Demand to ‘be treated with respect’…
Mayor Rahm Emanuel caught in 3-way tug-of-war – Taxpayers to shoulder added cost of police details.
CTU President Karen Lewis[ who has NEVER missed a meal] took her 32,000-member union on strike after midnight. She demands that her people ‘be treated with respect’. 
That’s her CODE for: you cannot fire an incompetent Black teacher – only the incompetent White ones. Don’t even think of evaluating a union teacher based on student test scores!
Mayor Emanuel is in a bind:
He is supposed to be running the Obama Campaign’s Super-PAC contribution machine, – which has been lagging behind Romney’s for months. He’s got to run the city – which is having a year-long wave of murders. Now he’s got to become personally involved in trying to settle the strike, without alienating either Chicago’s poor Blacks – or organized labor.
I think Karen Lewis is going to squeeze his %alls!
Meanwhile – the ‘Child First‘ program will keep 145 Elementary schools open ½ day – to feed breakfast and lunch to poor inner-city kids.
But you know that out on the streets the Jr and Sr high school kids will be running wild. More crime, more patients in the city’s Ers, – more police and court time.
Karen Lewis will insist it’s ‘all about the kids, – and of course her people needing R-E-S-P-E-C-T!‘ Starting teachers [BS/BA] make $47,268, average CTU salary is $71K…before benefits!
Mind you – this is the same failing school system from which Obama select Superintendent Arne Duncan [a thug] to be his Secretary of Education.
It has the lowest graduation rate in the country – and the highest in-school murder rate.
Anybody think ‘respect‘ is the real issue? How about 60+ years of deeply embedded AA/EEO and total corruption?
Total Corruption? Yeah, since the last strike – 1987 – the city officials have avoided strikes by bending over backwards, giving the union what it demanded, and getting nothing back in return. Now the monster they’ve been feeding wants more than dinner – it wants to eat the house!
And with unemployment rising sharply due to the Obama Administration economic policies, the Chicago tax base has dried up.
How do YOU think this story will end? Will Obama use YOUR tax $$ to enable Rahm Emanuel to mollify his monster union? Will poor Black Chicago kids go back to better schools and better teachers?
Remember back in 2010 when Emanuel departed the Obama White House so he could run for mayor? He wanted to expand his résumé - because he has higher political ambitions himself. Now he’s taking his mid-term exam.
AND, these 32,000 unemployed teachers will figure into next week’s unemployment numbers, if the Obama Dept of Labor records them honestly…
September 10th, 2012 - 7:48 pm
With Chicago’s unemployment rate at 11% and the average Chicagoan making about $30,200, it is unbelievable that these teachers walked away from a 16% raise (with benefits) knowing that there will be a $700 million dollar deficit at the end of the school year. No one has mentioned that only 15% of Chicago public school 4th graders are proficient in reading or that 4 of 10 Chicago’s students do not graduate. Maybe it is time to get rid of the union completely and pay teachers based on productivity and student accomplishments.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>—————–< <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<
It's all just political theater MC. The strike is taking place so Obama can swoop in and settle it – having ‘found’ a little unused ‘government money’ to smooth things over.
He’ll end up giving the teachers 18% plus a front-end signing bonus…
The kids and the taxpayers are screwed!
September 11th, 2012 - 12:10 pm
I had a thought, that if Mayor Emmanuel had any balls, he’d fire the lot of them.
Then I thought that this was Mayor Emmanuel, and of course the first thought was pointless.