Big Pharma's Baxter replacing laid-off CPS teachers with retired execs

In line with the times, CPS is moving further into the ownership-society orbit.

The latest is the board's deal with pharmaceutical giant Baxter Int'l. The Sun-Times reports that Baxter will be funneling retiring execs into CPS classrooms to teach health science classes. This while 1,000 teachers and staff has been pink-slipped.

The company was introduced to the idea by Alan Mather, who heads CPS’s Office of College & Career Success. He worked with Baxter when he was principal at Lindblom Math & Science Academy, where he was honored with a Golden Apple award.

 The idea came about more than a year ago when Mather was in New York. It was a personal trip, but he made time to visit with IBM to hear how it pays employees to go back to school to become teachers. “I thought it sounded like something we could try,” Mather said.

How it works: Companies contribute $15,000 for employees nearing retirement or preparing a career change to earn a teaching certificate. 

They’ll then move into the classroom, where they can talk from personal experience about how these technical subjects are used in the real world.

Real world, indeed. I doubt that CPS students will be learning much about global health care or health industry ethics from these Baster execs.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to single out Baxter and there's nothing wrong with Chicago companies contributing money and personnel to help support public schools.

Baxter's role in CPS goes back to the Daley administration. They should do more of it. Paying their fair share of taxes would be a great start.

The problem comes in when we turn public schools into beggars, more and more dependent on corporate support for survival, and when corporations move their retirees in as replacements for existing teachers and their training programs in as replacements for existing programs which have been destroyed by budget cuts.

Looking back on when Rauner clouted his kid into an elite selective-enrollment school.

In the same vein (no pun intended),...CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler says that wealthy families are still scamming their kids into the city's selective enrollment schools. Nobody is really shocked at such news. We remember how Gov. Rauner made that notorious phone call to Arne Duncan to make sure his unqualified daughter would be put on Duncan's secret VIP list for back-door admission to selective Walter Payton High School. And it wasn't just Rauner. The city's rich and powerful clouting their kids into elite schools worked then and is still working says Schuler.

CPS's Emily Bittner basically told Schuler to stuff it.

No 'Grit' at Lab or Francis Parker

"What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children." -- John Dewey, founder of the Lab School

The latest curriculum for poor kids. 

I checked. No, there's no "Grit" curriculum being taught at the University of Chicago's Lab school or at chichi Francis Parker, the schools where Mayor Rahm Emanuel and schoools CEO Forrest Claypool send their children at upwards of $34,000 a kid.

Professor Duckworth didn't intend it for their kids. Fixing the poor is the burden of the rich, white and powerful.

According to a story in this morning's Tribune, both Rahm and Claypool were "prickly" (ah, that's the word I was looking for) when asked by a reporter about why they, who run CPS, send their children to expensive private schools.

"I've got to be honest, I don't think it's a fair question, and I'll say why," Emanuel said. "My kids go to the same school that President Obama sends his kids to school, and nobody said anything when President Obama was leading the fight for Race to the Top. I don't live in public housing, but I do fight for fairness in housing. I'm not homeless, but I do fight for resources for homelessness. So if it's only about whether I as a parent make a decision, that's not actually, it's not about my kids, it's about the kids of Chicago."

Claypool said the fact his kids attend the exclusive Francis W. Parker School in Lincoln Park is "a parental choice. It's appropriate, OK?"

I remember N.J. Gov. Christie practically chewing a parent's head off for asking the same question.

Point of fact, I and many others, blogged plenty about Obama/Duncan's so-called Race to the Top and its reproduction and reinforcement of our two-tier school system.

And what a strange analogy Rahm's making between public schools -- created for everyone-- and public housing and homeless shelters, specifically reserved for the poorest and neediest of us. It's clear that the mayor views public education as some sort of poverty agency rather than as the cornerstone of a democratic society. And therein lies his problem and ours.

Nobody I know is challenging the right of the rich and powerful to send their children to private schools. That's not the point. The point is that the corporate reformers now running public ed, including our autocratic mayor and his hand-picked CEO, don't want our kids in public schools to experience the best educational practices, now reserved for their own.

Not banned at Lab or Parker. 

Remember back in 2013 when Rahm's felonious schools chief Barbara Byrd-Bennett banned the book Persepolis from CPS libraries? I made a quick call to the Lab School librarian only to find out that Persepolis was part of the middle school curriculum and readily available to all middle school students in the Rowley Library. In fact, the middle school library has 7 different editions of Marjane Satrapi's book, both in English and in French.

In 2011, the mayor forced a longer school day and school year on resistant Chicago schools even though he had no plan for what to do with the added seat time or how to pay for it. Again, I checked with Lab only to find out that their day and year was shorter than Chicago's.

Common Core? Nothing common about Lab or Parker.

Over and improper use of standardized tests? You won't find it in Lab or Parker.

In conclusion -- the best way to learn grit is by standing up to the bullies and pretenders who think they know what's best for other people's children.

Road Runner...

I had a great time at Moorhead St. Spoke to local Fargo/Moorhead teachers, pre-service teachers and faculty on "Schools for Sale: Reform, Charter Schools and the Future of Public Education" along with great profs Isabel Nunez (Concordia) and Joe Ferrare (Univ. of Kentucky).

Moorhead has some talented ed faculty, including old friend Steve Grineski (who recently retired), Sheila Marquardt, David Tack and more. Thanks especially to Sheila, Emily O'Meara, Renee Fast and the rest of the EMSP leadership for hosting the event.

Left Minnesota, the birthplace of charters, before getting the news that the state's legendary cultural icon, Prince had died. Sad day. Would have been a great place to celebrate his life and music.

Next stop, New Haven for an event at Yale, "The Inner City School: Inequality and Urban Education." I'm speaking on a panel there along with one of my favorite social-justice educator/researchers, Michelle Fine. Can't wait.

Among other greats on the agenda: Conference host Elijah Anderson ("Code of the Streets"); UIC's own John Hagedorn, (Gangs and Institutional Change); former Chicagoan and now Great Harvard sociologist William Julius Wilson, ("The Declining Significance of Race: Blacks and Changing American Institutions"); Gloria Ladson-Billings, ("Dream Keepers"), Charles Payne, ("I've Got the Light of Freedom") and many more. This leaves me with great feeling of inadequacy. But excited to see them all.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Parents tell IL State Board to suspend implementation of the PARCC test for the 2014-2015 school year.

Wendy Katten, Raise Your Hand Coalition

 “Illinois is not ready for the PARCC and the PARCC is not ready for Illinois.” -- Early & Often

Jawanza Malone, of the Kenwood Oakland Community Organization

“When they look at us and say, ‘We don’t need an elected school board because that just puts politics in education’ — what do they think is there now? … You have one person controlling the lives of millions.” -- S-T,  Coalition pushing advisory vote for elected CPS board

Chuy Garcia

Jesus "Chuy" Garcia

 "Instead of closing that many schools, you should have looked at other options. I’m not saying none of those schools should have been closed. But that was too many. It was too drastic. And you obviously didn’t heed the advice of many parents and students who said, `Please don’t do this to us. This will snuff the life out of many neighborhoods.’"  -- S-T, Garcia Blasts Emanuel

Miguel del Valle

 It’s a big job just getting him [Chuy Garcia] on the ballot but I’m hoping some labor groups get behind him, that teachers and others will get behind him. The dynamics are always different. Their personalities are different. Karen had a different kind of base than Chuy does. How those two meld has yet to be determined. -- Catalyst interview

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Ken Griffin

Kent Redfield

“It’s certainly an indication of the increasingly large role that wealthy individuals are playing in American politics.” -- Sun-Times, Billionaire Ken Griffin gives Rauner record-breaking $2.5 million

Rev. Walter "Slim" Coleman

“We’re not suggesting that Rauner is a member of the Klan or that there were any Klansmen involved in his campaign or anything like that.  We were just saying that the forces that are unleashed by the - the current day Republican Party are very dangerous forces and very racist forces, and that we don’t want them to take over in Illinois.” -- WBEZ 91.5

Ray DeBerry

He sensed the injustice of having to climb to the gallery at the segregated Holly Theatre. He resented having to call the white kid behind the counter at Tyson's Drug Store "sir." "No one needed to teach you that," the 66-year-old DeBerry said. "It was just something that was in your DNA." So when a Freedom School opened in an unassuming white-frame building, DeBerry found his way there. -- 50 years ago, 'Freedom Summer' changed South, US

John McCain

Andy Borowitz

The Arizona senator stressed that the blame game must be “rigorous and far-reaching,” but said that it would exempt those in the Senate who voted to invade Iraq in 2003. “That’s ancient history,” he said. -- New Yorker

Mercedes Schneider

Teacher tenure is due process, not a lifetime job guarantee. -- deutsch29

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Hoboken Board of Education president Leon Gold

“We are creating separate but equal school systems." By capping property taxes and fueling charter expansion, Christie “is increasing the segregatory effect of charter schools, while raiding our budget.” -- Salon

John Hagedorn

UIC Criminology Prof. John Hagedorn

But the reasons for Chicago’s medium to high homicide rate are not what police do, but what the city has not done. The problem isn’t gangs so much as the desperation of young black men. We don’t need magic policing tricks but real jobs, decent education, adequate housing, fair police and other steps on the long, hard road of reducing inequality and violence. -- S-T Voices, "What's really driving down murder rate"

Billionaires With Big Ideas Are Privatizing American Science

“For better or worse,” said Steven A. Edwards, a policy analyst at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, “the practice of science in the 21st century is becoming shaped less by national priorities or by peer-review groups and more by the particular preferences of individuals with huge amounts of money.” -- New York Times

 Chicago Magazine

Despite spending more than $1 million of his [Pritzker's] own money, he lost the primary to Jan Schakowsky. The experience left him feeling bruised—and eventually convinced him to take his uncle Jay’s advice. “He told me that I could accomplish many public policy goals by making money and going without the public life,” Pritzker told the Tribune a few weeks after the primary. -- J.B. Pritzker: The Other Mayor of Chicago

Forget all the 'fiscal cliff' drama. The deal has already been cut.

Honeywell CEO David Cote OK's the deal

Why am I so sure that the deal has already been done on the so-called fiscal cliff?

Because, according to this report in the NYT, the big boys have already given Obama and Boehner their blessings to increase taxes on the wealthiest 4% of Americans in exchange for cuts in so-called entitlements, ie. medicare benefits and social sec. By the big boys, I mean the real power in the country, including CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, Dow, Morgan Stanley, G.E. and the rest.

“We recognize that part of the solution has to be tax increases,” David M. Cote, chief executive of Honeywell, said on a conference call with reporters. “That’s the only thing that allows a reasonable compromise to be reached.”

According to the Times, on Wednesday, several hedge fund managers, including Daniel Och, the billionaire founder of Och-Ziff Capital Management, met with Valerie Jarrett  and members of the White House economic team.

What’s more, the political symbolism of some of the wealthiest Americans’ saying they support higher taxes on the rich takes a bit of the sting out of the idea of raising rates, for both Democrats and Republicans.

The fact that the the majority of voters overwhelmingly voted against austerity measures and cuts in supports for the neediest among us, means little to the leaders of both parties when compared with the voices of these corporate power houses.

Teaching Democracy

There was a good turnout of students and faculty Monday night at Lake Forest College, to hear Deborah Meier speak on the topic of "Democracy is more complicated than rocket science: So why don't we teach about it?" Wow! That's a brainfull.

Here's my headline of the week. It says a lot.

The growth of charter schools

NYT reports that between 2010-11 and 2011-12, the number of students in charter schools increased close to 13 percent, to just over two million.

New Orleans, where the city’s schools were essentially destroyed by Hurricane Katrina, leads the nation in the proportion of students in charter schools, at 70 percent. But in six other districts, including Detroit, Washington, D.C., and St. Louis, more than 30 percent of public school students attend a charter school.

As you might expect, these are all school districts heavily populated with black and Latino students. The pattern breaks slightly in Clark County (Las Vegas), Nevada, the nation's fifth largest school district, where charters are growing at the fastest rate in the nation. There white students still make of a slight majority of charter school students but district charters are highly segregated. Charters like 100 Academy of Excellence and Agassi, for example, are about 90% African American while the other charters have only a sprinkling of African American kids.

The school district is the largest single employer in Clark County and the rapid growth of privately-run charters signifies a growth in non-union jobs.

The CREDO alternative?

Funny. I continually get mailings from a company called CREDO Mobile asking me to switch from AT&T over to their company, which claims to be politically progressive. CREDO (formerly known as Working Assets), claims to contribute heavily to groups like Planned Parenthood, United for a Fair Economy, Earthjustice and the ACLU. Credo Mobile is basically a re-seller, wholesaling bandwidth from Sprint and then repackage it as their own.

I have no love from AT&T and would gladly dump them for a viable alternative, and not just for political reasons. Their rates are outlandish and their coverage, even in certain Chicago neighborhoods is weak. So I was ready to make the move, especially after reading CREDOs latest mailer denouncing AT&T for contributing to the Romney campaign.

In fact, says the letter from CREDO President Michael Kieschnick,

AT&T "contributed to his [Romney's] campaign -- making this the fifth straight presidential election where they've supported only the Republican nominee."

But before switching, I decided to check. The only thing worse to me than AT&T would be some corporate hustler trying to pimp off the progressive movement through deceit. I'm not saying that about CREDO.

I know that AT&T has no love for the Obama administration. You see AT&T Inc. Chairman Randall Stephenson lost $2.08 million in bonus pay after Democrats killed his bid to build the biggest mobile provider. Six weeks after the deal for T-Mobile USA collapsed, he made his largest campaign donation in more than two decades of giving to Republicans. Stephenson’s personal $30,800 contribution to the Republican National Committee punctuated months of sniping between the biggest U.S. telephone company and the Democratic-controlled Federal Communications Commission.

Sixty-five percent of donations from AT&T employees and their families are going to Republicans for the 2012 elections, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. That’s up from 55 percent in 2010, when the Democrats were in charge of both houses of Congress and the presidency, and is the highest percentage since the center began keeping records in 1990. Republicans got 63 percent of the AT&T donations when they controlled the White House and Congress in 2006.

But OpenSecrets.Org  carries an organization profile of AT&T Inc. on their website showing a list of their corporate political contributions. Here it is.

 Top Candidate Recipients, 2011-2012 (Source: Center for Responsive Politics)

Barack Obama (D)	$138,641
John Boehner (R-OH)	$103,450
Mitt Romney (R)	$47,269
Thomas C. Leppert (R-TX)	$35,200
Mitch McConnell (R-KY)	$29,250

As you can see, not only is Romney not the only beneficiary of AT&T corporate generosity, he ranks only third behind Obama and Boehner. Even with the bad blood from the FCC fallout, the company still hedges its election bets and contributes heavily to both campaigns. I put all this information in a missive to Mr. Kieschnick and asked for a reply. I will let you know what I come up with.

Open Secrets had lots of other good information about creepy AT&T. Here's an interesting tidbit:

57 out of 84 AT&T lobbyists in 2012 have previously held government jobs

There's also a list of the 49 members of Congress who own stock in the company.

And there's more from Fast Company including that AT&T has donated $377,500 to members of the House Tea Party Caucus.

View from right field: Smarick wants an end to urban school systems

I don't agree.

Is there any real difference between calling for an end to "urban school systems" and calling for an end to urban public schools?  I don't think so.

Andy Smarick, who works for right-wing think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Fordham Institute, tweeted me yesterday, saying that I was being unfair to him for equating his call for the destruction of urban (code word for black and Latino) school districts with destruction of urban schools, in my Twitter post. He says he was only talking about "urban districts" in his call for urban mass demolition.  Is he playing with words here? I think so.

In fact, I don't think I was being unfair at all. I told him basically to stop whining and own up to his obvious anti-public school perspective. After all, Smarick says he wants to replace urban schools with privately-run charters. He thinks urban schools are a "total failure" even though they outperform most charters by every measure,  and he claims that our urban schools system is "broken, and it cannot be fixed. It must be replaced."

He writes:

 Given urban districts’ unblemished record of failure over generations, you’d think these statements would be widely accepted and represent the core of the education-reform strategy... The blueprint for the urban school system of the future can be found in charter schooling.

Of course, he offers no evidence about this record of failure, or to support the supposed superiority of charters. The reason -- there isn't any evidence. To his credit, likeable Andy tries to find some common ground with me, tweeting, " I bet you're not always a fan of what districts do."

He's right, of course. I'm not always a fan. But public schooling is not some sporting event where fans cheer for their favorite team; i.e., the public school team vs. the privatization team. Being a critical voice is a lot different than bashing and destroying.

The dismantling of urban school districts and replacing them with a market-driven system, would mean that the neediest public schools would be left to sink or swim on their own. The mechanism through which they received public funding and support would be smashed. Parents would be completely reliant on small, often self-interested and corrupt, charter school operators for their children's education. Schools would be at the mercy of private sponsors, (Fordham itself is one) for their existence. Teachers would lose all rights to bargain collectively and all constraints on the operator's attempts to cream kids or re-segregate schools would be lost. Smarick's anti-public vision strikes at the very heart of democracy.

As Smarick writes:  

First, we must see chartering not as a sector and not even as a system but as the system for urban education’s future. The systemic practices it has introduced into public education must be the playbook for how urban school portfolios are managed. Second, we must accept that the full flourishing of this new system requires the permanent demotion and the potential cessation of the district.  

Smarick (left) and his team at Fordham

Smarick and Fordham have a record for for all kinds of unethical shenanigans. It's because of groups like this that we need government regulation. In the state of Ohio, for example, Fordham has been both a lobbyist for charters and at the same time,  a sponsor (authorizer) of charter schools. In other words, they authorize (vet) the very schools that they sponsor. Talk about the fox guarding the hen house.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, privately-run charters are a source of wealth for both Smarick and Fordham. Smarick makes his money working for Bellwether Consulting, which is basically a union-busting and school privatization company run by his pal Andrew Rotherham and with clients like Louisiana Tea-Party Gov. Bobby Jindal. 

Even the most corrupt of the charter school operators, White Hat's David Brennan, is hailed as a "revolutionary" by Smarick's Fordham group.

And he's not just about smashing urban public school systems. He wants to "re-invent" government as a group of privately-run enclaves. He calls it "entrepreneurial government."

As I see it, Andy Smarick's plan calls for nothing less than the end to the institution of public education and the erosion of public space and public decision-making. Behind all his buzzwords, cliches, and obfuscating language about "innovation" and "re-inventing," he and his right-wing think tank pals are really just about narrow self-interest and the profitability for themselves and wealthy patrons like David Brennan.For me, this is about the future of democracy.

Oh yes -- fair? Yes, I'm fair. Didn't I call him likeable?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

"Firing teachers is not a school improvement strategy...Killing a neighborhood school is like putting a knife into the heart of a community." -- Diane Ravitch

Diane Ravitch

"Value-added Assessment, used as it is today, is junk science."  -- AFT Convention speech 

Randi Weingarten

The fixation on testing, the attacks on teachers and their unions—they’re all proxies for attacks on public education. That’s what this comes down to: whether people believe that kids have the right to good public schools close to where they live (and despite what anyone says—parents are with us on that), or whether our public education system should be privatized, bled dry or abandoned altogether. -- Speech at the AFT Convention

J.C. Brizard

Chicago Public Schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard said Tuesday that an elected school board would be “a disaster for the city” due the possibility of cronyism, nepotism and political agendas of elected officials getting in the way. -- Defender

Anthony Cody

I will be there because SOS has once again created a crossroads for our movement, just as it did last summer. -- Living in Dialogue

Caterpillar striker Bruce Boaz

“It’s corporate greed, plain and simple.” -- Sun-Times

Sen. Bernie Sanders

"... not content to own our economy, the 1 percent want to own our government as well.” -- Republic Report

Weekend Quotables

"Privatopia"

David Segal

With public employee unions under attack in states like Wisconsin, and with cities across the country looking to trim budgets, behold a town built almost entirely on a series of public-private partnerships — a system that leaders around here refer to, simply, as “the model.” -- "A Georgia Town Takes the People’s Business Private."

Natalie Hopkinson

Today, as the quality of life improves, there is a subtext to change, that in order to make progress, black people must be pushed out of the way. They had it for 50 years! -- "Farewell to Chocolate City."

Charles Blow

The Republican-Democratic divide is increasingly becoming an all-white/multicultural divide, a male/female divide, and a more religious/less religious divide — the formers the traditional power classes, and the latters the emerging ones. -- "Bullies on the Bus"

Jay Mathews

I have been a reporter for 45 years. I have seen many cover-ups. This looks like one to me, and to many educators I have spoken to. D.C. officials have never investigated in any depth the wrong-to-right erasures that the District’s testing company began reporting in 2008. -- "D.C. keeps ignoring its test erasure scandal"

Teacher Appreciation Weekend Quotables

Dr. Shaq gets Ph.D. from Barry Univ. "Thank you Google..."

Push-back on Pearson

“This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” said Barbara Madeloni, who runs the university’s high school teacher training program. “We are putting a stick in the gears.” -- NY Times

Primer on ALEC

"The ALEC agenda is today the “reform” agenda for education." -- Diane Ravitch

Now the charter school operators are saying it...

"Over-reliance on a single high-stakes assessment is a fundamentally illegitimate tool with which to answer the question that is on everybody's mind — or ought to be — and that is: What does it mean to be an educated person?" -- L.A. charter school co-founder Marcos Aguilar

Philly's great public school giveaway now nearly complete

This is a cynical, right-wing and market-driven plan to privatize public education, to force thousands of economically disadvantaged families to select from an under-funded hodge-podge of EMO and charter-company-run schools and to convert thousands of professional and family-sustaining positions into low-paying, high-turnover jobs. -- PFT Pres. Jerry Jordan

He's right. The complete dismantling of the nation's 5th-largest school district and getting rid of collective-bargaining and union rights for teachers has long been the dream of the city's corporate reformers. Taken over by the state and placed under the control of the so-called School Reform Commission, Philly's racially-segregated and underfunded school system was first looted and then sold off school-by-school to companies like Edison and other private charter operators.

What Paul Vallas started a decade ago with his give-away of 40 public schools is nearly a fait accompli with the new Blueprint For Transforming Philadelphia Public Schools. The Blueprint includes a proposal to divvy up city schools among “achievement networks” including charter school operators and other outside organization.

Vallas actually began the process during his tenure as Chicago's mayoral-appointed schools CEO with the so-called Renaissance 2010 plan. Before he was fired by Mayor Daley, Vallas had succeeded in replacing teacher-led, highly autonomous small schools with privately managed charter schools and replacing school redesign with school closings. It was a trend he would take to scale as CEO of Philadelphia Public Schools and later as school boss in post-Katrina New Orleans.

The privatization of Philly schools has been in the works for a long time. It was given the green light by Sec. Arne Duncan when he and pal Newt Gingrich made their infamous tour of the city's privately-managed charter schools back in 2009. 

The process continued in Philly during the scandal-ridden reign of Arlene Ackerman and her Image 2014 plan (modeled on Renaissance 2010), despite mass protests and school walk-outs by thousands of students).

The result, as I've documented in these pages and in our book, Small Schools: Public School Reform Meets the Ownership Society, has been nothing less than a disaster for the city's 185,000, mostly African-American and Latino school children. Study after study showed that the 64 schools turned over to private management companies had failed to outperform the closed neighborhood schools they replaced. 

Now that the Commission has ignored all the research and has moved ahead with its ideologically-driven district reorganization plan, it will be once again up to the students, teachers, parents and community activists to make their voices heard. 

Dare the council stand up to autocrat Rahm?

"We've debated this long enough. I'm not in the position of analysis. I'm in the position of getting things done." -- Rahm to his council 

Scientists have discovered signs of life in Chicago's city council. The discovery comes as a shock to our autocrat mayor (and to me) who thought he had already crushed or bought off the last flicker of democratic impulse among his gaggle of alderman.

This time around, even after Rahm snapped his fingers and demanded that the council act without debate and ram through his $7 billion dollar, Infrastructure Trust (Trust? What trust?) deal, a few brave souls (Pat Dowell, Leslie Hairston, Willie Cochran, Rick Munoz, Brendan Reilly, Lona Lane, John Arena, and Scott Waguespack) found enough courage to slow things down. I suppose they still remember the public outrage over Mayor Daley's great fast-tracked, parking meter swindle which bought him a post-retirement gig with the law firm that did the deal.

You just knew this deal would involve CPS, which has been turned into a wing of City Hall. It includes borrowing millions for school repair, directly from his billionaire buddies, who are expecting higher than ever returns on their investment. The very nature of the deal takes all oversight away from the council and gives the mayor and his cronies unlimited power to decide how the $7 billion will be spent.

Here's what Hairston had to say about the deal:

"Despite his 'reform' claims, Emanuel has employed the same closed, rushed, 'ram it down their throats' process that placed us at the mercy of investors who can increase costs at will, demand the City provide compensation for losses and refer complaints to a black hole where nobody accepts fault. Even worse, he wants us to give him blanket authority over numerous such ventures, with appointees he chooses as 'watchdogs.'"

The same scientists found absolutely no such signs among the state's spineless legislators who still vote 113-0 for whatever bullshit Boss Madigan offers up in Springfield.

A new angle on the anti-bullying campaign

A lot of accusations and allegations have been flying around here lately, but this one had to make me laugh. Our little band of progressive bloggers and tweeters are being made out to be "bullies" by the Wall Street Journal. And just who is it we have allegedly been bullying? It's these poor, little kids on the block named, Coca-Cola, Gates Foundation, the Koch Bros., McDonalds, & Blue Cross Blue Shield.

Yes, is seems we big, bad tweeters have been kicking the crap out of these defenseless corporations by shining a spotlight on their relationship with ALEC. In response, these little guys ran home to get their big brothers, the Breitbart Bloggers to come back and beat us up.

Sorry, gotta run. Here they come.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Joshua Lott for The New York Times

Matt de la Peña’s novel has been banned at Tucson High for containing “critical race theory.”

John Huppenthal, AZ state supt.

“When we encountered this situation, we did what Hannibal did to the Romans. This is the eternal battle, the eternal battle of all time, the forces of collectivism against the forces of individuality.” -- Racial Lens Used to Cull Curriculum in Arizona

 Santorum in Puerto Rico -- "Speak English..."

"Like any other state, there has to be compliance with this and any other federal law," Santorum said. "And that is that English has to be the principal language." --Reuters

Times Columnist, Joe Nocera

...the kind of amoral, eat-what-you-kill capitalism that Goldman represents is one that most Americans instinctively find repugnant. It confirms the suspicions many people have that Wall Street has become a place where sleazy practices are the norm, and where generating profits in ways that are detrimental to society is the ticket to a successful career and a multimillion-dollar bonus. -- The good, bad and ugly of capitalism

Sun-Times Columnist, Mark Brown

 When I placed a call to Misty Gillian of Auburn, Ind., confused as to why she donated $1,500 to Tabares, I got a call back from her husband, Kevin, who explained that his company, TFC Canopy, made all those shiny aluminum wall panels cladding UNO’s new Soccer Academy. That explained it. -- Lozano Jr. vs. Tabares campaign one to watch on Southwest Side

Summing up 2011: David Sirota did it for me

SOS March & Rally, July 30, 2011

I was going to write one of those end-of-the-year blog posts. But lucky for me, Salon.com's David Sirota ("In education, it’s all about dollars and cents") did it for me. Now I can concentrate on getting ready for classes next week. Thanks David for getting it right.

As the revelations of 2011 prove, students aren’t helped by billionaire-executives-turned-education-dilettantes who leverage their riches to force their faith-based theories into schools. Likewise, they aren’t aided by millionaire pundits sententiously claiming that we just “need better parents.” And kids most certainly don’t benefit from politicians pretending that incessant union-busting, teacher-bashing and standardized testing represent successful school “reforms.”

Read David Sirota's entire commentary here.

What the 1%ers have to say for themselves

Quotes from New York Magazine piece, by Noreen Malone, ‘I Stand Guilty of Being a Fat Cat.’

Yuck!
Billionaire Tom Golisano:

“If I hear a politician use the term ‘paying your fair share’ one more time, I’m going to vomit.” 

Right-wing loony
Home Depot Ken Langone reclaimed certain terms that have been used to oppress his people:

"I am a fat cat, I’m not ashamed. If you mean by fat cat that I’ve succeeded, yeah, then I’m a fat cat. I stand guilty of being a fat cat." 

Shop at Home Depot? Are you kidding me?
Another Home Depot co-founder, 82-year-old Bernard Marcus said, regarding possible targeting from Occupy Wall Street protestors, the only thing to do was approach the whole thing with Zenlike calm.

"Who gives a crap about some imbecile? Are you kidding me?”

There's more: white men with money, white men with money talking to reporters, the wail of the 1%

Transparent moments

Every once in a while, a bit of truth comes seeping through the pores of the corporate media. Corporate moguls, media tycoons or politicians become a little remorseful or a little drunk and let us know what they really think.

N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg let the cat out of the bag in a recent speech at MIT, admitting that if he were king (isn't he?) he'd fire half the teachers and double class size.

He looked like he was from another planet when he dressed as a hippie for a political show, but the mayor’s blueprint for fixing city schools have some asking “what was he smoking?” -- CBS News

"Big money owns everything ..."

On November 22, Dan Rather upon receiving the prestigious Burton Benjamin Memorial Award at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City, shared his thoughts on media and the Occupy Movement.

 But now, we see our fellow citizens taking to the streets. And, that my friends, is our cue to get back to work. As the People of our nation begin rising up, they expect the business of news to be about inquiry and accountability. And, luckily for us, we can still do that ... but it may not be within the confines of big corporate media. As you know, we are living in an age when big money owns everything ... including the news. -- RSN

Then there's former Chase Bank V.P. James Theckston whose Florida team wrote more than $2 billion in mostly bad mortgages, who in a remorseful moment told NYT's Nicholas Kristof:

“The bigwigs of the corporations knew this, but they figured we’re going to make billions out of it, so who cares? The government is going to bail us out. And the problem loans will be out of here, maybe even overseas.”

Kristof adds:

All this came into sharper focus this week as Bloomberg Markets magazine published a terrific exposé based on lending records it pried out of the Federal Reserve in a lawsuit. It turns out that the Fed provided an astonishing sum to keep banks afloat — $7.8 trillion, equivalent to more than $25,000 per American.

Yes, it's out there. You just have to dig for it and try and make sense out of it.