Mayor Daley seizes Chicago land for unfunded project

This may be Chicago Mayor Daley’s version of Tip O’Neill’s big dig in Boston and Ted Stevens bridge to nowhere in Alaska with more a more imaginative and self serving method of “bringing home the pork.”

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley (pictured) has kicked hundreds of families out of their homes and relocated a cemetery full of buried bodies to build a whopping $15 billion airport expansion Chicago residents oppose, airlines don’t want and he doesn’t have the money to build.

Daley is doing it for a chance at a big chunk of stimulus money under Barack Obama’s pledge to dramatically increase infrastructure spending.

The “O’Hare Modernization Project,” signed by disgraced Governor Rod Blagojevich in 2003, has enabled the city to seize 433 acres of land from surrounding villages under a special “quick-take authority” power given to Daley by the state.

The city even uprooted a 108-year old cemetery, requiring families to find a new home for the 1,500 bodies resting there, in the process of taking some of its first tracts of land.

More of the ‘tax grab’ details here.