Claypool threatens war on schools if CTU won't bend.

Claypool's threatening letter

LEFT COAST--I'm blogging from L.A. this week and missing all the action back in Chiraq. If I had the dough, I would fly back just for Thursday's big blowout CTU rally in response to Rahm's threatened $100M in new school cuts.

A letter sent by Forrest Claypool to the union Tuesday said that within 30 days, CPS would stop paying the teachers’ share of pension contributions (as if they'd been paying them up until now), order school administrators to cut $50 million by laying off 1,000 teachers and "re-shuffle" $50 million that goes toward general education funding to schools. That re-shuffling of Title I and II funds will hit hardest at kids with special needs and English-language learners.

Claypool says he will drop the threats if the union would only agree to his contract offer which CTU's bargaining team unanimously rejected. I believe that's called blackmail. Or maybe -- hostage taking.

The CTU calls it "war" on the schools. Thursday's a good day to battle.

Very very...The first meeting Rahm Emanuel’s newly formed Police Accountability Task Force produced the quote of the week from Lori Lightfoot, chair of the task force and president of the Chicago Police Board.

Lightfoot said officers who violate Rule 14 — making false statements — are taken “very, very seriously.”

Notice the two verys, showing that this time Lightfoot really really means it. She's has been complicit in the cover-up of police shootings and misconduct up til now. The cost to the city, of police misconduct (a strange name to describe torture and shootings) comes out to more than $640M over the past decade. This according to a report from the BGA. You may notice that this is roughly the same amount as is needed to plug the current budget hole at Chicago Public Schools.