Inside Chicago Government presents audio from a federal court's public status hearing on the Chicago Police Department Consent Decree held on Sept. 10 2024.

At a hearing in June of 2024, a federal judge overseeing the Chicago Police Department Consent Decree heard arguments over whether a court should dictate police practices concerning traffic stops.

Inside Chicago Government presents audio from a federal court's public status hearing on the Chicago Police Department Consent Decree held on Dec. 14, 2023.

Inside Chicago Government presents audio from a federal court's public status hearing on the Chicago Police Department Consent Decree held on Nov 16, 2023.

Since August of 2022, over 19,000 migrants have come from the U.S. southern border to Chicago—thousands of whom are now camped out in the city's police stations and airports.

Migrants residing at a North Side police station
in November. Photo by Dave Glowacz.

According to the city of Chicago, most the migrants have come from Venezuela. What caused them to flee their homeland?

A recent report from the Great Cities Institute of the University of Iliinois at Chicago gives some clues.

The report is titled, "The Current Migrant Crisis: How U.S. Policy Toward Latin America Has Fueled Historic Numbers of Asylum Seekers." Its author, Juan González, is a senior research fellow at the institute—and a co-host of the long-running "Democracy Now!" news broadcast.

In these excerpts from the 17-page report, González describes the U.S. government's economic pressures on the nation of Venezuela:

"In late 2014 President Obama signed an executive order—not publicly released until March 2015—in which he declared that conditions in Venezuela had become a national emergency and an 'extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.' The order never spelled out exactly how a small South American country hundreds of miles away, with a standing army of only 100,000 troops, could suddenly become a threat to world’s most powerful nation. Nonetheless, Obama launched a series of economic sanctions against Venezuela."

"His successor Donald Trump followed in 2017 with even broader sanctions which closed off Venezuela's access to Western debt financing, forced many U.S. and foreign companies to leave the country, and crippled its oil industry, the Venezuelan government’s main source of revenue. Trump even froze the assets in 2019 of CITGO Petroleum, a U.S. company that is wholly owned by Venezuela’s state oil company. CITGO’s refineries and gas stations in the U.S. are enormously valuable. In 2022 they generated . . . more than $2.8 billion in profit, but Trump’s actions effectively prevented any of that money from reaching the Venezuelan government and its people."

"Meanwhile, the White House joined with the United Kingdom to freeze Venezuelan gold reserves stored in the Bank of England worth an estimated $2 billion."

"The effect of these massive U.S. sanctions caused the Venezuelan state to lose between $17 billion and $31 billion in oil revenues between 2017 and 2020. Given that Venezuela normally imports 90 percent of its pharmaceuticals and 70 percent of its food, the loss of such a vast quantity of U.S. dollars from its shrinking oil exports has crippled its economy."

An on-line survey has become available for Chicagoans to say how the Chicago Police Dept. should focus its training.

Reactions came swiftly to Mayor Lori Lightfoot's COVID-19 pandemic executive order—which gave her power over city's budget "as needed to maximize effectiveness of the city response."

The Trump administration tried to pay a Germany-funded drug maker to give the U.S. exclusive rights to a COVID-19 vaccine, according to media reports.

According to The Guardian, "Trump offered $1 billion to Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac to secure the vaccine 'only for the United States'."

The Guardian quoted original reporting from the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag.

The moved reportedly incensed German officials.

"We cannot allow a situation where others want to exclusively acquire the results" of German researchers, foreign minister Heiko Maas was quoted as saying.

In this episode that transitions from "Interviews with Ben Joravsky" to the "Inside Chicago Government" podcast, Dave Glowacz and the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky look back over their 12 years of talks.

A study has found that publicly funded incentives such as property tax abatements and investment tax credits are "linked with worse overall fiscal health" for the state and local jurisdictions that employ them.

The study, from researchers at North Carolina State University, took a comprehensive look at all incentives offered in 32 states from 1990 to 2015.

Report: "You Don't Always Get What You Want: The Effect of Financial Incentives on State Fiscal Health" (North Carolina State University)

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on WCPT-AM's Ben Joravsky Show, Ben asks Mr Bike about Chicagoans in black areas that have gotten bicycling tickets in far greater numbers than those in white areas, and more.

In an interview by Ben Joravsky with Dave Glowacz on WCPT-AM's Ben Joravsky Show, Ben and Dave discuss a Logan Square TIF subsidy, the arguments for term limits, and more.

After the recent resignation of Forrest Claypool as head of Chicago Public Schools, one might ask: Why was he hired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the first place?

One insight into the Claypool-Emanuel relationship comes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

In late 2008, an FBI wiretap recorded then-Congressman Emanuel mentioning Claypool in a telephone call with then-Governor Rod Blagojevich. The FBI had wiretapped Blagojevich's telephones to gather evidence for the subsequent prosecution of Blagojevich.

Although a detailed transcript of the phone call didn't surface until Blagojevich's 2011 corruption trial, the conversation was first revealed by Blagojevich himself.

In his 2009 memoir The Governor (Phoenix Books), Blagojevich describes how Emanuel, who in November, 2008 had just been appointed chief of staff by the newly-elected Barack Obama, wanted the governor's help to "appoint a congressman who was going to keep the [5th Congressional district] seat warm" for Emanuel.

The "purpose of [Emanuel's] call," Blagojevich writes, "was to see whether or not l would be willing to work with him and appoint a successor to his congressional seat who he would have designated to be a placeholder and hold the seat for him when he sought to return to Congress in two years." When Blagojevich questioned the legality of such a move, Emanuel said "that his lawyers thought there was a way where the governor might be able to make an appointment."

Blagojevich was reluctant to help Emanuel, he says, because "if I helped appoint a congressman who was going to keep the seat warm for him, then I was going to make a lot of people who wanted to be congressman unhappy with me."

The fact that it was Claypool whom Emanuel wanted as his seat-warmer didn't come to light until two years later, in June, 2011—in a federal-court filing by Blagojevich's lawyers during the legal proceeding against him.

The filing contained the FBI's transcript of the phone conversation between Emanuel and Blagojevich.

In the call, Emanuel says that "all of a sudden, all the aldermen and committeemen" wanted to take Emanuel's congressional seat as he left for the White House.

"Forrest Claypool, bizarrely," Emanuel says, "would like to be considered, and he says he only wants to do it for, like, one term or two max."

Claypool didn't make it to Congress. But Emanuel, after becoming mayor, appointed him to successive positions as Chicago Transit Authority president, mayoral chief of staff, and finally CEO of Chicago Public Schools.

The federal government never released an audio version of Emanuel's phone call with Blagojevich. However, Inside Chicago Government has created an exclusive audio reenactment: Find it in the premium version of the interview titled "Rahm fired up about—but wouldn't fire—Forrest Claypool."

Interview with the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky on the motives of Governor Bruce Rauner in insisting on government "reforms" as part of a state budget deal.

Interview with the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky on what Democratic gubernatorial candidate Chris Kennedy thinks about voters, and more.

Dave Glowacz interviews the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky about Ben's new talk-radio program, "The Ben Joravsky Show," on Chicago's WCPT-AM.

Dave and Ben discuss how the show is the culimation of a lifetime of radio listening; the characteristics of the radio station's left-leaning audience; and synergies between Ben's broadcast and print material. Length 5.7 minutes standard, 16 minutes premium.

Music: "Breakup Breakdown" by Cullah

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Premium audio:

Illinois members of the Electoral College will meet in Springfield on Monday, Dec. 19 to cast their votes for president of the United States.

Have you ever been interviewed for an exit poll after you've voted? Do you know anyone who has?

If you answered "no" to these questions, you might wonder about the reliability of the exit polls that major news outlets keep quoting.

Though we've heard much about the kinds of voters that supposedly voted for Trump or Clinton in the recent election, we hear little about the sources of this info.

Take a listen, then, to a presentation by Sumi Cho, a law professor at the DePaul University College of Law.

Cho, who teaches courses on racism and employment discrimination, criticizes dominant exit poll surveys, saying that they aren't designed to represent certain demographics—such as immigrant voters.

In her comments, Cho:

• Describes the practices of mainstream pollsters that bias exit poll results.
• Says that mainstream pollsters capture too small a sample, so overlook the diversity of views within particular communities.
• Says that the dominant exit polls over-represent Republican voters.

Cho spoke in the Nov. 11, 2016 Webinar, "Social Justice SOS: What Happened, What's Coming and Why We Must Join Together Against Hate," presented by the African American Policy Forum. Length 4.3 minutes.

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Interview with the Chicago Reader's Ben Joravsky on the Emanuel administration's scramble, after the presumed election of Donald Trump as president, to secure federal funding and TIF designation for Red Line reconstruction.

The U.S. Dept. of Justice is holding little-advertised public forums to get citizens' input on their encounters with Chicago police.