Why I can't vote for Pritzker

Gassing the water protectors

“JB personally and through his businesses and trusts has both active and passive investments in many different economic sectors,” Pritzker spokeswoman Galia Slayen said. “If elected, JB is committed to putting in place best practices to ensure that no conflicts ever exist.”

It's not just that he's another white male billionaire. No, I've more or less made peace with that, given the record high cost of running for governor and that there are no women or people of color in the race with a realistic chance of defeating Public Enemy #1,Gov. Bruce Rauner.

And it's not just that J.B. Pritzker, a partner in the union-busting Hyatt Hotel chain, is another mainstream Democrat who is bound to sell out the very unions that have rallied behind him. After the pension-theft debacle with Gov. Quinn, I've almost gotten used to that.

Company thugs set dogs on DAPL protesters.

I guess the killer for me was when I read the Sun-Times this morning and learned that Pritzker, like Donald Trump, is a big investor in Energy Transfer Partners LP, the pipeline operator that constructed and is a part owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline. That's the notorious pipeline which carries oil underground, through Native American sacred burial grounds, from North Dakota all the way to an oil tank farm near Patoka, Illinois.Yes, the very same company that turned hired thugs and vicious dogs on the water protectors at Standing Rock.

Yes, I know that candidate Chris Kennedy, who has tried to rebrand himself as a leftist, is also a global capitalist with major investments in oil and defense companies. He even stands to profit from his holdings in Amazon, the corporation that Rauner and Rahm Emanuel are trying to lure, with huge tax breaks, to Chicago.

At Standing Rock with Chicago students.

I have disliked Kennedy ever since he used his position as head of the Univ. of IL Board of Trustees to tarnish or destroy the careers of educators like Bill Ayers and Steven Salaita because of their political views.

But Standing Rock is where I draw the line. I went to Standing Rock twice last year, once with a dozen Chicago neighborhood high school students, to join the protests. The time spent there left an indelible mark on me and on those students. For over a year an international movement has called on cities, universities and other investors to divest--to get rid of their holdings connected to the Energy Transfer Partners and to the Dakota Access Pipeline.  So the fact that J.B. Pritzker fattens up his investment portfolio with pipeline blood money makes it impossible for me to vote for him, much less support him.

I'm hoping against hope that Dan Biss can pull an upset in the primary and go on to defeat Rauner.

Trib's editorial board has found its 'Mussolini'. But IL crisis is a bi-partisan affair.

HILLARY'S IN TOWN TODAY raising lots of campaign dough. I would have attended this morning's brunch at the Gold Coast home of Tanya and Michael Polsky, the CEO of Invenergy, But my invitation must have gotten lost in the mail.

I also missed the Rahm-hosted lunch event at noon. I couldn't come up with the $2,700-per-person tab (not including tip for the parking guy) let alone the $27,000, it would have taken to have my picture taken with Hil.

Interesting side-note here. Wing-nut Chicago billionaires Ken Griffin and Todd Ricketts are among the funders of the new super anti-Hillary PAC, Future45. Each gave $250,000 to help launch the super PAC.

Rahm and Griffin

Lynn Sweet writes that Griffin is the billionaire founder and CEO of the Chicago hedge fund Citadel and a jumbo donor to Republican candidates and causes. Ricketts, a Cubs board member who is the CEO of the conservative Ending Spending super PAC, was the co-national finance chair for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s short-lived presidential primary campaign.

Why these guys don't have Noble Charter Schools named after them is beyond me.

Rahm has worked with the Ricketts family to put more than $100M in tax incentives into the renovation of Wrigley Field.

Griffin was also a major donor to Rahm's election campaign.

In fact, Griffin was Rahm’s single biggest donor, having donated more than $1 million to political organizations that support the mayor. The bulk of that money — $950,000 — was donated in the last weeks of the election after Rahm failed to win majority in his primary run against Chuy Garcia.

Funny how that works.

A TRIBUNE EDITORIAL comes to the defense of Gov. Rauner and calls on him not to give in to the "Surrender Caucus." Meaning, they want the sociopath gov to continue his siege on state social services and public employee unions, in order to make "Illinois less hostile to employers."

I would expect nothing less of an editorial board that has expressed admiration for  Mussolini's dictatorial style of leadership.

But I have to hand it to them. In the midst of all their right-wing blather they do make one good point. It's not just Rauner. He just picked up the ball where Gov. Quinn and the Dems dropped it.

State Democrats and Republicans have both played major roles in creating the current crisis by not paying the state's share into the pension fund for decades. To top things off, Democrats led by Quinn, Madigan and Cullerton passed their unconstitutional pension "reform" bill, that if not for the supreme court, would have been murderous on elderly and infirm pensioners trying to live on fixed incomes.

In doing so, they alienated their labor base and set the stage for Quinn's re-election defeat and Rauner's victory.

It's important to remember that Democrats still have a veto-proof majority in both houses. So it's apparent that neither Madigan nor Rauner are in any hurry to end the current impasse since it puts both of them in the driver's seat atop their own coalitions while many others appear paralyzed or afraid to act.

UNO charter debacle hurts parents. Shows charters aren't 'public' after all.

A single picture tells the story

The latest UNO scandal represents a potential disaster for the thousands of mainly Latino students and parents enrolled in Chicago charter schools. It should also put an end to claims that privately-run charters are truly "public schools"

For those who haven't been following, there's been a split between the scandal-plagued United Neighborhood Organization (UNO) and the charter school chain it founded. Now UNO is threatening to force closure of six of those charters, potentially leaving parents and teachers scrambling to find a new school for thousands of children come next fall.

UNO claims that the separately incorporated UNO Charter School Network owes them $3 million in management fees. The schools are said to be withholding payments to UNO because of lack of transparency about how the millions are being spent and also because UNO is currently the target of ongoing federal investigations.

Mike Madigan

UNO is threatening to sell all four school buildings it owns-- buildings that are home to six schools-- unless the charter network pays up. UNO CEO Rick Cerda says that conflicts between his group and the charter chain “raise a question as to whether the UCSN schools will continue to operate as they do today.”

It's hard to know how much of this is bluff or what UNO would be able to do with those empty buildings. But CPS has plenty of space to house those six schools now that it is sitting on dozens of empty school buildings of its own.

Imagine the power this clout-heavy, private group has over neighborhood parents, teachers, and children through its virtual ownership of their supposedly "public" schools.

Cerda never mentions that his  group only owns those schools because of a $98 million construction grant for the projects which was greased by Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, Alderman Eddie Burke, former Gov. Quinn and Mayor Emanuel. The huge state grant was blocked temporarily by Quinn when the feds came in, and then released again by Quinn under pressure from Madigan. This despite flagrant nepotism, conflicts of interest, and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation that has already led to a few cosmetic changes at the top and the fall of UNO big-dog Juan Rangel (the co-chair of Rahm Emanuel's first campaign for mayor in 2011). In 2011, UNO received $37.5 million in state-backed loans.

Meanwhile, the school network was handing out its own contracts to more familiar names. Monterrey Security, a firm that was previously co-owned by Alderman Danny Solis’s brother Santiago, won a $75,000 security contract.

Among other charges against UNO was its failure  to make pension contributions for more than 90 certified teachers in its charter schools. So far the federal investigators have failed to produce any indictments although they did help pull the city's bond rating down close to minus. Not that it needed any help in that area.

CPS oversees UNO's charter and provides funding support. It's the largest charter school operator in the state. But UNO has carried a BBB-minus rating from Standard & Poor's, the lowest investment grade level.

It's hard for most to even imagine the power this private group has over neighborhood parents, teachers and children through its virtual ownership of their supposedly "public" schools. But this is exactly what corporate school reformers envisioned when they promoted unrestricted expansion of privately-run charters through mayoral control of the schools and closing schools as accountability and cost-saving strategies.

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

The Name of the Game

Yes, I'm being facetious, but stay with me for a minute anyway..

The IL gov's race was basically bought by billionaire Bruce Rauner at $30.50/vote. Pension-buster Quinn lost to Rauner by 170,000 votes but spent only $17.31/vote. Does this mean that if the IEA and other unions had diverted the half-million or so they gave to Republican Kirk Dillard in the primary and to the Libertarian (Whatshisname?) to Quinn/Vallas, that extra million or so have bought another 170,000 votes?

Probably not, but it may be worth a rethink of IL union campaign strategy. Instead of pissing good money away after bad, how about some real real strategic support to progressive candidates, where a few mil could really make a difference? Like anti-Rahm candidates, Chuy Garcia and Bob Fioretti, as we head towards February?

As for SEIU Local 73, I hope Boardman's $25,000 check to Rahm's bloated campaign war chest, bounces higher than the interest rate on my daughter's student loans. Slavish union 'crats have donated more than $1 million to Emanuel since last year.

Union money spent smartly did help win an important victory in California, where pro-public school Tom Torlakson beat heavily-bankrolled Marshall Tuck -- the corporate suck -- for state school supe and in Pennsylvania where a strong parent-led coalition was able to knock out reactionary Gov. Corbett. 

It hurts to even mention WFP's endorsement of Gov. Cuomo in N.Y. who now swears that he will destroy the "public education monopoly". 

It's still worth remembering that the real power behind school privatization and the erosion of public space and decision making, can't be taken out in elections. They don't run for public office. As Caroline Howard at Forbes points out:

 Mark Zuckerberg has no term limit; no one can dethrone Gates or dismiss Bill Clinton.

Speaking of which...

Ald. Fioretti on the Lucas Museum:

"It looks like a palace for Jabba the Hutt. I was wondering what planet we are on." 

Dems didn't put out for Quinn/Vallas

No car today. I had to cab it home from basketball practice this morning. Yes, I know I said I retired from coaching last year. I lied. But anyway, the cabbie Jesus, who moved here from Mexico a few years ago, is also the janitor at a CPS high school. Plus he works in a restaurant downtown at night. He tells me that his CPS boss, Aramark has fired lots of his co-workers, leaving the school with three custodians. He says, there's no way they can keep the whole school clean with only three people.

He shared some stories about his home town. I talked privatization and asked him if he knew about his namesake running for mayor. He didn't. But he does now.

 Rahm and Rauner outside the Paradise Valley Grill near Livingston, Montana

Please don't blame progressives, African-Americans, teachers, or my brother Fred (he was in Mexico) for the Quinn/Vallas defeat. They earned  it on their own because they couldn't excite their own base.

Never, at least in my memory, has there been a worse pair of candidates who pissed away more than $30 million, trying to match billionaire Rauner's negative ad for negative ad instead of spending enough time and resources on voter turn out in Chicago's south and west-side wards.

Quinn sent his own aide in a chicken suit to stand outside Rauner appearances, while Rauner swiped back by campaigning beside actual chickens. And that was the high water mark of the campaign. Quinn certainly had nothing to offer black and Latino voters or union rank-and-filers besides chicken poop.

I would suggest it was the party's support for pension grabbing (Quinn) and union-busting privatization (Vallas) that kept lots of folks home on election day. They were also done in by a total abandonment of the campaign by Rahm Emanuel's own ward organization machine and lost the downstate Democratic counties of St. Clair & Jackson.

By now everyone knows that the  Rahm/Madigan gang hates Quinn and Vallas and feels much more comfortable playing let's make a deal with Rauner running the state. Greg Hinz at Crain's writes:

What counts now is that the Big Dance has begun, in which winner Mr. Rauner and General Assembly leaders Michael Madigan and John Cullerton take each other's measure.

While the turnout was low, there were enough registered Democrat voters statewide to elect Quinn/Vallas -- if they wanted to. For example, Sen. Dick Durbin was elected easily over his Republican opponent, and got over 100,000 more votes statewide than did Bruce Rauner. But the same voters who punched Durbin's ticket didn't vote Quinn/Vallas. Why not? Isn't it obvious that IL Dems didn't really put out for them?

It's true, Durbin wasn't running against Rauner but his clone, the Oberweis dairy magnate. But still.

Why the cavalry didn't come to save Quinn/Vallas

If Gov. Quinn is still waiting for cavalry from inner-city Chicago to arrive and pull out the election for him, he's going to be waiting a long, long time. From here it looks like there was little in the Quinn/Vallas campaign that excited either the black community, young voters, teachers or much of the union rank-and-file even while running against the worst person in the world. The Rauner scare just wasn't enough.

That's understandable given Quinn's self-description of "born for pension reform" and Vallas' practically single-handed elimination of New Orleans' public schools. The barrage of negative T.V. ads by both sides had little popular appeal and Quinn/Vallas ads spoke not a word of hope or offered anything in the way of programs or policies for black or Latino neighborhoods or for the state's poor and working people.

From an early look at things, most either held their noses and voted after standing in long lines in poorly-run polling places or stayed home. It's also pretty clear that Gov.-elect Rauner's wine-drinking pal and erstwhile Quinn supporter, Rahm Emanuel had little if any interest in gearing up the machine for this one and that many aldermen and precinct captains, with a few exceptions, sat this one out.

Despite the obscene amount of money (over $100 Million) spent by both candidates on this election, turnout in Chicago was down as much as 10% from four years ago. Rauner ended up spending about $30.50/vote while Quinn spent $17.31. Not exactly a grass-roots, populist campaign by either side.

________________________________________________

BLAME Brother Fred for Quinn/Vallas losss? OK.

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In predominantly African-American wards, turnout was not only was down but the GOP margin was up. For instance, Rauner got 10% of the vote in Cook County Board President Tony Preckwinkle's 4th Ward. The final numbers show that only 36.4% of registered voters in Chicago hit the polls on Tuesday. Chicago's 15th Ward has the lowest turnout at 22.2%. Turnout was also way down in the 3rd, 6th, and 8th wards. And all of that despite repeated trips to Chicago to stump for Quinn/Vallas by Pres. Obama, Joe Biden, and Michelle.

____________________________________________

ONE OF THE BIGGEST questions of the night: How did Gov. Pat Quinn drop nearly 100,000 votes Tuesday night in the city and suburban Cook compared to 2010 numbers? -- Natasha Korecki

 ____________________________________________

Bottom line is Quinn/Vallas lost by about 5% of the vote. We can only wonder how badly an authentic progressive Democrat (not just two pension-busting white guys) might have spanked Rauner and left his overpriced campaign and the IL Republican Party buried neath the neighborhoods, schools and union halls of Chicago.

More on the battle ahead coming up as Rauner tries to reach an accommodation with Boss Madigan, who still owns a veto-proof majority in the legislature and as progressives try and run a different kind of campaign to unseat Rahm in February.

As S-T columnist Mark Brown put it: "If he chooses to make the rights of working people his first target, though, he can expect a long four years."

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Rich Miller

A quick note to Bruce Rauner: The next time you try to claim that Gov. Pat Quinn is "personally" under federal investigation (an allegation that, as far as anyone can tell, is not true), it's probably best not to say it while standing next to a different governor who actually is "personally" under federal investigation. -- Crain's

Marian Wright Edelman

Racially discriminatory school discipline policies contribute to the Cradle to Prison Pipeline crisis with a Black boy born in 2001 having a 1 in 3 chance of going to prison in his lifetime and a Latino boy a 1 in 6 chance of the same fate. -- Huffington

Chicago Trubune Columnist Eric Zorn 

I see that Emanuel's supporters are nervous enough about the prospect of a challenge from Lewis that they're already dialing up the histrionics, clutching their pearls and fanning themselves with premature and utterly phony concern over a "conflict of interest." -- Tribune

Doing "their jobs"

Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson

 "I'm truly sorry for the loss of your son. I'm also sorry that it took so long to remove Michael from the street. Investigators were doing "important work" trying to uncover the truth and collect evidence during those four hours...They were simply trying to do their jobs." -- CNN

NYT Columnist Frank Bruni

Around that same time, there were movements on scattered college campuses to attach so-called trigger warnings to texts whose evocations of, say, anti-Semitism or rape might prompt emotional turmoil in students. This echoed moves years earlier by officials at some elementary, middle and secondary schools to prune standardized tests of words that might distress students, either by summoning life’s harshness, reminding them of their deprivation or making them feel excluded. “Poverty,” “slavery,” “divorce,” “hurricanes” and “birthdays” were on a list drawn up by New York City educators, who later abandoned the plan. -- The Wilds of Education

Lesson from Teachout: It won't be as easy for Rahm to buy the next election

You've really got to go back to Bloomberg's narrow escape in his 2009 victory in the NY mayor's race over relative unknown, Bill Thompson. Bloomberg poured $90 million of his own fortune into the race, a sum without equal in the history of municipal politics that gave him a 14-to-1 advantage in campaign spending. He won by only 5%.

Without Bloomberg's billions in the race, money wasn't a big factor in Bill de Blasio's landslide victory last year. BdB won because he ran as a progressive and had strong organization on the ground in the form of the Working Families Party.

Teachout a winner.

ZEPHYR TEACHOUT just ran a strong race for governor against Republicrat Gov. Cuomo despite the fact that she was outspent 100-to-1 by Cuomo's Wall Street patrons. Cuomo raised $40 million to Teachout's $40,000 and political neophyte Teachout sill got 35% of the vote.

The New York Times described Teachout's strong performance as "an embarrassing rebuke to Mr. Cuomo, and it could put a dent in any national aspirations he may hold." I have no doubt that Cuomo, the favorite of the charter school hedge-funders and school profiteers like Eva Moskowitz, could have been beaten had Teachout received support from N.Y.'s chicken-poop teacher union leaders who are tied to Cuomo and the Democratic Party leadership by a thousand threads. Her defeat was also a defeat for the WFP which lost credibility when they endorsed Cuomo.

Lincoln Mitchell writes in the New York Observer:

Ms. Teachout’s strong showing, however, demonstrates the enduring relevance of the activist wing of the Democratic Party, reinforces the ability of a smart but poorly resourced candidate to use social media and less expensive forms of communication to significantly balance out a huge fundraising disadvantage, and shows that establishment Democratic candidates would be well served to run with clear and compelling messages, rather than simply on inevitability and incumbency.

In Illinois...The more of his own money billionaire Bruce Rauner pours into his campaign for governor, the worse he seems to be doing. Latest polls show him blowing his lead and now trailing incumbent Pat Quinn. It seems that the more money Rauner spends on TV ads, the more people remember how much they dislike him and what he stands for. Quinn's biggest problem isn't lack of money. It's the fact thousands of the state's rank-and-file union members and retirees (who all vote) still remember his sellout on the unconstitutional pension-robbing bill and want to punish him for it. He can still squeeze out a win simply because so many IL working people righteously fear devil, Rauner.

Similar problems exist for Rahm Emanuel even with his $11 million war chest and his huge army of professional media spinners. The more press he gets, the more his ratings suffer, especially in minority communities. Even as he tries to slide to the left, cut last-minute deals with ministers, the police union, and his few council opponents, Rahm seems vulnerable in the face of two likely credible, progressive opponents, Karen Lewis and Bob Fioretti -- no matter how many TV ads he buys.

A REVOLUTION OF VALUES...With the latest run-up to war, I'm remembering to words of Dr. Martin Luther King who spoke continuously about the "triple evils" of POVERTY, RACISM and MILITARISM

“A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” -- Dr. Martin Luther King (1967),  “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” 

Nine years since Katrina. Maybe some justice for New Orleans teachers.

On Sept. 4th, the State Supreme Court will hear the case of 7,000 teachers fired after Hurricane Katrina. 

"Katrina accomplished in a day ... what Louisiana school reformers couldn't do after years of trying". -- American Enterprise Institute. 

When Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast exactly nine years ago, New Orleans school chief Paul Vallas saw the disaster as an opportunity to carry out his long-standing mission  by replacing New Orleans' public schools with privately-run, union-free charter schools. He was brought in on the wake of  the firing of 7,500 teachers and other school employees -- most of them African-American -- and the crushing of United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO), once Louisiana's largest labor union and its first racially integrated teachers' union.Vallas takes credit for installing the largest privately managed charter system in the nation.

His "grand experiment in urban education for the nation" worked, at least up until now and is seen by corporate reformers as a model for urban districts from Detroit to Chicago.. The so-called Recovery School District (RSD)  has become the first district in the nation to do away completely with traditional public schools, replacing most of its older, veteran teaching force with younger, whiter 5-week wonders from TFA.

But a class-action lawsuit could finally bring some justice for the fired teachers. The case will be heard by the State Supreme Court on Thursday, Sept. 4th,  following lower court decisions that held the employees were wrongfully terminated. Teachers and their lawyers are expecting a positive decision.

Quinn picked Vallas as running mate.

HE'S BACK...Now Vallas, the master of disaster and the king of school privatization, is gone from N.O., leaving behind a trail of lost, costly court cases and shattered public school systems from Haiti to Chile, from Philly to Bridgeport, CN. For some reason angry teachers will never understand, IL Gov. Pat Quinn has chosen  teachers-union-buster Vallas as his Democratic Party running mate in his upcoming election against right-wing Republican billionaire Bruce Rauner. Good luck on that one, Governor.

Cross-posted at Schooling in the Ownership Society.

Quinn losing to the worst person in the world. Why?

Workers need more than a $1.75 raise.

Mimicking former MSNBC great Keith Olbermann, I'm willing to go out on a limb a say that billionaire Bruce Rauner is the worst person in the world. And few would disagree, although Pat Quinn's running mate Paul Vallas may have a lock on second place. While Quinn proudly takes credit ("I was born for this...") for slashing the pension benefits of the state's public-sector workers, Rauner has vowed to do away with collective-bargaining rights and unions altogether, a la Gov. Walker in Wisconsin. 

So why does the worst person in the world, hated even by most Republicans, have a double-digit lead over Quinn the incumbent with just 12 weeks to go? This in a state where only 27% of voters vote Republican. I would argue that it's not just the money factor. And it's not only because running-mate Vallas has hardly lifted a finger to help Quinn. Rauner can't even spend all the dough he's raising, even while saturating the market for almost a year now with trite, negative, sometimes laughable ads (what ever happened to Bruce-the-Hammer?). I mean, there's only so much money you can spend on a campaign without moving beyond your own base. The rest, he's has had to spread around to a host of ultra-right-wing, Tea Party and Koch Bros.-aligned groups. 

What ever happened to #Hammer & Shake?

My assessment? This is one of the worst the-other-guy's-a-crook ("unpatriotic") campaigns in recent memory, which has to work in favor of the guy with the most money. Quinn's campaign has been pitiful, giving even the most avowed Rauner haters little to get excited about. Despite receiving gobs of money from the state's unions, Quinn has done nothing to win back the trust and support of the state's 850,000 union workers and especially its 87,000 retired teachers who he shafted with his support for the (unconstitutional on its face) pension-robbing SB-1 legislation. That is precisely the group of angry, activist voters who could put Quinn back on top. 

Even Quinn's support for an increase in the state's minimum wage has been tepid. On an issue that could rally the base, the governor supports a measly buck-seventy-five-cent increase in the minimum wage (hardly livable) and that, only in a non-binding resolution. Pathetic. 

And barely a word since April regarding public education funding, charter school expansion, school closings or much of anything else. 

If it's his management team that's to blame for this weak stuff, Quinn needs to re-tool quickly.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

French Economist Thomas Piketty

Economist Thomas Piketty

There is a fundamentalist belief by capitalists that capital will save the world, and it just isn't so. Not because of what Marx said about the contradictions of capitalism, because, as I discovered, capital is an end in itself and no more." -- The Guardian, Occupy was right

Arne Duncan responds to mass teacher protest...

Tells  the crowd the state had an opportunity to “help lead the country where we need to go,” despite the “drama and noise” now on display. -- DuncanDonut

 Ed Commissioner John B. King Jr.:

 “We’re poised to lead the country. It’s within our grasp.” -- CCSSRules

Quinn, NEA Pres. Cinda Klickna, & Rauner at IEA RA

Pat Quinn at IEA Conference

"Don't compare me to the Almighty," said Quinn. "Compare me to the alternative over there." --  #NotToWorry

Times Editorial 

The myth of the superpredator helped spawn a generation of misguided laws that treated young people as adults, despite evidence that doing so actually increases recidivism. -- Echoes of the Superpredator 

Quinn: 'Don't compare me to The Almighty...'

IEA members pick their poison

Stunning that Democrats like Gov. Quinn now feel it necessary to stand in front of 1,200 educators at the IEA Regional Assembly in Chicago and assure them that,

"Eliminating collective bargaining is not part of my agenda."

"I respect teachers" [No, really I do].

"I'm not going to charterize this system of education in Illinois."

"I'm absolutely opposed to school vouchers."

He did tell the teacher union delegates that he would be willing to negotiate pension "reform" with them. But only IF the courts throw out the unconstitutional pension-busting bill he signed.

And then he offered them this:

"Don't compare me to The Almighty..."

Not to worry, Gov. Not to worry.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Captain Clarion Tweet: "When does that dammed trickle down start, already?"

ANON

"In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice, but in
practice, there is. " -Anonymous

NEW CHARTER STUDY

 “The results showed that they were virtually identical,” Mazany said of the 2010 study. “I found that surprising because charters are based on a model that they have greater freedom, opportunity to be innovative and be more flexible. So I would have intuitively expected they would have been performing much better than the neighborhood schools they were pitted against.” -- Terry Mazany, president and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust

"Stark raving Rahm"

PROGRESSIVE MAG INTERVIEWS RAHM

IC: What do you think when you hear the word “gentrification”? 

RE: I know there are a lot of bad connotations. High rents and people being forced out who have been there for years. And there is a reason it has that connotation. But if we are smarter about it, we can do things that allow improvements. -- Stark Raving Rahm

LSC ELECTIONS

 “If these people in the charter school movement see the importance of that local empowerment of the community and the parents and the teachers, why don’t they duplicate it within their own schools?” -- CTU's Michael Brunson  

TORTURE

“If he [Dick Cheney] doesn’t think that was torture, I would invite him anywhere in the United States to sit in a waterboard and go through what those people went through, one of them 100-plus-odd times." -- Sen. Angus King (I-Maine)

SCHOOL FUNDING

“Illinois will never succeed by starving its schools.” -- Gov. Quinn spokeswoman Brooke Anderson.

Creepy Rauner Dems

CREEPY! Rauner Dems

Interesting to see who showed up Thursday for Rauner's photo shoot of “Democrats and Independents for Rauner” besides Mrs. Rauner. Only surprise was that Bruce's buddy Rahm wasn't in this picture, even though everyone knows he should be.

Interesting names on the list include:


Rahm/Daley pal, billionaire James Crown -- President of Henry Crown and Company, he serves on the Board of Directors of JPMorgan Chase & Co. and General Dynamics who sits on the Board of Trustees at the University of Chicago. Crown's the guy who bankrolled Stand For Children's invasion of IL and who sat at the table at Aspen with SFC's Jonah Edelman, bragging about how they had hoodwinked IEA and IFT leaders into backing the horrendous anti-union bill SB7. The very same IEA leaders currently attacking their critics still call the bill, "a model of collaboration".

Lula Ford – Former Chicago public school teacher, principal and CPS bureaucrat under Paul Vallas. She probably should have been named CEO after Arne Duncan, but was passed over by Mayor Daley when he appointed Ron Huberman (BTW, what ever happened to Huberman's Culture of Calm?-- I digress). I'm surprised that she's not supporting her old pal Vallas, Quinn's running mate. But I guess money talks & bullshit walks in this case. Then again, Vallas, like Rauner, is a Republicrat who swings either way and is only serving as window dressing on Quinn's campaign.

Charter school hustler Phyllis Lockett - Founding President and CEO of New Schools for Chicago, corporate type, former Executive Director of the Civic Consulting Alliance, she previously held marketing, sales and business development roles with IBM, Kraft Foods and General Mills.

Rev. James Meeks -- No surprise here. Like Rauner, he wants to turn IL into a right-to-work state. He's a big voucher supporter and deal-cutter supreme. Meeks claims he never heard of Rauner before Eden Martin, President of the Civic Committee called on Rauner’s behalf about five years ago to request a meeting. A gay-basher, Meeks was named one of the "leading black religious voices in the anti-gay movement" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Newton Minnow -- Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission under President John F. Kennedy. Invoked JFK's name to explain why he's backing proto-fascist Rauner. Oh my!

And the list goes on. Excuse me while I go wash my hands.

HOLD YOUR NOSE...As much as Quinn has earned the enmity and distrust of teachers and all union workers with his support for the great pension grab, he will obviously get union backing in his race against billionaire union-buster Bruce Rauner.

I too will have to decide whether or not to  hold my nose and vote for Quinn even as he works to pauperize me, my family and thousands of other retirees, teachers, and public employees. Until we are able to radically reshape the political landscape in this city, state and nation, these will continue to be the kind of choices we have. The result -- most voters will stay home and this will likely be the most expensive race, with the lowest turnout in history. A democracy up for sale to the highest bidder.

If I do vote, I hope I don't end up standing in the Quinn voting line next to IEA Pres. Cinda Klickna. No telling what I might say. Instead of directing her venom against Rauner, she used her first post-primary evaluation of the union's electoral efforts to attack the “naysayers" who she claims "called our involvement in the primary’s ‘a fool errand’ and suggested it was a waste of time.” She referred to us as “those folks who root for our union to fail.”

Hmm. Wants the union to fail? Seems like she is doing a pretty good job of that on her own. Who is she referring to here, anyway? No doubt, her screed was aimed at union rank-and-file dissidents, like brother Fred, a retired teacher and former IEA local union leader who righteously objected to her bone-headed strategy of spending $3 million of union members' money to support Kirk Dillard, the man from ALEC, in the GOP primary. Dillard, who Klickna calls "a friend of education" returned the favor 10-fold by calling for a billion-dollar cut in CPS's budget and for a "scrubbing" of Medicaid. With friends like that...

We can only imagine how that money could be used right now in the current battle against Rauner, who will surely outspend Quinn in his effort to buy the guv's mansion. Or how about in next year's race for mayor. My god, $3 million just might swing it.

Just how much abuse will we accept?

Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. -- Frederick Douglass 

If the great Illinois pension robbery holds up in the courts, many career teachers and other public workers stand to lose upwards of $200,000 in retirement income over the next decade or so as their cost-of-living adjustments are capped. This is not money that was being "given" to them as a gift. It's money that we have contributed to our own retirement accounts and money that was contractually promised us and Constitutionally protected by the state. It is also, the only money teachers get when they retire. They are excluded from Social Security.

If Tuesday's vote wasn't bad enough, it was followed by this degrading cartoon in yesterday's Tribune, portraying us and the union as a castrated dog. Just how much more abuse will teachers and public employees receive? The exact amount they will accept, said Douglass.

Writes teacher Michelle Gunderson:

I don't think anything I've seen in this fight has horrified me more. The depiction of union workers who lost the pension fight as neutered dogs recalls propaganda of Goebbels and the lynching of black men in the south. Please decide to comment on the Tribune site, and share with others. Fred Klonsky's blog is the best response I've seen. 

In case you are taking names, which we damn well better be, here's the list of who voted how.In the House.  In the Senate.

Quinn: "I was put on earth" for this. 

I'm interested to see how the state's union leaders will respond to the great pension robbery. Gov. Quinn, who will likely sign the new bill into law today, claims that he was "put on earth" to engineer the pension heist. I'm hoping he, and other sellout Dems won't be rewarded for their despicable actions. SEIU, formerly Quinn's biggest supporter, sent members an email Tuesday reminding them that a "yes" vote on pension reform "means a 'no' vote on Election Day,"

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

The single biggest contributor to Quinn's war chest, the Service Employees International Union, told The Associated Press that there could be "two big strikes" against endorsing Quinn for governor in November. Besides Quinn's support for the $160 billion savings plan, he also has been under fire from the union for considering signing legislation that would alter the pensions of Chicago Park District employees. Quinn is expected to sign state pension legislation early as Thursday in quiet ceremony, a nod to the political sensitivity of the issue affecting employees across the state.

The Worst Pol in the World Award may go to Senate President Cullerton who endorsed the bill even while calling it "unconstitutional." The Sun-Times reports that Cullerton is having "serious heartburn" over the vote. Poor him.

Thanks to Senator Willie Delgado who condemned the bill as “morally wrong, morally corrupt” legislation that will “punish retired teachers, the janitor, the woman who serves lunch to your child in school.”

Kudos also to Lt. Gov. Sheila Simon, who has refused to run with Quinn for a second term, and who openly split with him on the pension bill, which she says, "puts too much of the burden on lower income workers and retirees." Simon is instead running for State Comptroller. She's the daughter of late U.S. Senator Paul Simon.

This from Counter Punch:

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle — a Democrat whose county houses Chicago and its suburbs and employs 20,000 workers in the system’s jails, public hospitals and other frontline agencies — says she may use the bill as a template for her upcoming raid on Cook County’s pension fund. Chicago Mayor 1%, Rahm Emanuel — who jammed through NAFTA for Bill Clinton and derailed the public option in Obama’s insurance company bailout scheme — is also a big fan.

What Vallas did in North Chicago

“Vallas ushered in an era of massive expansion of standardized testing; the privatization of public schools through outsourcing and charter school expansion; and the devastating policy of school turnarounds, which resulted in the firing of scores of black and veteran teachers,” Lewis said after Vallas was picked by Quinn.

Before he was booted out as superintendent of Bridgeport, Paul Vallas, one of the great double-dippers of all time, was brought into North Chicago, IL, as a high-paid consultant to "reform" the largely low-income, African-American and Latino school district. IL State Supt. Chris Koch gave a $311,000 consulting deal to the Vallas Group, even though they were outbid by other, more highly-rated consultants. For Vallas, contracts in North Chicago and Rockford, IL, would mark a back-door entryway back into Illinois state politics.

Once in North Chicago, Vallas did what Vallas does. He recommended closing four of the district’s nine schools and laying off 130 teachers and staff — 39 percent of the district’s workforce. That was his view of reform.

“The Vallas Group hopes that the recommendations in this report will help North Chicago become a model for school improvement,” Vallas wrote in his June 2013 report obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times through an open-records request.

 According to the Sun-Times:

For years, North Chicago’s school system has endured extreme financial difficulties; been poorly managed; faced declining enrollment, and seen its state and federal funding drop. Its enrollment of 3,814 students is heavily Hispanic and African American, with 78 percent of students described as low-income. 

In 2011, the district’s former school board president, Gloria Harper, and its one-time transportation director, Alice Sherrod, were charged in an $800,000 kickback scheme tied to student-busing contracts.

Surprising to some is that Vallas-style "reform" -- moving into largely African-American districts, firing teachers en masse and closing schools -- is also the model favored by "progressive" Gov. Pat Quinn. He says that's one of the main reasons he chose Vallas as his running mate,  praising the great union-buster and privatizer of public schools from Philadelphia and New Orleans to Haiti  as “an independent problem solver with a proven record of reform.”

Vallas is Quinn's white knight with a "servant's heart"

Gov. Quinn must think we are all idiots.

Yesterday he described his newly-named running mate Paul Vallas as, a white knight — a school reform champion — who now would help focus his expertise on fixing the state’s pension crisis.

Rahm, who also has a white horse, Bruce Rauner, in the Republican race, chimed in:

"The governor made the decision to pick Paul Vallas based on his record of being a strong advocate for education reform." 

Yes, Vallas is white. Yes, he is a champion of corporate-style reform, union-busting, and privatization. As for "fixing" the pension crisis? Well, we already knew what Gov. Squeazy means by "fix", long before he picked Vallas.

But...

“The most significant positive contribution that Paul Vallas left in Bridgeport is the fact that he united teachers, students and parents in opposition to everything he spent his lifetime creating,” Jon Green, National Deputy Director at Working Families, told the Sun-Times on Tuesday.

Maybe it's time for a Working Families here in Illinois to take on the Democratic Party of Quinn, Madigan, Burke, Emanuel and now, Vallas.

WEEKEND VALLAS QUOTABLES

Vallas (right) was beaten by Rod Blagojevich (left) in '02. 

Fran Spielman

Sources said Vallas alienated teachers unions by privatizing some New Orleans schools and forging partnerships with Connecticut Republicans in a desperate attempt to hang onto his job there. -- Sun-Times

Carol Felsenthal

[Paul's brother] Dean Vallas supported conservative Republican Brady against Quinn in 2010 because he thought Quinn lacked “the political skills to navigate around a Mike Madigan." -- Chicago Magazine

CTU Pres. Karen Lewis

"While he was CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, Vallas pioneered the corporate driven education model in our city. His policies continue to devastate our schools system, which recently suffered 50 school closures, deep and painful school budget cuts, and the loss of thousands of experienced school staff are key tenets of the Vallas model." -- Examiner

Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Connecticut Working Families Party

"It's not surprising Vallas is leaving town. His brand of corporate reform turned out to be toxic, and the voters have rejected him. But the last thing he deserves is a promotion." -- The Courant

Eric Zorn

Vallas, like Quinn, is a balding white guy in his 60s from a fading political era — he ran a close second to Rod Blagojevich for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination in 2002 ... I like the Vallas choice in part for that reason — Vallas is the only candidate for lieutenant governor who's clearly ready to take over the top job if necessary.  -- Chicago Tribune

We thought we were done with Vallas but... he's back

Look out. Vallas is back in town. 

We tried to finish him off back in 2001 but...

No sooner had I finished posting about how the Working Families Party and allies were running Paul Vallas out of Bridgeport, than I get the news that he has been selected as Gov. Quinn's running mate here in Illinois. Yes, the master of the disaster from Philly to New Orleans and from Haiti to Chile, the buster of teacher unions, the school privatization guru himself, is back with a vengeance.

Sun-Times political reporter Fran Spielman and David McKinney call it, "a stunning political move that puzzled many African-American politicians."

What was Quinn thinking? friends ask. Is this a way of sticking it to Rahm? Madigan? To the state's unions? Doesn't he need those unions to defeat the Republicans? Maybe not. Or maybe they will support him anyway. After all, they (including the teachers unions) were probably going to overlook his role as pension buster and turn out their members for him.

Quinn is most likely hoping that Republicrat Vallas will bring him badly-needed votes in the white collar suburbs or in cities like Rockford where his ed consulting firm has been successful in bringing in privately run charter schools to replace neighborhood schools. He might also see Vallas as a fundraising link to corporate "school" reform groups and their PACs. Finally, Quinn who's on the outs with Madigan, Rahm and others in the Chicago machine, might see Vallas as an ally in the state's back-ally faction fighting. After all, despite his declaration of support for Quinn, the Mayor and his friends are quietly backing Republican pal Bruce Rauner in the race.

Remember, Vallas, was dumped by Mayor Daley in 2001. It was Daley who had invented the position of schools CEO for him in 1995. But Vallas who had his own battles with then school board President Gery Chico began trying to upstage the Mayor himself in the media. This led to an irate Daley firing him. Then he ran for governor and was defeated by the machine boys in his run for the Democratic nomination in 2002 against Quinn's predecessor Rod Blagojevich. Vallas answered with an endorsement of Gery Chico in the mayor's race against Rahm. Vallas' brother even worked as an insider on Chico's campaign. After Quinn replaced Blagojevich, he appointed now Vallas ally, Chico to lead the Illinois State Board of Education, a post that often puts him into confrontations with Rahm.

PV, as savvy political infighter and former Chicago machine soldier, would like nothing better than to take advantage of current faction fighting and get back into the game here. There was even talk recently about him jumping into the mayor's race.

Fred Klonsky

The question now is, what are the unions going to do? They obviously can't support Republican Rauner who is their self-admitted sworn enemy. They could sit this one out despite threats to take away their "seat at the table" if Quinn wins anyway, without their support. Or they could debase themselves by planting their lips squarely on Quinn's behind while he busts their pensions and restores union-busting Vallas to prominence.

The same could be asked about party liberals and even the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus, since it was Vallas who launched corporate "reform" in Chicago which began the large-scale removal of black principals and teachers from CPS. In picking Vallas, Quinn passed over several black and Latino possible running mates who could have helped the ticket in those communities. Like the unions, Quinn probably figured he has those groups in his back pocket anyway. We'll see.

"It’s amazing to me. I’m extremely disappointed in his decision, as I know the caucus is,” said Ald. Latasha Thomas, chairman of the City Council’s Education Committee.“There’s already backlash. I don’t know what it’s going to mean in March or, better yet, November. But there is some backlash. Absolutely…In the primary, he has no challenge. So, it’s the November election. He’s got some work to do. That is why I am so disappointed in him because we are taken for granted.”

 In a comment in the Tribune, African-American schools activist Valerie Leonard writes:

Where's the Illinois Legislative Black Caucus now? We need them to voice outrage about Pat Quinn selecting Paul Vallas as a running mate...He used Hurricane Katrina and charter schools to break unions and destroy the public school system in Louisiana. He did the same thing in Philadelphia. The folks in Bridgeport, Connecticut had the good sense to kick this non-educator out of the superintendent's job. So, Governor Pat Quinn selected him to run as Lieutenant Governor?

Yes, he's back.