Possible Corruption in Chicago??

The Chicago Tribune is reporting that the City of Chicago is canceling the contract with its "red light camera vendor," a company called Redflix Traffic Systems, Inc, after an internal probe "found that company executives systematically courted former city transportation official John Bills with thousands of dollars in free trips to the Super Bowl and other sporting events."

I am shocked—shocked!—that the combination of Chicago politics and using automated traffic citations as a money-making scheme has resulted in scandal and corruption. What is the world coming to?

The Chicago Way

An arbitrator has sustained the grievances of four Chicago firefighters fired for submitting false reimbursement reports:

Independent arbitrator Edwin H. Benn said there is “no real dispute” that all of the accused “knowingly submitted inaccurate mileage-reimbursement reports and obtained compensation for mileage — ranging in some cases into the thousands of dollars — that they did not actually incur.” 

But Benn pointed to city Inspector General Joe Ferguson’s conclusion that the alleged mileage padding was a “decades-long practice that was condoned and encouraged by supervisors.” Benn quoted Ferguson as saying that many of he inspectors were “assured by their supervisors that the accuracy of their mileage totals would not be challenged.”

Apparently it's okay as long as everybody does it.

One question: have the complicit supervisors been fired? I mean, the ones who encouraged these firefighters to steal taxpayer money?

Dancing with the devil

President Obama recently decided to embrace so-called "super PACs" for his reelection campaign. This despite his prior position that such groups should be outlawed, on the argument that—as Justice Ginsburg recently implied—they "give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption."

Given this, I think at least one of three things must be true:

1) President Obama is corrupt;
2) President Obama is apparently corrupt; or
3) President Obama doesn't really believe that this kind of money gives rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.

Which do you think it is, Mr. Gillette?

My own guess is number three. But at least one prominent campaign-finance reformer has lambasted Obama for "dancing with the devil" by employing this "corrupting tactic": Russ Feingold.