Remember the guy from yesterday who just seemed to have mislaid $500K?
Well, from a story last year – he sought unemployment benefits…for no longer having his elected position, it seems:
Former Cook County Board President Todd Stroger wants to start collecting unemployment checks.
But the county is fighting Stroger's request on the grounds he isn’t eligible to get unemployment for wages he made as an elected official.
Stroger applied Jan. 7 to the Illinois Department of Employment Security, seeking unemployment benefits for the $170,000 he got annually as county board president, according to Jessey Neves, spokeswoman for current Board President Toni Preckwinkle.
The county protested Stroger's claim within the 10-day response period, Neves said today. "It's not a personal decision. He is ineligible under the law," she said.….Stroger, the architect of a much-criticized 2008 sales-tax increase that raised Chicago's rate to 10.25 percent, finished last among four candidates in the 2010 Democratic primary election, which Preckwinkle won. Stroger left office in early December.Before he was elected board president in 2006, Stroger was a Chicago Park District aide, state lawmaker, investment banker and Chicago alderman. Stroger had gotten help throughout his political career from his father, the late John Stroger, a powerful 8th Ward boss.
That was in March 2011. I doubt he got the huge checks he had been hoping for (while Illinois politics may be insane, the laws aren't totally stupid there. If you lose an election, you don't get unemployment for getting booted by the electorate.)
I have a feeling Mr. Stroger has a lifestyle to which he had become accustomed and was having a hard time making up for that sweet check as an elected official. While he had been connected, daddy (nor Daley) are around any more.
But it does put me to mind that there seems to be tiers to these corrupt pols. You have the "legitimate" slush funds, like Rahm's infrastructure fund, Obama funneling $$ to "green" industries, etc., and it's all supposedly above board. At the very least, criminal charges on government largesse to connected people, featherbedding, etc., is unlikely. Real estate deals at highly favorable terms, futures trading with amazing timing, all that jazz — just par for the course. Nothing actionable.
But then you have these marginal pols who don't have these connections, and see how the big boys are making profit from their seats. So they try these rinky-dink operations, trying to sell a Senate seat, hiding cash in a freezer, using campaign funds to decorate a house. Tsk tsk.
The Democrats really ought to put together a seminar for this sort of thing to spread the knowledge amongst their fellow party-goers so it's clear How It Is Done and How It Is Not Done. How dare they allow class distinctions between their own fellow partymembers perpetuate like this.
