WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Trump economic adviser, Larry Kudlow on damaging effects of Trump tariffs: "Don’t blame President Trump" 

Robert Reich

America doesn’t have a jobs crisis. It has a good jobs crisis. -- Guardian

Noam Chomsky

Taking children away from their parents, sending them off somewhere, losing track of them, you know, it’s hard to think of a more brutal and sadistic policy. -- Democracy Now

Rebecca Solnit

"This is an extraordinary time full of vital, transformative movements that could not be foreseen. It’s also a nightmarish time. Full engagement requires the ability to perceive both.” -- Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities 

 Arthur Jones -- IL GOP nominee for Congress

"There’s more to me than being a denier of the Holocaust." -- Tribune

Lori Lightfoot, Chicago mayoral candidate

 Asked about Emanuel’s contention that the gun-pointing issue was not mentioned in either the Justice or task force report, she responded: “So what? If there’s a need, there’s a need." -- Tribune

The moral courage meter in Springfield just got a big, powerful boost. Congrats to Celina Villanueva. She embodies the courage and sense of community that’s so urgently needed in our politics. Wishing her all the best as she takes on her next, new adventure. pic.twitter.com/S34sQXTZiu

— Ra Joy (@Ra_Joy) July 29, 2018

Eli Broad's L.A. school board puppet Rodriguez resigns. Pleas guilty to felony charge. Avoids prison.

Ref Rodriguez has finally resigned from the L.A. school board, but only after pleading guilty to a felony count of conspiracy and several misdemeanor charges involving election fraud. In doing so, he admitted that he was part of a scheme to conceal that he was the true source of early donations to his campaign.

He had already stepped down from his position as board president, but had refused to give up his seat on the board for the past year.

Rodriguez was seen by many school and community school activists as a puppet of billionaire school power player Eli Broad, whose goal has been nothing less than turning LAUSD into a total charter school district, like post-Katrina New Orleans. Broad along with a PAC of billionaire charter patrons spent millions and virtually bought the school board election. They bankrolled Rodriguez' election campaign as well as the rest of the pro-charter majority that took over the board 3 years ago after the nation’s most expensive school board elections ever.

Contributors to PACs that took part in the campaigns on behalf of charter operators included Netflix founder Reed Hastings, $1.5million (to the charter group only); former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, $550,000; Walmart heir Jim Walton, $375,000; and philanthropist Eli Broad, $205,000.

Even after Rodriguez had been indicted on three felony counts and 25 misdemeanors, charter advocates like Peter Cunningham still tried to cover for him, calling his long list of crimes, "a rookie mistake".  In a sense, they succeeded.

Under the deal with prosecutors, Rodriguez will get a slap on the wrist and avoid jail time. This work, he said, will continue: “I will just pursue that work from a different position.”

Unfortunately, with Broad's money propping him up, he's probably right.

The wheels of justice turn slowly.

There's a real progressive in the MI gov's race

Chuy Garcia and Abdul El-Sayed

Democrats in Michigan have a chance to back a genuine progressive over a couple of corporate dems in the upcoming governor's race. But the official state party officials are holding back support because they say, he's too young, too brown and too Muslim.

I got to meet Dr. Abdul El-Sayed at an event in Chicago this morning where he was introduced with lavish praise by soon-to-be Congressman Chuy Garcia. And quite frankly, cynical me was blown away by his eloquence, his qualifications and his history of progressivism. This in a state that is currently under all-out assault by the worse dregs of Trumpian Republicanism who are committed to nothing less than the total privatization of everything public, including schools, healthcare and public decision-making.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed

Republicans won the state in 2016 even though Barack Obama won MI twice and Bernie Sanders won the primary in 2016. Part of the reason, says El-Sayed, is because "people of color stayed home", uninspired by traditional Democratic candidates.

According to El-Sayed, there are currently four Michigan cities that rank in the top 20 in national poverty stats: Flint is #1. Detroit is #4. Kalamazoo is #18 and Dearborn is #20.

El-Sayed, the former Detroit Health Department director, has a Medicare-for-all plan. He also wants to abolish ICE. He's also taken a strong stand against school privatization, expressed a strong distaste for Ed. Sec. Betsy DeVos (Michigan's own) and wants to reverse the current governor's takeover of dozens of local municipal governments.

His opponents in the Aug. 7 primary are two corporate-types, one of them a Republican, running as a Democrat, the other running with lots of PAC money from the giant health care corporations.

Dr. El-Sayed will campaign later this month with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who he connects with in terms of generation and political outlook.

If you're interested to working for his election, doing some campaign work in Michigan or contributing some dough, you can do it here. 

What I’m running for:

🏥 #MedicareforAll
💰 Paying people a living wage.
📚 A good education for all.
🏡 Affordable housing.
🚰 Clean water.
🌎 Taking care of our planet.
✊🏽 People over profits.

These are not political issues. They’re moral ones.

— Abdul El-Sayed (@AbdulElSayed) July 20, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

The official police explanation, offered by spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, is that Augustus was "exhibiting characteristics of an armed person."

Ben Joravsky, in the aftermath of the police shooting of Harith Augustus

But you know how it goes. In the aftermath of the Supreme Court's anti-union Janus decision, it's obvious that Republicans think the First Amendment is only supposed to protect the speech of conservatives—certainly not football players, like Colin Kaepernick, who kneel during the National Anthem.

And apparently, the NRA thinks the Second Amendment only applies to white people. -- The Reader

Ald. Ricardo Munoz (22nd Ward)

"Yes, there will be a Latinx candidate for mayor." -- Hitting Left

Laura Washington

 As far as I know, [Trump] hasn’t set foot in Chicago since he ran away from his own “Make America Great Again” tour back in March 2016. -- Sun-Times

Millionaire Chicago mayoral candidate Willie Wilson 

He handed out $300,000 in cash to attendees at a South Side church Sunday. And it gets better: According to Wilson, $100,000 of it came from Gov. Bruce Rauner. -- POLITICO

The French ambassador to the U.S. @GerardAraud criticized Trevor for congratulating Africa on France’s World Cup victory. Trevor responds #BetweenTheScenes: pic.twitter.com/5nJklXRyY8

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) July 19, 2018

The 'Summer Slide' myth

Testing companies continue to perpetuate the myth of the so-called "summer learning gap", where children supposedly forget most of what they learned in the classroom in a matter of a few weeks of vacation. If this were true, it would speak more to an irrelevant school curriculum than anything else. But it's not true.

According to an article by Sarah Shupe in today's Edweek, 

...what students forget over the summer becomes more damaging over time as students make less progress during the school year, according to an ongoing study by NWEA, the Northwest Evaluation Association.

"As kids grow less and less during the school years, they are still seeing the same summer drop—so they are losing proportionately more," said Megan Kuhfeld, a research scientist at NWEA and the author of the study.

According to this theory, kids grow dummer and dummer as they progress through school and therefore can ill-afford to spend more time playing and with their friends and families.

NWEA tracked the reading and math test scores of students grades 3 to 6, and nearly 40,000 students from grades 5 to 8 in an "unnamed southern state" and concluded that the more time they spent with family, fishing, working, at summer camp, hanging out with friends -- or whatever students do on vacation in this southern state -- the less bright they got.

Not only that, but things got worse as the kids grew older.

On average, students lost about 2 points out of a possible 250 each summer in reading, and a little more than 4 points each summer in math. But as the charts below show, students gain less during each school year as they grow. 

In other words, hardly anything measurable that was being taught in their schools lasted in children's consciousness for more than a few weeks. This generates an obvious call for perpetual schooling and even more standardized testing.

But it should be even more obvious to the evaluators that students continue learning during the summer, the same way that they learned before they were in school, experientially and largely through play. How well they learn depends on what kind of learning and play experiences are available to them in their family and community life. But that's true within school as well.

Authentic learning is deep and enduring. It goes on all the time, all year round, including summer. Perhaps especially in summer. If children lose academic skills over the few weeks of summer, then did they really ever learn those skills?

Then there's the question what's tested, what's not tested, and how real learning is measured. Reading and math scores are but one small indicator.

All this leaves open the question of what happens when these kids graduate, become adults and spend the rest of their lives forgetting how to solve a quadratic equation, the shape of states on the map, or the color of Laura Ingalls dress. Do we call that the life slide? Hopefully, what stays with them are critical thinking and life skills, habits of the mind and body.

I think it was Albert Einstein who first said it: "Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school?"

'Who do you serve? Who do you protect?': The Killing of Snoop the Barber

TWITTER/BYP100

Officers assigned to a foot assignment observe "a man exhibiting characteristics of an armed person".  -- Anthony Guglielmi, the Chicago Police Department’s chief communications officer

It's hard to say what it is that will finally push a community to the breaking point. I lived in L.A. in 1965 when the Watts riots (rebellion) began as a reaction to a police assault on a black motorist pulled over for a traffic violation. LAPD needed help from 4,000 members of the National Guard to quell the uprising. By the time the smoke cleared they counted 34 deaths and over $40 million in property damage.

In '68 it was the assassination of Dr. King in Memphis.

1992 brought the Rodney King riots.

But all these singular events were only sparks that lit the prairie fire of anger and rage. The real tinder box was years of oppression and suffering within a system of enforced racist violence, segregation, joblessness, broken schools and mass incarceration -- a political system leaving those oppressed communities voiceless and without hope for the next generation.

I was considering all this when I heard the news about yesterday's deadly shooting by police of Harith Augustus ("Snoop the Barber") on Chicago's south side. Harith was the father of a 5-year-old daughter and was a well-known barber in his South Shore neighborhood. One of his customers told local media the barber usually “brings his daughter with him wherever he goes, but she wasn’t with him today.”

Police said they encountered a man “exhibiting characteristics” of being armed. Wait, what?

There was a confrontation and Augustus was shot in the back five times and killed. An angry crowd gathered shouting,  "Who do you serve? Who do you protect?", and a confrontation ensued, a few water bottles against cop batons. Witnesses said the cop who did the shooting was quickly whisked away from the area in a police cruiser. As of this writing, she has not been named.

Wasn't no "scuffle." CPD beat organizers with batons for throwing water bottles. This is an violent occupation. #FTP #StopTheCops https://t.co/E8Audl3cz0

— BYP100 (@BYP_100) July 15, 2018

Shortly after, the streets erupted in the neighborhood with residents turned demonstrators demanding answers from police. Police claimed a weapon was recovered at the scene. People who knew him said, Harith had a permit for the gun, that it was holstered and that he never reached for it. So much for all that Second Amendment bull crap.

By midnight, demonstrators were still in the streets, police and residents clashed and a number of people were arrested. Sun-Times reporter, Nader Issa was caught up in the chaos and was assaulted by police.

I don't know if Harith's killing will turn out to be one of those moments in time. If nothing else, this is one more brick in the wall for a mayor running for reelection and still being dogged by his role in the cover up of the Laquan McDonald killing. His only saving grace is that none of the other candidates seem to have a meaningful response to the ongoing and systematic police abuse in this city's black communities beyond calling for a new $95M police training academy.

But at the risk of being repetitive, the pumping of five bullets into the back of a man accused of no crime except running for his life, is not a training problem.

Here's some of Issa's tweets from the scene.

A very large crowd is gathering at 71st/Chappel, where Chicago Police say they shot and killed a person this evening. It's hard to put in words how tense the scene is. Witnesses say a female officer shot the man in the back while he was running away. He was a local barber. pic.twitter.com/aaV6smY07V

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

Witnesses say the incident started when the officer told him not to sell loose cigarettes. He supposedly told the officer he wasn't selling them, just handing a couple to his aunt. An argument started, and he began to run. That's when the officer fired, per police and witnesses.

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

I had my press badge held up in one hand and my phone in the other while I was saying "I'm a reporter." Two Chicago Police officers repeatedly pushed me, then smacked my phone out of my hand and threw me back. I lost my balance but can't remember if I hit the ground or not. pic.twitter.com/vhi4gjlNla

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

 The situation has gotten as bad as its been a night. Police charged into the parking lot and started hitting people. Two officers smacked my phone out of my hand and shoved me to the ground. Don't know how many arrests, but at least a dozen from what I could see. pic.twitter.com/L7Q5xQyWSe

— Nader Issa (@NaderDIssa) July 15, 2018

Searching for my inner civil self in these difficult times

Protests rocked Chicago following the Laquan McDonald shooting and the cover-up that followed. 

Responding to liberal critics of incivility, I'm trying to get back in touch with my inner civil self. Not like all those "McCarthyites" on the Vineyard who are shunning poor Alan Dershowitz or that mean old bartender in D.C. who flipped off Trump's racist-in-chief, Stephen Miller. Miller got so upset, he tossed his sushi. What a waste.

I'm now looking for common ground with political foes like Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Rauner. I'm even offering to mediate the rift that broke out between the two over Saturday's anti-violence protest on the Dan Ryan which ended with each telling the other to "shut down" their Twitter accounts.

It was a peaceful protest. Delete your account. https://t.co/QoKyIHmuQj

— Mayor Rahm Emanuel (@ChicagosMayor) July 7, 2018

C'mon fellas. remember, you're long-time business partners. Rahm, Bruce even donated thousands to your campaign warchest. You both gonna let a little expressway disruption get in the way of millions in profits?

Remember, you two will always have Montana. 

My message to both of you: Remember, there will always be Montana and that thousand-dollar bottle of Napa Valley wine you two shared.

Believe it or not, I've also found some common ground with Rahm's former police superintendent, Garry McCarthy, who is now his number-one, great-white-hope opponent in the mayor's race.

McCarthy, who was Rahm's top cop during the Laquan McDonald killing and cover-up by Chicago cops, now says, he opposes spending $95M on a new police & fire academy.

So do I, but for different reasons.

Here's the part I agree with:

“This police academy is a shiny object that Rahm Emanuel can point to and say, `I’m all about police reform.’ It’s for political purposes — not functional purposes,“ McCarthy said.

 “I could find much better ways to spend that money that would have a much greater impact on what’s happening in Chicago. … I’d use that $95 million to put social services and mental health centers back in communities that need them the most.”

Here's where I don't:

McCarthy contends that there is no new training needed and that CPD is doing a fine job. He was at odds with the Justice Department's report which came out in 2015, when Emanuel was forced by a judge’s order to release video of white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald, a black teen, 16 times. The report found CPD’s training to be sorely lacking.

That dispute forced Rahm to throw his top cop under the bus. Hunger for revenge appears to be what drove McCarthy to enter the race. He will likely draw votes from largely-white wards on the northwest and southwest sides where lots of cops and firefighters live.

I of course, don't agree that CPD is doing a fine job. I don't even buy the "few bad apples" theory which would also, by the way, make a new training academy unnecessary.

The ongoing shooting of unarmed black men, women a children by mainly white Chicago cops is part of an institutionalized culture of entrenched racism within the department which is, at worst cultivated and encouraged and at best, tolerated by the mayor, department heads like McCarthy, and the FOP.

In other words, this isn't really a "training problem", but one calling for more radical solutions which need come directly from the communities most impacted by police misconduct.

It's not that I'm against a sparkling new police training academy in principle. It's just not high on my priority list, given the current state of public school buildings and other city infrastructure needs.

I don't think any of the mayoral candidates have real handle on the problem. But I am intrigued by the idea of a gay, progressive African-American woman like Lori Lightfoot, who Rahm appointed president of the Chicago Police Board, giving the mayor and McCarthy a run for their money in the most recent polls.  According to those polls, taken in April, 62% of those surveyed want someone, anyone besides Rahm as mayor.

I'm with the 62%. I would sooner vote for Pigasus ('68 reference there) than for either McCarthy or Rahm. Still searching for my civil side on those two.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Thousands of marchers took over Chicago's Dan Ryan Expressway Saturday, demanding an end to gun violence joblessness. 

Jonathan Capehart

Just when you thought the callous disregard for these children couldn’t get any worse, the New York Times reported last week that “records linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed.” And don’t forget that the Trump administration is going after naturalized U.S. citizens now, too. -- Washington Post

Christine Geovanis, CTU spokesperson

“Our concern is equity. And where is the plan that is designed to lift up neighborhoods that are so clearly struggling? By not having a plan, by refusing to deploy a plan, they’ve been able to dovetail these one-off announcements that don’t strengthen all neighborhoods and all neighborhood needs equally, and end up privileging some at the expanse of thousands of others.” -- Sun-Times

Michael Sainato

The reality is that the decline of America’s traditional retail industry has left a void that corporate titans like Amazon will continue to exploit – unless employees, unions and Amazon customers work together to raise wages and improve working conditions. -- Guardian

Elizabeth Warren

 “He tries to bully me to shut me up, and he’s also trying to bully women all across this country. He talks about MeToo. He thinks we should sit down and shut up. It’s just not going to happen.” --Washington Post

David Callahan

The rest of us, ordinary citizens without big bank accounts, will certainly play a role in the outcome this November. We cast the votes, after all. But more and more, US politics – along with civic life broadly – often feels like a spectator sport, as a growing array of billionaire super citizens battle it out in the public square. -- Guardian

Latest from the "stable genius"

He's right. The brain is important...

And I, by the way, I don’t have a musical instrument. I don’t have a guitar or an organ. No organ. Elton has an organ. And lots of other people helping. No we’ve broken a lot of records. We’ve broken virtually every record. Because you know, look I only need this space. They need much more room. For basketball, for hockey and all of the sports, they need a lot of room. We don’t need it. We have people in that space. So we break all of these records. Really we do it without like, the musical instruments. This is the only musical: the mouth. And hopefully the brain attached to the mouth. Right? The brain, more important than the mouth, is the brain. The brain is much more important.”

Karen Lewis on Hitting Left (archives show) today

Karen Lewis with the Klonsky Bros. on Hitting Left, March 3, 2017. 

Brother Fred and I are taking the day off. Retirement has exhausted us both. Instead of our usual live show on Fridays, today we will be rebroadcasting a show from the Hitting Left archives, March 3, 2017, featuring in-studio guest, CTU Pres. Karen Lewis. As most readers know, Karen, suffering from failing health, resigned from her position last month.

Tune in at 11 a.m. today at WLPN, 105.5 FM or catch the livestream at www.lumpenradio.com to hear Karen at her most upbeat and feistiest self. Or, you can listen to the whole show on podcast.

The latest word from Karen is, she's still in the fight. 

“I want my members to know first that I’m not abandoning them, I just will be an emerita,” Lewis said. "I will be around to help do things, I’m not disappearing anywhere and I’m going to be here for whatever people want to do with me.”

Lewis said she also planned to be involved with the city’s upcoming mayoral election, and revived her past criticism of Mayor Rahm Emanuel as he faces a crowded field of challengers.

“My plan is to try to get somebody to unseat Rahm,” she said. “I think we can do better than that.”

My memo to Rahm: Killing Petunia not a good look

Fired Animal Care Director, Susan Russell, left, holds Petunia alongside state Comptroller Susana Mendoza 

Memo to Mayor Rahm Emanuel...Your poll numbers are in the dumper. 23 shot, including 5 children 15 and younger this past weekend. Your administration is ridden with scandal. For the next few months leading up to election time, that video of the Laquan McDonald shooting will be playing over and over again. Black families are leaving the city in droves. Your police Supt. Eddie Johnson claims he has never seen any police misconduct in all his years on the force. Yet he's pushing for a new, $95M cop training academy. This while many schools are in ruins, filthy and disgusting. The sexual abuse scandal at CPS goes all the way to the top. You, your hand-picked school board president, Frank Clark and schools CEO  Janice Jackson all appear culpable. While you still have tons of money to spend on reelection, your main opponents are raising lots of cash from your former patrons. Even some of your closest pals are dropping hints that you may drop out of the race. I could go on.

So what do you do? You fire Animal Care Director Susan Russell, for "warehousing dangerous animals".

Not a good look, Rahm.

You sure you're really up for this campaign?

CPS response to sexual abuse scandal is just what you'd expect

CPS BUTT COVERERS:  Board Pres. Frank Clark, CEO Janice Jackson, and Board V.P. Jaime Guzman

Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked school board have responded to the ongoing CPS sex-abuse scandal in the same ass-covering way we've come to expect. It can be summed up as follows:

• Create another new department in the bloated bureaucracy without any input from community groups or even from their own team.
• Rationalize: "Not our fault. It's always been this way." 
• Throw a couple of principals under the bus with no due process.
• Impose new bureaucratic rules (annual fingerprinting??) that put the onus on teachers and makes them suspect (i.e., meeting one-on-one with their students) and makes it more difficult for them to do their jobs. The Tribune, whose reporters broke the story in the first place, wasted no time in placing equal blame for the scandal on the CTU.
• Do an end run around your own appointed IG.
• Above all, cover the behinds of the mayor, his schools CEO and Board President.

Jadine Chou, CPS’s chief of safety and security, now says all employees are required to report suspected "grooming" behavior on the part of colleagues. At first I thought she meant whether teachers smelled bad or were having a bad-hair day. But, it obviously means something else. Please give us a checklist of such behaviors, Jadine, so we can turn colleagues in and have them fired immediately.

Inspector General Nicholas Schuler, who is supposed to work with the new department, said Wednesday that he was largely in the dark about the new plan.

"Figuring out how we're going to interface with CPS and the new unit they've started today is what I would have liked to have seen some more details about before today," he said.

After an uproar in the press, Schuler was nominally put in charge of the investigation. But he will remain under the watchful eye of CEO Jackson.

Chamala Jordan, parent to a CPS student, said the announcement left her confused.

"As a parent, honestly, those things were told to us that they were in place. So to create or construct a whole new entity, that was supposed to be in place already, doesn't really make sense to me," she said. 

Jesse Sharkey, CTU Veep

"While tutoring a student alone in your room puts you under a cloud of suspicion, I think we have to be concerned about what that would mean for the work that we do as educators."

Sharkey also raised doubts about the new department's origins. The formation of the office was developed with Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor who is overseeing the comprehensive review of CPS policies as state inspector general.

"The bottom line reaction is that I'm surprised by this and I don't trust its political independence," Sharkey said.

RYH calls for Pres. Clark to "step down".

Jennie Biggs, CPS parent and Raise Your Hand (RYH) Communications Director.

President Clark and his predecessors were briefed on rampant reports of sexual abuse in our schools over time and did NOT act to ensure this situation was better managed, and did NOT demand that procedures and policies were implemented beyond very basic and clearly insufficient mandated reporter trainings.

 We do not know how much Frank Clark or David Vitale or those before shared with respective board members, but we do know that they knew and did nothing.

Sure, some individual teachers, principals and staff are also complicit.

BUT YOU hold the keys to district policy making, and YOU did not act, YOU did not do your jobs, YOU did not ensure schools were being trained, and you should step down and admit that you are part of a flawed system of school governance that has no checks and balances.

Chicago Mayoral candidate Lori Lightfoot on Hitting Left

If you look at what's been happening in the Chicago Public School system, especially this past six or seven years, you see epic failure after epic failure. You can't have a good, well-run public school system when you have five CEOs in the last seven years...Yes, I do support an elected school board. -- Hitting Left