Ed Burke Should Have Hired an Irish Fiddler, but Boss Madigan May Need a Few Keeners

By John Kass

June 26, 2024

Former Chicago Alderman Ed Burke should have hired himself a fiddler, an Irish fiddler to fiddle him gleefully out of federal court—Ald. Ed and Justice Anne doing a jig for the news cameras–after they got that big wet federal kiss from U.S. Judge Virginia Kendall.

Or a piano on wheels to meet Ed and Anne. Ed is a musical fellow and has been known to gather around a piano to sing show tunes and Irish classics.

Is there a song for Ed Burke getting a slight slap on the wrist with Boss Mike Madigan–the longtime Illinois House speaker–also facing corruption charges?

Boss Madigan is the last trophy Chicago Irish politician waiting to be mounted on that federal wall. The feds have been hunting him for years. So, Eddie gets a kiss and Mike Madigan waits to bear the brunt and feel the cracking weight of the federal sledge hammer right in the teeth if he’s found guilty. Will there be those who mourn Boss Madigan if he gets hammered? Perhaps.

Isn’t that how it works? Yeah, that’s how it works. They’ll tell you that the cases are not connected, but then, they’ll tell you a lot of things. The media think this is some kind of victory, and the idiotic Sun Times is telling you that the Burke case means the end of the “Chicago Way.” Who believes that? Only idiot chumbolones.

I admit that I could be completely wrong here. Could be, but I don’t think so. I’ve spent four decades covering corrupt Chicago politicians and federal corruption hunters have been hounding Madigan for years.  I’ve heard angry judges lecturing the corrupt,  then cut them a break. And a federal judge has just cut Burke a big break.

Ignore the media bleating all over itself that justice was served and their nonsense that this means the “Chicago Way” has been smashed. The media beclowns itself daily.  Within minutes of the news U.S. District Court Judge Virginia Kendall showering the Burkes with mercy, political guys were calling each other comparing Burke’s sentence to that of Tim Mapes, Madigan’s chief of staff, who was convicted of lying under oath to protect his boss.

“So Burke only gets two years and Mapes gets 30 months?” a man who makes his living in politics said to me.  “What does that tell you about Madigan?”

It tells me that Boss Madigan should have taken the advice of friends who told him decades ago, begged him actually to retire and slip away and count his millions in some castle in Ireland rather than play politics in Illinois, and play the Boss with a target on his back.

But Burke gets a measly two years for a whopping 13 corruption convictions? That’s all? He did get many letters of mercy sent to the judge.

Politico reporter Shia Kappos  quoted Judge Kendall as saying: “I have never in all my career seen the letters I have received for Mr. Burke.” The letters detailed that Burke had helped them overcome their troubles. Burke’s attorney added to the emotional overkill.

“Ed is a priest without a collar because he has done some many good deeds that are priestly in nature” said Burke lawyer Charles Sklarsky. A priest without a collar. Really? Did that priest without a collar go fishing? Did he, uh, land the tuna Chuckie?

Just two years for Burke? The feds wanted 10. Even the federal judge’s own guidelines allowed from six to eight years. But Ed Burke, the Democrat Party longtime Southwest Side ward boss and picker of judges, gets only two years after all those convictions for all that corruption?

Well, fiddle-dee-dee.

I did find a photo of a sad Hungarian fiddler, but failed in my quest for a green fiddler leprechaun, like Burke’s famous green necktie.

I didn’t want Burke to die in prison—I’ve known him for years—and in all that time he treated me fairly. We’re from the same neighborhood. But when Judge Virginia Kendall offered her guideline of between 6 and 8 years I told a friend of Burke’s that three years seemed fair.

But only two?

That’s only two baseball seasons.Burke was prepared for the worst. Last year I wrote a column: Ed Burke Knows How This Will End.

But in federal court this week, Burke didn’t get a death sentence behind bars. He didn’t get the worst. He got ice cream and cake. Much of the Chicago media continued to beclown itself, prattling idiotically about how the Department of Justice had squashed the old Chicago corruption.

According to the Sun Times: “Ed Burke’s prison sentence is another blow to the old ‘Chicago way.’ Good.”

Two years isn’t a ‘blow.’ Reading such idiotic nonsense out loud is cruel and unusual punishment. Writing such nonsense means you should take a long walk in the woods, alone, and never come back. That idiocy in the Sun Times might as well have been written by the paper’s lead columnist, an odious, unctuous creature, fashioning himself as someone who speaks truth to power. Yet when he was criminally charged with domestic battery for slapping his wife around, he showed up in court with a public defender in the hopes of saving himself some money.

That’s cheap clout. The act of some cheap chisler. Even Burke had more respect for the courts.

I always liked Burke and his colleague Fast Eddie Vrdolyak. Were they corrupt? Yes. Were they hard workers in a ruthless game? Yes. Did they outwork everybody and take care of their neighborhoods? Yes. Were the Eddies consumed by revenge? Yes. And that’s why they were perfect subjects for writers.

I was born in Ed Burke’s neighborhood, in Visitation Parish on the South Side, near the Union Stockyards, a neighborhood of lace curtains on the windows in the front-rooms, the smell of tens of thousands of livestock to be slaughtered hanging in the air.

Those who remember the slaughterhouses remember the smell. We can’t forget it. It’s in our skin even now.

I suppose the smell was of the unspoken fear of the livestock that hung all about us, the wet wool and hides that permeated everything, from the gray painted stoops in the backs of the two-flats, to the offices and white tablecloth restaurants on 55th Street, like my Uncle John’s place, LeMeck’s, where Burke’s 14th Ward organization would hold high-stakes card games.

Would Burke want an Irish fiddler to help him dance out of federal court?

“And Madigan?” asked a friend John McCormick, a grand Irishman if there ever was one. Besides, he’s my former boss. And talking of Madigan and Burke we fell into our old patterns of dialogue, kicking around ideas before he’d write an editorial, and I’d write a column. “Will Madigan have his keeners?”

In the very old, forgotten days the keeners were lamenting women. The Greeks and Sicilians have such women in their now forgotten histories, and so do the Irish. The lamenting women of the Irish would show up for wakes, and lead the villagers in public displays of grief. The word keener comes from the Gaelic word “caoineadh, ” from which it derives signifies among other things, a highly articulate tradition of women’s oral poetry.

Boss Madigan is past 80. He didn’t retire. He doesn’t want keeners around him, demanding coin with their piteous cries.

But I don’t think he’d mind a judge like Virginia Kendall to cut him a break like the one she bestowed upon Ed Burke, with the media idiots prattling on about how political corruption in Chicago is over.

It isn’t over. The Chicago Way is still alive.

But you knew that, didn’t you?

-30-

About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.

Comments 45

  1. It ain’t over, not by a jug full of real old mountain dew. Not so long as there are government pensions to be bartered for votes, silence and nodding assent. Not so long as there those willing to shun the people who won’t get in line, or vote the right way, the Chicago way.

    The howler monkeys of the Sun Times, or that twitch on WGN TV who believes that Thundering Dick Simpson has the inside dope on anything, will jig up a storm, but the Chicago way ain’t even breathing hard.

  2. Great column JK. What a disgrace two years, and he will be out in 18 months.
    Justice American style. Money buys freedom. All the letters from the connected, standing up for this pompous idiot, whose greed allowed him to stop the minim wage workers from working at the Burger King in his ward over a driveway permit.

    How about those poor people. The nobodies. The corporation can survive.

    Did the Judge Kendall watch the same videos and listen to the audio recordings we did?

    Plus he has the campaign money in his coffers to pay the fine..

    That was no priest with out a collar, that was a man as crooked as a dogs hind leg.
    Arrogant Irish mobster. Possible worth of 30 million, and shaking down for more money.

    Some poor kid pitching dope, not the kingpin, gets caught up in a drug conspiracy case and gets five years, to rot in a cell.

    I was against the destruction at the Capital on Jan 6; look at the time some of these people got. They should not have attacked the police or entered the facility, but to see some of the sentences is astounding compared to what violent DC criminals get sentenced to.

    The two tiered Federal Court system.

    Off the subject.

    JK, we need a column on Justice Cook County Style.

    You can hit, strike, bite, kick, spit, drive over a cop, and no ones charged with a felony, unless your the States Attorney who gets hit with a slurpee walking in the middle of the street. Ten am on Friday a work day no less.

    Not a word from the woman who refuses to prosecute shop lifters, or the criminals who attack and maim innocent people every day in Cook County.

    This is the States Attorney who refused felony aggravated battery charges on a people who attacked a couple in the loop causing the woman to miscarriage her pregnancy.

    Fantasy become reality…great work JK..

      1. Please do!!!!
        I, too, see the depths you might plumb!!

        Kasso, you get people who love words reading this stuff!

        Deft folks and nobody’s fool.

        Yes, Madden! Do!

        hansen

  3. Lol!!!!! Why is anyone surprised with the Sentence on Burke. There are two justices in America. One for the Liberal Democrats and one for the rest of us. The Poor are still Voting for Democrats that are keeping them poor and hungry while the rich get richer and the Government is run by crooks like Burke and his wife the Judge. I knew it would go down that way, and Obama and Hillary are behind Biden, so they can take over the Country once again if he WINS. Kamala is whom Obama always wanted to be President so she can finish the work he wants. She is not even Black American Woman. How sad that the people are so uneducated and cannot see the destruction of America. The Mayoral Election is Chicago was a farse, Vallas was the Winner by a long shot and at the end he lost. I find it very funny that a man that has no clue how to run this once Wonderful City has no idea what he is doing and blames everyone else especially if they are White Mayors. It is true they blew it by fattening their pockets and destroying this great City while the Black Population is killing their own children and thugs are stealing and raping and no one does anyone about that. You still want to Vote for Liberal Democrats?

    1. Helen,

      Why in the world would you want to confuse the voters with logic and commonsense? They have already demonstrated that they lack the capacity to use logic and have no commonsense. They are too brainwashed to vote their self-interest. The majority of the voters get the government they deserve. The rest of the voters can put up with the crap or leave. Since the likelihood of change is slight, it is time to leave and abandon the fools to their well-deserved fate.

    2. ” I see you outside with rage in your eyes and your megaphone…” Steely Dan, “Don’t Take Me Alive”. Yes, Helen. You make valid points. Keep em coming…

  4. Burke skated and he knows that. The good citizens know that. The judge know that. As Anthony Vincenzo Barretta once said “ If you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime”. This is being chalked up to another Chicago politician gone bad. Our senses have been so hardened by these stronza as they have never been told no and think their actions are untouchable. Fanculo a lora, they should trot in jail.

  5. Let’s review. ComEd had to pay a $200 million fine in cooperating with the Feds for their non-prosecution agreement. They later settled the civil suit brought against them for $173 million from the same scheme of malfeasance. Yes, I know, that’s not the Burke case; that’s the case against the Lepruchan from 63rd and Pulaski. But ask yourself a question. Does a two year stint in Oxford and a $2 million fine equate to an entity like Exelon ponying up almost $400 million for the dirty deals they committed with these rat bastards? Obviously not! Judge Kendall must be a Hallmark card person. She let the prose of strangers bring a tear to her eyes. What a complete big FU from the federal bench to the citizens who have had to live under the worst government officials in the history of the United States. Huey Long and Edwin Edwards would be envious – Louisiana isn’t even in the same universe as Hellinois!

    1. Helen, you need to come up from your anti Commie bunker/bombshelter more often for air to the brain.
      1. When did Convicted Felon Shanty Irish Harp/Mick Burke become a Liberal Democrat?
      He’s an old time Chicago Racist just like Daleys, Madigans, Vrdolyaks, and all the other white Chgo pols, etc.
      2. Kamala is not black? Huh. You mean like Obama’s not black? BOTH have one parent black and the other white or Asian/ Indian.
      3. Helen as Moe use to say to Curley: ‘fish is great brain food, you should eat a whale’. Try it. It might help.

      1. Kamala and Barack became black when it became a political advantage. They adopted that street brotha and sista persona when they got into politics. Barack was raised as a white kid in Hawaii. Hawaii Barack became Chicago Barack from the South Side. Kamala was raised as an East Indian in Canada. I know, I know…when she was a civil right marching toddler with her East Indian mom the first word she learned to say was “fweedom”. Strangely enough Martin Luther King said the same thing except his enunciation was much better. He said “freedom”. It’s not like Kamala made the story up. That would be lying.

      2. Tom Rudd:
        I’m watching you now. if anyone here knows you let them warn you. I’m watching.
        You want to attack someone, come attack me. I’ve got something for you and it’s not a coffee cake from Weber’s.
        But if you persist in verbally attacking Helen Edwards or others, I will cut you off from commenting. We don’t abide rudeness from bartenders or randos online.
        Capisce?

        John Kass

  6. This is an excellent column on a subject that is your expertise. I enjoy your takes on local politics. I attended Catholic schools from K through undergrad education and almost gagged when I read that priest without a collar comment. I remain unconvinced Burke will ever see the inside of prison. And he’s a multi-millionaire from his misadventures so can afford any fine.

  7. 🎵 When Irish eyes are smiling
    Sure you blush ‘cause you’ve been kissed
    By many kindly letters
    And a two-year slap on the wrist.
    Green pocket squares are snappy.
    Sun-Times says it’s all OK.
    Sleepy media are happy.
    Sure, they steal the truth away! 🎵

  8. Spot on in pointing out the naivety of local press’ absolute idiocy in announcing the demise of the Chicago Way!

    Please usher them into the bowels of Chicago Dem HQ (aka City Hall). Lead them to the boiler room where, under a single hanging light, sits a folding table and several folding chairs. This the HQ for Local 13, Thieves, Villains, & Scoundrels. This set-up has been there for over a century.

    The Dem capos meet there and come up with schemes to get richer and new methods to pull the wool over the smug, more psuedo-sophisticated peepers of our press corps!

    Great work John

  9. Look at it through the lens of economics instead of corrupt politics. Ed Burke and his wife Ann grifted through the Chicago Way for 40 years at least. They made millions of dollars grifting. Who knows how many million and if you impute an average 8% return on assets over the years you can imagine they have a huge pile.

    The opportunity cost of that corrupt grift was always getting caught. Getting caught left it uncertain as to what the real cost of corruption was. A good lawyer could estimate jail time and then the expected lost wages of grift post-conviction. John did some of that in the post. 6-10 years.

    Instead, we found out corruption and grift pay. 2 years. Here is a link to the breathless commentary of Dec 23, 2023 when he was convicted: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/ed-burke-racketeering-bribery-trial-verdict/ 20 years maybe.

    From the time he was arrested, to the time he was sentenced, Ed and Ann Burke barely had to dip into the millions they grifted out of the system. Ed might appeal. He will get good behavior and time served leniency. Bet he’s lucky to do more than 12 months. You know, jails are over crowded and we need to make room for “real criminals”.

    If you are a young kid on the make in Chicago today, what you just witnessed told you corruption pays. You just joined the Chicago Teacher’s Union and will try to make your way using The Chicago Way.

    I don’t think Madigan is shaking at all. He’s laughing. Maybe he will get 5 years and will only serve a lot less. Plus, he grifted more than Burke. He had more mouths to feed. Madigan descendants will be living it up large after Boss Madigan’s body is cold in the ground for more than a century.

  10. John, Burke will be 81 in December. According to the SSA Life Expectancy Tables, an 81-year-old man has about a 1 in 6 probability of dying over the next 2 years and about 7 in 10 probability of dying over the next ten years. Prison life is no picnic. Perhaps a larger fine was reasonable, but two years in prison is a reasonable punishment. Of course, no amount of prison time will deter political corruption in Illinois. You’re correct in that assessment. Oh, one more point, Mapes is 69 … he probability of death over the next 30 months is about 1 in 20.

  11. Ed Burke is a good man, and helped legions of people over the years, including me. I’m proud to call him my friend. He’s 80 some years old and going to jail for what? a remark he made on a tapped phone call? The testimony of a lying weasel like Danny Solis who gave the feds Burke to save his own Asian hooker loving ass? I was there, I saw Solis on the witness stand lying his ass off to save himself. Madigan? Not so much.

    1. Mike, maybe you should have declined commenting at all, what with Burke being a good friend of yours – the road to hell is paved with good intentions! Further proof I’m living in the wrong state! I’m sure I can find equally excellent dining options in FL, AZ, NV, NC, WI – gotta pull the trigger and get the f—k outta here!

    2. You are a good man, Houli!

      You remind me of my favorite President, Harry Truman. Truman said of his Democrat Political Boss Tom Pendergast, “”I am obligated to the Big Boss, a man of his word, but he gives it very seldom and usually on a sure thing . . . He in times past owned a bawdy house, a saloon and gambling establishment, but he’s all man. I wonder who’s worth more in the sight of the Lord?”

      1. Whose bitch is Convicted Felon Shanty Irish Burke gonna be.
        He may be in for a little fudge packing if he’s not careful and tries to be bossy.

  12. Great column!
    I still think Madigan will get something along the lines of Burke. Nothing too harsh, but not too lenient either. Just for show; to let the ‘people’ know that justice is served.
    But the Chicago way is not gone, not by a long shot. Even Tammany Hall morphed into something else but still the same.

  13. Helen, you need to come up from your anti Commie bunker/bombshelter more often for air to the brain.
    1. When did Convicted Felon Shanty Irish Harp/Mick Burke become a Liberal Democrat?
    He’s an old time Chicago Racist just like Daleys, Madigans, Vrdolyaks, and all the other white Chgo pols, etc.
    2. Kamala is not black? Huh. You mean like Obama’s not black? BOTH have one parent black and the other white or Asian/ Indian.
    3. Helen as Moe use to say to Curley: ‘fish is great brain food, you should eat a whale’. Try it. It might help.

  14. In a city where crime has been legalized and carjackers and murderers are sent home from court with an ankle ornament, a paid subscription to Netflix and a Domino’s gift card, Burke will be processed at the Federal lockup and then sent home. Burke won’t eat Domino’s though, I’m sure Pizzeria Uno will come through for him to make his home confinement much more bearable. Chicago is such a historically corrupt city that to end the theft would be like emptying a sand pit. Once Madigan goes it effectively ends the era of the Irish Mob running Chicago. It was inevitable and only a matter of time since guys like Madigan and Burke empowered radical leftist and public sector unions to hijack their political party. The theft will continue, it will just be committed by different people. Hundreds of millions of Covid money has disappeared and hundreds of millions in Chicago’s new Illegales Fund is in the process of vanishing. Like they said in Goodfellas ” ..bring it through the front, take it out the back and when we couldn’t steal anymore we burned the place down…” The Public sector unions are now picking at what gristle is left on Chicagos carcass as it sinks into urban decay and dystopia. There is no more manufacturing sector in Chicago. No industrialist is opening any factories in the city. The only factories left leave as soon as their leases are up. Chicago’s future lies in the things they used to put mobsters in jail for. Drugs, gambling and prostitution. Yes our aldercreatures are looking at legalizing ” sex work “. Um, prostitution that is. These industries are the future of Chicago. Dope, gambling and whores! Who needs to go to Vegas? We got everything ya need right here! Its Vegas on the Lake!

    1. Nice column. But I agree with Enrique. I think the old Chicago Way (corrupt politicians, often Irish) is dying and is being replaced by something darker, Marxism. To a Marxist media creature, this is cause of celebration. For all the faults of the Chicago Way, it did take care of the neighborhoods and create the city that works. If Chicago still worked, people wouldn’t be leaving.

  15. Yianni,
    So, two years? No doubt out in less than 18 months, from one of the Feds spa camps with no fences. Poor guy…..alas, but like all the felons on the inside, I’m sure Ed will quickly ascertain the pecking order of cons, and assist anyone with his legal expertise to apply for an early release, while they assist in his control of his law firm from afar! He won’t miss a step. Thus, the “Chicago Way” lives and breathes, maintaining control of us chumbolones! Lest we forget, Obama, “the annointed one,” took it to new heights and infected all of D.C. with it. Thus, we now see how it works on the world stage. Punish your political adversaries; reward your foes; enlist the MSM, DOJ or IRS as your ally – but snub all your allies around the world threatening them with no military aid; as the leftists free all the criminals that are “justice challenged”. What a country the Soros socialists have fashioned…while the world watches, and holds its breath….Theos Filaxi!!!

  16. Sadly whether on a local or national level most if not all politicians are bought and paid for. Term limits are the ONLY sensible option but will they agree to ending their gravy train? Not likely. Sad 😢

  17. Loved this column. Fine work, JKass. It was evident that Burke skated with a laughably easy sentence by his behavior after the hearing. A defendant who got clobbered doesn’t smile. No, he doesn’t; he goes with the armed guards to be fitted for an orange jumpsuit. Instead, this defendant laughed and grinned and spent nearly a hour with his entourage and then he walked gaily into the fresh air and daylight.

    I agree with Mr Houlihan and all of the letter writers asserting that Ed Burke had an admirable side to his public career. He did accomplish some good. But folks in the political world mostly know better than to lie down with pigs. There’s no upside to it, and when it happens for decades upon end, and the stink becomes a kind of sleazy well-dressed trademark, well then it’s not just a single, excusable misstep, is it?

  18. Agree. Chicago, in my opinion, is still the wild west. We are still a frontier town – which in some ways is kind of appealing. I have worked for years now with financially distressed companies and two thing they all have in common. No one has any visibility or understanding of the dire financial condition the company is in – everyone just covers their ass. And the culture is positively toxic. You can change out employees, managers, even CEOs – but the culture persists, I mean its unreal at times. Sometime you just blow the whole thing up, change out everyone. Well, perhaps term limits accomplishes the same.

    But you still have to have everyone on board with the financials – a thing called Open Book Management, where everyone understands fundamental financial concepts and their role in the company in achieving outcomes, goals. and the good in it!

    I just don’t think Chicago has ever had enough time to sit down, catch its breath and realize that we are no longer a New England colony

  19. Yes, Neal Slimeberg (cheap insult, I know) is unctuous. Glad my wife changed to the Sun Times digital subscription, (they doubleD the price of their print subscription – JK hasn’t increased his subscription price – thanks) so I’m longer forced to look at his column. He isn’t a limousine liberal; he’s a Lexus liberal. Lives in Northbrook, which is Winnetka talks to Wilmette land. Nothing wrong with being successful, I live in a nice suburb, but it isn’t Northbrook, and Northbrook isn’t Indiana. Lives in WTTW land yet showed up to court (don’t we all have problems) with a public defender.

  20. Having spent 25 years of my life investigating and helping prosecute official corruption cases in the Northern District of Illinois, this sentence is a disgrace. Shame on you Virginia!

  21. Eighty years later and Paddy Bauler’s words still ring true. “Chicago ain’t ready for reform yet.” I personally don’t think it ever will be, and that goes for the country in whole.

  22. Kamala and Barack became black when it became a political advantage. They adopted that street brotha and sista persona when they got into politics. Barack was raised as a white kid in Hawaii. Hawaii Barack became Chicago Barack from the South Side. Kamala was raised as an East Indian in Canada. I know, I know…when she was a civil right marching toddler with her East Indian mom the first word she learned to say was “fweedom”. Strangely enough Martin Luther King said the same thing except his enunciation was much better. He said “freedom”. It’s not like Kamala made the story up. That would be lying.

  23. “…The media bleating all over itself that justice was served and their nonsense that this means the “Chicago Way” has been smashed”

    Nope not one bit – just say…

    Toni Preckwinkle

    nuff said 😡🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

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