed by a (formerly) trusted bodyguard 
As it was elsewhere in Afghanistan, America’s approach to Kandahar after 2001 was always counterintuitive. Putting hated warlords back in charge to fill the leadership vacuum left by fleeing Taliban was expedient but self-defeating. But U.S. reliance on this unorthodox strategy for success has remained consistently curious for the Taliban-stronghold. During a trip to Kabul in the fall of 2002 we were told that Pakistani ISI were crossing the Durand line (the disputed border between Afghanistan and Pakistan) to openly recruit Afghans for al Qaeda/Taliban cells in the villages of the province. No one we spoke to could explain such a lapse in U.S. intelligence, considering that at the time, (prior to the Iraq invasion) the U.S. had all the resources necessary to deal with such a flagrant cross-border operation. 
There is no point in wasting too many words and space rehashing what every media outlet has been reporting and recounting on 
That’s right. This is why I am not going to sit here and type away on this particular Kingpin; the Old Kingpin. While the media is busy getting the readers’ and listeners’ and watchers’ attention on the assassination of the Old Kingpin, Langley is busy installing their already groomed and prepared new Kingpin; while no one is looking. Instead I am busy looking at several likely candidates; the possible new heirs to the Old Kingpin. I have a fairly short but fairly solid list. Today I’ll provide you with one from that list, in an attempt to get you to look at a possible new Kingpin the Media-Langley duo doesn’t want you to be looking at.
About two years ago while no one was really looking at the people Langley didn’t want them to look at, I wrote a piece called: 
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has chosen a new special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan: a long-time controversial neocon, a man who has been famous for parading as a foreign agent in the lobby circuit, the scandalous former diplomat Marc Grossman. The not-so-gradual resurrection of the old neocon cabal under the Obama administration, led by Hillary Clinton, should not come as a surprise. According to Washington insiders, Richardl Perle and Douglas Feith have been consulted more than a few times in their ‘unofficial’ capacity, but are not far down in the queue to receive ‘official’ acknowledgement. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; at least to those who’ve been following the steady momentum building at the Obama White House towards a soon-to-come Neocon Easter.
We had 
A belated happy new year to all our readers and friends here at Boiling Frogs Post. As you can tell I am just coming up for air. The holiday season happens to be the busiest time for my part-time work which involves a retail business, and my full-time motherhood task which has gotten at least three-fold harder during this not-so-terrible-twos stage. You see I say harder, but I’ll never call it ‘terrible’ because despite the tasking aspect it still remains the best and most rewarding role I’ve ever had; ever. My daughter is now 2.5 years old, and I’m happy to report: she is outspoken, highly opinionated, and on her way to becoming a real activist. She is already stopping those engaged in littering in their tracks for an earful lecture, and orders them to stop, ‘Go home, time out, and take bath!’ I am sharing a few of her recent pictures here. Many of you know all about my ‘no venture into my private life’ over here at BFP…except for an occasional relevant experience(s), or, like these here and the ones from last year to mark a new year at Boiling Frogs Post. Again, Happy New Year.
You thought the Bush-Cheney administration was bad? Think again; especially if you happen to be a whistleblower. Despite its awful record, the current administration witch-hunt like pursuit of whistleblowers and truth-tellers has many whistleblowers and truth-telling advocates longing for the Bush era climate. After all, everything is relevant, right? There was the bad, now it is the worse, or probably worst ever. Despite all the threats and muscle-flexing not a single whistleblower, including myself, got arrested or even pursued criminally under the previous regime. With Obama the era of threats has changed into an era of Punishment-Imprisonment and in some cases even torture. Here is one of the latest:
Last month I came across the following coverage at 
I just finished reading an interesting 
In a continuous flow of money, American tax dollars end up paying members of the Taliban and funding a volatile environment in Afghanistan. Private contractors pay insurgents with the hope of attaining the very safety they are contracted to provide. Concurrently, US soldiers pay at checkpoints run by suspected insurgents in order to get safe passage. In some cases, Afghan companies run by former Taliban members, like President Hamid Karzai’s cousin, are protecting the passage of American soldiers. The funding of the insurgents, along with rumors of American helicopters ferrying Taliban members in Afghanistan, has led to widespread distrust of American forces. In the meantime, the US taxpayer’s dollar continues to fund insurgents to protect American troops so they can fight insurgents.
As the bodies in Afghanistan are piling up and the number of wounded keeps escalating, while Washington is buzzing with the long-known but selectively-buried corrupt and criminal past and present of our installed government officials there, some are cashing in on both sides, and some are paving the way to the next pot(s) of gold reserved for carpetbaggers and war-profiteers in every war or conflict. In this game there always are a few known names and faces who are publicized and who draw the spotlight, and there are those who enjoy operating and profiting quietly without drawing deserved attention and needed scrutiny. That’s how Washington’s war and conflict machine works, and that’s’ the way our foreign policy decisions are influenced and made. I am going to introduce one such character as an introduction to my upcoming longer story on this same topic. Ladies and gentlemen please meet our Neocon Ex Congressman, Don Ritter, and be informed of his new lucrative ‘Laundering Business’ in Afghanistan.
Once upon a time there was man named Milton Bearden, commonly referred to as Milt. He spent his early years in the state of Washington where his father worked on the Manhattan Project. After a few years with the US Air Force he joined the CIA in 1964.
Last week I wrote a 
