Gulag For You

The State of Illinois, The County of C(r)ook, Imprisons on Demand

I had some material facts about Steve’s marriage incorrect, and the way he bought seats to make money. So, I edited them. The thrust of the original article outlining the corruption is correct. I showed where the blog post was edited.

Remember during Covid when there were people, mostly left-wing Democrats, saying things like, “We should put non-vaccinated people in a camp so they can’t kill the rest of us.” Alexander Solzhenitsyn would have had fun with this bunch.

Yes, it actually happened and worse. People lost their jobs over the vaccine. People lost relationships. They lost opportunities. The Joe Biden regime enforced this discipline on people, eliminating their freedom of choice.

The vaccine didn’t work as advertised. Democrats didn’t care.

Democrats would put you in a gulag. Bill Ayers opined about it back in the day and the feeling hasn’t changed. In fact, a lot of elected Democrats would do it if they could. John Kerry just talked about how awful free speech is. They want your gun rights taken away. Communist rep posing as a Democrat Jan Schakowsky opined about the bane of the 10thers. People who liked and advocated for the 10th Amendment. The US Constitution isn’t a sacred document to them. It just gets in their way.

Their actions on Covid, and how they ignored the law in the Biden Administration go to the core of the soul of today’s Democratic Party.

Nowhere is it more apparent than in Illinois. Illinois is the most corrupt entity in the entire 50 states. It’s not close. The Governor of the State is a totalitarian. Already, he is foaming at the mouth eager to “defend” the “rights” of illegal aliens and looking to pick fights with the new Trump administration. In a conversation I had with him years ago, he told me about his trip to China. He said that he was standing in a building looking out the window at a gigantic field of poor people and squalor. A CCP official told him in the next two years that field would be gone and it would be developed. Pritzker was totally impressed. I asked him if he preferred the Chinese system or the American system. You know, the one where we have property rights. He never picked that up in law school I guess.

I think you know the answer. Political crony’s property rights are paramount. If you aren’t one of them, yours are subservient.

If you want to see and understand the full scale and scope of corruption in Illinois, you must go through the posts at Wirepoints and Illinois Policy. I’d suggest that you listen to Dan Proft and Amy Jacobsen in the morning on AM Radio 560. They aren’t barking up a naked tree. The corrupt Democrats don’t want you to listen or read them.

Illinois judges and the entire court system in Illinois are crooked. You cannot get a fair trial in Illinois. The Supreme Court showed its colors, ruling against the pension initiatives in 2015. One of the justices, Ann Burke, sleeps with one of the most corrupt pols in Illinois history, her husband Ed. Even some Democrats wanted pension reform. The will of the people was shut out. Jussie Smollett is another example of the kind of justice administered in Illinois. He was friends with the Obamas and others. He got off. You wouldn’t have.

Toni Preckwinkle pulls all the levers of political power in Cook County and the city of Chicago. Boss Preckwinkle tells the Chicago Teacher’s Union and other pols what she wants, and they do it for her. John Kass has chronicled this so I won’t go into it all. But, if you thought the Daley’s were crooked, and they were, they’d blush at the shell game Preckwinkle is playing. Putin is jealous of Preckwinkle’s power. There is no difference in their character makeup or the culture of corruption they perpetuate.

There is not any difference between the old Soviet politburo system and the Chicago Democratic Machine. They are the same and operate the same.

The city and Preckwinkle want the Chicago Bears to stay inside city limits. The Bears bought land in Arlington Heights to develop a stadium. It looked like they might even do it privately. The old tax assessor suddenly decided that the land they purchased was a lot more valuable than it used to be a little bit ago, and jacked the property tax bill on the Bears to get them to “re-examine” their strategy. We will see what happens but what is happening is the politicians are reminding the Bears that they are the boss.

Now the Bears are lobbying for subsidies like every pro team. If they bend the knee enough they will get them. They did it for the old rehab of Soldier Field. That place is a dump. I had season tickets for years until I moved. Mistake on the Lake doesn’t give justice or enough respect to the word “mistake”.

There is a never-ending litany of stories like this in Chicago and the state of Illinois. I tell you that to highlight one that came across my X feed the other day.

<redacted>

There is a guy named Steve Fanady who is being held indefinitely and violating his Constitutional rights by corrupt Sheriff Tom Dart in the county jail. You can read the X thread here. It shouldn’t come as a surprise, Chicagoan and head of the DOJ Merrick Garland is holding January 6th protestors in prison violating their rights too. It’s standard operating procedure with corrupt Democrats.

You’d think some enterprising Chicago reporter would do investigative work here. They’d uncover corruption, and win an award. They could write books and make money. But, they must be in bed with them.

I do know the papers in Chicago report after the fact. Crain’s Chicago is calling for the mayor to step down. Course, they in bed and played kissy face with Pritzker, Preckwinkle, and all the other corrupt politicians. It just shows how bad the mayor is.

Steve Fanady and I know each other. We first tangled with each other when the CME was going to buy the CBOT. He was a CBOT shareholder and talking his book and I was a CME shareholder talking mine. We tangled on message boards and we tangled in person. It was a serious disagreement, but a respectful and civilized one. The transaction was finalized and I bet if Steve and I were in a room together we’d still disagree about a few of the finer points of the transaction, but we would still be friends in the end. I think we have met physically in person about 4 or 5 times at most in our lives. We are acquainted.

Steve’s case is a microexample of what would happen if people like Adam Schiff or the mobsters in the Biden Administration were able to control all the levers of power in government. Believe me when I tell you, if Trump didn’t win that last election, he and Elon Musk were going to jail. Just like Steve. Remember all the lawfare carried out against Trump and the regulatory hassles Musk received from all government agencies?

Here are the facts of the case as I understand them. I haven’t spoken with Steve about it. I know other people who did similar.

(edited) Steve owned a membership at the exchange. However, he was partnered with someone regarding the purchase. He acquired it to trade. Like a lot of guys, you had a choice between leasing or owning and Steve owned. There are other people I know who did partnerships to acquire memberships. Plenty of broker groups did it, though they listed the memberships in the name of an individual because that was the rule.

In Steve’s case, his first divorce started the trouble on his shares. The court awarded his first wife half of the shares on the demutualization of the exchange, denying Steve and his partner their shares. They went to court and ultimately prevailed and received their shares. Only one of the partners paid the cost of the litigation, the other paid nothing. Eventually, the appellate court found that she had perjured herself during the divorce proceedings regarding the total number of shares received on demutualization. Yet Steve was still found in contempt 10 years later for non-payment and has been sitting in Cook County jail for the past two and half years.

I do not know what CBOT or CBOE memberships were worth when the exchanges went public. But, they were worth less than CME memberships. A full CME membership had 18,000 shares of stock attached to it, and the stock opened at $35. The B share portion was worth another $350,000 at the time. All those values changed of course over time and how much money you made depended on when you sold. It also depended on how much money you were able to continue to make trading. For at least 95% of us, trading became a losing game and ended.

Steve married a highly connected woman. They were married for four years with no children. I don’t even know who he was married to but she is connected politically to the right people. But somehow, his wife was under the impression that he had boatloads of money stored in a vault somewhere. He didn’t. I don’t even know who his first or second ex-wife is.He has a child from that divorce. I don’t know what the settlement was, but if you know people who went through divorces with kids, they had significantly fewer material assets after the divorce than before the divorce. I had a buddy who had a seat who went through two divorces and he was a very good trader. He’s struggling to make ends meet now.

The threat of divorce and losing a lot of money keeps many guys on the straight and narrow when they go on golf junkets with their buddies.

Steve remarried, and he had one daughter from that marriage. Though, it too ended in divorce. (end of edit)

But I feel sorry for Steve, and empathy. When trading ended for me, I was lost. I could have lost it all. In 2012/13, I was so low and perpetually depressed I didn’t know how to get myself out of it. I went from 2009 to 2016 living off savings.

Like a lot of guys who traded, once Steve had money, then he didn’t. There are thousands of guys like that all over now. Most of the guys I know who needed to work when they left the trading floor went into wealth management, insurance, real estate, or the restaurant business. But, Hemingway was right about going broke. It happens slowly, then suddenly.

We know from decades of experience that justice in Cook County is corrupt. Kim Foxx, the departing state’s attorney can’t even practice law anymore because she didn’t do what was necessary to keep her law license. You can listen to Rod Blagojevich here on the Joe Rogan podcast talk about his case. The Democratic Machine put him in jail too. He was a Democrat who had bucked the system a little and not as a reformer. He just didn’t fall into line with Madigan and his crew. You know, Michael Madigan don’t you?

I lifted this from Reporter Kelly’s X thread which goes to the core of how corrupt and weird this case is. Read the whole thread.

Bizarrely, Fanady wasn't found in contempt of court until 10 years after the 2011 judgement of dissolution of marriage. He wasn't evading a judgment. Fanady's lawyer says that Illinois court effectively "rewrote" the judgment in order to find him in contempt.

Interestingly, @TomDart is now making news because he says that he wants to end the Cook County Jail's electronic monitoring program because it is "too dangerous." However, he has let violent repeat offenders out on on electronic monitoring. Conversely, he has hired a PRIVATE lawyer to go to state court to argue AGAINST putting Fanady on electronic monitoring even though he has no criminal record, is handicapped, and 60 years-old with severe health issues.

Fanady's powerful ex-wife hasn't ever paid a single dollar to her divorce lawyers in decades. She owes them millions of dollars and now those powerful lawyers want Fanady to pay her fees - or else - he stays in jail indefinitely, likely to die by natural or unnatural causes. To date, both the Circuit Court Judge Michael Forti and the Illinois Appellate Court have ignored Fanady's pleas and the unheard length of his detention. According to Illinois law, the limit on detentions in civil contempt cases is six months. He has been held for more than two years. Is it just about the money?

Here is some more color for you that I heard but cannot confirm. It’s gossip:

Sheriff Tom Dart is planning to run for Governor. Pritzker’s term is up and in deep blue (and corrupt vote-counting Illinois) whoever wins the Democratic Primary has about a 20-point head start on the governor’s mansion. He’s been Sheriff Tom for a long time and he’s probably been trying to get what John Kass says is “moving the chess pieces on the board” type of permission from Boss Toni Preckwinkle. He might have it. As Kass has stated, Boss Toni calls the shots from behind the scenes. If you think the horrible Mayor that Chicago has today is calling his own shots, he isn’t. He has puppet strings attached to Toni’s hands.

However, a lot of people say there is a lot of dirt about Sheriff Dart. I heard it through the grapevine. I have no proof. It’s just talk. But if there was true investigative journalism within the city of Chicago, someone might want to take a look at it. Wouldn’t you get an award for uncovering thExcept, the journalists are either afraid to buck the system or in bed with Boss Toni. Subscribe to John Kass to learn about that.

1. Dart's been accused by some of being a wife-beater.

2. Dart has been accused by some of having numerous sexual affairs with his staff.

3. Dart’s been accused of being intoxicated most of the time.

4. Dart’s been accused of running a kickback scheme inside the jail. If you want to be a sergeant or higher, even after they've passed their test, the minimum kickback to Sheriff Tom for his “mentorship” is $10K.

5. Dart has been accused of being aware of numerous sexual assaults by his officers on female detainees and does nothing about it.

It is alleged that the dysfunctionality at Cook County jail all stems from the culture Sheriff Dart has created. All of the regular deputies hate his guts. Wouldn’t it be nice if a reporter could investigate and uncover a straight answer to questions like these?

• Why is Dart adamant about holding a person like Steve when people who committed murders are let out on electronic monitoring?

• Why does Boss Toni want Steve held despite his Constitutional rights?

Plenty of other questions to ask. We know Chicago pols won’t ask them. Maybe Bill Conway could whip out his alderman badge and ask a couple. He ran against Kim Foxx. The Republicans in Illinois won’t. They have no powerbase to do it from anyway.

It would be great if a lot of people interested in Chicago reform could tweet about this issue. At least it might bring some pressure on people.

If you are a journalist with any sort of integrity, maybe you could start asking them and bringing “truth to power”. Unless you are afraid. Or worse, corrupt yourself.