WEEKEND QUOTABLES

San Juan Mayor Says 'No One' in Puerto Rico Has Received a COVID-19 Stimulus Check

Shia Kapos

It was an insurgence but "it's not quite" a Council War.

"There are multiple divisions in this Council. It's not pro or anti mayor," former Ald. Dick Simpson told Playbook. He would know. He was there for the 1980s Council Wars. "Mayor Lightfoot has the majority and is likely to keep the majority." --  -- IL Playbook

Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Biden

“I'd be fooling myself if I thought Joe Biden would embrace Medicare for All. But I do think there’s room for him to move much more than he has so far,” said Jayapal, who is the lead author of the House’s single-payer bill and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. -- Politico

Former Bush speechwriter David Frum 

President Trump is a "psychological coward" and is "heading toward a historic political defeat — one that will likely take the Republican Senate down with him." -- MSNBC

Tyson Foods board chairman John Tyson

"The food supply chain is breaking." -- CNN

V.P. Mike Pence (Note to myself: Revisit this quote on June 1)

 “I believe by early June we’re going to see our nation largely past this epidemic...I think honestly, if you look at the trends today, that I think by Memorial Day weekend we will have this coronavirus epidemic behind us,”  -- Bloomberg

Robert Reich 

The Covid-19 pandemic is putting the deepening class divide in America into stark relief. Four new classes are emerging: The remotes, the essentials, the unpaid, and the forgotten. -- Guardian

Ilhan Omar & Leah Hunt-Hendrix

Now is not the time for retrenchment into isolationism. It is time to reimagine what it means to lead, and how we might work together as a global community. -- Guardian

San Juan Mayor, Carmen Yulin Cruz

'No One' in Puerto Rico Has Received a COVID-19 Stimulus Check. “The problem is that the support goes to the higher levels of government, and doesn’t reach the people that it’s supposed to reach.” -- Time

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

@realamberheard

Karen Lewis

For those of you who may not know, I submitted my retirement papers in Friday. Not only did I retire from CPS after 30 years, I have retired from CTU. Please Google glioblastoma and note, I've already beaten the odds. I'm not done fighting. Good luck to the officers and staff, especially Jesse Sharkey, who's been doing 3 jobs...since my illness. -- Facebook 

Roseanne Barr 

 'I'm not a racist, I'm an idiot' -- CNN

Rahm's City Hall spokesman, Adam Collins

“When he was in the private sector, for a few months, the mayor explored a potential business agreement with Mr. Pecker, but it did not ultimately come to fruition.” -- Sun-Times

“Hammerin’ Hank” Aaron

At a ceremony for the “Hank Aaron Champion for Justice Awards” in Atlanta, Aaron said that he would not visit the White House if an invitation came from the mouth of Donald Trump. “There’s nobody there I want to see." -- Nation

Columnist Neil Steinberg

 I don’t know about you, but I want to look back and say I did all I could and spoke out, loud and clear, again and again. Donald Trump is a racist appealing to our country’s worst instincts. He will lead us over a cliff to disaster unless he’s stopped. -- Sun-Times

Cong. Luis Gutierrez moving to Puerto Rico

With the move, I will in a better position to “connect the experience of the people of Puerto Rico, the devastating effect of the hurricane and the lousy, inhumane response of Donald Trump to the tragedy.” -- Sun-Times

Today would have been #TamirRice’s 16th birthday. He should be alive and celebrating. #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/ZBLWIJ71dL

— Legal Defense Fund (@NAACP_LDF) June 25, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

CPS student, Tamara Reed

“I dreaded going to school. I cried every night." -- Chicago Tribune

Lori Lightfoot

 “This tragedy happened because of incompetency at the highest levels. Who are we as a city if we accept this as just another scandal du jour at CPS?” -- Politico

Study

This household-based survey suggests that the number of excess deaths related to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico is more than 70 times the official estimate. -- New England Journal of Medicine

John Boehner

“There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party." -- Politico

Rudy Giuliani

Trump could have shot Comey and still couldn't be indicted. “If he shot James Comey, he’d be impeached the next day. "Impeach him, and then you can do whatever you want to do to him.” -- Huffington

Natasha Korecki on cost of IL gov's race

"How many Hulu ads can you buy?" -- Illinois Playbook

Chicago Public Schools has failed to protect students from sexual abuse and assault, a Tribune investigation has found. Reporters identified hundreds of cases in the last decade, attacks that left students feeling betrayed and wounded. https://t.co/396Q42bApm https://t.co/NDiwoWVtip

— Juan Perez Jr. (@PerezJr) June 1, 2018

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Passerby Gretchen Moore shot video of raid on Chicago homeless

“And so I parked my car and I went running over and I said, ‘Who are you and why are you doing this? I can’t believe any of the aldermen would do this.'" -- WGN

Oprah at the Golden Globes 

 They're the women whose names we'll never know. They are domestic workers and farm workers. They are working in factories and they work in restaurants and they're in academia, engineering, medicine, and science. They're part of the world of tech and politics and business. They're our athletes in the Olympics and they're our soldiers in the military. And there's someone else, Recy Taylor, a name I know and I think you should know, too. -- Transcript 

 Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) following visit to Puerto Rico

"If this were happening in Connecticut, there would be riots in the streets." -- Washington Post

Brandon Johnson

Brandon Johnson on Amazon's HQ2

The fact that you have the richest man on the planet getting a tax incentive, in theory to move jobs to Illinois, while black women in particular have to beg on the county floor for a job, that's an unjust system. -- Hitting Left 

 Drew Magary on 'Fire & Fury'

 And it confirms what we have all always known to be true: that the president severely lacks the cognitive ability to do this job, and that he is surrounded at all times by a cadre of enablers, dunces, and outright thieves. -- GQ 

....Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 6, 2018

The question of Oprah’s “qualifications” to be president is entirely beside the point. The question of why we continue to have this sad paucity of imagination wherein major political office is our only understanding of leadership/change is the point.

— wikipedia brown, unstable genius (@eveewing) January 8, 2018

Urban school district austerity based on colonial model

Austerity is the forerunner to colonial-style takeovers of the cities, urban school districts and democratic decision-making. What the banksters are doing in Puerto Rico is setting the stage.  

The Puerto Rico Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Act, backed by the Obama administration, Hillary Clinton, (opposed by Bernie Sanders) and Republican congressional leaders, would create a new bankruptcy-type process for PR. It imposes a seven-member oversight board with dictatorial powers. Any new laws that are passed have to be approved by the control board. Any capital investments on the island have to be approved by the control board. If passed, the legislation will be geared to protecting bondholders and paving the way for massive cuts in the island’s public services.

Sound familiar? Maybe like the Control Board established for D.C.?

Newark in '05?

New Orleans in 2003?

Philly in 2001. 

Or Michigan's Public Act 436 in 2012, that allowed criminal Republican Gov. Rick Scott to appoint emergency managers with near-absolute power in cash-strapped cities, towns, and school districts. Emergency managers who can supersede local ordinances, sell city assets, and break union contracts -- leaving local elected officials without real authority.

It's the act that led to the takeover of Detroit schools, the Flint lead-in-the-water crisis, and the end of democracy (such as it was) in the state of MI. 

After "emergency" takeover in Michigan

According to Democracy Now's Juan González, there's one big difference. 

The governor of Michigan did have the power, under the laws that existed, to do that. Puerto Rico supposedly is a self-governing territory, that was granted self-government by Congress back in the 1950s. And so, this is a situation not just of a state imposing itself on a city, but of one nation imposing colonial control on another nation. 

Now we're seeing similar plans emerging for colonial-style takeover and privatization of debt-ridden urban (mostly black and Latino) school districts like Chicago and Baltimore..

Yesteday's Baltimore Sun reports:

Baltimore City school officials said the district will save about $14 million from cutting 171 positions this year, which included 111 staff members who were notified Tuesday that their jobs were being eliminated. The new details about the layoffs were released to The Sun on Wednesday, one day after the school system executed the third round of layoffs in two years.

There have been several attempts to takeover Baltimore schools in the past decade. So far, all have been beaten back. 

Schools may not open in the fall in Chicago where sociopath Gov. Rauner has kept the state without a budget for nearly a year, forcing massive, up to 40% cuts in local schools. 

Rauner is also pushing legislation aimed forcing Chicago schools into bankruptcy and allowing a takeover and ultimately privatization while busting the CTU. So far, the Democratic majority in the legislature hasn't given in. Stay tuned.