After Rahm's legacy tour, he heads for Wall Street

The elite get all the breaks and are shown all the shortcuts. In the meantime, ordinary people are forced to pay full freight. -- Rahm Emanuel in The Atlantic

Rahm’s announcement of his new Wall Street gig comes on the heels of his phony legacy tour where he tried, with lots of media help, to rebrand his term in Chicago as a “progressive” era of good governance. It included this piece of centrist populism in the Atlantic where Rahm fakes a hit on "American elites" but actually goes after the growing "socialist" insurgency within the Democratic Party.

As many of us expected it would, the story ends with Mayor 1% laughing and flashing his middle finger at all of us as he boards his limo to the Wall Street investment firm Centerview Partners LLC, whose leaders are mainly Rahm cronies and campaign donors. They include Centerview founder Blair Effron, who contributed $61,500 to the former mayor’s campaign fund, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who has donated more than $70,000 to Emanuel’s campaign, and Robert Pruzan, another Centerview founder and Rahm pal for the past 20 years.

This so-called "boutique" investment firm Centerview (centrist Democrats -- get it?) is one of the most profitable on Wall Street. The company brags on its website that it has advised on nearly $3 trillion worth of transactions.

In 2014, Centerview served as an adviser to Time Warner on its proposed merger with Comcast that drew opposition from many who argued the deal would hurt consumers.

According to the Tribune, Emanuel penned an August 2014 letter to the FCC, encouraging regulators to support the deal, writing on city of Chicago letterhead that he believed the proposed merger would not “reduce choice, elevate prices or otherwise harm customers.”

Good riddance, we hope, to all that.

Oakland's general strike -- Today's teachable moment

"We as fellow occupiers of Oscar Grant Plaza propose that on Wednesday November 2, 2011, we liberate Oakland and shut down the 1%." -- Occupy Oakland General Assembly votes to shut it down.

Teachers and students are playing a central role in today's general strike. Teachers are participating in teach-ins across the city and thousands of students are planning to take part in school walkouts. Lots of schools should be closed with lots of learning going on. No standardized tests but authentic, performance-based assessments. Curriculum includes values clarification, community leadership, economics, political science (this is what democracy looks like), mathematics (percentages -- the power of 99).

Students in Philly are walking out for 99 minutes at noon in solidarity with Occupy Oakland. In New York, the New York City All Student Assembly has called for students to gather in Washington Square to express their solidarity before joining other Occupy Wall Street activists in a larger solidarity demonstration.

I don't know why I'm surprised at the total black out of the general strike on morning news show. Of course, Democracy Now covered it extensively. But not a word on NBC's Today show --  I did learn a lot about Kim Kardashian's impending divorce from Kris whatshisname. 

Oakland cops are asking Mayor Quan, "are we part of the 99% or not."  The fact that they are even asking doesn't bode well for Wall Streeters.

Targeting mayoral control of the schools

Photo: Anna Philips

Brother Fred reports from OWS that mayoral control of the schools has become a prime target of the protests. Although I don't think I'll ever be at ease with that human microphone thing (reminds me too much of the Monty Python movie, Life of Brian), it does sound like a great way to get your point across in one of  Chancellor Wolcott's carefully controlled policy panel meetings.

There's a pretty good debate about standardized testing going on at National Journal online. The main protagonists are FairTest's Monty Neill and former Bush adviser and die-hard NCLB defender (he may be the only one left) Sandy Kress. On today's Bridging Differences blog post  "End it, don't mend it", Diane Ravitch warns that, "Instead of ditching this disastrous law, senators are trying to apply patches."

School's CEO J.C. Brizard calls Chicago's widening racial achievement gap "unacceptable." Good! But then he offers up the 90-minute longer school day as the solution. Not so good.
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NYT reports that the top 1 percent of earners more than doubled their share of the nation’s income over the last three decades.  

The most affluent fifth of the population received 53 percent of after-tax household income in 2007, up from 43 percent in 1979. In other words, the after-tax income of the most affluent fifth exceeded the income of the other four-fifths of the population.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Duncan's biggest fan

“I’m a fan,” said Margaret Spellings, Duncan’s immediate predecessor, who was education secretary during President George W. Bush’s second term and an architect of Bush’s signature No Child Left Behind policy. “He’s a good man who I think is doing the best job he can.” -- Politico

Petrilli agrees

He has “used his power responsibly for the most part,” said Michael J. Petrilli, executive vice president at the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute and a former Bush-era Education Department official. “The priorities he’s been pushing on are the right ones.” -- Politico

Ravitch not so much
“If you like federal control of education, he’s your man.” -- Diane Ravitch

Gates knows best

"It may surprise you—it was certainly surprising to us—but the field of education doesn't know very much at all about effective teaching." -- Bill & Melinda Gates

Measurement and its discontents

One way is to ask ourselves what is missing from our measurements. Are the tests administered by schools making students smarter and more educated, or just making us think we know how to evaluate education?  -- Robert Crease, New York Times

Beating the bushes for a speaker in Denver

Look who they've dredged up in Denver to speak on school reform. This even though Jr. had backed out of his previous commitment. His handlers wouldn't let him get within 10 miles of WikiLeaks' founder Assange.

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Even though the president's jobs bill was DOA, Dems are pushing ahead with it piece-by-piece in order to force the hand of Limbaugh Party opposition-ists. Not a bad campaign strategy. First up is $35 billion for state and local governments to rehire teachers, police and firefighters paid for by a tax increase for millionaires and ending subsidies for the oil and gas industry. "Our expectation [is] that the first measure will be teachers," says White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

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I'm looking forward to hearing  John Carlos speak tonight with my favorite sports writer, Dave Zirin up at Northwestern.  For those too young or mis-educated to know, Carlos was the great Olympic sprinter who in 1968,  along with Tommie Smith, raised his fist in the black power salute, in open defiance, when he got to the medals podium. He's been an outspoken human rights advocate ever since. Zirin is co-author, along with Carlos, of The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment That Changed the World. Cornell West wrote the foreword.

In this morning's L.A. Times:

About 200 protesters gathered near downtown Tuesday to link the nationwide Occupy Wall Street-inspired protests to budgets cuts and layoffs in the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Occupy LAUSD” participants took on the district, education philanthropists and charter schools as well as giving voice to familiar themes such as opposing corporate greed and inequality. Many of the demonstrators had marched from the main Occupy L.A. campsite around City Hall, more than a mile away. English teacher Greta Enszer spoke at the school board meeting going on inside district headquarters and then addressed the crowd outside in similar terms.  

“This is not OK to lay off permanent teachers,” she told the school board. “This [job] is not a stepping stone to me. This is my profession. My students are very important to me.”

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Dr. Cornell West

"If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. were alive today, he would be on Freedom Plaza."--Upon his arrest in D.C. protest

Sen. Bernie Sanders

"Now that Occupy Wall Street is shining a spotlight on Wall Street greed and the enormous inequalities that exist in America, the question then becomes, how do we change the political, economic and financial system to work for all Americans, not just the top 1 percent?" -- Huffington

KIPP gets an "F"

"I still find it very difficult to vote for two more schools when their first school, which got all these praises, is an F," -- Jacksonville school board member, Tommy Hazouri

Taxing the rich?

“I suggested 80 percent. A tremendous number of wealthy people haven’t given much of anything.” -- Billionaire industrialist Jon Huntsman Sr.

"What do these protesters want, anyway?"

Truthout

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Fred Shuttlesworth

"He marched into the jaws of death every day in Birmingham before we got there." -- Andrew Young

The Mayor of Wall Street

"What they're trying to do is take the jobs away from people working in this city," the mayor declared in his harshest criticism of the three-week-old protest that has caught the attention of the nation. "They're trying to take away the tax base we have because none of this is good for tourism." -- N.Y. Post

AFT Pres. Randi Weingarten

"They are basically sending us a message that says, 'Don't create a society where one percent basically has all the wealth.'" -- CBS News

The GOP and the DOE

“You can imagine the Republican candidate is saying, ‘Not only do I want to end the Education Department as a bureaucratic monster, but I want to defund programs for needy kids or special-needs kids,’ or ‘I want to let states spend those dollars on other kids.’ That’s a very difficult debate for the Republican candidate.” -- Frederick M. Hess, director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute,

Let's Occupy Chicago Monday

Meet at the Board of Trade (LaSalle and Jackson) at 4 P.M.

The Occupy Wall Street protests are coming full-blast to Chicago where Mayor Emanuel and the Civic Committee continue where Mayor Daley left off,  with the city as their personal cash cow.  On Monday the teachers union and education activists will play a key role in the flowering Occupy Chicago Movement. The CTU is mobilizing teachers, who have a day off Monday for Columbus Day, to meet  at the Board of Trade (LaSalle and Jackson) and march to CPS headquarters, to City Hall and the Art Institute to demand and end to the privatization of our schools and asking that the state and and wealthy investors gathering at the Art Institute pay their fair share and adequately fund our schools. Four other marches are also expected to meet up at the Institute.

Greg Hinz at Crain's reports:

The union says about 10,000 teachers, jobless veterans, students and others will join in objecting to "corporate bailouts, tax breaks for the rich and the way neighborhood schools are cheated out of more than $250 million a year." The latter refers to tax-increment financing funds, which the city uses for development projects and which the union asserts can be switched to other needs.

The union said in a press release that demonstrators will also rally for "a better school day" as a counter to the mayor's own 90 minutes of more seat time campaign.

Other marches will begin at: 

• Daley Plaza (Washington & Dearborn) where SEIU members are coming together to demand meaningful job creation.
• Federal Plaza (Adams & Dearborn) An alliance of labor unions and immigrant groups are rallying to demand real solutions to the unemployment crisis. 
• Hyatt Regency (Wacker & Stetson) National Peoples Action—Pay Us Back-Outside of the Mortgage Banker’s Association 98th Annual Convention and Expo. Congresswoman Jan Schakowskywill be speaking to the group about the foreclosure crisis in Chicago. 
• Hilton Chicago (Balbo & Michigan) College students and MoveOn activists are converging outside the Futures & Options expo to demand that corporate welfare be reinvested in our schools and communities.

News from the battle front

Bloomberg's White Shirts go wild

Occupy Wall Street Arrests; Fox 5 Crew and Protesters Hit by Mace, Batons: MyFoxNY.com

News from the battle front

Unions join the protest

Crain's New York Business, New York Magazine, and The Village Voice are reporting that "a loose coalition of labor and community groups" have pledged solidarity with the protests at Zuccotti Park in New York's financial district and are organizing a march for next Wednesday, Oct. 5. -- Slate

Who are the 99 percent?

College debt shows up a lot in these stories, actually. It’s more insistently present than housing debt, or even unemployment. That might speak to the fact that the protests tilt towards the young. But it also speaks, I think, to the fact that college debt represents a special sort of betrayal. We told you that the way to get ahead in America was to get educated. You did it. And now you find yourself in the same place, but buried under debt. You were lied to. -- Ezra Klein, WaPo

UFT will show support for Wall St. protests today

At 4:30 p.m., members will gather near the UFT banner in Foley Square. Marchers will step off at 5 p.m. from Foley Square and head to Zuccotti Park, where they will be welcomed by the Occupy Wall Street protesters who have created an encampment to denounce corporate greed and the grossly unequal distribution of wealth in this country. Their rallying cry: “We are the 99 percent.” -- Edwize

Other unions that will be joining the protest today

• AFL-CIO (AFSCME)
• United NY
• TWU Local 100
• SEIU 1199
• CWA 1109
• RWDSU
• Communications Workers of America
• CWA Local 1180
• United Auto Workers
• United Federation of Teachers
• Professional Staff Congress - CUNY
• National Nurses United
• Writers Guild East

Who won't be there today

I'm pretty sure you won't find corporate reformers like DFER at today's protest. The reason? Their patrons, like hedge-funders Whitney Tilson, Charles Ledley, John Petry, David Einhorn, Joel Greenblatt, Vincent Mai, Michael Novagratz, and Boykin Curry already occupy Wall Street.

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

U.S. Marine

"2nd time I've fought for my country. 1st time I've known my enemy." - At Wall Street protests

Alabama Supt.

"In the case of this law, our students do not have anything to fear," Casey Wardynski said in halting Spanish. He urged families to send students to class and explained that the state was only trying to compile statistics. Police, he insisted, were not getting involved in schools. -- A.P. "Ala. Hispanic students vanish"

The "Chicago Miracle"

So after waves and waves of reform, you thought Chicago public elementary schools had made tremendous progress in the last 20 years? Think again...Math scores improved only “incrementally” in those grades, and racial gaps in both subjects increased, with African American students falling the most behind other groups, especially in reading — an area pushed heavily under former Mayor Richard M. Daley. -- Sun-Times

N.Y. Teacher

“This time I just got a letter home, explaining, you know, that I’m no longer needed,” said Ms. Ramirez, 30, who is five months pregnant with her first child. -- New York Times, "School Layoffs About to Fall Heaviest on the Poorest and Most Struggling"