So, Forrest Claypool Walks into a Pay Day Loan Store . . .What Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune Will Not Tell You.

The Chinless Wonder has done it again!   Forrest Claypool took out  huge Pay Loan for the children of CPS!  What a guy!

Forrest Claypool can do all of these things

• Fires key Park District personnel and calls it "Cost-cutting."
• Scapegoats people for Richie Daley
• Works with Quigley and Orr to ramrod Venezuelan Voting Machines - machines got hacked by the Russians
• Bombardier cars that don't fit the CTA rails
• Tries to hire ex-cons to do the work of union people
• Smears the union leader who objects
• Pushes Ventra Card
• Gives lawyer a CPS sinecure
• Gives CPS jobs to his CTA posse
• Increases CPS debt

and get away with it and move on to ever more lucrative pay days at our expense and fatten up his already lard-assed pension life.  Not only that, he gets protected by Carol Marin, Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich, the goofs at the Sun Times, WTTW, WBEZ and of Bruce Dold. 

Ain't he great?  He is a media protected, multiple tax-payer funded pension collector and career government grifter.  He is Forrest Claypool.

For any mossback sneak from down state Illinois, Claypool is a role model.  If the Better Government Association was anything other than flak-maker for the Chicago Oligarchs, Claypool would have been a private sector sneak and at best an orange jumpsuit run-way model.

That said, TRY AND FIND  the name of FORREST CLAYPOOL anywhere in its long article.

"Although the Board believes that it has the capacity to borrow both in the short-term and the long-term credit markets, there can be no assurance as to the terms on which the Board will continue to be able to procure such funding, whether the Board's existing statutory borrowing authority will provide sufficient borrowing capacity, or if market access will continue to be available to the Board," the district said in bond documents.(emphases my own)

The Board is Forrest.  In the recent past Tribune features we see Forrest Claypool

•  In Voice of the People, a reader takes the Tribune to task for its editorial regarding the "crisis" surrounding the Chicago Public Schools led by Forrest Claypool. It is unfortunate to see that there still are those who feel we should function with an..
• In your Tuesday editorial titled “We will do whatever is necessary,” you pull no punches in criticizing Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool. You say, for example, that he made a "foolhardy assumption” by relying on a "huge cash infusion from the...
•          Claypool: Illinois' school funding is unfair to CPS students In its recent editorial, the Tribune   correctly identifies the cause of the Chicago Public Schools fiscal crisis: the outsized  payments it must make to the teacher pension fund. The Tribune fails to note, however, that      the state of Illinois imposes this...
• Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool vowed recently that CPS will open on time in the fall despite the district's perpetual cash crunch. "We will do whatever is necessary ..." Claypool said in a City Club of Chicago speech. That's a refreshing...

There's no BOARD in CPS!  There's Forest Claypool . . .until he steps on his Johnson and gets shelter from Bruce Dold's investigative and editorial purse puppies.

So, Forrest goes all Pay Day Loan on your wallets again.  You have only yourselves and the Chicago media to blame.

Forrest Claypool will ride all over our backs once again and as long as Chicago and Cook County residents enjoy the consequences of living in a Banana Republic. 

The Racoon on the Fifth Floor and this Skunk of a Grifter created more debt, mayhem and misery for generations to come. 

 

CPS Gets Claypool; Chicago Gets Another Sound and Thorough Screwing!

Just when one might believe that CPS is up the proverbial creek with the legendary paddle, Rahm makes Forrest Claypool, the chinless wonder of all metropolitan career grifters, to be CEO of CPS.

Well, F Me!

Forrest will serve Chicago's soul-less local cadre of connected venture capitalist as well as he did in every appointment he has enjoyed at the County and City levels of government.

Name a Claypool achievement, success, or non-disaster.

Name one.

I hear crickets.

Rahm v. Preckinkle: Book Dodge Ball with Joe Epstein as Referee! Jimmy Fallon????

 

"Books are fun!" Just ask America's greatest essayist and literary critic-critic Joe Epstein!

I love books and I love getting nailed in the mush with dodge ball.  Books empower and dodge balls keep us on our toes.

Jimmy Fallon?  I guess he's pretty funny, but Jimmy could not get me to watch Bill Moyers, unless we were going to goof on that doughy mope's sanctimonious posturings on PBS, ala Mystery Science Theatre.

Rahm Emanuel, of CNN's Chicagoland and the Tonight Show Challenges, is Chicago Mayor who has done more to make the dim-bulb Progressive sour-puss Toni Preckwinkle seem like Frances Rappaport Horwich*  Toni Preckwinkle is former Chicago Alderman, former spouse of Zeus Preckwinkle and the current Cook County Board President with the personality of a dial tone and a room-temperature I.Q., I believe.

Rahm Emanuel took credit for Jimmy Fallon's March 2014 Polar Plunge in support of Chicago Special Olympics run by the witty, brilliant and painfully honest James "Skinny" Sheahan and is trying parlay that dubious ownership into a Tonight Show broadcast from the Chicago Theatre.  Rahm wants Jimmy Fallon to bring his show to Chiraq by dint of a promissory note from the Chicago Board of Education that Chicago Public School (CPS) children will read 2.5M books. That's allot of books.

"Here's our challenge: This year the kids of the city of Chicago, I challenged them to 2.4 million books to be read, and if they do it this summer we want you to bring the Tonight Show back to Chicago, it hasn't been since 1998," Emanuel said in a rare moment of pleading. "If they read it, will you do it, for the kids of Chicago?"
After Fallon tried to bump the number up to 11 million, Emanuel joked that a local accounting firm would handle the tally before saying, "2.5 million books, you can bring your show back to Chicago any time."
Fallon agreed, saying "I love to go to Chicago."

 Hey, who don't, Jimmy?

I read a lot of books and continue to do so, because my Mom and Dad read alot of books and I went to Catholic schools from K-20+ and taught literature in Catholic schools from 1975 -Present.

As a kid I read Captain of Ice , by Charles Spain Verral about twenty million times.

Book reports on this great read only got by the nuns twice.  Does Rahm factor distinct tomes into the wager's equation, or is he expecting any number of young scapegrace to read Diary of Wimpy Kid over and over?

Rather than get into the tall weeds of For the Kids legalese - why not offer a different challenge - Literary DodgeBall?

Rahm could go Mano a Mano with Toni Preckwinkle tossing unlimited literary volleys of question with retired Northwestern Literary Professor Joseph Epstein.

Each participant comes armed with an individual literary arsenal - Toni Preckwinkle once damned Nobel Laureate for Literature Saul Bellow as a racist.  I like to hear Rahm toss a dodgeball question like this -

• "CCBPresident Toni!  In one sentence, explain 'What exactly is Mr. Samler's Planet?' "
• " In the Canon of Bellow's racist tomes, Who exactly is __________ the Rainking?
• " Saul Bellow's imitation of James T. Farrell's south side trilogy is called The Adventures of Augie _________________, whom?"

Then having been pummeled, Smart as a Whip and former teacher and Hyde Park resident Toni could ask Rahm . . .hmmmmmmmmmmmm.  Let me see H'yar. Books, wait, wait, don't tell me.  Literary?

Man I'd pay to watch that and I'd bring a picnic basket chock full of eats from Manny's and something to read.

*"Frances Rappaport Horwich (born Frances Rappaport, 16 July 1907–22 July 2001) was the host of the popular children's television program 'Miss Frances' Ding Dong School.'"

CPS or Catholic Schools

 

On the left, Shedd Elementray at 200 E. 99th Street -not closing - tuition free and God is not welcome; on the right Catholic Leo High School at 79th Street unadorned by gang tags, but there is tuitiion to pay and God is here 24/7

CPS has closed the schools it wants to close.  The hearings are closed.  The Closing Are Not Racist!  Get it?

The CTU howling is a smoke-screen for CPS and Mayor Rahm.  Remember?  Karen and Jesse Sharkley ( Kaen's ventriloquist) were 'part of the process,' and Okee Doked the Closings during the strike negotiations.

Karen is doing her best smoke dancing with the always handy race-card set a torch ' "The Closings are Racist, People!"

I agree. What is not Racist?  The closings are Progressive.   The meme coming from Rahm and Dr. B Cubed is this - The Schools  were closed to make test scores jump like Forrest Claypool for a new government job appointment.

Dr. Barbara Bennet-Byrd ( Dr. B-Cubed, B3, B to the Third Power) says, "I cannot agree with adults who would use the excuse of gangs to leave children trapped in failing schools," (emphasis my own).

The excuse of gangs?  Tut, tut and tut yet again, Dr. B Three!  Gangs, one dare suggest?  Hhhhwhat Gangs, indeed.

Lemme see, Mike Cobras (my personal favorites) Gangster Disciples ( not to be confused with the Black Gangster Disciples, Four Corner Hustlers, The Stones ( of many color), Vice Lords, Latin Kings . . .??????????????

Fifty three ( 53) neighborhood schools like Marcus Garvey Elementary and others will be closed and the students from Garvey will be required to travel out of their neighborhood and into neighborhoods that might, just might, mind you, be dominated by a gang.   That is not an excuse; that is a fact.

I work at Leo High School in the Auburn -Gresham neighborhood, 6th Police District (Beat 621),no stranger to senseless killings, home to a number of prominent gangs.  Some gang territories might be as small as block or few houses, or a larger portion extending many miles.  Leo High School resides within what might be termed Territory of the Conservative ( not be confused with the Insane) Vice Lords.  Also within spitting distance of the realm claimed by the Black Disciples, Black P Stone Nation and those scamps of the Gangster Disciple congress of thugs.

Leo sits within what might be termed a Gang Quilt Celebration of Diversity or more ominously a DMZ.  North and South Korea are more amicable. That said the property between 79th Street and the two allies north & south and Morgan and Peoria Streets remain un-tagged and respected territory.  The statue of the Virgin Mary and Memorial to the the Leo War Fallen are untouched.  The building is untagged. God is here.

A few blocks in any direction from Leo High School are CPS elementary and high schools and Charters adorned with Gang tags.  Those schools represent Tax Dollars.  Leo represents God's presence in Auburn Gresham, as does St. Sabina Faith Community.  Churches like the 27 small congregations between 87th & 79th on Racine are untagged by gangs, due to God's presence as well.

CPS are Tax Dollars - they have that going for them, as well as CTU teachers who owe the allegiences to Karen Lewis and Jesse Sharkey and the dictates of the CPS board appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.  CPS recorded  24 students murdered and 319 wounded by gunfire in 2012; that was before 53 neighborhood schools in gang quilted zipcodes were closed.

Dollars are what FREE CPS and public education in general are all about, the children notwithstanding.  A woman who pulled her son out of a CPS school and enrolled him at Leo told President Dan McGrath that Catholic school tuition was  a much better bargain than a  young man's funeral.  

God is what Catholic schools are all about, as well as academic success, no drop-out rate, violence free school days and college placement.

For the families* who remain ignored after the CPS hearings, the choice seems simple enough to me - a tuition free duck and dodge through rival gang territories, or God centered education at a Catholic school.

*Remember -a Charter School is only a public school with a better wardrobe.  God is not allowed in a Charter.

Will CPS Rahm Go All Edwin Starr? And How Far?

Come on, Feet! Start Movin'!    Uh huh huh huh huh , Uh huh huh huh huh huh yeah It's twenty five miles from home Girl, my feet are hurting mighty bad/Now I've been walking three day, 'n two lonely night/You know that I'm mighty mad

With Saturday as the deadline for parents of CPS children to be ignored on the upcoming school closings, some CPS parents want Mayor Rahm Emanuel to diminish some leather from the sole-bottoms of his Florsheims:

CITY HALL —  Parents and community activists have formally invited Mayor Rahm Emanuel to "walk the walk" when it comes to the controversial plans to shutter 54 public schools in Chicago.

And they say they literally mean "walk the walk."

Parents and members of organizations, including Blocks Together and the Chicagoland Researchers and Advocates for Transformative Education, rallied on the fifth floor of City Hall, just outside Emanuel's office Tuesday morning to protest the proposed closures. 

The protesters invited Emanuel to join planned weekly walks from schools slated to close to the schools that would receive the displaced students.

 Ain't that something.  CPS and the educational geniuses they always tap with Progressive ideas on small schools* do studies aplenty but can not read gang graffitti, or bother to understand what constitutes a neighborhood demographic - it ain't all income disparities juxtaposed to more affluent communities.  It has to do with what three or four blocks are GD's, Stones, Vice Lords, Mikey Cobras, Four Corner Hustlers, or Latin Kings.

Fenger was 'smart sized' at this time. because Carver was turned into a military academy and kids that did not deire to, or could not possibly go all GI Joe were required to travel west from Altgeld Gardens/ Pullman to Roseland. Guess what? Different Stokes Hit Different Folks, or Peoples.

Fenger made national news when several lads went to the lumber. Even PBS saw the turn-around plan as the catalyst for violence:



An inner city kid can not walk Chicago streets - not because of Burge, or systemic racism, but because he, or she might cross a street that two days before had been the site of a murder.  If the kid is not known to be from those streets ('He stays with his uncle on Euclid') and happens to be walking to school, that child is a victim to be confronted, beaten, or murdered in response to the previous homicide.

School closings will happen.  It is planned and decided upon.

Parents should be worried about how their kids will get to school -damn worried.

Rahm and CPS and CTU have all the charts and figures and studies that ask if "students feel they are getting the Context of Support?"

If Rahm goes on a Mayoral perambulation, he should spund track the stroll -




The very simple to  solution to all of this nonsense - Send Your Kids To Catholic Schools!

*Chicago High School Redesign Initiative (CHSRI). In partnership with CPS, the effort was launched by the Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation and local funders. It began
in September 2001 with a $12 million grant from the
Gates Foundation, matched by $6 million from foundations in Chicago, and ultimately will develop andsupport approximately 25 new small high schools. . . .

Huzzah! The Strike Ends! Okay.

Karen, you know what's coming and from whom -tic-tock;tic-tock . . .

The voucher bill failed because Republican legislators — and the weak-willed GOP leadership — caved to state teachers unions that fund Republican campaigns and viewed vouchers as a threat. But charter schools are ascendant. John Kass Chicago Tribune

Now, it is time to relect -

• What's the over and under Jean Claude's time left on the job?
• When will the next schools crisis demand another "march" ?
• When will Rahm and Jesse Sharkey share a meal at Manny's Deli?
• Where will the money come from to make the contract valid?
• How's Pat Quinn?
• When will parents get serious about School Reform? Vouchers.
•  What's over and under on Karen Lewis' tenure as CTU President.
• When does Jesse Sharkey make his move to purge Karen Lewis?
• How's Pat Quinn these days?
• When will the Illinois GOP become something other than Judy Barr Topinka's path to another job?

If you thought the CTU -CPS September Skunk and Coon fight was weird, stay tuned.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-chicago-teachers-strike-quotes-20120919,0,3987402.story

How Much is that Elephant in the Room? The Elephant Wearing Glasses, but not talking and wearing Red on Red! That One?

“I am tired of billionaires telling us what we need to do for our children as if they love our children more than we do,” Lewis continued, as the crowd the union estimated at 25,000 waved signs and cheered. “I want them to turn off the air conditioning at 125 S. Clark, and work like we work. I want them to turn off the air conditioning on the fifth floor of City Hall and let them work like we work.” Chicago Sun Times

Karen Lewis, Leo High School has been standing in solidarity with you on the air-conditioning issue since 1926.  No air-conditioning, no way, no how!  I knew that when I signed a contract with Bob Foster in 1995.  He didn't have no air-conditioning himself.  Our building was constructed beginning in 1921 when air-conditioning was limited to Swift and Armour meat storage houses and box-cars in Canaryville's Stockyards.  Some things will just not configure, or evolve as John Dewey pretends.  

I wish we had a few billionaires concerned for our kids, like CPS.  We have a handful of millionaires pumping in hard dollars, to be sure, but mostly old or aging white guys who managed to safe a few dollars extra, or young black guys making their way in the world thanks to their Leo High School Catholic education. Thanks be to God.

Karen Lewis excoriated Bruce Rauner, a philanthropic capitalist, who wants the best education for Chicago public school children in last Friday's Pre-Wisconsin Style Occupy Union Park Rally column meant to gin-up rage against the machine.

Millionaire capitalist Bruce Rauner, ranked No. 90 on Chicago Magazine's "100 Most Powerful Chicagoans," and who donated enough money to the Noble Network of Charter Schools to get his name on one, published a scathing opinion aimed at Chicago Public Schools teachers in Wednesday's Tribune. The amount of anger and venom Rauner spits out at our hardworking CPS teachers is beyond reprehensible. Chicago Tribune op-ed Sept 14, 2012

Donated money to a school? Let's kick him in the nuts!  

As a Director of Development, I was appalled by a beneficiary of private largess taking a donor to the canvass at all, much less while in the process of squeezing more money from the CPS public coffers emptied with glee by Ms. Lewis et al since 2001.  I could only imagine my life expectancy in the Leo Community were I to call Andy O'Spud Class of 1940 and beef that his recent contribution of $ 200,000 for financial aid assistance was shabby.

My pelt would be drying on the portals of Leo, before I hung up the phone. Not Karen Lewis. She continued in this  
manner on Saturday with the above pasted quote from the Sun Times  at the Hey,Hey, Ho, Ho-fest in Union Park on Ashland Ave. before an estimated 2,500 ( or 10% of the Chicago Membership of CTU). 

 Karen Lewis, I believe in my craven, mean-spirited, child-hating heart of hearts, is merely the gut-wind for the ISO doctrinaire VP of CTU -Jesse Sharkey.  Jesse Sharkey is the CTU leader the media has been told to lay-off. He is much like the daffy Andy Thayer, or odious Kevin Clark who merges Hamas Propaganda Boosterism with Anti-Catholic domestic terrorism in the name of Gay Rights.  Jesse is leader of International Socialist Organization( ISO) and Kevin Clark is a national leader of Hamas affiliated International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

The teachers strike, it seems to me, is more about creating havoc than righting work-place wrongs.  The media has beating the phrase Elephant in the Room,  into a pliable metal of metaphor meant to maintain this havoc.  Who is the elephant? Rahm??? Penny Pritzker??? Bruce Rahm????  What is the Elephant and how much do he cost?  

In an earlier news conference, a grim Lewis ticked off a long list of concerns that her members mentioned about the contract. She said "the big elephant in the room" is CPS' plans to close upwards of what she said could be 200 schools. Teachers are "extraordinarily concerned about that," she told reporters. "It undergirds everything they talked about" in the House of Delegates meeting.
Yes, CPS could be looking at closing and consolidating schools. The real elephant in the room: CPS is exhausting its reserve funds this year and faces an estimated $1 billion budget deficit next year with a massive pension payment hike.

Close schools and Karen Lewis will lose membership and numbers is what Jesse Sharkey is all about.
Numbers keep the havoc going!  Numbers of dollars, schools closed, or not closed, air-conditioners, kids in a class, days off, test scores and enemies to be vilified.  You gotta keep the hate going.

There is great jazz tune by Oscar Brown Junior about a child's incessant demands for something over there - in this case a stuffed elephant.


This sums up the continuing strike by Chicago Public School Teachers and no one in the media will ever point to the real Elephant in the Room - the buss-ciut Brooks Brothers Commie in the Red Duds standing behing Karen Lewis and tellling here what to say and do.

Dat Elephant over dere?


The time will march days will go
And little baby's going to grow
I gotta tell her what she needs to know
I'll help her along and she'll be strong

And she'll know right from wrong
As life's parade goes marching by
She's gonna need to know some reasons why
I don't have all the answers but I'll try to do what I can
We'll make a plan

You give the kid your best and hope she’ll pass the test
And finally send her out into the world somewhere
And though she's grown up I bet I never will forget
Mummy, can I have that big elephant over there?

Hey why they do that there? And how you put that there?
Hey mummy, up here! Hey mummy, what that say up there?
Hey mummy, what is fair? How come I have to share?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/15177062-418/union-head-teachers-tired-of-billionaires-telling-us-what-to-do.html
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-14/news/ct-perspec-0914-lewis-20120914_1_cps-teachers-charter-schools-karen-lewis
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-union-0917-bd-20120917,0,6966289.story

SEIU Scabs - It's All Good . . .evidently

Ever wonder where the labor term "scab" comes from? For those who might not know, a scab is also sometimes called a"strikebreaker:" a person who returns to the job without permission from the union or the striking workers during a strike action. One of the most powerful weapons a labor union has is a strike. By crossing the picket line, a scab can render a strike useless. Kate Thomas -SEIU.org

I grew up in a family that despises scabs.  We were all taught as soon as we could walk -Never Cross a Picket Line.

That is an absolute. I never have done so. Nor have I given business to anti-union entities - No Wal-Mart ever; unlike many Progressives. Real labor created the standard of living that I have been blessed with all my life.  Real labor is sacred.  

These days?  Not so much.

When Real Labor decided that SEIU made a good partner a few years ago things changed. Big Labor is equated with SEIU and AFSCME and many manifestations of teachers unions.  All are public-salary entities.

Real labor took a beating that will continue until the goals of the Marxists who run and control public service labor are reached and the middle class built by organized labor will disappear.

Here is just one example of this Marxist/Trotskyite hypocrisy that goes unchallenged by news papers, radio and television:

Message to All SEIU Local 73 Members at Chicago Public Schools
Posted by adamrosen on September 6, 2012SEIU Local 73 stands in solidarity with 26,000 public school teachers, clinicians and paraprofessionals who are fighting for a contract with Chicago Public Schools. However, we do have a contract with Chicago Public Schools and we cannot go on a sympathy strike with CTU.  The majority of our members approved a contract with CPS that included a no subcontracting agreement for the life of the agreement along with a “me-too” clause on wages comparable to what is achieved for paraprofessionals. . . .(wait for it!). . .However, we do have a contract with Chicago Public Schools and we cannot go on a sympathy strike with CTU.  The majority of our members approved a contract with CPS that included a no subcontracting agreement for the life of the agreement along with a “me-too” clause on wages comparable to what is achieved for paraprofessionals.

Solidarity?   Uh, huh.  Now, that's some real Studs Terkel Lefty Horse-shit! Imagine a guy telling the mother of his six children, " Babe, I only kinda slept and had sex with that man." The heart wants . . . what the #$%^?

Real labor backed the Chicago Tribune's striking printers from January 1986 and all the way through the buy-out settlements in Sept. 1987.

Pickets from every skilled trade union marched with the Printers and did not cross the picket line and cancelled the Chicago Tribune.

 That was then.
This is now.  
I doubt if an inflatable rat will get dumped at SEIU headquarters on Ashland, but one should be carted there in Teamster City.

O Tempora, O Mores!

Different Times, different bullshit, or horse-shit, or both.



http://www.seiu.org/2010/01/origins-of-a-scab.php
http://seiu73.org/2012/09/06/message-to-all-seiu-local-73-members-at-chicago-public-schools/
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-09-30/business/8703130991_1_printers-tentative-accord-usery
















http://www.seiu.org/2010/01/origins-of-a-scab.php