Nekritz, Drury, Burke and McCarthy. Like flies to . . . honey?

State Representative Elaine Nekritz in the 2012 Northbrook parade.

What is it about the Illinois Attorney General office that is attractive to such creepy types as Representatives Elaine Nekritz and Scott Drury?

And former top cop Garry McCarthy as Mayor? Just no.

Reports are that Alderman Eddie Burke’s daughter is circulating petitions to run as AG too.

I need another jolt of coffee this morning.

For public employees there are two legislative names that represent pension theft: Biss and Nekritz.

I know plenty who will never forgive or forget and will never punch a voting card or put a mark on a touch screen next to either one of  their names.

Hey. I’m just the messenger. I said the same thing about Pat Quinn. Enough Illinois pensioners would  not forgive his, “I was put on this earth to cut your pension,” and they left the governor’s line blank. That gave us Bruce Rauner. It’s just a fact.

Biss, to some credit, has admitted he was wrong on pension theft as a question of public policy. Although I never have heard him say he was wrong to promote an unconstitutional solution. Maybe he has said it and I missed it. I truly haven’t heard every Biss campaign speech.

Nekritz on the other hand is unrepentant on all counts.

“I’m no constitutional scholar,” she told me once over lunch. I have since been told knowledge of the state constitution is no requirement to be Attorney General in Illinois.

“How do you sleep at night?” I asked her over salad at one of our IRTA candidate forums.

“Just fine,” she said.

In yesterday’s Politico, reporter Natasha Korecki wrote of Nekritz: “Perhaps the crowning period of Nekritz’s legislative career was her push for pension reform: a landmark legislative package that ultimately was struck down by the Illinois Supreme Court. Nekritz, though, was at the forefront of the effort and roundly considered an expert on the matter.”

High praise, indeed.

Drury, as I reported last week, is pushing a pension buy-out of 70 cents on the dollar for current public employee retirees.

I asked Representative Drury, “Why would someone agree to a deal in which they get less money than the one that they are contractually and constitutionally guaranteed?”

“Because we will scare the shit out of those old people and we will get 30% of them to believe that they will lose their pensions if they don’t take the deal.”

Okay. He didn’t actually say that in so many words. But that’s what he meant.

Drury was running for governor as of yesterday, although polling poorly. Now he says he is thinking he may want to be AG.  This is further proof you don’t need to have much constitutional knowledge to want to be the state’s chief lawyer.

I am reading reports that Alderman Fast Eddie Burke may be circulating petitions for his daughter to run as AG. I never heard of her before, so I have no knowledge of her legal scholarship.

As for McCarthy for Chicago Mayor.

Jeez.

But I’m thinking Rahm didn’t sleep well last night at the thought of a McCarthy candidacy.

 

Random thoughts. Summer comes to the heartland, left-wing radio, Aziz Ansari and Seyfarth Shaw.

The thermometer nearly hit 90 degrees yesterday in Chicago.

This morning, a beautiful morning, Ulysses sits while I have my coffee with soy across from the Logan Square Centennial monument.

The New York Times reports there is a resurgence in left-wing programming since Trump’s election.

Although the sky is clear, this appears to be the silver lining on this morning’s non-existent clouds.

And it might explain the growing audience for our radio show/podcast, Hitting Left with the Klonsky Brothers. This week we are joined by my old pal, Jerry Harris. Jerry heads up the Global Studies Association.

Globalization is the current word for what I always thought was imperialism.  So, I am looking forward to a discussion that this week will look at the wider world through the lens of the Klonsky brothers and Jerry.

It should be informative as well as entertaining and a prime example of resurgent left-wing programming.

http://www.lumpenradio.com 105.5FM @ 11AM and podcast later at HittingLeft.libsyn.com

Meanwhile, if you haven’t been watching the Netflix show Masters of None with the brilliant Aziz Ansari you are missing something great.

The second season started with a wonderful take on the Italian film, The Bicycle Thief, with Ansari learning pasta-making in Modena, Italy. A cell phone takes the place of the bicycle in the original film by the legendary director, Vittorio De Sica.

I watched episode three last night. Titled Religion, Ansari tackles what he faces as a Muslim in America and makes it the stuff of sweet comedy.

Lastly. I noticed that the giant law firm, Seyfarth Shaw is having financial problems.

Why should I care?

Because Seyfarth Shaw is a giant national law firm that specializes in labor law.

Not pro-labor.

Anti-labor.

For years they were the firm that represented our board of education in bargaining with our local union. Even though ours was a small suburban district, Seyfarth Shaw would send in a senior partner to do the bargaining.

This couldn’t have been cheap.

What a prick.

I bargained along with our bargaining team a dozen times with their guy on the other side of the table whose main role was to try and provoke us.

The firm cut their teeth representing the California growers against Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers Union.

I guess I should take it as a sign of respect that the board needed them to bargain with us.

But I’m not sorry they are facing tough times.

Random thoughts. Paris, Gehry and kids.

We came home from our 40th anniversary trip to Paris on Friday in time for the first Cubs game. I am still on time distortion, waking up early even as I stayed awake long enough to enjoy last night’s win over the team from Believeland, as my Facebook friend from Ohio, Phil Arway, constantly refers to the ones with the racist logo.

It is not the players fault that the owners cling to this offensive mascot. Cleveland’s pitching is impressive and I fear for the Cubs who lost to the Mets last year due to New York’s superior pitching.

On one of our days in Paris we decided to take a look at the Louis Vuitton Foundation building in the huge Bois du Boulogne, a beautiful park in the upscale 16th Arrondissement.

Both Anne and I have limited attention spans for art museums. We were interested in seeing the Frank Gehry building. There is a cheap bus ride from the Arc de Triomphe to the Bois du Boulogne.

Photos: Fred Klonsky

The museum was both impressive and redundant of buildings designed by Gehry. The collection on display was owned by some wealthy Russian and was made up of paintings by, well, everybody who painted  in Europe in the 20th Century. And the line was long for those like us who had not pre-purchased tickets.

Instead we wandered next door to the Jardin d’Acclimatation, a public park for the kids of Paris.

French kids are off for two weeks four times a school year, which starts September 1 and ends July 1. The two week holidays take place around All Saints and All Souls Day, Christmas, February and Easter. For years schools were also closed on Wednesdays although now they are open on Wednesday mornings.

With all that time off it is a wonder France can compete in the global economy.

French kids also seem pampered by good, healthy school lunches.

Spending the afternoon surrounded by Paris’s kids was a much better choice than visiting one more stuffy art museum or church. With school out, the place was packed with organized groups of kids wearing bright flourescent vests.

The Jardin has been around for 150 years.

First it was a zoo. For a while it displayed actual people from France’s colonies, much like the human zoo at the Chicago 1892 World’s Fair.

Just as the United States can never escape the mark slavery has left on us, neither can France escape it’s brutal colonial history.

But on this afternoon, watching kids ride a camel in the middle of Paris was a gas.

Random thoughts. Suddenly the Mayor is concerned with long-term solutions. There is a mid-night deadline, pal. Make the deal.

The Cubs magic number is nine.

For the Mayor it is $200 million. It’s not like he doesn’t have it.

That is the number he can come up with to avoid parents having to find alternative places for their children tomorrow morning.

That is the price tag for a contract with the Chicago Teachers Union.

As a comparison, that is four* gyms for DePaul University.

He has the $200 million available in Tax Increment Financing.

The Mayor argues that this is not a long-term fix.

Probably not. I’m not sure the Mayor really  is interested in the long-term fix. That involves taking money from his wealthy friends and donors.

So, while we wait for a long-term fix, sign a contract with the teachers.

Open the schools tomorrow morning.

It will cost you four gyms.

*More recent estimates make it closer to two DePaul gyms.

Random thoughts. A “possible” cover-up?

The special prosecutor in the Laquan McDonald case has decided to request a grand jury. She wants the grand jury to consider whether there was a possible cover-up in the aftermath of the police murder of Laquan McDonald.

Judge LeRoy Martin Jr., the presiding judge of Cook County’s criminal division who appointed Holmes, said he would convene the special grand jury in the next two weeks to hear evidence.

That there was a cover-up is without a doubt.

My question is: Will Patricia Brown Holmes go after those at the top who tried to cover it up?

Or will she just hang  it on a few bad cops.

That just would not be justice.

Will she present evidence that police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who was fired after the release of the suppressed video tape, was part of a conspiracy to protect his cops?

There is plenty of evidence of that.

Will she bring evidence that Anita Alvarez, then Cook County States Attorney, was so buddy-buddy with the CPD that she functioned more as their personal lawyer than as the legal representative of the people of Chicago charged with protecting us from killer cops.

Will she have the grand jury look into the behavior of The Mayor?

In pursuit of his election for a second term, didn’t he bury the tape?

Let the grand jury hear about that.

There was no possible cover-up.

There was a cover-up that lasted a year.

A conspiracy to violate the law by those at the very top.

Will the grand jury hear testimony about that?

Will we see indictments of anybody in authority?

No way.

Random thoughts. No art in these deals.

Governor Rauner and the legislature had to do something, so they cut a stop-gap budget that allowed more money to flow to pay for basic state needs.

Today the Chicgo Trib reports that Rauner is meeting with a “panel of lawmakers” in Springpatch to address equity in school funding.

If you read this blog you know that Illinois ranks at the bottom in state school funding. There are few places in the country where the funding of schools is more dependent on where you live and, consequently, how much money you have and what color you are.

Democratic Senator Andy Manar has been chasing this issue for the last couple years. His solution is based on his belief that there is little courage in Springfield to address the issue of adequate school funding. He has argued that since the Democratic legislature won’t provide enough funding for every school, we can at least shift current funds around so that the crumbs that are provided can be more equally divided.

This is a state that lives by the idea of stop-gaps.

I say we can’t get equity without adequacy.

I have no hope that the “panel of lawmakers” will act on that principle.

Another part of the stop-gap budget agreement was that in order for Chicago to recieve $205 million for help in paying the pension bill there must be legislative pension reform.

What will this look like? Who will be in on the bargaining? What kind of pension reform can there possibly be that would survive a constitutional challenge after the Illinois Supreme Court’s May 2015 ruling reaffirming the pension protection clause?

I’ll be talking with Ken Davis on Chicago Newsroom about these question tomorrow on his public access program. The video will be posted here later.

Even if the City gets the $200 million, Rahm must come up with $700 million more.

Following the giant property tax increase that Rahm pushed through, there is little enthusiasm for another tax on working families by even the most toady-like alderman.

Speaking of toady-like aldermen.

Joe Moore supports a utility tax instead of a property tax. 

Any further hike in property taxes would make homeowners howl.

“We’re left with the least harmful of the poisons, and that’s the utility tax,” said 49th Ward Ald. Joe Moore.

“At the end of the day, you’re paying more in taxes overall, whether it’s the property tax or the utilities tax,” said Amanda Kass of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability.

It is the cost of Mayor Daley’s unrealistic obsession with keeping property taxes low.

“For years and years and years, pension funds have been underfunded,” Kass said. “By underfunding pension funds, you could keep property taxes artificially low.”

Amanda Kass is right as usual.

I am a homeowner whose property taxes have gone up 30% in two years. We also pay a tax on utilities. How does Dumb Joe think one is a lesser poison?

The pension bill must be paid.

Can they stop-gap forever?

 

 

Random thoughts. Free speech for student journalists. What a concept.

I spotted State Representative Will Guzzardi having breakfast at Dunlay’s as we were going to Sunday’s Logan Square Farmers’ Market.

Sweet corn. Raspberries. White fish and pasture-raised chicken. That isn’t what Will Guzzardi was having for breakfast. That is what we bought at the Market.

Guzzardi was still recovering from being a Bernie delegate to the DNC in Philly.

We exchanged pleasantries. But he did not mention that his bill protecting Illinois high school journalists had just passed both chambers of the Illinois legislature and had been signed by Governor Rauner.

It has been 25 years since the United States Supreme Court ruled that first amendment rights and freedom of the press don’t count if the journalist is under 18 years old.

Guzzardi’s bill, cosponsored by Senator Dan Biss and even supported by my old nemesis Elaine Nekritz will give those rights to Illinois high school students.

Stan Zoller is a member of the Illinois Journalism Education Association who approached Nekritz about supporting the Guzzardi/Biss bill.

“Some people were concerned that we were going to give student journalists the right to storm the Bastille. And that’s not the case. You can see the law says that administrators can step in in cases of obscenity or libel issues. So the key is responsible journalism. And how can you argue with that?”

It seems that somebody argued against it when it came before the Supreme Court. Now laws like this must be passed state by state.

That’s crazy.

I’m glad it has come to Illinois after 25 years.

As far as storming the Bastille is concerned, I always thought that was a good thing. And it’s not as if anybody needed a law to do it.

Random thoughts. This is not an election over who is a friend of Wall Street.

The news out of Cleveland yesterday was that a norovirus was spreading among delegates and staffers. A norovirus causes vomiting and diarrhea.

Newt Gingrich also spoke.

And, of course, Ted Cruz.

Reports  the N.Y. Times.

At a downtown barbecue joint, lobbyists cheerfully passed out stickers reading “Make Lobbying Great Again” as they schmoozed on Monday with Republican ambassadors, lawmakers and executives. At a windowless bar tucked behind the Ritz-Carlton hotel, whose rooms were set aside for the party’s most generous benefactors, allies of Mr. Trump pitched a clutch of receptive party donors on contributing to a pro-Trump “super PAC.”

And from Slate:

“Trump has told prospective donors that, if elected president, he plans to nominate former Goldman Sachs banker Steve Mnuchin for U.S. Treasury Secretary.” Currently, Mnuchin is a hedge fund CEO, as well as Trump’s chief fundraiser.

Again, from The Times:

And on Tuesday night, as Republican delegates formally made Mr. Trump their presidential nominee, a few dozen lobbyists and their clients instead sipped gin and munched on Brie puffs in an oak-paneled room at the Union Club. They had come to witness a more urgent presentation: Newt Gingrich, a top Trump adviser and Beltway fixture, painting an upbeat picture of the deals they could help sculpt on infrastructure projects and military spending in the first hundred days of a Trump administration.

No surprise, Trump’s campaign is an alliance we have seen in history before.

Wall Street banksters and brown-shirt fascists at rallies and in the streets.

I wish we were voting on the power of Wall Street. Not in this election.

But a massive popular vote and electoral defeat for Trump will be a punch in the nose of those  brown shirts.

Random thoughts. Teachers as Carnac.

If you are old enough to remember the old Johnny Carson show you will remember the bit when Carson would come out as the fortune teller Carnac.

Carson as Carnac would be handed an envelope by his side kick Ed McMahon and he would predict the answer to a question that was sealed the envelope.

“Peter Pan,” Carnac would say.

“What do you use to fry a Peter.”

I still laugh at this joke, evidence that I have a still have little boy’s sense of humor.

I posted a terrific article on Facebook this morning from Valerie Strauss’ Washington Post column by  Nancy Carlsson-Paige. Carlsson-Paige is an authority on early childhood development, professor emerita of education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Ma., where she taught teachers for more than 30 years and was a founder of the university’s Center for Peaceable Schools.

Never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined that we would have to defend children’s right to play.

Play is the primary engine of human growth; it’s universal – as much as walking and talking. Play is the way children build ideas and how they make sense of their experience and feel safe. Just look at all the math concepts at work in the intricate buildings of kindergartners. Or watch a 4-year-old put on a cape and pretend to be a superhero after witnessing some scary event.

A Facebook friend responded.

I’ve been teaching Kindergarten for 18 years and have been fighting to keep play in my classroom the whole time. It’s maddening to have to defend children’s true work. I continuously have to justify having a water table, costumes, or Lego. At one point a few years ago I hung signs around my classroom at each center titled ‘What Children Learn From Dramatic Play’ and ‘What Children Learn From Puppets’ listing five or six things kids are learning through that particular type of play. Still, I am subjected to sweeping walkthroughs where admins offhandedly glance at the water table and wave it away saying “Oh no, get rid of that. Less social, more academic.”

Predicting what our students learn is teaching as Carnac.

As an Art teacher I never invited students into my room without a sense of where I would like us to go, what was worth knowing and experiencing, what activities would take us there, how I should organize those activities and how I would know if it all worked.

Yet, students learn all the time. They learn in ways that are unexpected and unplanned. They might take a path of their own. Sometimes to a place I wasn’t aware of ahead of time.

The third grade teacher walked into my room and looked down at my planning book that the district had provided. It was open to all the little one inch squares that represented each class. In each square I had written a word: Mask, self-portrait, landscape and so on.

“What the hell is that?” she asked.

“My plans,” I said. “Five classes a day. This reminds me of what is next.”

“But where are your lesson plans?”

“If someone needs to see one, I will write it later,” I said.

In our district we were on evaluation every other year after we received tenure. It just so happened that I was to be evaluated my final year of teaching. The irony of that did not escape me. Irony nearly always totally escaped my principal and this situation was no exception.

Prior to her coming into my room to observe my teaching for the 45 minutes that were required she asked me to fill out a form which included a space to explain what the students would learn.

“Why don’t you just come and watch and then tell me,” I said.