Theo’s Twit Of The Week: William Beavers

This week’s twit has famously referred to himself as an even-toed unglate with abnormally-large external genitalia. Machine Democrats everywhere should be quaking in their boots as the Federal government’s IRS nutcracker tries to prove that it is up to the task of crushing the gargantuan gonads of a big hog like:

William Beavers

“Horseshit.”

This is the eloquent response of a high political official, a man with decades of Chicago politics under his belt (and the gobs and gobs of cash that entails in Chicago’s massively corrupt and avarice-driven public pension system), given the other day when he was presented with the news that the federal government is bringing him up on charges.

No, it wasn’t the high pontiff emeritus King Daley II. This vulgar sentence fragment belongs to a Cook County Commissioner named Barnyard Bill, also known as The Hog With The Big Nuts, who also happens to have the name William Beavers scrawled on his birth certificate.

Barnyard Bill wasn’t going to simply let that single curse word sum up his whole range of feelings concerning the government’s move to collect taxes on hundreds of thousands of dollars which he (allegedly) hid from the IRS. When questioned about Patrick Fitzgerald, the United States Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and the fellow whose office is bringing these charges against him, Beavers exclaimed “fuck him.” Evidently Beavers does not “give a fuck” about Fitzgerald, a man who has put away the last two governors of Illinois.

It is a pleasure to see that a guy like Barnyard Bill is finally getting the attention he deserves. There are some people in Chicago busily propping up Beavers as the old school real deal, a praiseworthy mix of mobster tough guy and gritty –let’s-get-it-done Windy City politician-cum-fixer. They should just call Beavers what he is, a criminal who thinks he’s tough enough to bluff his way through anything. His methods are so steeped in illegality that a few years ago he said, “I gotta speak sign-language now because everybody has the possibility of being on tape.”

For a man famous for his blatant disregard for political correctness, Barnyard Bill seems awfully worried about being recorded.

But that is because, as an unabashed Machine Democrat, Beavers is proud of the theft he has perpetrated upon the people of Chicago and Cook County (though not proud enough to want to go to jail for it). A longtime Alderman and Democratic Committeeman, it is no shock that Beavers is well-schooled in the Chicago school of political graft. He made national news in 1995 when he blithely stated the open secret that Chicago is an entirely fixed town, but did not take this opportunity to denounce the autocrats that dictate the city’s future. Instead he sympathized with them and begged for a cut.

“I’m not an idiot. I know what these deals are — and I’ve been knowing what they are. All I want is just, give me some. I’m not asking nobody to be fair ‘cause I wouldn’t be fair if I was the mayor. Just give me some. Just give me some of it, okay. Don’t take it all.”

This is the sort of sickening disregard for law and order that has made Chicago into the corruption capital of the United States.

When he weaseled has way on to The Cook County Board of Commissioners (or, as he called it, his “retirement”), he even stuffed his former chief of staff (his daughter, Darcel) into his position as alderman. Thankfully, she was soundly defeated by Sandi Jackson in a democratic election. (Yes, every now and then people are actually legitimately elected to positions in Chicago!) Sandi Jackson would also go on to take Barnyard Bill’s Democratic Committeeman spot.

Since embarking on his taxpayer-subsidized vacation as a County Commissioner, Beavers went out of his way to continue bleeding the citizenry, ridiculing other commissioners that wanted to take a pay cut to help the cash-strapped budget (remember that Beavers receives substantial pensions from Chicago for his time as a cop and alderman) and refusing to lower Cook County’s highest-in-the-nation sales tax rate. After all, needs that money so he can go to the boat.

Despite the strangely glorified old-boy network mythos that surrounds him, there’s nothing brave or praise-worthy about the way William Beavers does business. Guys like Beavers are an illness of Chicago’s one party scheme, and I gladly welcome the federal government’s help in purging the old school germs from Chicago’s system.