Do not make the mistake of thinking that because my conclusion is the same as another person's that my reasoning is the same
September 26, 2003
The politically connected Duff family used its matriarch and a trusted black associate to pose as fronts for phony women- and minority-owned businesses in a massive, dozen-year fraud that garnered more than $100 million in contracts from the city of Chicago, a federal indictment charged Thursday.
Among those charged were James M. Duff, who concealed his role as the decision-maker in the family business interests; his mother, Patricia Duff, who falsely claimed to run the family janitorial firm, Windy City Maintenance Inc.; and William E. Stratton, a family confidant and African-American who posed as boss of Remedial Environmental Manpower Inc., another Duff-run business that won a lucrative subcontract to operate the city's blue bag recycling program, prosecutors alleged.
Lawyers for the two Duffs and Stratton said their clients would plead not guilty and fight the charges.
The charges follow a four-year investigation launched after a 1999 Tribune story alleged Windy City Maintenance was a fraudulent women's business enterprise and questioned whether Stratton really ran R.E.M., which purported to be a minority-owned business.
When you interfere with the free market, you encourage the corrupt to avail themselves of this artificial advantage. You see the same thing in farm subsidies and the drug war (because of artificially inflated values).
Get rid of the artificial advantage and you get rid of the associated corruption.
...which leaves all the regular corruption.
Phelps, there's always going to be ways to game the system, and there's always going to be people willing to do it.
THAT'S why it's not surprising.