Archive for February 25, 2024

Chicago’s southern suburbs are the sewer of corrupt Illinois

Posted: February 25, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Blogger pictured in 2016

By John Ruberry

Illinois is a corrupt state. Rankings of the 50 states usually place in Illinois within the top five in the union in regard to public crookedness. 

Surprisingly, as bad as Chicago is, the city’s inner southern suburbs, are even worse in regard to political corruption. It’s the sewer of Illinois.

Sharp-eyed readers will recall I wrote a similar post here at Da Tech Guy several years ago, but the WordPress wormhole seems to have swallowed that entry up. 

So here I am again documenting south suburban Chicago sleaze, mainly because of the antics of Tiffany Henyard, the mayor of Dolton (rhymes with “Walton”), who has been accused of widespread corruption by her own village council. 

But you’ll find graft in nearby communities. More on them later.

Henyard is a double-dipper, a time-dishonored ILL-inois scam. The self-described “Super Mayor” collects $224,000 as a Thornton Township supervisor. But last year, the township’s board passed an ordinance that if voters remove her from office, her successor will earn just $25,000. 

As I wrote recently at DTG, township government in Illinois–a sinecure haven–should be abolished. 

Henyard’s salary as mayor of Dolton is $46,000. The village has 21,000 residents. As for her haul as a township supervisor, 49 of America’s 50 governors have a lower salary than hers.

Henyard, a Democrat, is accused of wasting village money on expensive trips to Atlanta and New York with village staff, wasting money on billboards with her picture. There is even her image in front of Dolton’s village hall. Yep. And I don’t care if you call me racist, it sounds a Third World-like cult of personality. I don’t care–because I’m not racist. Not surprisingly, Henyard is not above using the race card to deflect well-earned criticism. “You all should be ashamed of yourselves because you all are black. You all are black,” Super Mayor said recently in a livestreamed meeting. “And you all [are] sitting up here beating and attacking a black woman that’s in power.”

Henyard has only been mayor of Dolton for three years. She was defeated in a recall election in 2022, but a Cook County judge invalidated the results.

Meanwhile, finances in Dolton are a disaster. A lender is threatening to repossess 13 vehicles, including police cars. It could be at least $5 million in debt. Business owners are accusing Super Mayor of strong-arming them into making political donations to her campaign. Super Mayor is accused of shutting down businesses that didn’t cough up cash.

Speaking of donations, the Illinois attorney general’s office has ordered Henyard’s charity to stop collecting contributions, citing a lack of transparency and more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4e4KBV-jy8
Last month Super Mayor visited the White House and met President Joe Biden.

Is that all in regard to Henyard? No, but the FBI is investigating her.

Back to those other south suburbs.

In the 1990s, nearby Dixmoor’s Park District, which at the time had only one tiny tot lot under its jurisdiction, employed 80 people as police officers. Harvey, a poverty-stricken town has a long tradition of graft. While he has not been accused of wrongdoing, Eric Kellogg, who as mayor of Harvey until being voted out in 2019, Kellogg allegedly accepted kickbacks from a strip club that was offering prostitution. His brother was convicted for his role in that scheme. In Calumet City, which borders Dolton on the east, has recent sleaze to answer for. Its mayor is Thaddeus Jones. His wife, Saprina, collects $92,000 in a job working with state grants involved with Cal City. And the mayor’s son, Thaddeus Jr, collects $32,000 from the suburb.

Whose responsible for this debacle? Voters are. Yes, in the invalidated election Dolton voters chose to recall Henyard, but there were many red flags that should have been a sufficient warning to vote otherwise.

As the cliché goes, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” Barack Obama famously said, “Elections have consequences.” Indeed they do.

Finally, there is speculation that if Joe Biden backs out of the 2024 presidential election, Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, will jump into the race. On X, Pritzker, who of course earns less in public money than Henyard, regularly rails about the evils of “MAGA Republicans.” But Pritzker is silent about Super Mayor.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Day Three Total Confusion Convention 2024, Games, Developers, Vendors and zzz’s

Posted: February 25, 2024 by datechguy in fun, gaming, special events
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On Day Three of Total Con I decided to shift my focus to the vendors and some of games being played. Started with a group about to play a miniatures game call Trilaterum.

I didn’t realize at the time that they were also a vendor selling miniatures and accessories to the game.

Next I talked to a fellow named Caleb who was about to start running a boardgame called Mosiac

There seemed to be an awful lot of grand march of Civilization games in the place, at least to me.

From there I spoke to Christopher White of Creatorpult whose 3D printer seemed to be constantly running every time I passed by his area.

The concept of being able to do this would be almost beyond the imagination of those who attended the first few Totalcons.

I then spoke to one of the playtesters of a RPG called Fae which had a rather interesting concept of being an RPG where you play the monsters.

It certainly had one of the coolest characters which is why I led with the image.

There were vendors who had gone completely old school like the folks at Arkensword Press who were doing their first Total Con as vendors.

Vendors who were selling and testing their own games were a common sight at Total like Jim Fitzpatrick whose game is Mission to Planet Hexx.

As I mentioned there is a different vibe from Pintastic and one of the difference was that by Saturday the director of the event Steven Parenteau had some time for me when he didn’t at the start.

I was actually surprised that the only sign of pintastic was Dave dropping off some cards promoting it, but there was one familiar face and taste that had been at Pintastic:

Quigley’s cakes have been at Total Con for a decade and they did in fact sell out of their entire inventory by the end of this night which means that on Sunday they’ll have chance to actually game. (Don’t worry if you want the cupcakes they’ll be back for Pintastic in April

Of course there are other side business like the Fabric Treasury that makes accessories for gamers:

You might have noticed that while I am, as always excited to interview people I was starting to seem a tad slower, the early mornings had been getting to me and despite a more reasonable 5 hours of sleep over a friend’s apartment that morning I was dragging having completely forgotten to eat. A trip to Linguini’s for lunch filled me up and I returned to my spot in the free play room where the continual Blackbeard game was set up by 3:30 or so.

I plugged in the laptop and the battery of the camera to recharge but apparently I needed recharging more because it was a little after 4:30 when I sat down and seemed to nod off and when I looked again it was nearly 6. I literally crashed right in the chair in front of the game and was out at least 60-90 minutes as the gaming went on around me.

When I came to I was a tad refreshed and even more importantly the Wars of Ozz table was being reset for a new group meaning that the gamemaster was free for an interview:

It turned out the fellow from my home town a year ahead of me in High School which was cool.

But the most intriguing interview of the day was my final one with Jeff Johnston whose games were very different than most of the elaborate setups in the place as all of his games were designed to be played in 15 minutes and made for the youngest of children.

That was it for interview. I spent the rest of the night running Avalon Hill’s Blackbeard for a group of players and finally teaching Groo to the group when Blackbeard ended. I didn’t end up back at the apartment till 1 AM.

I’m going to mention one thing in passing. There was a miniatures game that I thought was simply incredible and brought a huge smile to my face. The gamemaster had no time to talk early in the day but I swung by as he was packing up. He was very enthused about the game he had made but for reasons that people who attended Totalcon and played or saw his game will understand we decided that it was prudent to give the interview a miss and skip even the still photos of it.

Fortunately there were other games with cool images that were not a problem from the Star Wars universe.

To Cthulhu boardgames.

There is one more day of Total Con to see. Looking forward to seeing it.