WEEKEND QUOTABLES

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on the military killings in Myanmar

I am deeply shocked by the killing of dozens of civilians, including children & young people, by security forces in Myanmar today.

The continuing military crackdown is unacceptable and demands a firm, unified & resolute international response. https://t.co/qtnQaH5jvN

— António Guterres (@antonioguterres) March 27, 2021

           

R.I.P. Beverly Cleary

“I had chicken pox, smallpox and tonsillitis in the first grade and nobody seemed to think that had anything to do with my reading trouble,” Cleary told the AP. “I just got mad and rebellious.” By sixth or seventh grade, “I decided that I was going to write children’s stories.” -- Guardian

Prosecutor Jerry Blackwell 

“She wanted to check on his pulse, check on Mr. Floyd’s well-being,” Blackwell said. “She did her best to intervene. When she approached Mr. Chauvin …. Mr. Chauvin reached for his Mace and pointed it in her direction. She couldn’t help.” -- AP

Bessemer, AL Amazon warehouse worker Linda Burns

 “They are treating us like robots rather than humans.” -- AP

 Attorney Walter Shaub, former director of the US Office of Government Ethics

"Georgia's bill would make it a crime to give free food or water to voters standing in line for hours and hours. But we know who these politicians force to stand in line all day long," Shaub said earlier this month on Twitter. "I've never once stood in line for even five minutes where I get to vote. This racism is thorough." -- CNN

Emma Berquist @eeberquist

everyone's anti-godzilla until there's a 200,000 ton boat that can't be moved

Looking back on Chicago's great 2001 Boeing tax giveaway

Chicago Theater welcomed Boeing in 2001. 

It's been nearly 20 years since Boeing Corp. pulled one of the great hustles on the people of Chicago with help from then-Mayor Richard Daley and Gov. George Ryan. While many of us protested the deal that brought Boeing's headquarters from Seattle to Chicago, we couldn't stop the huge corporate tax giveaway that would become the norm for cities and states competing with each other for corporate investments.

Families of Boeing 737 MAX crash victims protest. 

Boeing promised to bring 500 high-paying jobs to Chicago and claimed that the combined executive pay would trickle down and create even more jobs and small businesses. This in exchange for $60 million in tax breaks for the huge military defense contractor. Their promise wasn't worth the paper it was written on.

Gov. Ryan even claimed at the time that the move would bring Illinois more than prestige. "It will pay huge dividends, producing a 100-to-1 return on the state's investment", he said.

It didn't. 

Boeing's former CEO Tom Condit explained in 2001 and later, the headquarters move was made to create psychological distance between the corporate leadership and the manufacturing sites on the ground.

There also was a suspicion that the corporate and political climate of Chicago — its more conservative, business-friendly bent; its expensive steakhouses where macho titans of industry could talk over cigars and scotch — would better suit the taste and personality of men like Boeing’s then-president, Harry Stonecipher.

From their airy perch in Chicago, Boeing’s leaders could — and did — make steely decisions about where to locate work or where to make layoffs at a safe remove from the people affected on the ground.

 The BGA's Alejandra Cancino, writes this week in Crain's, that the Boeing deal,

...laid down a marker for megadeals to come that opened the public purse in the name of economic development. Since then, states and cities have engaged in an escalating bidding war for jobs and bragging rights, with the promise of future economic riches as bait. 

A new massive $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus package signed by Trump includes billions of dollars in loan guarantees for Boeing, in financial peril before the pandemic because of the grounding of its faulty 737 Max aircraft. By that and other incentive measures, the price tag for the 2001 Boeing deal might seem puny. 

As would the failed offer of $2 billion in tax incentives then-Mayor Emanuel and Gov. Rauner made to Amazon in exchange for a promised "50,000 new high-paying jobs." That deal fell through but it's one that Gov. Pritzker appeared ready to pursue again in 2019 when Rahm was still mayor.

With Rahm and Rauner gone and more important things for Mayor Lightfoot to focus on, I doubt he'll pursue it now.

Side Note -- I would call the two Boeing 737 Max crashes, which killed 346 men, women and children, a case of criminal neglect and malfeasance and wonder why none of those top execs have been dragged from their "airy perch" in Chicago and carted off to prison?

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

When Jonathan Bailey returns home from his job at an Amazon warehouse, he puts everything he was wearing in a plastic garbage bag. ... New York Times

John Iadarola, host of The Damage Report

Coronavirus is the election. Trump has a vision for how to respond to it. We can see that vision playing out as the death toll rises. Is Joe Biden seriously going to simply surrender the discussion around this virus to Trump without a fight? How could he possibly imagine the American people will replace Trump with someone who plans to fight COVID-19 with politeness? -- The Hill

Osita Nwanevu

Trump is deeply vulnerable now. But the Biden campaign will not prevail unless that vulnerability is actually exploited. If Biden isn’t going to offer a bold vision for America’s future beyond this crisis, he could at least fulfill the promise his campaign made to the Democratic electorate—that this election would be a real fight, and one Biden could win. -- New Republic

R.I.P. kicker Tom Dempsey

“The owners make the rules,” he told the Los Angeles Times in 2010, “and my favorite saying about owners is, ‘If you threw them a jockstrap, they’d put it on as a nose guard.’ They don’t know a damn thing about football.” -- Washington Post

Gov. Andrew Cuomo

 "This [ventilators from China and Oregon] is a big deal, and it's going to make a significant difference," Cuomo said, calling the redistribution of ventilators a key to saving more lives in New York and across the globe...“We’re all in the same battle here.” -- USA Today

Georgia! Y'all could have a Yale Law School graduate who believes in science. Instead, y'all have this guy. https://t.co/s1rfOU3Vuw

— Commissioner Omari Hardy 🚶🏾‍♂️🚲 🛴 🚉 🌳 🏘 🌇 (@OmariJHardy) April 5, 2020

Big corps not "fleeing" IL over $15/hr minimum wage after all.

Crain's begs Amazon: "Come to Chicago. We have plenty of low-paid workers here."

Last year we defeated the Rahm/Rahner plan to bring Amazon HQ2 into Chicago. Why? Because they are among the worst low-road, abusive, union-busting companies with the poorest working conditions of any corporation. Plus, we knew that their promise of 50,000 new jobs was BS. Plus, despite raking in superprofits, they would have ended up paying no state or city taxes to help support our schools and city services. Preckwinkle and Daley were the only mayoral candidates who supported Rahm's plan.

Good riddance, right?

Chicago being a strong union town, along with our push for a living wage, then led to a fear campaign in the media by Rahm/Rahner claiming that other companies would now flee the state and the city if we made them pay fair taxes and a living wage to their workers.

Fast forward --  With Rauner and Rahm gone, Gov. Pritzker signed a bill in February, passed in the IL Legislature, that would raise the state's minimum wage to $15/hr. Not a living wage, but good news just the same.

The bad news is that under the new law, minimum-wage workers won't see $15/hr under for six years. Why such a compromise with Republicans in a Democratic-dominated legislature? You'd have to ask the progressive house members who crafted the bill.

But now comes the news that since the passage of the bill, corporations are coming back to IL rather than running away. In fact last week, Amazon announced plans to open a fulfillment center in Channahon, Illinois, supposedly creating more than 500 new, full-time jobs. The project, developed by Venture One Real Estate, will add a new distribution center of over 1 million square feet in size—the sixth in Will County for the online retailer, after properties in Crest Hill, Joliet, Monee and Romeoville.

“Illinois is a great place to do business and we are excited to continue our growth and investment in the state with our new fulfillment center in Channahon,” said Alicia Boler Davis, Amazon’s vice president of global customer fulfillment. “Since 2010, Amazon has invested more than $4 billion in the state through its local fulfillment center and cloud infrastructure, research facilities and compensation to thousands of employees in the state. We are excited to create more than 500 new full-time jobs, in addition to the 11,000 current employees across the state, who receive industry-leading pay and benefits starting on day one.”

And this from Gov. Pritzker:

“This significant jobs announcement is another sign that Illinois’ future is bright, and I’m excited to see Amazon build on its investment in Illinois with 500 new jobs in the south suburbs,” said Governor J.B. Pritzker. “Illinois is the transportation hub of the Midwest, and our workforce is among the best in the world."

I guess the big corps like Amazon aren't scared off by Pritzker's Fair Tax initiative. I didn't think they would be, even with Indiana and Wisconsin right next door.

And the great irony is that starting salary at the new center will be (you guessed it) $15/hr. Six years before the new law takes full effect and with no union representation for workers.

This should also bring some organizing-the-unorganized jobs for union organizers.

Will Chicago elect a mayor who's back in bed with Bezos on HQ2?

 

Toni Preckwinkle and Bill Daley on board with Bezos. 

...bringing Amazon to town will probably cost untold millions in tax credits—money diverted straight from the state's coffers. That spells a tax hike for everyone else as the state jacks up taxes to compensate for the money it's giving to Amazon. -- Ben Joravsky

Like Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm St., Amazon boss Jeff Bezos and his HQ2 plan for Chicago just keeps coming back from the dead. It looks like, now that New York has said no, Rahm/Rauner's $2.5B tax and land giveaway to Bezos is back on the table in Chicago.

How can that be with Rauner gone, Ed Burke on his way to jail, and Rahm on his way out the door? It can only happen if Gov. Pritzker and a new Chicago mayor are ready, willing and able to meet all of Bezos demands and accept his unsubstantiated estimates of tens of thousands of "high-paying city jobs".

And which of the current mayoral candidates is ready to bend over for Bezos? According to Crain's there's only two (maybe three) -- Bill Daley, Toni Preckwinkle and possibly, Paul Vallas who hasn't said yet.

While I would expect no less from Daley and Vallas, I'm still amazed that Preckwinkle, who's only in the race because of backing from CTU and SEIU, is willing to play ball with union-buster supreme, Bezos. The jobs Bezos promises are unsustainable and without long-term security. Amazon has the highest employee turnover this side of Walmart and their working conditions are reported to be the worst of any major corporation.

Burke may be under indictment and Ald. Danny Solis may have gone underground, wire and all. But the spirit of pay-to-play and quid pro quo, obviously still lives on among these three.

ONE MORE POINT, if I might... Bezos is also a big backer of charter schools and other school privatization schemes in the state of Washington. According to a report in the Nation, the Bezos Foundation has donated to Education Reform Now, a nonprofit organization that funds attack advertisements against teachers’ unions and other advocacy efforts to promote test-based evaluations of teachers. Education Reform Now also sponsors Democrats for Education Reform (DFER).

Other education philanthropy supported by the Bezos Foundation include KIPP, Teach for America and many individual charter schools, including privately funded math and science programs across the country.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

James Baldwin

Freedom is not something that anybody can be given; freedom is something people take and people are as free as they want to be. One hasn’t got to have an enormous military machine in order to be un-free when it’s simpler to be asleep, when it’s simpler to be apathetic, when it’s simpler, in fact, not to want to be free, to think that something else is more important. -- Nobody Knows My Name

Rev. William Barber & Rev. Liz Theoharis, co-chairs of the Poor People’s Campaign

While our nation once fought a war against poverty, now we wage a war on the poor...People are poor not because they are lazy, not because they are unwilling to work hard, but because politicians have blocked living wages and healthcare and undermined union rights and wage increases.-- Guardian Op-ed

Les Wexner, Ohio billionaire and longtime Republican donor 

“If you don’t think things are right, open your mouth...I just decided I’m no longer a Republican." -- HuffPost

James Bloodworth, worked undercover in Amazon warehouse

 In Amazon’s case, convenience evidently has a cost, and this cost is born by those toiling away in Amazon’s warehouses, rarely heard from in the media and invisible to the millions of people who every day submit orders through Amazon’s website. -- Guardian

Paul Vallas, on why he didn't act on CPS sexual assaults

His campaign released a statement that said the Lovett case was “not one that Mr. Vallas or any one of a number of other former school officials to whom we reached out, recalls other than vaguely as something that was fleetingly reported on the news.” Vallas’ campaign defended the lack of an investigation by saying it was a matter for police and child welfare authorities. -- Chicago Tribune

I hope they cast a black Superman. It would nice for a brotha to finally be faster than a speeding bullet.

— Travon Free (@Travon) September 13, 2018

Struck up a conversation w/Glorimarie Peña in Old San Juan. Regarding Hurricane María response, she told me, “It’s not that we weren’t treated like US citizens, it’s that we weren’t even treated like humans.” pic.twitter.com/B8NebKyqSA

— Leyla Santiago (@leylasantiago) September 15, 2018

Post-Rahm

This morning on Hitting Left, Ja'mal Green. 

This morning from IL Playbook

A pathway opens up for Erika Wozniak...

If you thought the mayor's race was crazy, just wait a few weeks to see interest grow in city council races. A week ago, candidates might not have wanted to spend money running against an ally of the mayor. But with Emanuel out, aldermanic incumbents might be easier to beat. One race to watch, for example, is the 46th Ward, where Ald. James Cappleman—an Emanuel ally—faces Chicago Public Schools teacher Erika Wozniak.

I can't wait. Love Erika. Great teacher/activist and co-host of Girl Talk. 

Troy would dump Janice Jackson...

 — Mayoral candidate Troy LaRaviere says he’ll fire CPS CEO Janice Jackson if he’s elected. “I’m going to bring in someone who has a record of competence and effectiveness in running educational institutions,” he told Chicago Newsroom host Ken Davis. LaRaviere, a former school principal, criticized college persistence records under Jackson when she was a principal (before landing at CPS headquarters). “[It] does not bode well for her retaining her position.” LaRaviere called the CPS chief and Chicago Police Chief Eddie Johnson “highly paid” spokespeople for the “agenda of the mayor’s office.” Video here (with time stamp)

I feel you, Troy. But you've just split your base again, unnecessarily. The real question here is an elected school board to decide the fate of Jackson and the others on Rahm's board.

Rahm needs to get his resume up to date...

Kappos asks: But can any candidate match Emanuel’s ability to pick up the phone and talk persuasively to CEOs about bringing businesses to Chicago?
“Only the mayors of a few cities—New York and Los Angeles—are able to have a profile on a national level,” said Eric Sedler, of KIVVIT public affairs firm. “Like him or not, Rahm provided for Chicago. It’s hard to look at the current list of announced and speculated-about candidates and say that someone would naturally rise to that level.”

He may have CEOs and banksters in his rolodex, but last I looked, the bookies in Vegas had Chicago's odds on landing Amazon's HQ2 were 1400-1 against. Mayor 1% needs to get his rez up to date and start calling around. Maybe his pal Elon Musk will give him a job. Remember how Daley landed on his feet over at the law firm that did the parking meter deal?

We'll be talking about these and more this morning on Hitting Left with mayoral candidate and Black Lives Matter activist, Ja'Mal Green. Tune in at 11 on www.lumpenradio.com
.

Crain's to Amazon. Won't you please come to Chicago. We've got cheap labor.

"Chicago's low pay scales and big labor pool rank it tops for Amazon's HQ2", says Crain's.

Crain's let the cat out of the bag about Chicago's pitch for Amazon's HQ2. We already knew that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Bruce Rauner were offering Amazon over $2B in tax incentives and prime city real estate to move their second headquarters here.

In return, Chicago was supposed to get 50,000 new "high paying" jobs. I don't know how many people actually believe the mayor's B.S. Looking at his and Rauner's poll numbers, there's probably not very many. But if you are one of them, please take a look at the Crain's Chicago Business above-the-fold story this week. It will reveal that the real pitch city corporate leaders are making to Amazon CEO and world's richest man, Jeff Bezos is cheap labor.

According to Crain's, Amazon is more cost-sensitive than most tech companies since it imposes a strict cap on salaries and Chicago can offer Bezos a large skilled labor pool that includes research analysts, techies, and mid-level managers who are among the lowest-paid in the nation.

Chicago also has seen lower wage inflation than many HQ2 semifinalists. Last year, annual pay here rose 1.6 percent, half the rate in Seattle. It's the silver lining in the cloud that has been hanging over the Chicago economy for the past decade. Relatively slow growth in wages and housing values frustrates people already here, but it looks good to employers and employees being squeezed hard by inflation. 

 High-paying tech companies in a small market can drive up wages for nontech jobs, too. Managers in administrative services, HR, training and development, marketing, and sales cost 10 to 19 percent more in Austin than Chicago. Tech-sales workers make 50 percent more in Austin, and market research analysts make 35 percent more. 

In other words, the mayor is selling Chicago's workers to Bezos at a cheap price and without (he hopes) bothersome unions. But the city doesn't need and shouldn't want a company that comes here on those terms.

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

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kentucky Wildcats

A wildcat strike action, often referred to as a wildcat strike, is a strike action undertaken by unionized workers without union leadership's authorization, support, or approval; this is sometimes termed, an unofficial industrial action. Wildcat strikes were the key pressure tactic utilized during the May 1968 protests in France. -- Wikipedia

Attica Scott, first African-American woman to serve in the Ky Legislature in over 20 years

She explained how the Republican-controlled Statehouse gutted the state pension program last week, surreptitiously changing a sewage treatment bill: “On the Thursday before Good Friday, that morning, it was a sewage bill. And by that afternoon, it was the so-called pension reform bill.” -- Democracy Now

Rev. James Lawson.

“We cannot make our democracy succeed, be effective, if you do not have working people in organized units who can care for their economic benefits … who can care for the issues of justice.” --Democracy Now

Thomas Frank

“Amazon is the shining representative of a new golden age of monopoly,” is how the Atlantic journalist Franklin Foer put it in 2014, and what he said then is even truer today. -- Guardian 

Maria Villegas, who cleans Sayre Language Academy Elementary in Galewood

Says she has been told ahead of time by her supervisor when an inspector was coming. As a result, Villegas says, “When there is an inspection coming, we leave some things that we [normally] do daily. We leave them to clean the stairwells really well, they’re [inspectors] going to enter through there. Clean the first couple of bathrooms because they’re going to check those. The person who inspects enters the first floor checks the bathrooms, checks the stairwells — but doesn’t go to the upper floors.” -- Sun-Times 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Attempts to silence players who refuse to accept their assigned roles fits right in with owners’ smarmy manipulation of the women cheerleaders through discriminatory Jane Crow “laws”.  -- The NFL's Plan to protect America From Witches

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

One of the great misuses of the word 'Trust' ever.

Rahm flew Randi out to build union support for the Trust

"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 the City Council in 2012 

Back in 2012, Rahm Emanuel's proposed Infrastructure Trust got him him great press, especially with flack David Axelrod pumping it like it was the second coming of the Marshall Plan. The New York Times hailed it as the $7 billion plan that would "transform the city’s infrastructure from the skies above to the pipes underground".

This at a time when the mayor was closing half of the city's mental health clinics and school system was reportedly on the brink of collapse.

Rahm even flew in AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten to laud the Trust at Bill Clinton's Global Initiative Conference, even while the CTU was taking its strike authorization vote. Teachers were angry as hell after Rahm reneged on the 4% raise promised them the year before and the last thing on their minds was new grand privatization plan from the mayor.

I wrote at the time that this was one of the great misuses of the word trust ever.  I and others pointed out that rather than creating jobs or saving schools, the Trust would more likely line the pockets of a handful of Rahm's billionaire patrons and give the mayor an unregulated slush fund to use for his own political advantage. No city program had ever been rushed through the City Council without careful review since the great parking meter heist during the Daley administration. As it turns out, the Trust did nothing and all Rahm's big "investors" were all show and no go.

Why the question mark?

Fast forward to read today's headline: Rahm’s trust a bust? Fails to raise a dime but has cost taxpayers $5M

S-T Watchdog Tim Novack writes:

But the infrastructure trust has fallen short of the expectations the mayor laid out. It has yet to raise a dime in private financing for a single public works project, records show. At the same time, it has cost Chicago taxpayers more than $5.1 million to pay for its handful of employees, offices on Wacker Drive, consulting fees and other expenses.

A top city official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, wonders why the mayor hasn’t shut down the trust.

“There’s no excuse for the mayor to avoid closing down this thing that’s been a complete failure,” the official said. “They’ve done nothing that can’t be done by [the Department of Fleet and Facilities Management] or the Public Building Commission.”

The agency’s five-member staff is overseen by a seven-member board headed by Emanuel’s appointed city treasurer, Kurt Summers. The board includes Ald. Matt O’Shea (19th), four business leaders and Jorge Ramirez, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, which is an investor in the Chicago Sun-Times. There’s also a four-member advisory board that includes Ald. Michael Scott Jr. (24th).

 If this all sounds to you a lot like the mayor's current scheme to entice Jeff Bezos into moving his Amazon's HQ2 here with the promise of 50,000 new jobs, you're on to something. You get it.

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

Amazon's promise of '50,000 new jobs' for Chicago is bunkum

A week ago I posted about Amazon not being the kind of company Chicago needs. But Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Bruce Rauner continue to grovel before the king of e-commerce offering huge tax and real estate giveaways that will only push the state and city into more debt, hurting schools and wiping outpensions. All this in the hope that Amazon will bring "50,000 jobs" to the city.

Sadly, most local pols, including Democrats running to replace Rauner, have drunk the Amazon jobs koolade. So has the media for the most part. On Friday, a planted Amazon good-news story claims the company is about to hire 10,000 holiday workers in IL.

Amazon is hiring more than 120,000 seasonal workers nationwide, including 10,000 new employees in Illinois. That means jobs at local fulfillment centers, sortation centers and customer service sites — and some of those positions could become permanent, according to Amazon. 

What's left out of the Patch piece is that these are non-union, mostly minimum-wage jobs offering most of these workers little or no chance for full-time employment. The work is mind-numbing and repetitive. 50-hour weeks are not uncommon and managers are continually relocated.

As for the claim that thousands of seasonal workers were given full-time jobs last year, it's important to remember that good-paying "full-time" jobs with Amazon are not usually permanent jobs and that those few who are hired full-time are usually replacing some of the thousands who quit or are fired each year.

In fact, Amazon has the second highest worker/turnover rate of any of the Fortune 500 companies. Turning over a big chunk of the workforce each year (most new-hires are gone after just nine months) saves the corporation millions of dollars on benefits like medical coverage and paid vacation days.

Amazon has built its empire around fast shipping speeds and generous return policies. But little is said of it's "dangerously intense internal company culture".

Last year, Bloomberg reported that the company was using flat-screen televisions in its warehouses to shame workers for alleged theft. The workers are not identified by name; rather, they are shown as black silhouettes with the word “terminated” or “arrested” emblazoned before an account of what they stole from the company and how they got caught. In the absence of a TV monitor, workers told Bloomberg that similar information was posted on walls or bulletin boards around the office.

A former Amazon contract worker wrote this, in an open letter to CEO Jeff Bezos:

There’s a lot of talk about how Amazon is a great place to work. They have showers in the basement. You can get your bike serviced while you work. And there’s food trucks! But if you really want to create a positive work environment and generate productivity and employee loyalty, give your employees some job security.

That's not likely to happen. Amazon, stay away.