Thread: Corruption ?? In Chicago ??

Corruption still rife in Chicago years after Al Capone
By Andrew Stern | Reuters – 7 hrs ago

CHICAGO (Reuters) - The city where gangster Al Capone once kept the mayor on his payroll ranked first in public corruption convictions over the past three decades though the recent pace, perhaps because lessons have been learned or due to earnest prosecutors, researchers said on Wednesday. "We here lead the country in corruption, just like in Al Capone's era of corrupting Mayor Big Bill Thompson" during the 1920s, said University of Illinois at Chicago political scientist and former city alderman Dick Simpson, who spoke to reporters before testifying to a city task force on ethics.

An analysis of U.S. Department of Justice statistics by a team led by Simpson showed the Northern District of Illinois, which includes Chicago, led all 94 federal districts with 1,531 convictions for public corruption since 1976.

The California district that includes Los Angeles ranked second in the period with 1,275 convictions and the district covering New York City's Manhattan was third with 1,202. Both have larger populations than Chicago's district.

Still, there was a pronounced decline in federal corruption cases in the Chicago region after it led the nation with 610 convictions during the 1990s. Between 2000 and 2009, the Chicago district had 367 convictions and in 2010 there were 46, ranking the city fourth during both periods. "The lessons of the earlier 25 years probably had an effect," said political analyst Don Rose, who was not involved in the research. "The politicians saw the dire consequences of getting caught, and the voters may have taken more care in selecting who represented them."

Hard-charging federal prosecutors beginning with Jim Thompson in the 1970s, who was elected Illinois governor in 1976, and current U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald beginning in 2001, also struck fear into tempted officials, Rose said.

The report showed Illinois, the fifth-most populous state, was also rife with public corruption, ranking third behind much-larger New York and California in public corruption convictions between 1976 and 2010, the last year for which data was collected.

Illinois' last two governors and four out of the past seven were convicted of federal crimes. Simpson singled out the state capital of Springfield as sorely in need of reform.

Besides the four governors, prosecutors in Illinois have ensnared two U.S. Congressmen, a state treasurer, an attorney general, the state's auditor, seven state lawmakers, numerous judges, appointed local officials, policemen, and city inspectors since 1976.

Only the District of Columbia and Louisiana had higher rates of public corruption than Illinois on a per capita basis, according to the report produced by Simpson and Jim Nowlan of the University of Illinois' Institute of Government and Public Affairs.

Simpson, an academic who was elected alderman in 1971 as an opponent of Chicago's Democratic political machine and reelected in 1975 before leaving the city council to return to academia, said he believed most public officials convicted of cheating or stealing "don't ever think they're going to be caught. "For every public official caught, there are 10 others involved in the scheme who weren't," he added.

There were signs in the year-old administration of Mayor Rahm Emanuel of increasing transparency in government contracts and a dismantling of what Simpson derided as "the old boy network" that dominated city-directed business for years and bred corruption.

The 5,000-strong patronage army of city workers once controlled by Emanuel's predecessor, Mayor Richard Daley, had shrunk, though that was largely due to the paring of city payrolls due to budget cuts, Simpson said. "Clearly something has to be done to stem corruption" in Chicago and in Illinois, he said, citing citizen outrage evident in public opinion polls.

Simpson recommended expanded oversight by the city's inspector general, and stricter ethics and campaign finance laws to get rid of gifts to politicians, lobbying by public officials, nepotism and patronage in hiring.

http://news.yahoo.com/corruption-sti...202412176.html

I know we had a thread in which Obama quoted "The Untouchable's" line about "the Chicago Way" .... but I couldn't find it last night...

Chicago thuggery personified: Meet Chicago Teachers’ Union president Karen Lewis
By Michelle Malkin • September 10, 2012 10:52 AM



This is the woman leading the walkout of 26,000 public school teachers in Chicago. Karen Lewis, head of the Chicago Teachers’ Union, is a loud-mouthed “social justice” radical whose Big Labor racket would rather abandon 350,000 children to the streets than accept merit-based pay, teacher evaluations, and a 16 percent pay raise. http://www.suntimes.com/15054902-761...main-open.html The school board had already caved considerably on the union’s demands, but as the Chicago Sun-Times put it: “From the get-go, the union seemed intent on striking.” http://www.suntimes.com/15054902-761...main-open.html

Last night, Lewis mocked public charter schools that are defying the strike and doing their jobs as not “real” schools. http://twitchy.com/2012/09/10/chicag...lash-violence/

Derision is her specialty. Her tirades at teachers’ confabs are infamous. http://communities.washingtontimes.c...ing-behaviior/ Don’t feel sorry for her when she moans about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s bully tactics and trash mouth. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/18/us...er=rss&emc=rss http://eagnews.org/ctus-karen-lewis-...el-of-tyranny/ Lewis has one of her own. Here she is bragging about smoking weed in college, cracking homophobic slurs about Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s lisp, and whining about teachers being “demonized” at a “social justice” conference:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=A1YXOSaMZzs
Full rant : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AUGgJ...layer_embedded

Via The American Thinker: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/...l_justice.html

Angry at former Chicago Public School chief and now U.S. Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, an old pal and neighbor of President Barack Obama (D), for his support of (public) non union charter schools, this oh so sensitive teacher, understanding his differences delicately observed:

“Now, you know he (Duncan) went to private school ’cause if he had gone to public school he would have had that lisp fixed.”
Making it all better she mockingly added,
“I know, that was ugly, wasn’t it? I’m sorry.”

The teachers, learning about teaching for social justice, chuckled at this profound insight.

(Duncan attended the [private] University of Chicago Lab School, the same school the Obamas placed their daughters while living in Chicago and where new mayor and Obama pal Rahm Emanuel’s children now learn.The children of the latter two do not seem to lisp.)

Continuing her pacing as she lectured about teaching for social justice, Lewis highlighted good differences, using herself as an example.

“I am the only black woman in the class of 1974 from Dartmouth College. Woo. People are impressed. Let me tell you, I spent those years smoking lots of weed, self-medicating. Self-medicating, thank you. Sounds like you all did to. Oh, I’m sorry there are kids here, I wasn’t suppose to say that right? Too late!”

But that’s ok because she also speculated about Duncan’s years at Harvard:

“He was an athlete, so he might not have been self-medicating, but I wouldn’t count on it.”

The teachers, learning about teaching for social justice, appreciated the potty talk.

Blaming the bearer of the bad news, the Chicago Teachers Union issued the following statement:

CHICAGO – Today, the Chicago Teachers Union released the following statement in response to a viral video promoted by right-wing, anti-public education advocates. The edited clip features remarks made by President Karen GJ Lewis in a keynote address before the Rethinking Schools – Northwest Teaching for Social Justice Conference which convened in Seattle last month.

Whoops! Bad differences. Using its right of free speech, the Education Action Group distributed the video, thereby earning the honorary title of “right wing and anti education.”

Meanwhile, Karen Lewis, a self described former comedian (couldn’t you tell?), and her liberal community valiantly paces back and forth, blaming and mocking everyone but the parents, the community, the mentality for the problems of a significant portion of young people.

Cuz that’s real social justice.

Here’s Lewis chumming it up with former Communist Party leader Michael Klonsky, who praises her as a “fist-in-the-air, crowd-rousing, dynamic union leader.” http://michellemalkin.com/2009/09/04...-his-comrades/ Asked to explain increasing dissatisfaction with public education, Lewis blames lack of respect for government union teachers’ leaders on…”lower class students” and “students of color.” http://illinoisreview.typepad.com/il...ule-video.html

It’s always someone else’s fault: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=iKLg3NhuLIA

Out: “For the children.”

In: Blame the children. Scr--ew the children. But then, that was always the teachers’ union’s way.

Via EAGNews: FLASHBACK: Chicago Teachers Union member tells taxpayers: “Give up the bucks!” http://eagnews.org/flackback-chicago...-up-the-bucks/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=OdREEcx0-Qc

http://michellemalkin.com/2012/09/10...t-karen-lewis/

“79% of Chicago 8th Graders Not Proficient in Reading”

…obviously because striking Chicago teachers aren’t being paid enough for the job they’ve been doing. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/us-d...icient-reading

“We’re tired of being bullied, belittled and betrayed,” Karen Lewis, head of the Teacher’s Union said at the time. “We have done everything asked of us, yet we continue to be vilified and treated with disrespect.”

It would seem that little has been asked for much in pay and benefits. Traditional?

I blame Bush. And Republicans in general. Whose hatred of education sometimes accidentally rubs off on Democrats in broke-ass Democratically controlled cities, forcing them to hate education, too.

http://proteinwisdom.com/?p=43428

Impoverished Chicago teachers hit the mall for cute red picketing outfits

Posted at 12:41 pm on September 10, 2012 by Twitchy Staff
http://twitchy.com/2012/09/10/impove...eting-outfits/

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The ABCs of the Chicago teachers’ strike: New evaluation system looms large
By Liz Goodwin, Yahoo! News | The Lookout – 1 hr 23 mins ago.

On Monday morning, 350,000 kids in Chicago found themselves without a classroom to bustle about as the city's teachers went on their first strike in 25 years. The sticking point? A new teacher evaluation system.

While Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the local teachers' union disagree on a long list of issues, including planned pay raises and sick day accrual, Emanuel said in a press conference Monday afternoon that the evaluation is the main obstacle to agreement. The new system would eventually use students' standardized test scores as 40 percent of a teacher's yearly evaluation. Teachers who don't improve their students' test scores would be fired.

Many Democrats, including Emanuel's former boss President Barack Obama, embrace this test-based way of judging educators. The president's "Race to the Top" federal program awarded money to states that agreed to rate teachers this way and institute other reforms, like encouraging the creation of more independent charter schools. As of last October, teachers can be dismissed in 14 states based on their students' test scores.

Union supporters argue that evaluating teachers using tests can be tricky, and that this "value-added" measurement can be volatile and inaccurate. Additionally, teachers who have a high proportion of poor students may have a harder time lifting their kids' scores than teachers who work in affluent districts. (About 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free or reduced federal lunches.) As many as 6,000 teachers would wrongly lose their jobs under the system, says Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) President Karen Lewis. "Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control," she said while announcing the strike, according to Reuters. But reformers counter that teachers should be responsible for helping their students score better on tests, and that current evaluation systems provide no way for ineffective teachers to be identified or removed from classrooms.

Emanuel doubled down on the new evaluation system Monday, as negotiations between CTU and the city dragged on. "What we can't do is roll back what's essential to improving our quality of education," Emanuel said at the press conference, flanked by children. He called the strike "totally unnecessary."

While other city and state leaders have pioneered test-based evaluations without prompting strikes, one sticking point that may make Emanuel's reforms more controversial is a lack of money. The school district is facing a $3 billion deficit over the next few years. Former Washington, D.C., Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee was able to overhaul the city's teacher compensation and evaluation system in part by offering big pay increases for teachers who thrived under the new system. But Emanuel has no such leverage.

"The mayor is pushing for dramatic Obama-era teacher quality reforms, but doesn't have a lot of money to help the medicine go down," Rick Hess of the American Enterprise Institute told Yahoo News.

Union organizer and former social studies teacher Jackson Potter said one issue the teachers are striking over is poor facilities. Teachers are upset that some schools lack playgrounds or libraries, while others convened in "sweltering" August classrooms without the benefit of air conditioning. Meanwhile, the facilities budget for the city has been slashed. Emanuel dismissed this complaint on Monday, saying the teachers aren't actually striking over facilities. "It's 71 degrees outside," he said. "You don't go on strike for air conditioning."

But the issues leading to the strike have been building for quite a while, said Potter. When current Secretary of Education Arne Duncan ran Chicago's schools, he pioneered a new aggressive approach of closing down schools whose students performed poorly on tests. Duncan's strategy led some teachers, who felt they were being blamed for teaching in difficult, high-poverty schools, to form a more radical branch of the union, called Caucus of Rank-and-File Educators (CORE). The organization has been instrumental in the current strike, and similar groups have formed in other big cities with strong teacher unions, such as New York and Los Angeles, potentially setting the stage for more high-profile strikes in the future.

"I think we're likely to see other cities going down the same road as Chicago," Hess said.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/...201903517.html

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Paul Ryan on Chicago teacher strike: ‘We stand with Rahm Emanuel’
By Chris Moody, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 39 mins ago.

Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan spoke out against the Chicago Teacher Union strike in Chicago Monday, saying he stands behind Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's opposition to the demonstration.

"Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong," Ryan said in Portland, Ore., according to a pool report transcript. "We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel."

More than 26,000 education professionals in the Chicago area did not attend work Monday over a contract negotiation dispute with the Chicago Board of Education.

President Barack Obama's administration declined to comment on the strike. Emanuel, elected mayor in 2011, was Obama's Chief of Staff from 2009-2010.

Here are Ryan's full remarks:

If you turned on the TV this morning or sometime today, you probably saw something about the Chicago teacher's union strike. I'd like to make a couple of comments about that because it does matter. I've known Rahm Emanuel for years. He's a former colleague of mine. Rahm and I have not agreed on every issue or on a lot of issues, but Mayor Emanuel is right today in saying that this teacher's union strike is unnecessary and wrong. We know that Rahm is not going to support our campaign, but on this issue and this day we stand with Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

We stand with the children and we stand with the families and the parents of Chicago because education reform, that's a bipartisan issue. This does not have to divide the two parties. And so, we were going to ask, where does President Obama stand? Does he stand with his former Chief of Staff Mayor Rahm Emanuel, with the children and the parents, or does he stand with the union? On issues like this, we need to speak out and be really clear. In a Romney-Ryan administration we will not be ambiguous, we will stand with education reform, we will champion bipartisan education reforms. This is a critical linchpin to the future of our country, to our economy, to make sure that our children go to the best possible school, and that education reforms revolve around the parents and the child, not the special interest group. This is something that's critical for all of us.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/p...-election.html

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Romney links Obama to Chicago teachers’ strike
By Holly Bailey, Yahoo! News | The Ticket – 5 hrs ago.

Just hours after Chicago public teachers went on strike, Mitt Romney is trying to tie President Barack Obama to the controversial walkout, suggesting he's sided with teachers' unions over school kids.

In a statement issued by his campaign, Romney says he's "disappointed" by the Chicago Teachers Union strike to "turn its back on not only a city negotiating in good faith but also the hundreds of thousands of children relying on the city's public schools."

"Teachers unions have too often made plain that their interests conflict with those of our children, and today we are seeing one of the clearest examples yet," Romney said.

While Obama has not publicly commented on the Chicago walkout, Romney tried to tie the president to the strike, pointing to a speech Vice President Joe Biden delivered to the National Education Association last year in which he reaffirmed the administration's "affection" and "commitment" to teachers.

Echoing a line he frequently says in his stump speech, Romney said it's proof that Obama has put unions ahead of teachers.

"President Obama has chosen his side in this fight," Romney said. "I choose to side with the parents and students depending on public schools to give them the skills to succeed, and my plan for education reform will do exactly that."

It's a charge Romney is likely to repeat on the trail today, as he campaigns in Ohio and later in Chicago, where he's scheduled to attend a fundraiser Monday night.

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/ticket/r...-election.html

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Thousands of teachers strike in Chicago, parents scramble
By Mary Wisniewski | Reuters – 1 hr 46 mins ago.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Thousands of public school teachers formed picket lines in Chicago on Monday and parents scrambled for child care during teachers' first strike in a quarter century over reforms sought by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and endorsed by President Barack Obama's administration. Some 29,000 teachers and support staff in the nation's third-largest school system were involved, leaving parents of 350,000 students between kindergarten and high school age to find alternative supervision. "There's no excuse for either side for not coming to an agreement," said Faith Griggs-York, mother of a first-grader at Agassiz Elementary School, as she dropped her daughter off at a community center a mile from the school. "I think both sides, because of what they are doing to parents and because of what they are doing to kids, should be embarrassed," Griggs-York said.

The teachers' union called the strike Sunday night after months of negotiations did not resolve major disagreement over public education reforms. Talks resumed between the union and school district on Monday. Emanuel is among a number of big city U.S. mayors who have championed school reforms and Obama's education secretary, Arne Duncan - a former head of Chicago public schools - has endorsed them.

The school district's charter schools, which account for about 12 percent of students, opened as usual. The mayor wants to expand the number of charter schools, which are publicly funded but non-union. Churches, community centers, some schools and other public facilities opened to care for thousands of children under a $25 million strike contingency plan financed by the school district. The children were supervised half a day and received breakfast and lunch, allowing some parents to work.

The union has called the plan to care for children during the strike a "train wreck." It warned that caregivers for the children do not have proper training, and there are fears of an increase in gang-related violence in some high-crime areas.

About 20 teachers picketed in front of Overton Elementary School on Chicago's South Side, wearing red T-shirts, carrying strike signs and singing "We're not going to take it," the chorus from the rock band Twisted Sister's popular anthem. Several passing cars honked in support, prompting loud cheers from the striking teachers.

Chicago's South Side, often mentioned by first lady Michele Obama in reference to her humble roots, is one of the city's poorest districts and has a large African-American population. Laura Gunderson, a fourth-grade teacher at Nettelhorst Elementary School, held a "proud union home" sign outside the North Side school with 55 other teachers, aides and clerks lining both sides of the street. "My heart sank on Friday night when I clocked out and realized I was not going to be teaching Monday," said Gunderson, a teacher for 26 years.

POLITICAL RAMIFICATIONS

The Chicago confrontation also threatens to sour relations between Obama's Democratic Party and labor unions before the presidential election on November 6. While Obama is expected to win the vote in Chicago and his home state of Illinois, union anger could spill into neighboring Midwestern states such as Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio, where the race with Republican challenger Mitt Romney is much closer.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was aware of the situation in Chicago. "We hope both sides are able to come together to settle this quickly in the best interest of Chicago's students," Carney said.

Campaigning in the battleground state of Ohio, Romney criticized the teachers union. "I want our kids to have the skills they need for the jobs of tomorrow and that means put our kids first and put the teachers' unions behind."

Emanuel said two main issues remain in the dispute: his proposal that teachers be evaluated based in part on student performance on standardized tests, and more authority for school principals.

Union President Karen Lewis, who has sharply criticized Emanuel, said standardized tests do not take into account inner city poverty as well as hunger and violence in the streets. More than 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free lunches because they come from low-income households, and Chicago students have performed poorly compared with national averages on most reading, math and science tests. Union officials said more than a quarter of Chicago public school teachers could lose their jobs if they are evaluated based on the tests. "Evaluate us on what we do, not the lives of our children we do not control," Lewis said in announcing the strike.

Dick Simpson, a former city council member, or alderman, said that past Chicago mayors would have called negotiators to the mayor's office to get a deal by offering the union concessions. But dire financial straits preclude Emanuel from throwing money at the problem. The last Chicago teachers strike in 1987 lasted 19 days. "Most parents now are supporting the teachers. If the strike were to go on that long the public would be mad," said Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

http://news.yahoo.com/chicago-teache...003920042.html

comments

"...leaving parents of 350,000 students between kindergarten and high school age to find alternative supervision."

"Alternate supervision"? Not alternate education; supervision. That says a lot about our schools.

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we used to spend an avg of a $1000 a student a year to educate , now we spend over $10000 something is wrong and it's not the lack of money..

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350 000 students divided by 29 000 teacher comes to about 12 students per teacher... plus an average of $15 000 per student, equals a failed school system.

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@Erin - You're way off - the 29,000 union members striking are 25,000 teachers and 4,000 paper clip counters. That's 14 students per frequently incompetent teacher at an average salary of $76,000..

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This is fun! Rahm's kids attend an elite private school that costs $25,000. What makes that utterly hilarious is that it costs over $20,000 a year per pupil to run the Chicago school systems. The taxpayer is PAYING almost the same as an elite private school and getting . . . the Chicago School System!!

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My wife's sibling teaches in Chicago. Brings many stories to family reunions. Based on what I've heard, I'm convinced that 1/3 of Chicago teachers would not be able to pass a job performance standardized test for THEMSELVES, never mind having their job performance linked to the standardized testing of students.

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Rahm-Bo "Dead Fish" Emanuel will no doubt raise taxes to help the "poor, struggling" teachers. There is no great loss, however, because the N.E.A. has dumbed down the curriculum and turned teachers into proctors.

Once again, why are there any public sector unions in the first place?!

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These teachers have the same rights as the rest of us. If they don't like their wages, benefits or employer they can go to work somewhere else. Then they will discover what they are really worth.

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People are missing the point in this article...the teachers will get annual raises BUT they will also be evaluated based on their students tests. Think about it...if you do your job...you get your raise. Slack off and you don't and could get fired. Having seen my fair share of lazy and plain "bad" teachers..I agree with the city-not the union.

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"The school district, like many cities and states across the country, is facing a financial crisis with a projected budget deficit of $3 billion over the next three years and a crushing burden of pensions promised to retiring teachers."

This pretty well says it all. The simple fact is local governments can no longer spend money they don't have, just like you and I can't, and expect to be sustainable. It's time to cut salaries and benefits to teachers to come in line with tax income, or raise taxes. It's the math, pure and simple!

Apparently the Occupy Movement’s pledge of solidarity http://twitchy.com/2012/09/10/non-wo...cago-teachers/ wasn’t enough for some Chicago public school teachers. They’ve got their eyes on younger, more impressionable supporters — their students.

Chicago Teachers Union members are urging kids to support their cause by joining strikers on the picket line, according to some students on Twitter. But the students appear less than enthusiastic about the wildly inappropriate attempt to make a teachable moment out of a hostile progressive political fight. Evidently sleep takes priority over indoctrination. http://twitchy.com/2012/09/10/chicag...lash-violence/

Brie' Fab & Fame ♥ @Brie_MONEYBags

Lmao my drama teacher told us Friday it would be nice if us students meet them at the picket line and strike too O.o WHO?

9 Sep 12

HiiiiSexy @Beautiful_Kaira

Mrs.Kwanning ask me to come strike with them but i dont want to get up early .

9 Sep 12

brittany@arianasbieber

my teachers asked us to strike with them H-E-L-L NAW imma be in my bed sleep

7 Sep 12

@dopekidrauhls omg tell me why my homerm teacher told us to come and strike with them like gurl what the fck do i look like

natalie lol@dopekidrauhls

@arianasbieber omg same!!!

7 Sep 12

dareal. $@killaaCourt_

Teacher talking about they want me to come out and strike with them, b-tch I want you to be in a class room teaching.

9 Sep 12

One teacher allegedly resorted to bribery.

PeaceWarriorPrincess@_NotAStatistic_

Some Of My Teachers Said I Could Get Extra Credit If i Strike With Them. #CTUStrike

10 Sep 12

Keep it classy, CTU members. Do Chicago parents know teachers are coercing their kids into joining labor bullies in their left-wing temper tantrum?

http://twitchy.com/2012/09/10/disgra...o-join-strike/

Some students had tweeted that their teachers had encouraged them to join in on the strike. Workers Independent News is reporting that teachers have brought in a drum line. Are these students?

Labor Notes@labornotes

Kelly HS Drum Line represent! #ctustrike #faircontractnow pic.twitter.com/Ltnbn2rp

10 Sep 12

comments

The strike is less about money than it is about accountability.If merit raises and having the ability to fire bad teachers ever take hold...the teachers union is doomed...they know this,which is why they promote bad failing teachers and schools.

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Simply amazing. When they want more govt health care, they trot out the "think of the" children. When they need more money in contract talks, they take them to the picket lines while the kids get progressively more behind other nations. Not to say conservatives don't do the same when "protecting" kids from things but it's just so sad teachers pretend to have the kids' best interests at heart when all it's about is tenure and their wallets.

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if you want to know why our kids keep getting further behind? Pay attention to the number of teachers in positions that do not teach formal Sciences like math, life sciences or physics.
They have thrown in support for all the behavioral and social sciences though. Our school has 4 social studies teachers, two english, two math, and two science teachers. Then there is the spanish teacher, the art teacher, music dept, wood shop and welding. Ag and Family and Consumer Sciences (home ec)
it becomes clearer that the Liberal controlled public education system is churning out a nation of kids with critical thinking skill sets that match the thought processes of the material they are presented, especially when you realize they changed reading comprehension to reading repeater, focusing on a childs ability to parrot what they have read, not digesting the meaning of what they read. With the exeption of stand alone HISTORY based on facts, all other is largely based on interpretations.
They really don't want kids to develop a scientific, logical based thought process, they want them to run on emotions and the pseudo crap. mindless drones for the march towards FAIR collectivism. It starts in Head Start "EVERYONE MUST SHARE." giving the bully the toy he just ripped from someone elses hands. REward the taker, and publicly scold the victim...Collectivism is a concept foreign to anyone that values the importance of individual freedoms and those right to claim ownership to their own fruits. To any child who has never had to EARN their own rewards, it frees them to take what they want and claim it is only "FAIR".
No wonder kids of today's generation hit the adult ground running and run into the brick wall of reality. Either they learn to climb the wall or whine and Occupy something other than a job.

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In addition to the criminal (if it isn't it should be) coercion of children the tweets above prove that their students are virtually illiterate.

An equitable resolution to the strike would be to immediately cut their pay and benefits by 50%. Then require them to work their way back to the current level by educating the students in their charge to, at minimum, be able to produce a cogent grammatically correct tweet.


Conservatives offer up protest chants for striking Chicago Teachers Union
Posted at 7:20 pm on September 10, 2012 by Twitchy Staff

As Twitchy has been covering extensively today, members of the Chicago Teachers Union are striking today to voice their discontent with crazy concepts like merit-based pay, teacher evaluations, and a paltry 16 percent pay raise. The horror! But what’s a protest without a good chant? Conservatives thoughtfully chimed in with some suggestions for the pavement-pounding pedagogs:

http://twitchy.com/2012/09/10/conser...eachers-union/

Judging by the caliber of teachers that’s being put on display today, these folks need all the help they can get:

Emily Zanotti@emzanotti

I think @michellemalkin needs to see this CTU strike sign. pic.twitter.com/GioYxSG0

10 Sep 12

On-scene pics: Chicago teachers and supporters take to streets, force closing of Chicago Loop
Posted at 5:26 pm on September 10, 2012 by Twitchy Staff

http://twitchy.com/2012/09/10/chicag...-chicago-loop/

Between Barack and a Hard Place
By Luis Gonzalez, on September 11, 2012, at 12:47 am


Chicago teachers demanding better wages than what Chicago taxpayers make.


More than twenty-five thousand teachers and support staff are on strike in Chicago, impacting nearly 400,000 children.

The issue?

A demand by the teachers for a 16% pay increase over the next four years.

The problem?

Chicago's School Board is projecting a $3 billion dollar deficit over the next three years.

Some people would say that Rahm Emmanuel is threading dangerous waters right now, facing a confrontation with one of the Democratic Party's biggest supporters, yet, Chicago's parents are none too happy about the current turn of events, so he has to do something about it.

Or is this whole thing a ruse?

Rush Limbaugh seems to think so:

"Last week I asked a stupid question, and it took me a couple of hours on Friday to figure it out. I've been hoping I wouldn't forget it all weekend. And here we are, and I remember what it was. The stupid question I asked was: "Why are the teachers in Chicago going on strike?" The answer is very simple: So Obama can solve it as a campaign issue. That's why they're on strike. It won't be long before we hear Moochelle say that he's up late at night on the campaign trail practically crying, reading letters from students in Chicago upset they can't go to school.

The schools are open in Chicago for lunch and breakfast. Teachers aren't there. Rahm Emanuel's kids are at their $25,000-a-year private school. The Chicago teachers have been offered a 16% raise. How's that compared to your raise at your job? And they turned it down over some pension stuff. You watch. Rahm Emanuel himself is the guy who said, "Never let a crisis go to waste." We know that the unions, Obama and Rahm Emanuel, the Democrats, are in bed with each other. So this, to me, I think it's a perfect setup.

This school teacher strike in Chicago? Let's just see how long this thing goes on, and let's see how it gets solved. Anybody want to bet against me that Obama's the one that gets credit for this, in a few short days? Anybody want to bet that there might be a little bit of violence and finally Obama will have to move in and do something? He and Rahm will figure this out so they get credit for solving it. Because, I tell you: There is no union that is gonna go on strike right now for the express purpose of harming Barack Obama.

Quite the contrary."

Some pertinent facts...

The average teacher salary in Chicago was $74,839 for the 2011-2012 school year (nine months), not including benefits and pension. - CNN.com http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/10/us/ill...ike/index.html

The average private sector salary in Chicago is about $54,000 in 2011 (twelve months). - FOX Chicago News http://www.myfoxchicago.com/story/19...property-taxes

Chicago teachers are the highest paid in the nation. - CBS Chicago http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2012/06/...teachers-make/

"Of every 100 freshmen entering a Chicago public high school, only about six will earn a bachelor's degree by the time they're in their mid-20s. The prospects are even worse for African-American and Latino male freshmen, who only have about a 3 percent chance of obtaining a bachelor's degree by the time they're 25. Of the city public school students who went to a four-year college, only about 35 percent earned a bachelor's degree within six years, compared with 64 percent nationally." - Chicago Tribune, April 26, 2006 http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2...chool-students

Seventy-nine percent of the 8th graders in the Chicago Public Schools are not grade-level proficient in reading. Eighty percent are not grade-level proficient in math. - U.S. Department of Education http://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/districts/

Chicago teachers make an average of $75K per year for nine month's labor, and they want that average salary to increase to $87K per year by the time that Barack Obama steps down from office, if re-elected.

So, is Rahm Emmanuel really stuck between a rock and a hard place here, or is this a set-up as Limbaugh claims?

Or could it be that is it a set-up to a payoff for the support of the Chicago teacher's union?

I can't help but recalling Jesse Jackson's words at the DNC convention, just a few days ago: http://babalublog.com/2012/09/jesses-two-cents/

"...people...should be inspired that their vote will translate into food and housing."

http://babalublog.com/2012/09/betwee...-a-hard-place/