BILL BEAVERS: THE HOG WITH THE BIG NUTS GOES AWAY FOR ABSCONDING WITH SMALL NUTS

9/26/13

Former Cook County Commissioner, Chicago Alderman, and Chicago Police Officer Bill Beavers was sentenced yesterday to six months in prison on a tax related charge.   Mr. Beavers was convicted of using money from his campaign funds, and from his County expense account, for personal reasons but failing to report the income to the IRS.  Mr. Beavers said the transactions were loans; the jury didn’t believe him.  The press has been all over this story and the thrust of most of the reporting is twofold.  First, the sentence appeared light given that the prosecutors were asking for two years or so.  Second, Mr. Beavers was completely unrepentant and said nothing to Judge James Zagel.  There is a trace of admiration for the man on the part of the press for being a stand-up guy, not a whiner and perhaps the last of his breed…perhaps the purest specimen of an old time, let’s sit down and carve the turkey Chicago politician.

John Kass had an especially good column in today’s (Thursday, 9/26/13’s) Chicago Tribune in which he pointed out that Mr. Beavers neither cried nor begged; as Mr. Beavers, “the hog with the big nuts,’ put it

“I don’t beg my woman, so you know I wasn’t gonna beg the judge, all right?”

Mr. Kass then went on to draw the obvious contrasts with the sniveling Jesse Jackson, Jr. and his equally nefarious wife, both vehement Beavers adversaries.  And, like yours truly, Mr. Kass feels a little guilty about it, but he likes and kind of admires Mr. Beavers, or at least the way Mr. Beavers comported himself as his sentencing.

I last wrote about Mr. Beavers on the occasion of his conviction in March of this year.  (COMMISSIONER BILL BEAVERS:   HOG WITH THE BIG NUTS, REAL LIFE FRANK PANTANGELI, OR BOTH?, 3/22/13).  You ought to re-read that piece, and the piece that I copied onto it (COMMISSIONER BILL BEAVERS ON ALDERMAN SANDI JACKSON:  DIOGENES, PUT DOWN YOUR LANTERN) and I ought to reiterate something I wrote back then…at the risk of being attacked for somehow condoning the, by today’s standards, penny-ante type of corruption that made Chicago famous:

An old time corrupt pol like Bill Beavers is a heck of a lot less dangerous than a self-professed reforming crusader with a messianic complex.  The former make a few bucks.   At the very least, the latter cost the taxpayers more than legions of Bill Beavers.  At worst, the latter make history, but not in a “good” way.  Perhaps a better way of putting it would be that they achieve infamy.  Give me Bill Beavers, any day, any time,  to a guy who is certain he has all the answers and  can’t wait to get access not only to the public purse but also to the coercive powers of the state to make sure we comply with those answers.

See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge, A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.