Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw) Weekend Contributor
I guess you don’t have to be from Chicago or Illinois to know who Rahm Emanuel is. The current Mayor of the City of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel is the former chief of staff to President Obama and a former Congressman. He is also a former investment banker. It has been alleged that this former investment banker has been crying poor since he entered office and proposing that city workers must pay more into their pension funds and get less pay and benefits.
“If you’ve read the financial news out of Chicago the last few weeks, you’ve probably heard that the city faces a major pension shortfall, supposedly because police officers, firefighters, teachers and other public workers are selfishly bleeding the city dry.
You’ve also probably heard that the only way investment banker-turned-mayor Rahm Emanuel can deal with the seemingly dire situation is to slash his public workers’ retirement benefits and to jack up property taxes on those who aren’t politically connected enough to have secured themselves special exemptions.” Pandodaily
I guess the idea that a politician would want to claim that union workers and municipal workers are destroying the city’s finances is not a new claim. It is one of the favorite dog whistles of politicians of various stripes. You recognize the claim. The pensions are in trouble because the workers have demanded too much over the years. That audacious, and false claim has been made repeatedly in recent years. We have discussed the pension shortfalls before.
The most amazing part of this latest claim that pensions are destroying the City of Chicago’s finances is the disclosure that Mayor Emanuel may be hiding a large trove of cash from the public eye. Enough money to pay the yearly pension payment.
“Chicago is the iconic example of all of these trends. A new report being released this morning shows that the supposedly budget-strapped Windy City – which for years has not made its full pension payments – actually has mountains of cash sitting in a slush fund controlled by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Indeed, as the report documents, the slush fund now receives more money each year than it would cost to adequately finance Chicago’s pension funds. Yet, Emanuel is refusing to use the cash from that slush fund to shore up the pensions. Instead, his new pension “reform” proposal cuts pension benefits, requires higher contributions from public employees and raises property taxes in the name of fiscal responsibility. Yet, the same “reform” proposal will actually quietly increase his already bloated slush fund.
But it gets worse: an investigation by Pando has discovered that Emanuel has been using that same slush fund to enrich some of his biggest campaign contributors.” Pandodaily
That is an amazing claim, but I am not surprised that a politician would hide money to benefit his campaign contributors. However, in light of the latest Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon vs. FEC that removed most of the campaign donation limits, the Supreme Court Majority would be shocked that a politician might be serving his/her campaign contributors at the expense of the citizens!
To be fair to Mayor Emanuel, this secret slush fund was not his idea. It was started years ago, but Mayor Emanuel seems to have welcomed the idea with open arms.
“The new report, from the taxpayer watchdog group Good Jobs First, shows how Chicago’s roughly 150 “tax increment financing” (TIF) districts divert property taxes out of schools and public services and into what is now known as Chicago’s “shadow budget.” That’s a slightly nicer term for what is, in practice, Emanuel’s very own sovereign wealth fund.
Living up to his billing as “Mayor 1%,” Emanuel has used the fund to (among other things) offer up $7 million of taxpayer cash for a new grocery store, $7.5 million for a proposed data center, $29 million for an office high rise and $55 million for a huge new hotel (and that latter project is on top of $75 million more in tax money Emanuel has offered up to build a private university a new basketball stadium). And these are just a few of the corporate subsidy proposals in a $300 million spending spree Emanuel has championed at the very moment he has pled poverty to justify pension cuts, property tax increases and the largest school closure in his city’s history.
Contrary to the story of public employees bleeding taxpayers dry, the Good Jobs First report proves that the slush fund is the root of the city’s true fiscal problem. As the municipal budget figures show, over the last 14 years Chicago refused to make its necessary pension contributions. Yet, at the same time, the city’s TIF-based “shadow budget” skyrocketed. In effect, more and more public revenue that was contractually obligated to pensioners was being diverted by politicians to fund TIF subsidies, many of which go to subsidize wealthy corporations.” Pandodaily
I recommend that you review the “shadow budget” article linked above for a full description of how the funds are channeled into its deep pockets controlled by the Mayor and mostly hidden from voters, and even alderman. Mayor Emanuel has kept the shadow budget hidden from the media and has even claimed that he has diverted some of it towards schools.
“The scheme has gotten so out of control that, according to Good Jobs First, annual TIF revenues now far exceed the annual cost of funding the city’s pension systems. The report shows that in 2013 Chicago’s pension costs were $385 million whereas Emanuel’s slush fund that year received $457 million.
For his part, Emanuel has insisted that roughly a third of TIF funding goes into schools (at his sole discretion, of course). Yet, his slush fund is so opaque there’s little way to verify this claim. Indeed, Chicago’s local public radio station WBEZ recently noted that it “has repeatedly requested a breakdown of all current TIF-funded projects, but [the Emanuel administration] has not yet provided it.” ‘ Pandodaily
Can any so-called public servant be any more arrogant and corrupt than when he cries poor and hides a multi-million dollar slush fund and refuses to disclose how much is in that fund and how he disburse monies from that fund? What do you think should be done to force the Mayor to disclose the shadow budget?
How can any city or state administration be trusted in their claims that the money isn’t available to pay pensions and to keep schools open, when so-called Shadow Budgets are controlled by politicians, corporate and institutional beggars and wealthy contributors?
Mayor Emanuel, while you probably don’t read this blog, I challenge you to show us the money. Show the citizens of Chicago the money. Show the media the money and let them see the books. Just stop showing the money to your corporate sponsors and controllers! Mayor Emanuel, we will be waiting for your response!
The whole world is watching! Well, maybe not the whole world!
Respectfully submitted by Lawrence E. Rafferty (rafflaw)-Weekend Contributor
“The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.”
Justice:
Girls are supposed to participate more in an all-girl class. Gender specific classes are supposed to be able to be taught in ways that appeal to each gender, which statistically differ in how they learn. We can debate the pros and cons, but that seems to be the reason for gender-segregation. Of course, the genders are mixed in the real world and in most colleges, so students can benefit from learning how to shine in different environments.
http://scimath.unl.edu/MIM/files/research/LaFleurKelly_AR_final_LA.pdf
And I obviously think “education is good for the masses.” I’m just a mom trying to get my child the best education possible.
Hi Justice Holmes:
I disagree.
I am the mother of a young child in an area where the schools are underperforming, and have trouble with gangs, violence, drugs, etc. The charter schools in our area perform better academically than the public schools. Expensive private schools are not an option for me. Without the charters, I would have no choice but to send my child to the public school. We parents can research the academic performance of a charter school, and if it does not meet our criteria, we won’t choose it.
And there has been fraud in paying public school administrators, too. Human nature being what it is, opportunities will be exploited by those of low character. If there is fraud in a local charter school, it will likely be uncovered. And since it is a charter and not a public school, it will close when parents stop sending their kids.
I also dislike tenure for the reasons stated above, which is one of my main problems with the teachers union.
I do not blame the teachers union as the only problem with the public school system. But they do contribute. Schools keep on substandard teachers, even teachers they suspect of inappropriate student contact, because they can’t afford to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars and years in court to fire them. From what I have seen, the teachers union protects itself more than students.
But I do agree that funds that were supposed to go to public schools get raided for other pet projects.
Hi Eddie:
I agree that anyone offering a service, whether it’s the government or a private company competing for a government contract, should prove it can do the best quality job for the lowest cost. I think the procurement system in general is broken. Too often no-bid contracts go to cronies. We overpay and they under-deliver. The Obamacare website is just the latest debacle. It’s been a problem for at least decades, and probably since the inception of the US.
The post office is not a government run business like Amtrak, but it is an “”independent establishment of the executive branch of the Government of the United States”, (39 U.S.C. § 201) as it is controlled by Presidential appointees and the Postmaster General. As a quasi-governmental agency, it has many special privileges, including sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail. Indeed, in 2004, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a unanimous decision that the USPS was not a government-owned corporation, and therefore could not be sued under the Sherman Antitrust Act.[79].”
I’m not clear on why it is considered a “quasi-government agency” unless it is not subject to outside review. But it is a government entity, and not run like a private non-union business. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Service
Bingo Karen.
Much of my working life was centered around procurement and bidding, with much of it dealing with various government agencies including the GSA.
Unfortunately not all of it was ethical or legal(price fixing, bribery) and can sadly recall not being unhappy when Ronnie did his hatchet job to the antitrust department.
While I chose to work for small corporations the shenanigans(fraud) and corruption going on with the Exons, Lockheed, Boeing, Bechtels does not escape me.
I can well recall decades ago when some of the press and public noted when the price of oil went up the whores would tell us their prices would reflect the decrease only after the oil reached our refineries and then the market place. Today prices increase by whim and greed, often several times in a single day.
As you mentioned the outrageous ineptitude and practices of government and Pentagon procurement practices are staggering. Particularly the no bid and cost plus lunacy.
I was being a little flip about the USPS as it is a real sore point with me. What with all the talk about it’s going broke and forcing it to close on Saturdays and countless offices. And why?
“In 2006, the Bush White House and Congress whacked the post office with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act — an incredible piece of ugliness requiring the agency to PRE-PAY the health care benefits not only of current employees, but also of all employees who’ll retire during the next 75 years. Yes, that includes employees who’re not yet born!
No other agency and no corporation has to do this. Worse, this ridiculous law demands that USPS fully fund this seven-decade burden by 2016. Imagine the shrieks of outrage if Congress tried to slap FedEx or other private firms with such an onerous requirement.
This politically motivated mandate is costing the Postal Service $5.5 billion a year — money taken right out of postage revenue that could be going to services. That’s the real source of the “financial crisis” squeezing America’s post offices.”
Even the founder of the Charter school movement has turned her back on it! Charters are an excuse to have a private school,some started for profit, paid for by the tax payers. The most vocal supporter of charter schools in NYC makes almost $500,000 to oversee two schools! Some charter schools segregate girls from boys. Girls are just too distracting for boys. Talk about tax payers NOT having a seat at the table– taxpayers cannot say “jack” about what happens in charter schools; they are generally run by boards whose members do not have to have any qualifications at all. Have some succeeded but not as well as advertized or for the long haul but many public schools have done well also. Charter schools siphon money out of the public system. Unions have not destroyed the public school system. Ill conceived budget cutting and the continued lack of respect for in class teachers have made public education the whipping boy for those who think education is really not a good thing for the masses.
http://www.truth-out.org/buzzflash/commentary/new-poll-rahm-emanuel-would-lose-re-election-to-progressive-opponent/18569-new-poll-rahm-emanuel-would-lose-re-election-to-progressive-opponent The more progressive pro-union, anti-charter school candidate is ahead in the polls.
6 And all the men of Shechem gathered together, and all the house of Millo, and went, and made Abimelech king, by the plain of the pillar that was in Shechem. And all the men of Shechem assembled themselves together, and all the house of Millo, and went and made Abimelech king, by the oak of the pillar that was in Shechem.
7 And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood in the top of mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you. And when they told it to Jotham, he went and stood on the top of mount Gerizim, and lifted up his voice, and cried, and said unto them, Hearken unto me, ye men of Shechem, that God may hearken unto you.
8 The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive tree, Reign thou over us. The trees went forth on a time to anoint a king over them; and they said unto the olive-tree, Reign thou over us.
9 But the olive tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honour God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? But the olive-tree said unto them, Should I leave my fatness, wherewith by me they honor God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees?
10 And the trees said to the fig tree, Come thou, and reign over us. And the trees said to the fig-tree, Come thou, and reign over us.
11 But the fig tree said unto them, Should I forsake my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to be promoted over the trees? But the fig-tree said unto them, Should I leave my sweetness, and my good fruit, and go to wave to and fro over the trees?
12 Then said the trees unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us. And the trees said unto the vine, Come thou, and reign over us.
13 And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to be promoted over the trees? And the vine said unto them, Should I leave my new wine, which cheereth God and man, and go to wave to and fro over the trees?
14 Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us. Then said all the trees unto the bramble, Come thou, and reign over us.
15 And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and put your trust in my shadow: and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon. And the bramble said unto the trees, If in truth ye anoint me king over you, then come and take refuge in my shade; and if not, let fire come out of the bramble, and devour the cedars of Lebanon.
================================================
Let the frail Chicago citizens who elected this BRAMBLE suffer!!!
eddie, You’re kidding aren’t you? USPS v FedEx!!
Sorry Nick no lo comprende. Was not considering USPS as it is not publicly financed.
I definitely support school choice.
I saw a John Stossel special report on education a few years ago. In Europe, (was it Belgium?) public funds for school were tied to the child, not the school. They could go anywhere they liked. Schools competed for those dollars, and it became a race for excellence. In the special, they could answer more questions about America than US school kids.
He also investigated some of the top charters, the ones who really got it right, often for less money than public schools used. It was very interesting.
http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Stossel/story?id=1500338
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx4pN-aiofw&noredirect=1
To be fair, some journalists absolutely hated the segment, and brought up concerns that charters and voucher programs drain funds for public schools. Well, if you give parents a choice and they choose a better performing school then, yes, funds can drain from poor performing, overcrowded pubic schools. But how is it fair to give parents no choice on where to send their kids to school? The needs of the students outweigh the needs of the public school establishment. And if the public school was outstanding, they would have nothing to worry about. Talk about incentive!
As a parent, I am not very sympathetic to a public school with overcrowded classrooms and tenured, poorly performing teachers complaining that they are having trouble competing with a charter school. And as has been pointed out in Rafflaw’s post, the states drain away funds that taxpayers voted to go to schools. I know that happens here in CA. I remember when the lottery was going to solve all of our public school funding issues . . .
It’s all about politics and the love affair with charters.
I have no basic problem with private industry but before any are allowed to replace government workers they must be able to prove conclusively they can do it better and for less cost.
Karen, In my book there are good and bad rants, yours was good. Charter schools are here to stay. The best thing Obama did was hire Arne Duncan, support charters and competition, and give poor kids of all color a fighting chance. “Turn out the light…the party’s overrrr.”
Annie – sounds like there might be some wildcat charters taking advantage of the wave of disappointment in public schools.
The Charters kind of remind me of that movie Fame.
Hypothetically, you have a student that won’t stop fighting, won’t show up to class, takes drugs to school, and you have a long wait list of students wanting to get in. What do you do if he doesn’t want to be there?
I do not know if that is what is happening in public and charter schools, where suspensions and expulsions are high.
That said, I wish we could do more intervention on kids at high risk of dropping out or getting expelled.
The good, the bad, and the ugly:
http://www.greatschools.org/find-a-school/3706-charter-schools-better-than-traditional.gs
Another thing that I like about charters is that you can drive to a more distant one if it was better performing. That makes charters compete for excellence, and helps the bad ones fail, which needs to happen.
You cannot change public schools to a better one without a waiver, which is difficult to get.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/leaders-of-closed-milwaukee-voucher-school-are-now-in-florida-b99185323z1-240384541.html?ipad=y
Leaders of a Milwaukee voucher school now in Florida. Parents beware. There is also a case of a charter school graduate in Milwaukee that found out she didn’t have a legitimate high school diploma because her charter school lost it’s charter.
Here we go again, whining, that’s not fair. If expulsion creates a better environment for students to excel, then public schools need to expel more also, so that the remainder student body has a chance to better excel, as well, rather than dumbing down the entire system to make it fair. Didn’t there used to be reformatories for difficult students? Or is that something that disappeared when the overly protective psychologists took over the school system?
Karen, interesting comment about your experience with charter schools.
Annie – absolutely, poor performing charter schools should close. I think that poor performing public schools should also close and be replaced with a charter, and if that doesn’t work, a different charter, and so on until they get the best educational model they can.
Eddie:
In CA, at least, they use a lottery to accept students, so there is no “cream skimming.”
On the one hand, I would hope that every effort is used to bring a student around before he or she is suspended or expelled, and that the same standards apply to every race and ethnicity. On the other hand, with a waiting list a mile long, I can see why a Charter would only give so many chances to follow the rules until they have to give the seat to a student that actually wants to be there.
http://articles.latimes.com/2013/jul/15/opinion/la-ed-charter-schools-stanford-study-20130713
“But four years later, the new study found that charter schools were doing better. Compared with traditional public schools, they were somewhat more likely to give students an academic boost than to hold them behind. Among California’s more than 1,000 charter schools, which enroll 8% of its students, results were improved but mixed. Charter schools did slightly worse on math but significantly better in reading instruction. African American and low-income students were more likely to benefit from charter schools, as were English-language learners. These are among the groups that were often let down by the public education system before the era of school reform.
The most compelling aspect of the new report isn’t the results but how this improvement came about. It’s not that existing charter schools improved much, the authors said. It’s that some of the worst ones closed.
So it’s not a coincidence that states with the most laissez-faire charter rules have had the most abysmal results. In Nevada, which until recently approved charters with near-abandon and then let them operate with little accountability, charter students lost more than half a year of learning each year than if they’d stayed in the regular public schools.
Not that California can afford to rest on any laurels. According to studies by the California Charter Schools Assn., a trade group that has lobbied to close academically failing charters, the state has particularly uneven charter schools. They clump disproportionately among both the best and worst schools. School districts, which are responsible for authorizing charter schools, are just as uneven when it comes to overseeing and closing low performers. They might have political connections to the operators, or be under pressure from wealthy donors or parents, who, no matter how bad the academic results, tend to be fierce supporters of their charter schools. The Stanford researchers noted that academic excellence is far down on the list of reasons parents choose charters, well below convenience and the respect with which they’re treated. Those matter, but not nearly as much as whether students are learning.
Charter schools in Washington, D.C., which are held to higher accountability standards, give their students the equivalent of more than half a year of extra learning in math and 11 weeks in reading over traditional schools, the study found. And in a renewed push for more accountability, California’s charter school association recently approved higher standards for its schools, and will recommend the closure of those that fall short. But the group is often ignored; in 2012, it recommended the closure of 10 low-performing charter schools, half of which were allowed to remain open anyway.
Just as higher standards for traditional public schools are a matter of law, California and all states should be making higher performance by charter schools mandatory.”
I enclosed a study above that compared pre and post No Child Left Behind.
In addition, I am the mother of a young child in an area where the public schools are poor performing, and there have been problems with drugs, fighting, and gangs in the high school. I attended a parent meeting at an excellent charter school. CA state law requires that charter schools employ a lottery when applications exceed openings, so there is no cream skimming. They had arts, language, and music that has been long neglected in the public school system. Their teachers are not tenured, but merit-based. There was absolutely no comparison to public schools.
And here is what I like the best: a poorly performing charter school closes. A poorly performing teacher who cannot improve is let go. It attracts teacher excellence. It is a meritocracy – if the charter school produces poor student outcomes, parents won’t elect to send their children there. This alone makes so much more sense than being stuck with bad teachers year after year that can destroy a child’s love of learning.
The only problem is that there isn’t enough room for everyone. But a successful charter school can expand, or new charters can spring up using the same model. In a public school, you just get what you get.
Hi Rafflaw:
http://credo.stanford.edu/documents/NCSS%202013%20Final%20Draft.pdf
With the latest ruling from SCOTUS, giving campaign contributors virtually unlimited influence, we’ve now come full circle back to the days when only those who had a vote also lorded over surfs. Too bad that the SCOTUS majority forgot how that worked out for Nicholas II and the aristocracy.
Yeah, Bell, California, is where Chicago is headed, and needs to. Wasn’t there a post here recently about another city in California, entrenched in corruption?