No Money?

Fusco and Novak hit another one out of the park. No wonder there's nothing left for first responders:

• Humbert began working for the City of Chicago in 1967 in the first of a series of construction and maintenance jobs, records show.

  In 1993, at age 56, he took early retirement from his janitorial job with the Chicago Board of Education and began collecting his city pension.

  After that, he went to work for Cook County as an operating engineer.

  Then, in 2001, Humbert heard about a job at McPier.

These are Outfit-connected people we're talking about. We're going to go out on a limb here and speculate these were Tony Soprano-type "no-show/no work" type jobs. And incentives for buyouts? Oh yeah:

• By that time, he had been working in government for about 35 years. That made him eligible for a McPier "reciprocity" program "in which vacation credits are given for prior government service," according to Stacey White, a McPier auditor. In other words, McPier would pay him for vacation days he didn't earn at McPier.

Really? Might this be part of the hidden costs driving conventions, conventioneers and their business away? This might explain the $200 cases of soda, $100 boxes of donuts and whatever other inflated prices are attached to everything to do with McCormick Place?

Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. It's about time for a slaughter.