My favorite Ryan moment

Is anyone buying Paul Ryan's stale excuse for jumping ship? No, he doesn't really want to spend more time with his children. He hires people to do that. After years as a corporate shill, busting his state's unions and putting hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into his wealthy patrons' pockets through regressive taxation, Ryan is joining the mass exodus of Republicans from DT's sinking ship for one reason only. He knows his day of reckoning is near.

My favorite Ryan story took place back in 2014, when he was called out by a Wisconsin high school, social studies teacher named Al Levie, who had been one of three recipients of a Martin Luther King Jr. humanitarian award. During a celebration honoring the late civil rights leader, Al refused to accept the award from Rep. Ryan, who he correctly called, "a lackey of the one percent". He then told the audience,  “I can’t in good conscience accept this award, as a humanitarian, Paul Ryan stands for everything I don’t believe in.”

After Ryan spoke, Al criticized the congressman’s policies before being walked off the stage. He had earlier made it clear that he would like to see collective bargaining restored in Wisconsin, fair immigration reform and a fair tax system and more.

“Paul Ryan had no business at a Martin Luther King event, it’s totally hypocritical. On the one hand he votes to slash health care, while on the other hand, King dedicated his life and he died for it — for people to have adequate healthcare, to have adequate jobs.”

I imagine, Al is smiling a little today, both at the news of Ryan's imminent departure and of the rolling teacher wildcat strikes in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona, Kentucky and more.

Then there was the time in 2012 when V.P candidate Ryan ventured down to Chicago to counsel his pal, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on how to break a teachers strike.

"I've known Rahm Emanuel for years. He's a former colleague of mine. Rahm and I have not agreed on every issue or on a lot of issues, but Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong. We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel." 

Then Ryan artfully called out Pres. Barack Obama, who, in the middle of his re-election campaign, and worried that his support for the striking teachers would split his Democratic Party base, was trying to walk the center line  in the epic battle between the CTU and MRE. A sign of things to come.

My favorite Ryan quote came from another visit to Chicago a year earlier. Speaking at the city's Economic Club, Rep. Ryan said that Obama's attempt to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans amounted to “class warfare” and "class envy".  Ryan only wanted to make sure that class warfare remained one-sided.

As NYT columnist Charles Blow put it:

Ha! The war is already being waged against the poor and vulnerable, and the envious have-nots didn’t start it. The right and its cabal of economic cannibals did.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

CTU V.P. Jesse Sharkey on Claypool

“His own arrogance did him in...Because, in his mind, there was no such thing as unethical as long as it applied to him.” -- Sun-Times

Ald. Sue Sadlowski-Garza on hearing news of Claypool resignation

“I shouted out the F-bomb when the mayor’s office called me, like ‘F yeah!’ ” said 10th Ward Ald. Susan Sadlowski Garza, a CTU member and a school counselor of 22 years. -- Chicago Tribune 

Ben Joravsky 

 With the Cortland TIF, it seems as if Christmas has come early for Amazon. It's Rahm's way of saying "I love you, Jeff Bezos." Of course, the mayor's generosity would be backed by money that could otherwise go to dead-broke public schools. -- Reader

Barack Obama on rising fascist threat

The danger is "grow(ing) complacent," Obama said. "We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly." --  Q&A session before the Economic Club of Chicago

Paul Ryan

Providing free lunch to hungry school children gives them a "full stomach and an empty soul".  -- Time

Roy Moore 

Getting rid of amendments after 10th would "eliminate many problems." -- CNN

Mayor, #CPS Board Pres, Forrest Claypool refuse questions after Claypool resigns. More like retirement send-off than resignation @cbschicago pic.twitter.com/AKy36wWzTt

— Dana Kozlov (@DanaCBS2) December 8, 2017

Protests greet Ryan at charter school photo-op in Harlem

Ryan comes to Harlem

It looks like Eva Moskowitz's Success Charter Academy has become the photo-op, stop-off point favorite for Republican pols anxious to demonstrate their fealty to so-called "school choice".

Latest to duck in and out of Harlem under heavy security was House Speaker Paul Ryan, fresh from his initial triumph over millions of people's health care coverage. What Ryan, Moskowitz and the charter network's publicity department probably didn't count on, was the large gathering of protesters, organized by the Working Families Party, that turned out to greet him with chants of "shame! shame! shame!".

His hourlong visit on National Teachers Day also included a brief meeting with special-needs students at P.S. 149, a public school that shares a building with the charter school. These are the very same students whose programs are being gutted by Trump's Sec. of Ed, Betsy DeVos as her budget shifts about $20 billion from public schools to charters and vouchers.

Ryan, who banned the press from covering his visit,  described the tour as “special.”

Ryan came at the invitation of Moskowitz who pulls down about $500K/year as the charter network's director. A faux-Democrat, Moskowitz was a runner-up to DeVos as Trump's choice to run his DOE. Previous photo-op invitees include Ivanka Trump and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

According to Newsday, 

...protesters, including New York City Public Advocate Letitia James, rallied across the street from the school, on West 118th Street. They waved cardboard cutouts of tombstones bearing messages that denounced Ryan’s push to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. They chanted “health care for all, not just for Paul.”

As Ryan exited the building after his visit, protesters chanted, "health care is a human right, how can you sleep at night?"

.@SpeakerRyan .@SpeakerRyan ends his visit in Harlem to a chorus of boos. pic.twitter.com/6ic2icAzsB

— Vocativ (@vocativ) May 9, 2017

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Aspire Early College Prep English teacher Eleshia Smith leads a chant during a rally outside of Aspira Business and Finance High School

Aspira charter teacher Marines Martinez

“Aspira just finally agreed to our terms. It’s just a tentative agreement, but we did note that Aspira is finally listening to us." -- Tribune

Valerie Strauss

But words have meaning — even if they are only symbolic and not legally enforceable — especially at a time when public schools are more segregated than at any time since the 1960s and school choice policies favored by President Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos have been found to increase school segregation. -- Alabama’s constitution still calls for ‘separate schools for white and colored children’

Philly Councilwoman Helen Gym

 Faced with continued austerity, we marched, took over school-board meetings and lobbied City Council offices. And we started to win more victories...If the Philadelphia experience is any measure, this uprising won’t just be limited to our schools. It will form the basis of a movement which will not only withstand an authoritarian federal agenda but will also grow more unified in spite of it. -- Bill Moyers & Co.

U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R-IL)

Men paying for prenatal care coverage like buying a cabin 'you're never going to use'. -- The Southern

E.J. Dionne Jr.

 What some feared might be a Trump Juggernaut is instead the Trump Jalopy, a wheezing, unsightly contraption with grinding gears and missing parts. -- Washington Post

 Speaker Paul Ryan  

...said he didn’t know how many people would lose their insurance under his Obamacare replacement plan. In a revealing exchange with CBS News, he suggested that it was “up to people” how far the uninsured rate would climb. -- Think Progress

Romney, Ryan Support Rahm

This from ABC10 in Philadelphia:

"Teachers unions have too often made plain that their interests conflict with those of our children, and today we are seeing one of the clearest examples yet." -- Mitt Romney

And this:

"I've known Rahm Emanuel for years. He's a former colleague of mine. Rahm and I have not agreed on every issue or on a lot of issues, but Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong. We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel." -- Paul Ryan

More from Ryan:

And so, we were going to ask, where does President Obama stand? Does he stand with his former Chief of Staff Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with the children and the parents, or does he stand with the union? On issues like this, we need to speak out and be really clear. In a Romney-Ryan administration we will not be ambiguous, we will stand with education reform, we will champion bipartisan education reforms.

Actually a damn good question. Where does Obama stand? Answer:

Obama "has not expressed any opinion or made any assessment," White House spokesman, Jay Carney said.