Rahm's boat springs more leaks

‘I’m not an emperor. I do not look good in a toga.’ -- Rahm Emanuel

As we head into the weekend, Little Emperor's gold-plated political ship continues to spring leaks. Even with his giant City Hall damage-control battalion working overtime, Rahm can't catch a media break.

His latest proposed boondoggle, to spend millions to turn the Windy City into a f*#k-the-environment, Paris-like City of Lights with a parasitic, tourism-based economy, isn't playing well in resource-starved, school-shuttered neighborhoods.

Even the Illinois Coalition for Responsible Outdoor Lighting is ridiculing the mayor for suggesting that Chicago be turned into “North America’s city of lights” at the same time that Paris, the global “City of Light,” has toned it down.

His latest pension-robbing, property tax-gouging initiative isn't going down well, either with the governor or within his own usually compliant City Council. Moody's, who according to the S-T "has already dropped Chicago’s bond rating by four notches in eight months — to just three levels above junk status," has called Rahm's bluff, telling the mayor that there are lots of other ways to generate revenues, even if the pension plan is vetoed by the gov.

Then there's Maggie Haberman latest piece in Politico, "Rahm Emanuel: D.C. hero, Chicago goat". Haberman attempts to be neutral, but it's still brutal. She recounts Rahm's split with the Daley's "who believe the current mayor’s team has foisted blame for his own problems on the past administration."

Best quotes, as usual, comes from Karen Lewis. Haberman writes:

It’s a particularly difficult task at a time when income inequality has driven voters in Democratic-leaning cities further to the left. In Chicago, class politics fall along starkly racial lines. Lewis recalled telling reporters that Emanuel had used the F-word with her, a move that fanned much of the initial anger among black voters against him. She noted that he demurred when asked by reporters whether he’d said it.

“And that’s where, if there were any stretch of the imagination of having any fear of Rahm Emanuel, it vanished at that moment,” she said. “Because I knew then he wasn’t the bad-ass he claimed to be.”

AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten piles on:

 “He’s very connected with the power elite in Washington and Chicago, which is why the power elite doesn’t see [his current struggles].”

And Ald. Fioretti:

 “He has a top-down philosophy of not listening to what the communities say,” said Alderman Bob Fioretti, a frequent and vocal Emanuel critic who is also sometimes mentioned as a potential challenger.