Day after day, week after week, year after year, stories about Mike Madigan’s wide-reaching influence arise. He never actually gets accused or caught doing anything illegal — he is always dancing around the edge of the law.
Two reports today detail instances that alone should be enough to warrant a call for his resignation, let alone the hundreds of stories over the years. He was caught on tape doing his law firm tap dance asking a developer for business, and a lawsuit accuses the speaker’s ward organization of sending mob-like goons to intimidate an aldermanic candidate and his supporters. That’s enough to call for the end of his reign. But then again, this is Illinois.
We know that his Democratic colleagues, the unions, the cops, the governor, just about anybody with a checkbook are all in his pocket. When is enough enough? This man has screwed Illinois for decades and is a Tony Soprano-like bully. When will someone, anyone, have the guts to take this man on for the good of the state? Somebody, somewhere knows something. Find them. Expose it for the state to hear.
Scot Sinclair, Third Lake
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Voters deserve better campaign coverage
Both daily newspapers are giving readers short shrift in this municipal campaign season. Rather than explaining the candidates’ positions on key issues, the newspapers are bombarding us with stories focusing on money.
The ink and keystrokes wasted on stories about Chance the Rapper backing Amara Enyia’s campaign, or on Willie Wilson removing the campaign cap by donating $100,000 to his own campaign, could have gone toward explaining candidates’ positions on resolving the pension crisis or budget problems. How many stories are necessary on Toni Preckwinkle receiving, then returning, money from Ald. Ed Burke? This overkill exemplifies lazy reporting.
In the last municipal election, approximately 450,000 of the city’s 1.4 million registered voters bothered to cast a ballot. It is a joke to call this representative government. Is the voting public better informed by a daily newspaper reporting on a candidate’s potential wrongs rather than demystifying the election process?
Residents place stock in what reporters and columnists write. It’s a disgrace that the reporting on this election is so limited and shallow. Readers, be they online, print subscribers, or the people who pick up the discarded newspapers on the L, deserve better.
Glenn Reedus, Calumet Heights
