Month: June 2011

Brooklyn Museum Cancels Graffiti Show

Seth Anderson0 comment

Plate F

Cowards. Controversial art is still art, right?

The Brooklyn Museum has canceled plans to show “Art in the Streets,” the popular but controversial graffiti exhibition originated by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. In both a terse press release and an e-mail that, according to L.A. Weekly was sent to an artist in the show, the Brooklyn Museum’s director, Arnold Lehman, blamed tight finances for the cancellation. In the email quoted by L.A. Weekly, Mr. Lehman said: “With no major funding in place, we cannot move ahead.”

The show has drawn criticism in Los Angeles, both from people who accuse it of glorifying vandalism and from others who question the role of Roger Gastman, an associate curator of the show who also has a commercial interest in street art. The first issue was of most concern to The Daily News of New York, which editorialized in April that, if the show comes to Brooklyn, “museum mavens will be sticking their thumbs in the eyes of every bodega owner and restaurant manager who struggles to keep his or her property graffiti-free, not to mention the eyes of all New Yorkers who cringe recalling the days of graffiti-covered subway cars.”

(click here to continue reading Brooklyn Museum Cancels Graffiti Show – NYTimes.com.)

There’s a difference between spray painting gang symbols and street art, as we’ve discussed previously.

Facts Are Pliable Too

Woody Graffiti - CLS

Understand

Could the West steal Great Lakes water?

Seth Anderson0 comment

Lake Michigan Excursion

Lake Michigan Excursion

Occasionally people worry that the Great Lakes are in danger of being sold off to the highest bidder, leaving residents with dusty mouths…

Part of living in the Great Lakes, one of the richest sources of fresh water in the world, is living with a little undercurrent of worry that someone out West or around the world is coveting our water.

That fear isn’t based on nothing – there have been schemes floated out there to load water into tankers and ship it to Asia, and trial balloons floated over the years.

…But just how likely is Great Lakes water moving that far west?

Not very, according to Noah Hall, a law professor at Wayne State University who used to manage the Great Lakes Water Resources Program for the National Wildlife Federation.

For one thing, there’s an agreement between eight Great Lakes states and two Canadian provinces that prohibits diversions outside the Great Lakes basin. Congress passed it and so did the president.  As long as that compact stays in place, the Southwest and the rest of the world should be out of luck.

Hall says the cost of moving water that far west, and moving it uphill to boot, is too expensive to be possible anyway.

“As a general matter, the West is short of water because it’s a desert, and we’ve chosen to settle and live there as if it’s an eastern climate,” Hall said. “A large, thousand-mile diversion from the Great Lakes to another part of the country is the least affordable, practical and feasible way of meeting their water needs.”

He said the Southwest is already considering other more efficient, cheaper options like conservation, and recycling and reusing water. They’ll have to learn to live with what they have, he said, not look to the Great Lakes. That could mean people starting to move back to regions with more water, rather than trying to bring the water to them.

“The West is a dry region,” Hall said. “The reality is it’s never going to look as green as it is in Michigan. If you want green all around, you probably should live east of the 100 meridian.”

(click here to continue reading How likely is the fear the West could steal Great Lakes water? | WBEZ.)

So, no need to worry, yet

Ideological Regimes

swanksalot0 comment
Ideological Regimes

Ideological Regimes, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Actual artist / title unknown.

At the Grand/Halsted/Milwaukee intersection.

Pump up the volume thusly:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/5849910606/in/photostrea…

The City of Chicago ought to eminent domain this building, and allow it to be used by Chicago’s best street artists

Walking Blind

swanksalot0 comment
Walking Blind

Walking Blind, originally uploaded by swanksalot.

Actual artist / title unknown.

Just past the Grand/Halsted/Milwaukee intersection.

13% improvement if viewed large on black:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/5849380513/in/photostrea…

I initially didn’t notice that the bird on the right doesn’t quite match the bird superimposed on the face

The Secret Knowledge – By David Mamet – sucks

Seth Anderson0 comment

Cab 6570

Unfortunately, David Mamet, author of such seminal works as Glengary, Glenn Ross and quality films such as The Untouchables, The Postman Always Rings Twice, and The Verdict has become a Tea Party, Know-Nothing conservative Republican. Sad, really.

Anyway, Christopher Hitchens, himself a late-blooming conservative, yet still a critical thinker, eviscerates David Mamet’s autobiography, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture.

Read, and chuckle

This is an extraordinarily irritating book, written by one of those people who smugly believe that, having lost their faith, they must ipso facto have found their reason. In order to be persuaded by it, you would have to be open to propositions like this:

“Part of the left’s savage animus against Sarah Palin is attributable to her status not as a woman, neither as a Conservative, but as a Worker.”

Or this:

“America is a Christian country. Its Constitution is the distillation of the wisdom and experience of Christian men, in a tradition whose codification is the Bible.”

Some of David Mamet’s unqualified declarations are made even more tersely. On one page affirmative action is described as being “as injust as chattel slavery”; on another as being comparable to the Japanese internment and the Dred Scott decision. We learn that 1973 was the year the United States “won” the Vietnam War, and that Karl Marx — who on the evidence was somewhat more industrious than Sarah Palin — “never worked a day in his life.” Slackness or confusion might explain his reference to the ­Scottish-Canadian newspaper magnate Lord Beaverbrook as a Jewish courtier in the tradition of Disraeli and Kissinger, but it is more than ignorant to say of Bertrand Russell — author of one of the first reports from Moscow to analyze and excoriate Lenin — that he was a fellow-traveling dupe and tourist of the Jane Fonda style.

Propagandistic writing of this kind can be even more boring than it is irritating. For example, Mamet writes in “The Secret Knowledge” that “the Israelis would like to live in peace within their borders; the Arabs would like to kill them all.” Whatever one’s opinion of that conflict may be, this (twice-made) claim of his abolishes any need to analyze or even discuss it. It has a long way to go before it can even be called simplistic. By now, perhaps, you will not be surprised to know that Mamet regards global warming as a false alarm, and demands to be told “by what magical process” bumper stickers can “save whales, and free Tibet.” This again is not uncharacteristic of his pointlessly aggressive style: who on earth maintains that they can? If I were as prone to sloganizing as Mamet, I’d keep clear of bumper-sticker comparisons altogether.

(click here to continue reading and chuckling Book Review – The Secret Knowledge – By David Mamet – NYTimes.com.)

 

Burning Burning and Politicians Fiddling

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Tonatiuh Resplendent

Nero fiddled, I’d say Senators like Jim Inhofe are just playing their energy company-sponsored kazoo as the planet burns up.

Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It’s happening right here, right now.

Air tankers have been dropping fire retardant on what is being called the Wallow fire in Arizona and firefighting crews have been mobilized from across the West, but the fire remained “zero contained” for most of last week and only 18% so early in the new week, too big to touch with mere human tools like hoses, shovels, saws, and bulldozers. Walls of flame 100 feet high rolled over the land like a tsunami from Hades. The heat from such a fire is so intense and immense that it can create small tornadoes of red embers that cannot be knocked down and smothered by water or chemicals. These are not your grandfather’s forest fires.

Because the burn area in eastern Arizona is sparsely populated, damage to property so far has been minimal compared to, say, wildfire destruction in California, where the interface of civilization and wilderness is growing ever more crowded. However, the devastation to life in the fire zone, from microbiotic communities that hold soil and crucial nutrients in place to more popular species like deer, elk, bear, fish, and birds—already hard-pressed to cope with the rapidity of climate change—will be catastrophic.

The vastness of the American West holds rainforests, deserts, and everything in between, so weather patterns and moisture vary. Nonetheless, we have been experiencing a historic drought for about a decade in significant parts of the region. As topsoil dries out, microbial dynamics change and native plants either die or move uphill toward cooler temperatures and more moisture. Wildlife that depends on the seeds, nuts, leaves, shade, and shelter follows the plants—if it can.

 

(click here to continue reading How the West Was Lost | Mother Jones.)

Bush White House vs Juan Cole

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Don’t Call Me Yellow

Sad, but easily believable. We are talking about the Cheney-Bush Reign of Error after all. Juan Cole was (and is still) essential reading on all things Middle Eastern, and was a vocal critic of the Bush warmongering in Iraq and elsewhere. For the record, I’ve been reading Professor Cole’s blog since late 2003, you should too if you are interested in historical context and astute analysis of the region.

WASHINGTON — A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.    Glenn L. Carle, a former C.I.A. officer, said he was “intensely disturbed” by what he said was an effort against Professor Cole. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

It is not clear whether the White House received any damaging material about Professor Cole or whether the C.I.A. or other intelligence agencies ever provided any information or spied on him. Mr. Carle said that a memorandum written by his supervisor included derogatory details about Professor Cole, but that it may have been deleted before reaching the White House. Mr. Carle also said he did not know the origins of that information or who at the White House had requested it.

(click here to continue reading Ex-Spy Alleges Effort to Discredit Bush Critic – NYTimes.com.)

Discarded Cautions

and of course the CIA has to vehemently deny the allegations because it is illegal:

Since a series of Watergate-era abuses involving spying on White House political enemies, the C.I.A. and other spy agencies have been prohibited from collecting intelligence concerning the activities of American citizens inside the United States.

“These allegations, if true, raise very troubling questions,” said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former C.I.A. general counsel. “The statute makes it very clear: you can’t spy on Americans.” Mr. Smith added that a 1981 executive order that prohibits the C.I.A. from spying on Americans places tight legal restrictions not only on the agency’s ability to collect information on United States citizens, but also on its retention or dissemination of that data.

Mr. Smith and several other experts on national security law said the question of whether government officials had crossed the line in the Cole matter would depend on the exact nature of any White House requests and whether any collection activities conducted by intelligence officials had been overly intrusive. The experts said it might not be unlawful for the C.I.A. to provide the White House with open source material — from public databases or published material, for example — about an American citizen. But if the intent was to discredit a political critic, that would be improper, they said.

Stop Bitching Start a Revolution

Professor Cole responds (which I’m reposting in full as his website is extremely slow/non-responsive today – either a CIA/Karl Rove “dirty trick”, or just overwhelming traffic)

Ret’d. CIA Official Alleges Bush White House Used Agency to “Get” Cole

Posted on 06/16/2011 by Juan

Eminent National Security correspondent at the New York Times James Risen has been told by a retired former official of the Central Intelligence Agency that the Bush White House repeatedly asked the CIA to spy on me with a view to discovering “damaging” information with which to discredit my reputation. Glenn Carle says he was called into the office of his superior, David Low, in 2005 and was asked of me, “ ‘What do you think we might know about him, or could find out that could discredit him?’ ”

Low actually wrote up a brief attempt in this direction and submitted it to the White House but Carle says he intercepted it. Carle later discovered that yet another young analyst had been tasked with looking into me.

It seems to me clear that the Bush White House was upset by my blogging of the Iraq War, in which I was using Arabic and other primary sources, and which contradicted the propaganda efforts of the administration attempting to make the enterprise look like a wild shining success.

Carle’s revelations come as a visceral shock. You had thought that with all the shennanigans of the CIA against anti-Vietnam war protesters and then Nixon’s use of the agency against critics like Daniel Ellsberg, that the Company and successive White Houses would have learned that the agency had no business spying on American citizens.

I believe Carle’s insider account and discount the glib denials of people like Low. Carle is taking a substantial risk in making all this public. I hope that the Senate and House Intelligence Committees will immediately launch an investigation of this clear violation of the law by the Bush White House and by the CIA officials concerned. Like Mr. Carle, I am dismayed at how easy it seems to have been for corrupt WH officials to suborn CIA personnel into activities that had nothing to do with national security abroad and everything to do with silencing domestic critics. This effort was yet another attempt to gut the Fourth Amendment of the US Constitution, in this case as part of an effort to gut the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

I should point out that my blog was begun in 2002 with an eye toward analyzing open source information on the struggle against al-Qaeda. In 2003 I also began reporting on the unfolding Iraq War. My goal was to help inform the public and to present sources and analysis on the basis of my expertise as a Middle East and South Asia expert. In 2003-2005 and after I on a few occasions was asked to speak to military and intelligence professionals, most often as part of an inter-agency audience, and I presented to them in person distillations of my research. I never had a direct contract with the CIA, but some of the think tanks that every once in a while asked me to speak were clearly letting analysts and field officers know about the presentations (which were most often academic panels of a sort that would be mounted at any academic conference), and they attended. I should underline that these presentations involved small travel expenses and a small honorarium, and that I wasn’t a high-paid consultant but clearly was expected to speak my views and share my conclusions frankly. It was not a regular gig. Apparently one of the purposes of spying on me to discredit me, from the point of view of the Bush White House, was ironically to discourage Washington think tanks from inviting me to speak to the analysts, not only of the CIA but also the State Department Intelligence and Research and other officials concerned with counter-terrorism and with Iraq.

It seemed likely to some colleagues, according to what they told me, that the Bush administration had in fact succeeded in having me blackballed, since the invitations rather dropped off, and panels of a sort I had earlier participated in were being held without my presence. I do not know if smear tactics were used to produce this result, behind the scenes and within the government. It was all the same to me– I continued to provide what I believe was an important service to the Republic at my blog and I know for a fact that not only intelligence analysts but members of the Bush team continued to read some of what I wrote.

What alarms me most of all in the nakedly illegal deployment of the CIA against an academic for the explicit purpose of destroying his reputation for political purposes is that I know I am a relatively small fish and it seems to me rather likely that I was not the only target of the baleful team at the White House. After the Valerie Plame affair, it seemed clear that there was nothing those people wouldn’t stoop to. You wonder how many critics were effectively “destroyed.” It is sad that a politics of personal destruction was the response by the Bush White House to an attempt of a citizen to reason in public about a matter of great public interest. They have brought great shame upon the traditions of the White House, which go back to George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, who had hoped that checks and balances would forestall such abuses of power.

(click here to continue reading Ret’d. CIA Official Alleges Bush White House Used Agency to “Get” Cole | Informed Comment.)

The orthodoxy of the article

Seth Anderson0 comment

Evening Newspapers at Monument Station

While I’ve never been a journalist1, I know plenty practitioners of the form; am descended from journalists, and related to others. Thus, Jeff Jarvis’ argument resonates with me.

He begins:

When I say the article is a luxury, I argue that using ever-more-precious resources to create an article should be taken seriously and before writing and editing a story we must assure that it will add value. Do most articles do that today? No. Go through your paper in the morning and tell me how much real value is added and how much ink is spilled to tell you what you already know (whether that is facts you learned through Twitter, the web, TV, radio, et al or background that is reheated more often than a stale slice in a bad New York pizzeria).

How many articles are rewritten from others’ work just so a paper and a reporter can have a byline? How many predict the obvious (every story about an upcoming storm, holiday, press conference, or horse race election)? How often do you see a local TV story with any real reporting and value instead of just someone standing where the news happened 12 hours ago telling you what you and he both read online already? Too many articles passing themselves off as professional journalism are crap and I say we can’t afford to do that anymore. I say we should treat articles with veneration as a luxury.

 

Second, I am also promoting rather than devaluing background when I say it is best linked to. The background paragraphs in an ongoing story generally do one of two things: they bore and waste the time of people who have followed the story or they underinform the people who have not been following the story. Background graphs were a necessity of print but online we can improve background immensely, investing the effort in truly valuable and long-lasting content assets that give richer and more helpful background on a story. I’ve worked with smart folks at news companies imagining how we could provide multiple paths through background: here’s the path to take if you’re coming to the story as a virgin; here’s a track to take if you’ve missed a week; here’s a track from one perspective; here’s one from another. If someone else did a great job explaining the story or elements of it, we should link to them. Filoux calls that oursourcing. I call that linking. We do that nowadays. This is why I’m eagerly watching Jay Rosen’s project in creating explainers, which is an even richer form of background.

Third, in this entire discussion of the article, I am valuing reporting higher than repetitive retyping. As our resources become ever-scarcer, I say that we must devote more of them to reporting than to articles that add little: asking the questions that haven’t been asked and answered, finding people who can add information and perspective, fact-checking.

 

(click here to continue reading The orthodoxy of the article, part II « BuzzMachine.)

Journalism, especially print journalism, has to change, drastically, and soon. Or else the profession will be relegated to the warehouse that holds telegraph operators, carriage horse cabbies, and sword polishers. Actual reporting will not be replaced by current2 trends and practices: Twitter, cellphone video, and so on, but it could and should be enhanced by it.

People's Friend, People's Journal, Sunday Post, Dundee Courier

oh, and Mr. Jarvis’ original article, for the record.

Footnotes:
  1. being a blogger since 1999 doesn’t count – much different aims, no editor – obviously – and so on [↩]
  2. and future [↩]

Not All $12 an hour Jobs Are The Same

Seth Anderson2 Comments

Wisconsin countryside

To wit: working in a hot, dusty field on your knees is not as much fun as making copies at Kinko’s…

Cynthia Tucker reports:

I’m going to let you in on a big secret, a closely-held and dirty truth about Georgia’s farmers: They depend on immigrants, some of whom are here illegally.

What’s that? You knew that already? Not such a secret?

Well, Georgia’s agri-business leaders are posing and posturing as if it is. They dare not admit that they need the sweat and toil of migrant laborers so much that they are not always fastidious about searching for legal documents.

But the gut-busting pressures of a harsh new Georgia law targeting illegal immigrants — modeled after a controversial law in Arizona — may force farmers to speak the truth out loud. At the very least, it may force them to campaign openly for a broad immigration reform proposal that grants legal status to illegal laborers.

It’s not looking like a good year for many of Georgia’s farmers, who were already struggling with a warming earth. As drought conditions worsen in some portions of the state — upgraded from moderate to severe — searing heat and stingy rainfall are yellowing leaves and stunting crops.

Now, some of those lucky enough to reap bountiful harvests may be forced to leave fruits and vegetables in the fields for want of enough hands to pick the onions and tomatoes, beans and watermelons. Farmers have complained that some of their seasonal workers from Mexico, Guatemala and other points south have failed to show up, frightened away by the new law, which takes effect July 1, and its promise of increased scrutiny of those with Spanish surnames.

Dick Minor, president of the Georgia Fruit and Vegetable

Growers Association, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that some migrant workers are skipping Georgia because they fear harassment. “People are just saying, ‘I am not going to Georgia. The law is terrible. We are going to get in trouble there. Let’s just go on.’ They have options. And what they are saying is, ‘Georgia is not the place to go,’ “ he told reporter Jeremy Redmon.

For what it’s worth, the labor shortage casts doubt on the old canard that illegal immigrants are taking jobs from hardworking American citizens, a reliable set-piece in arguments from nativist diehards. Even at an average wage of $12.50 or so an hour, native-born Georgians aren’t eager to take the work the fields offer — dirty, joint-maiming, miserably hot and impermanent. Once you’ve picked one crop, you must move to another state for a different harvest.)

(click here to continue reading Georgia’s big secret: State needs illegal workers | Cynthia Tucker.)

Mango, Orange, Plantains, Oh My!

Bottom line, expect fruit and vegetable costs to rise dramatically as the cost to pick them rises

Vienna Beef Sues Grandson of Founder

Seth Anderson0 comment

Vienna Pure Beef Hot Dogs Polish Sausage

Scott Ladany must have really been causing Vienna Beef trouble behind the scenes for a long time, or else they wouldn’t have reacted this way.

Chicago hot dog maker Vienna Beef has a beef with a grandson of one of the 118-year-old company’s founders.

Vienna says the grandson, Scott Ladany, is trying to make consumers think hot dogs made by his newer, separate company are the same as theirs.

In a suit filed Monday in federal court in Chicago, Vienna Beef says that Ladany “has embarked upon a deliberate, multi-faceted campaign to promote [his] products” by trying to convince hot hog vendors to sell his hot dogs by misrepresenting them as Vienna hot dogs — or by telling vendors that his company’s hot dogs are made with Vienna’s original recipes.

The suit claims Ladany and his company, Red Hot Chicago, are guilty of trademark infringement, false advertising and unfair competition.

Ladany was a Vienna Beef employee and shareholder, the suit notes, until 1983. At that point he sold his entire 10 percent interest in Vienna, resigned his position as a salesman and left the company. He signed employment and severance agreements that acknowledged, among other things, that Vienna’s recipes were trade secrets that he would never use or divulge.

In 1986, after his non-competition agreement with Vienna ended, Ladany opened Red Hot Chicago (RHC), headquartered at 4649 W. Armitage, to sell hot dogs and other products.

Vienna Beef says “for more than 25 years, Ladany and RHC made few inroads into Vienna’s position of dominance of the hot dog stand market. Vienna’s reputation among consumers was simply too strong. … Accordingly, Ladany and RHC recently decided to take a different tack: they decided they would avoid the enormous long-term expense associated with building their own brand. Instead they would lay claim to Vienna’s recipes, pretend to be Vienna, and sell their products by misappropriating the enormous power of the Vienna name and reputation among consumers and vendors.”

Vienna says Ladany, of Highland Park, and RHC have “made numerous false and misleading statements in their print and Internet advertisements and marketing materials” that intend to mislead the public into thinking that RHC and its products are affiliated with Vienna and its products, the suit states.

“Among other things, Defendants state in these advertisements that RHC’s products are made with Vienna’s family recipes. If these statements in their advertisements are true, then Defendants are admitting that they have stolen and are using Vienna’s trade secrets. If RHC is not in fact using the Vienna family recipes, as stated in their advertisements, then Defendants’ advertisements are false.”

(click here to continue reading Vienna Beef suit: kin of a founder misrepresenting his new company – Chicago Sun-Times.)

Give the Gift of Chicago

Travis High School Reunion

Seth Anderson0 comment

City of Austin Power Plant

My high school is having an anniversary; 25 years ago we graduated from William B Travis High School1. Facebook became popular since the last time a reunion was held, thus some enterprising classmate set up a Facebook Group for the details of where and when, and who was attending. To be brutally honest, there weren’t many on the list of attendees that I’d like to have a beer with, seems like too many are Tea Baggers, religious zealots, or both. I’m sure some folks didn’t fall into this cynical trap, we are from Austin after all, but too many of the same schmoes that I didn’t like then, and hadn’t heard of in years, were going to attend.

Instead, I left the following RSVP which I’m saving for posterity:

I’m sorry but I cannot attend, even though I would like to see how some of you turned out after all these years. I’m just too afraid that Rick Perry is going to convince Texas to secede from the US, and institute some sort of 3rd world Tea Party Republic that won’t be friendly to liberal,  secular humanists like myself. Maybe when there’s high speed rail service from Chicago to Texas I’d reconsider.

I’d thought about being less abrasive, and just saying “sorry, couldn’t make it”, but then, why? Don’t care about my “reputation”, and those who even remember me will have a chuckle.

Seth and Josh 1986

Me and Joshua Starbuck in my first car, parked in front of Post Oak, back when my waist size was still 28…

Footnotes:
  1. apparently Roky Erickson also went to Travis – there should be a statue or something, no? But there is not. [↩]

The Daley Legacy Is Corruption

Seth Anderson0 comment

Everything Must Go

Not to say that Mayor Daley did nothing positive for the City of Chicago, because he did some good things too, but at best his legacy is mixed. Too many examples of greed and corruption, like:

For years, City Hall maintained that Mayor Richard M. Daley’s son, Patrick Daley, had no financial stake in the deal that brought wireless Internet service to city-owned O’Hare Airport and Midway Airport.

But it turns out that the younger Daley still reaped a windfall of $708,999 when Concourse Communications was sold in 2006, less than a year after the Chicago company signed the multimillion-dollar Wi-Fi contract with his father’s administration, company documents obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times show.

Concourse disclosed its investors to the city, as required. Patrick Daley wasn’t one of them.

But he still had a stake in Concourse’s success, the company documents show, and profited as a result when the company was sold after winning the city contract.

Daley’s role was as a middleman who lined up investors for Concourse. Among them: M. Blair Hull, the millionaire commodities trader who mounted an unsuccessful campaign for the Democratic Party’s nomination for U.S. Senate in 2004.

On June 27, 2006, nine months after it signed the potentially lucrative city contract for airport Wi-Fi service in Chicago, Concourse was sold — at a 33 percent profit — to Boingo Wireless Inc. for $45 million.

Three days later, Patrick Daley got his first payment as a result of the sale, the documents show — for $164,789.

Over the next 17 months, with Daley now serving in the U.S. Army, he got four more payments resulting from the sale, totaling $544,210, the documents show, for a total of $708,999.

Shortly after Patrick Daley received the last of those payments, his father’s City Hall press secretary, Jacquelyn Heard, told a Sun-Times reporter in a Dec. 3, 2007, interview, that Patrick Daley “has no financial interest with the Wi-Fi contract at O’Hare.”

(click here to continue reading Former Mayor Daley’s son profited after airport Wi-Fi deal – Chicago Sun-Times.)

So next time you read a hagiography of Mayor Daley, remember this aspect too.