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Well, what do you know? A sentence of 17 months in prison had been handed to Anthony Duffy, a plumbing contractor who omitted the names of former mayor Richard M. Daley’s son Patrick and nephew Robert Vanecko (not to be confused with indicted Daley nephew Richard “R.J.” Vanecko) from the list of owners of his sewer company, which was awarded millions of dollars in contracts with the city. Three cheers for justice? Hardly. At the hearing Duffy told the judge that when he’d learned about the Daley family’s involvement he’d questioned it, only to be told that it was “above his pay grade” to be concerned about such things as legality. As it happens, no member of the Daley family has been charged with any crime in connection with the deal. But Duffy’s own lawyer denied that his client was taking a fall for anybody, saying that “the mayor, of course, didn’t have anything to do with” the bogus minority contract the city signed off on with what he nevertheless described as “a wink and a nod.”
There’s a lot our former mayor didn’t have anything to do with.
And he pointed at me and said, ‘She is.’
And I whispered to him, ‘Mr. Mayor, they’re asking you who’s to blame for the Park Grill concession agreement.’
And he said very loudly, ‘I heard them. You’re to blame.’
It’s called taking a bullet.
But of course there’s nothing funny about pay to play, tax fraud, or rich pols wasting the money of people who give it to them, be they suckers or members of the ubi est mea crowd.
