EXTRA: That was quick! Or was it?

Former Chicago Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett got herself into the local political lore with that e-mail she sent, the one about having “tuition to pay and casinos to visit.”

BYRD-BENNETT: Trying to put issue to rest

An attitude that now has her in a position where she faces the possibility of a few years in a federal correctional institution, now that she has pleaded guilty on Tuesday to criminal charges alleging she directed contracts to an educational consulting firm that promised her assorted financial perks.

I’M SURE THEY weren’t presented to her as bribes, but that is the way they are being viewed by the U.S. attorney’s office – which last week said she was indicted on assorted charges.

Just as former 7^th Ward Alderman Sandi Jackson’s only real action for which she’s now on her way to prison was signing income tax returns for herself and former Congressman husband Jesse Jr. It was the federal government that determined those returns were not fully accurate, and therefore worthy of incarceration for the couple.

But because Byrd-Bennett isn’t putting up anything of a fight, she was permitted on Tuesday to enter a plea to one count of wire fraud. The other dozen or so charges she faced last week have withered away into nothingness.

Not bad, particularly since federal prosecutors have said they will seek less than the 14 years in prison she could have got if she had been found guilty of all the charges she originally faced.

JACKSON: Prison for signing a tax form

BUT BYRD-BENNETT CAN’T say this ordeal is behind her.

Because the judge in question (Edmond Chong) isn’t about to sentence her until legal proceedings are done against a pair of co-defendants.

It seems that Byrd-Bennett is expected to cooperate with prosecutors against those defendants, and won’t know how long her own prison time will be until after things have settled. I’d hate to think her time waiting to be sentenced will be longer than the actual time she has to serve.

JACKSON: His actions got her too

Perhaps it seems I’m not taking all of this too seriously, or that I’m not appropriately outraged at the notion that Byrd-Bennett gave no-bid contracts to a company that used to employ her.

THE FACT IS that Byrd-Bennett resigned her post and we already have moved on to the new leadership of Forrest Claypool – who already is the butt of jokes for people determined to point out the public schools system’s every flaw.

BEAVERS: Also a gambling habit

Byrd-Bennett is already ancient history. Who probably wouldn’t be remembered anymore if not for her remark about needing money to feed her casino habit?

Which does little more than put her in a category with political people such as former alderman and Cook County commissioner William Beavers – who wound up doing his own short stint in prison because prosecutors objected to the idea of him using money from his campaign funds to help entertain himself at those casinos out on the fringe of the Chicago area.

Just think how many more politicos we’ll have facing criminal charges if our officials ever are able to get their acts together and approve construction of a casino within the city limits?

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A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): To listen to the CTU, it’s Rahm’s fault!

Chicago Public Schools boss Barbara Byrd-Bennett is out of the job, at least for the time being.

It seems federal investigators are looking into a contract awarded by the Board of Education to the SUPES Academy, a no-bid deal to the leadership institute that Byrd-Bennett once worked for.

THERE ARE THOSE who would like to think this is an “a-ha!!!” type moment of catching the Chicago Public Schools in something illegal – as though it isn’t just aldermen who are inherently corrupt.

Which is why I found it intriguing to read the statement issued by the Chicago Teachers Union with regards to Byrd-Bennett deciding to step down indefinitely from the post to which she was picked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. To listen to the teachers’ union, it’s Rahm’s fault.

He’s the one to blame for anything that was done wrong with the schools. They may not have been successful in stirring up a majority voter support in this month’s municipal election run-off to dump Rahm Emanuel from his mayoral post. But he’s still going to be the brunt of the union attacks.

“What Barbara is being singled out for is sadly just one incident among widespread practices by the mayor’s Board of Education  appointees, and the turmoil caused by yet another top-down leadership scandale is a grave concern for all of us as the district faces a crippling financial deficit,” union Vice President Jesse Sharkey said in a prepared statement.

IT SEEMS THAT if we don’t have elected school board members for the Chicago Public Schools, the union is going to go after the one person who does get elected – Hizzoner himself.

So much for the idea that the union and the mayor have reached some sort of peace, the way some would like to think after learning last week that Emanuel and union President Karen Lewis actually had a civil conversation following Election Day and Emanuel’s 56 percent vote support.

Then again, after outspending opponent Jesus Garcia by a 5-1 ratio during the election cycle, the real miracle is that Chuy came as close as he did. It’s going to be an ugly round of negotiations later this year when Emanuel and the teachers’ union have to try to hammer out a new labor agreement if this kind of bitterness remains.

What else is notable along the shores of Lake Michigan’s southwestern corner?

CARDINAL GEORGE ASCENDS TO THE HEAVENS: Cardinal Francis George stepped down from his post as head of the Catholic Archdiocese in Chicago because of health reasons, making it possible for an orderly transition that gives us Archbishop Blasé Cupich at the head of the local church.

George’s health factors weren’t an exaggeration, as he died Friday at age 78 from cancer.

His 17 years as head of the Catholic church in Chicago was significant because he was the first Chicago-born native to return here and become the local boss – quite a rise up from a former Catholic school kid from St. Pascal School in the Portage Park neighborhood.

Particularly when one considers he was turned away from the Quigley Preparatory Seminary and was told at the time he likely would never be ordained as a priest because he had to recover from a bout with polio.

KRIS BRYANT; THE QUINTESSENTIAL CHICAGO CUB?: 0-4 with three strikeouts. That was the major league debut of Kris Bryant, the so-called top prospect whom some Chicago Cubs fans were all worked up over because he didn’t make the Cubs’ Opening Day roster.

Cubs management admitted they sent him to the Iowa Cubs roster until Friday because of a business maneuver that will delay by a full year the amount of major league service time he will have before he can someday become a free agent.

Bryant supposedly knocked the snot out of the ball during spring training, and had a couple of good weeks hitting Pacific Coast League pitching before getting his major league call-up.

But on Friday, he stunk the joint up as the Cubs lost 5-4 to the San Diego Padres. It’s only one game, but you have to admit it is so Chicago Cub-ish for the superstar of the future to fizzle out when it matters the most.

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And on this corner, we see a couple of crackheads selling drugs to your kids…

How many people would think to use the 45^th anniversary of the date of the shooting death of Martin Luther King, Jr., to take a bus tour of some fairly decrepit neighborhoods in Chicago to point out all the things that are wrong?

EMANUEL: Is he really all-powerful?

That actually was the tactic of the Chicago Teachers Union, which on Thursday put together a bus tour meant to take unsuspecting people to the neighborhoods that will be impacted by the Chicago Public Schools plan to close some 60 facilities.

AS THOUGH IF people see for themselves the street gang-infested neighborhoods that some children would now have to walk through or attend schools in due to the closures, officials will suddenly feel sympathy.

Somehow, I doubt it worked. Largely because the Chicago schools officials already are putting on their “game” face that they’ve acted, and they’re not in a reconsideration mood.

That’s how I take schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s comments earlier this week about how she’s insulted that people are describing the schools closure plan as “racist” because so many of the schools that will be closed down are in African-American neighborhoods.

Somehow, I don’t think taking people on a bus tour of black-oriented neighborhoods will sway that many people, because too many Chicagoans already are oriented to ignoring such neighborhoods.

PERHAPS THEY MIGHT think, “It’s not my neighborhood,” so they don’t concern themselves with it. One only has to look at recent activity along Michigan Avenue involving robberies to realize that there are no barricades between neighborhoods, and we really are tied together as one city.

One’s problems ought to be considered as all of our problems.

Now I have stated before that I think the real tragedy concerning the fight about closing schools is that it puts people living in substandard neighborhoods into fighting to maintain schools that are substandard themselves.

We ought to be thinking about how to improve the opportunities for those people – rather than encouraging this particular fight that has the ability to make everybody look seriously stupid.

OR ARROGANT, WHICH is how the Emanuels are now coming across in this particular political fight.

Take Mayor Rahm’s brother, Ezekiel, the one who is getting attention these days for the book he recently wrote about the lives of himself, Rahm and third brother Ari. He also is the guy who went on the Huffington Post to “advise” the Chicago Teachers Union to, “give in now. Give in now. Rahm will win. He always does win.”

He also elaborated that the unions, by putting up any fight to Emanuel and the Chicago Public Schools (who are merely following Rahm’s dictates on this issue) are merely “banging their heads against the wall.”

That’s tough talk! It seems that Rahm Emanuel (if his brother’s talk is at all true) thinks he’s already as mighty and powerful a municipal executive as anyone named Daley!

AS ONE WHO remembers the mayoral terms of people like Eugene Sawyer, Mike Bilandic and Jane Byrne, I’m well aware that it isn’t the position itself that gives people the power to treat Chicago like their personal fiefdom. Particularly in the case of Byrne, this city has a way of snapping back at people who try to push too hard!

It makes me wonder if the final outcome of all of this is going to be the bloody political showdown that will make the racially-tinged hostility of “Council Wars” seem like a political tea party!

All I know for sure is that we have a teachers union that is angry enough to charter a bus to drive around some neighborhoods that many of us try to pretend do not exist. That is, if we have ever even bothered to set foot in those neighborhoods (which may be the real problem).

It could end in a hard-fought victory for the mayor, if certain circumstances work in his favor.

THEN AGAIN, IT could also turn out to be a case where Emanuel (as in the mayor) gets hung out to dry.

Could this someday become the sight of a bloody mess? Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

Because that kind of arrogance (“He always does win!”) is usually the type of attitude that causes people to desire the equivalent of a severed head put on a pike just in front of the Picasso statue!

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