Chicago Corruption In Anti-Violence Form

December 3, 2012 Leave a comment

It’s no secret that I love visiting Chicago. Yours truly is a big Cubs fan and I’ve got quite a list of restaurant suggestions for anyone who is visiting. (Purple Pig anyone?) But let’s face it, Chicago is the most corrupt city in the most corrupt state in the union. It isn’t just corrupt, it’s also one of the most left-wing cities in the country. Just look at the revolutionary rhetoric of September’s teachers union strike before the city largely caved to their demands. This is a city that has tried to ban “big box” stores such as Wal-Mart and a city that was temporarily successful at banning foie gras.

For all that is good in Chicago it’s one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Just last weekend 6 people were murdered and 11 wounded in gang violence around the city. This year alone at least 476 people have been murdered, mostly due to gang related gun violence. Don’t blame handguns though, Chicago banned them years ago and has largely ignored the Supreme Court’s ruling which prevents cities from banning them. There is no getting around the fact that Chicago is seeing increasing violence, including tourist areas such as the mile. Gang flash mobs have showed up downtown robbing businesses in broad daylight.

So what’s the city response to all of this? They spent $55 million on an anti-violence program. This seems to have amounted to not much more than paying a bunch of, likely politically connected, teenagers on the south side to pass out leaflets urging less violence. Because of course violent gangs will have their hearts melt over a leaflet. When the city isn’t paying these kids to hand out leaflets, they’re paying them to go to the museum or march in a parade with the Democrat Governor.

In other words, ACORN or Moveon.org is the model for the “anti-violence” program. When you can’t get kids to show up to a rally, just pay them. Can’t get your message across though conventional means? Pay some kids to pass your message out. In this case it’s all on the taxpayers dime as opposed to George Soros or some other wealthy leftist paying the bill. So that means they can waste even more money while cultivating the next generation of corrupt city employees, aldermen and crooked voter.

Of course the anti-violence campaign did nothing to curb violence in Chicago. Murder is up 20%, the big question is whether the city will see its 500th murder by the end of the month. Other violent crimes are also up this year. The anti-violence campaign failed, it didn’t curb any violence whatsoever. It was little more than a pay off to community organizing groups. It was another in a long line of corrupt Chicago programs aimed at youth which do little more than set up the next generation of Chicago corruption.

This sort of nonsense has been going on for decades, it’s nothing new. Our hearts are supposed to melt over an anti-violence campaign to the point where we don’t bother to ask how the money is being spent or whether its affective. Paying kids to hand anti-violence leaflets to gang bangers doesn’t exactly pass the smell test. Neither does paying them to march in rallies with the Governor or paying them for a trip to the art museum. With murder on the rise in Chicago it’s pretty clear the anti-violence program was a failure. But it wasn’t. It kept the corruption alive, it paid off community organizing groups to vote for Democrats in elections. So it was a wild success!

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Why Are Race Relations Worse Under Obama?

November 27, 2012 2 Comments

President Obama entered office in 2009 declaring himself a post-racial President. He’s been anything but. He and his surrogates spent his first term accusing the Tea Party of racism, without a shred of evidence. Mere opposition to Obama’s policies have been decried as racism. Opposition to Susan Rice who lied about the Benghazi attack is declared racist. During the campaign the left declared common words like Chicago and apartment had evil, racist connotations. Enjoying white meat instead of dark meat on Thanksgiving is a sign of racism and white guilt according to Slate. A school in Oregon declared peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were racist. The races are more separate today than they were four years ago.

Part of the problem is Barack Obama. He’s spent the better part of his term calling Republicans the enemy. His surrogates have spent a great deal of time calling the GOP a white party while insinuating that it wants to destroy minorities. The division begins with the President. From there his policies have further divided the country. Black unemployment is the highest in the country, over 14%. Instead of blaming Obama, blacks blame Republicans because after all we’re the “enemy.” The black middle class has been completely destroyed in the last four years, again it isn’t the President’s fault it’s the mythical “enemy.” You have to go back to Jim Crow to see an administration where the gap between black and white incomes widens. Again, the “enemy’s” fault.

What better enemy to blame than the Tea Party, which did little more than oppose Obama’s policies. To listen to the left, you’d think conservatives had never opposed a Democrat President before. The only reason why the Tea Party existed was because Obama is black. Of course to believe that you’d have to ignore the Clinton administration. You’ll recall the GOP won 54 new seats in the House in 1994, winning a majority for the first time in 40 years. You’ll also recall the GOP impeached Clinton for lying under oath. Clinton was detested by conservatives, arguably more so than Obama. After all, Obama hasn’t yet been impeached.

Declaring preferences for white turkey meat and PB&J sandwiches racist is nothing more than the rantings of the insane. Though sadly the latter controls education. During the last four years the word Chicago has been deemed racist. Presumably Chicago as racial epithet as to do with Chicago politics, particularly the smear campaign Obama engaged in. But of course to believe the term Chicago is racist would require a suspension of the facts. All of Obama’s main Chicago advisors are white. The Daley machine is predominately white and Roman Catholic. In fact in Chicago politics black and white have historically not gotten along well. The boys at MSNBC and the Obama campaign had a laundry list of “racist” code words, all of which were equally as ridiculous.

Obama hasn’t brought the country together, he’s separated us. Intentionally so. Obama needs to have an enemy to demagogue. That enemy is the GOP, which he consistently insinuates is racist. The fact though is that race relations were better under Bush and Clinton. Black unemployment, while higher than white unemployment, wasn’t substantially higher. The black middle class grew and thrived. Today blacks are worse off than they were four years ago and sadly they’ve bought into the lie that not only is the GOP racist but they’re to blame as well. As long as minorities are led by people like Obama who tell them white people are the enemy and the cause of all their woe we will never have positive race relations. The situation will, unfortunately, only get worse the next four years.

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Chicago Teachers Union Fighting A Revolution

September 18, 2012 Leave a comment

The Chicago government school teachers remain on strike. Mayor Rahm Emanuel is seeking a court injunction against the strike, claiming it ‘endangers’ kids safety. Because of course the kids in Chicago were somehow not endangered all summer but suddenly became endangered in September when school didn’t start. One could be cynical and suggest kids might be safer outside of the Chicago government schools, however considering the number of gang murders in the city this year such might not be the case. If Emanuel is to win the lawsuit it’s going to be because the strike isn’t about pay not because kids aren’t safe.

Last week the sides were supposedly “kilometers apart.” It seems the Chicago school teachers haven’t given up on forcing metric down everyone’s throats. The really interesting statement made last week though was from union head Karen Lewis who suggested that “the revolution will not be standardized.” She’s referring to the apparently outrageous notion that teachers be judged based on how their students do on tests. While that itself is an outrageous position to take, the really disturbing part of her comment is that she’s talking about “the revolution.” What revolution is that exactly?

The teachers unions have been fighting a revolution since the National Education Association was created over a hundred years ago. The fact is that the revolution isn’t limited to wild eyed union thugs in the inner city. The revolution is in your local government school, whether you care to see it or not. Government education is the creation of progressives who sought to fundamentally transform an America who largely rejected their big government socialism a century ago. Their goal was to transform society by capturing the next generation through compulsory education laws. They have been wildly successful, forcing government education on the overwhelming majority of students.They’ve taken America from a nation that loves freedom and loves Christ to a nation that looks to government and hates religious faith.

It goes beyond that though. John Dewey and Horace Mann, the leaders of progressive education a century ago, actively sought to dumb down America via the schools. The dumber people are the more servile they will be and the more willing they will be to accept the progressive outlook. An intelligent public wouldn’t accept a break from the Constitution in the way Dewey and Mann wanted but a dumbed  down public would. As such Dewey and Mann sought to revolutionize how children are “educated” beginning with how kids read. They’ve been wildly successful, there are tens of millions of functionally illiterate adults because of these people. There are millions of people who have no idea about the Christian history of America because the progressives have been successful at separating kids from their history.

So while many people may react with shock at Karen Lewis’ dropping lines about a revolution, it really shouldn’t come as a surprise. Government education is a progressive revolution. Lewis was actually being honest, which is odd for these people because they rarely discuss revolution in such a public forum. These people are educating the next wave of moronic voters who do as they’re told and look to the government for everything in their lives rather than looking to God and their own hard work. They’re growing the seeds of racial and ethnic resentment and breaking Americans even further of their Christian past. These people are fighting a revolution and it is not one that will result in anything good for freedom in the world.

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Chicago Teachers Strike Proves Wisdom of Scott Walker

September 10, 2012 13 Comments

The teachers union in Chicago is on strike. The average teacher in Chicago earns $76,000 per year not including generous heath and pension benefits. By comparison, the average Chicagoan only earns $47,000 per year. Those in the private sector don’t get the lavish health and pension benefits, which bring the average Chicago teacher’s benefit package to well over $100,000. The teachers rejected a 16% increase in pay, totally more than $400 million. Chicago government school teachers have the highest salaries in the country and they want more. The pro-union press is very concerned about all the children which are “loose” in Chicago. As though those kids weren’t loose all summer long. I guess only in September are unleashed children a major concern.

The teachers unions will of course pretend like they have the best interest of children at heart. Nothing could be further from the truth. With the highest teacher salaries in the country and a 16% increase on the table (who in the private sector has gotten a 16% raise in the last four years?) the teachers said no, they want more money. These people already pay less than 3% towards their health and pension benefits, their compensation packages average well over $100,000. Yet they want more and they’ll lie about their concern for children in the process in order to garner sympathy from already overtaxed taxpayers. Keep in mind, Chicago has some of the highest tax rates in the country.

The Chicago government school strike illustrates everything Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker was fighting for in Wisconsin. Government employee unions are completely out of control. Their members earn more than private sector employees, in the case of Chicago government school teachers earn nearly $30,000 a year more in salary. Chicago teachers also earn lavish healthcare benefits and pensions, lavish plans that no one in the private sector get anymore. Yet all you hear from the teachers is how difficult life is with the summers off and how hard their jobs are. Maybe no one told them that most jobs that earn more than $50,000 a year are difficult.

Taxpayers can’t afford this nonsense anymore. Especially when the government schools produce such poor results. Chicago government schools are among the 10 worst in the nation, yet the teachers want a 16% raise on their already #1 ranked salaries. If these people operated in a competitive environment, they’d be out of a job. Who would willingly send their kids to such awful schools and who in their right mind would pay such poor teachers so much money? Only in the public sector, which shields itself from competition, can this sort of nonsense take place. There’s a reason why parents in Chicago are flocking to charter schools, it’s because the public school teachers are fat and sassy with their $100k+ pay packages to the point that they don’t actually do a good job teaching.

Chicago is providing us with a good example of why we all need to follow Scott Walker’s lead. States need to restrict the power of government employee unions, for the good of taxpayers. Government employees aren’t altruistic, they don’t care about children or the public good. They care about themselves and milking taxpayers of every last dime. They get more pay on average than private sector employees, their benefit packages far exceed what most people get in the private sector. Yet they want us taxpayers to pay even more for even less service. It’s time to restrict these unions, it’s time for all of us to do what we can to make sure our city and state doesn’t become the next Chicago.

UPDATE: According to the Department of Education, 79% of Chicago government school students are not proficient in reading. It appears that the highest paid teachers in the country want a raise nearly equal to the amount of 8th graders who are actually capable of reading at an 8th grade level. Pathetic.

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Food Tyranny in Chicago: Brown Bag Lunches Banned

April 11, 2011 2 Comments

Michelle Obama’s dreams of tyrannical food control are coming true at some Chicago government schools. It seems homemade lunches are banned at more than a few Chicago government schools. Unless a child has an allergy he is stuck eating the slop that the government school hands out at lunch. His parents have no choice. The government school lunch costs $2.25 if the Federal government isn’t subsidizing it. Not surprisingly the politically connected school lunch company Chartwells-Thompson stands to make a fortune if more schools ban parents from sending their kids to school with a homemade lunch.

The arrogance of the government schools is sort of incredible. They apparently believe it is their responsibility to make sure children eat what they consider to be healthy food. According to one principle:

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

Since when was it the job of the government schools to protect children from themselves? Since when was it their job to step in and prevent parents from determining what their kids eat for lunch? It’s this sort of power that government should not have over students or anyone and yet most turn a blind eye when the government schools declare that they alone will determine what kids eat for lunch.

What’s going on in Chicago does little more that set children up for a lifetime of servile dependency on the state, which is exactly what the socialists at the government school want. They want children to grow up depending on the government to determine what is best for them. They want them to grow up with only the choices that the government decides to bestow on them. What these socialists don’t want is for children to have free and unfettered access to choices that the school or government doesn’t approve of.

One of the goals of the government schools has always been to train the next generation to rely on the state. The schools have always been viewed as the way for socialists to change the next generation. This dates back to Dewey and Mann, the founding fathers of modern government schools. Parents have long been seen as an impediment to radical socialist change dating back to the very beginning of modern government schools. So it should come as no surprise that the next government school movement, the control of food, views parents as the problem and thus seeks to isolate parents from their kids. Ironically the government schools will try to deflect blame for poor test scores by blaming parents when all along they have tried to keep parents away from any serious decision making at the schools.

It is none of the government’s business what our children eat. It is therefore none of the government schools business what parents choose to serve their kids for lunch. Even if we agree that a lot of parents give their kids unhealthy food to eat, that is not cause for government to step in. Parents have an inalienable right to raise their children and thus feed their children as they see fit. Haughty government bureaucrats do not know better than parents and should not be allowed to substitute their judgment with the force of law.

Michelle Obama’s food campaign is dangerous because it seeks to turn know it all government bureaucrats into absolute authorities on healthy eating. Those bureaucrats in turn will substitute their judgment for that of parents. Every time the left gets up in arms about something like food it leads to less freedom for parents and more government control in the lives of children and families. That is exactly what is going on in Chicago today. Mrs. Obama may be jumping for joy in one of her frumpy designer outfits but what she wants costs the American people in freedom. Parents alone should be free to determine what their children eat for lunch. Government needs to steer clear of usurping parental authority.

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