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October 21, 2010
The Chicago Way expands
In a brazen extension of the Chicago Way's principle of never wasting a crisis and/or a brazen display of a total lack of morals that awed even hardened Cook County (which encompasses Chicago) pols, Carla Ogelsby, former chief of staff to the president of the County Board, who left her job after being recently charged with public corruption, theft and money laundering, has filed for unemployment compensation.
According to Fox News,
automatically thinking unemployment compensation was her right was either so clever, so enterprising for exploiting a new source of government revenue for private gain or even so blatantly publicly indicative that this once well paid, powerful woman, who is accused of awarding thousands of dollars of government contracts to friends and family, doesn't understand the seriousness of the charges that even the normally unshockable Cook County officials were more than a little shocked when she filed a claim with the state, asking that the county pay her unemployment benefits.
But why should they be shocked? County employees, like many--not all--government employees in the Chicago area are overpaid and underworked, hired on the basis of who they know not what they know, see government funds, government jobs as their own private piggy bank, their personal resource. Given the circumstances, if found guilty Ms. Ogelsby might well collect the full 99 weeks while she sits in prison. But perhaps she could advise another Chicago Way politician, former Governor Rod Pay to Play Blagojevich (D), how to do the same.