No more Mayor Rahm-bo?!?

For all practical purposes, the era of Rahm Emanuel as Chicago mayor is over.

EMANUEL: Kaput as of Monday, but will he return?

The transition to the Lightfoot Years comes Monday, so unless Rahm has some sort of “midnight surprise” planned for the weekend, his time being able to do much of anything in municipal office is kaput!

ALL THOSE “HUZZAHS!!!” we’re hearing are from people pleased that we’ve managed to survive the past eight years, and that Emanuel is no more. Or so they think.

Because personally I think it’s wishful thinking to believe that the Era of Rahm is over and that we’ve sent the man packing into political oblivion.

I’ve heard the same political reports of the mayor saying he’ll focus his life back on the business community – for the time being. But I can’t truly envision him a political has-been.

If anything, I won’t be the least bit surprised to learn Emanuel becomes a “behind the scenes” political player who winds up being connected in some form to whichever of the dozens of Democrats with dreams of becoming president in 2020.

THE MAN DID, after all, serve as a significant part of that 2006 effort that shifted the House of Representatives back to Democratic Party control. He did serve as a White House chief of staff under the “beloved’ Barack Obama presidency that many progressive politicos fantasize about returning to in spirit.

TRUMP: Do we despise more than Rahm-bo?

Could it be that many of the same people who are thinking thoughts of “Drop Dead!” at the very thought of Rahm Emanuel’s continued existence will wind up touting the man’s merits (through gnashed teeth, most likely) at the fact he’s likely affiliated with whoever it is they wind up touting for president?

Because it may wind up being that these people of progressive political leanings will despise the notion of “four more years” for Donald Trump far more than they do the thought of Emanuel.

They may wind up coming to appreciate his hard-core political leanings that are willing to play hardball just as much as any Republican ideologue does. Adopting the notion that history only remembers who won an election, and doesn’t care in the least about praising the merits of the good loser.

Can Rahm turn unknown Dem into 2020 winner?

OF COURSE, THERE were those people who always despised the notion of Emanuel as mayor – maybe because they’d rather be the loser with a so-called sense of morals who can then blame the opposition politicos for running roughshod over everything they desire for our society.

Looking back on commentaries I wrote back in those days of 2011 when Emanuel beat three other mayoral hopefuls to avoid having a run-off election, what catches my attention was the notion that Emanuel would be the mayoral hopeful who placed the business interests of downtown first.

Not all that different from the days of the Mayor Daley eras (both elder and younger), if you think about it. So perhaps we shouldn’t be the least bit shocked by the way the Emanuel era turned out.

For those who still rant about the way Emanuel early on oversaw the closing of public schools in predominantly black or Latino neighborhoods, the reality is that many of those schools were failing their students. You can say Rahm didn’t do enough to replace them, but we’d be worse off if many of those schools were still lingering in existence – providing inadequate services for the students stuck there because of a lack of alternatives.

THEN, THERE’S THE key issue that I’m sure upsets people – the relations between police and the African-American segment of Chicago. As evidenced by the 2014 shooting death of a teenager that took more than four years to finally get a case to trial – and resulted in a police officer getting a minimal penalty.

LIGHTFOOT: Her era begins Monday at noon

Although to some, even that three-plus year jail sentence is too harsh. But for others, the injustice is that it wasn’t Emanuel himself who had to suffer some punishment.

I don’t doubt that the same people who were pushing for a 90-something-year prison term for Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke are also the ones who would have wanted Emanuel to suffer an indignity – rather than being able to walk away from office with his political win streak intact.

A streak that I really believe will be put to the test by those people eager to Dump Trump next year. We may have to decide just which character do we despise more – and will we have to put aside our contempt for Rahm if it achieves a “greater” good.

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Rauner will have a few friends in coming weeks; schools get their cash

We’re less than a week away from the point in time when the lack of a budget for state government causes the government to shut down, yet Gov. Bruce Rauner ensured on Wednesday that he will have a few friends remaining.

This bank will get cracked; what about rest of Ill.?

Those “friends” will be the education community; who learned this week that they will continue to get their money – regardless of what happens to the rest of state government.

FOR RAUNER GAVE his signature of support to the bill that covered the part of state government that handled general state aid payments to public schools, early childhood education, bilingual education programs and the Teachers Retirement System.

Rauner had threatened a series of cuts he said would have to be made to state government to balance out the budget without any significant increases in income. Which was his way of saying he’d want some of his anti-labor measures implemented before he’d consider any tax adjustments.

Those cuts would have included a failure to make state aid payments that each and every single public school district in Illinois counts on to cover their operating costs.

Those payments for the upcoming academic year begin in August. Literally, Aug. 10 was the date that public schools would start to suffer because of the political stalemate.

BUT NOW WITH the education appropriations signed off on, Illinois government will be able to pay bills beginning Wednesday that relate to public education.

So we don’t have to worry about our local schools having to cut their spending for the upcoming school year. Or perhaps not having enough money on hand to even begin the new school year – which was a reality that cash-strapped districts in rural Illinois were facing.

RAUNER: Did he make friends, or enemies?

Now, the schools will still have a lack of cash and won’t have any money for extras. But parents all over the state will be able to breathe a sigh of relief at the thought that they’d be stuck with their kids because school couldn’t reopen following summer break.

Also pleased, I’m sure, are the school administrators who currently are putting together their budgets for the upcoming school year without knowing when, or how much, money they would be able to count on from state government.

ADMITTEDLY, THIS DOESN’T resolve the state’s problems. The rest of state government still faces the prospect of a shut-down because the governor and the Legislature’s leadership aren’t capable of coming agreement on how money should be spent.

MADIGAN: Still apart on rest of budget

Or even how much money the state will have for Fiscal 2016.

The fact that education got its appropriations approved first may wind up meaning everything else could wind up having to be cut even more than anticipated.

Even in the statement Rauner issued saying he had signed the education appropriation, he couldn’t help but take a pot shot at the political people who won’t just cave in to his ideological whims.

“I REFUSE TO allow (Illinois House) Speaker (Michael) Madigan and the legislators he controls to hold our schools hostage as part of their plan to protect the political class and force a tax hike on the middle class without real reform,” he said.

Although I’m aware that many educators are viewing this as a matter of Rauner trying to place the blame on them because the business class wants a tax break that will bolster their financial bottom lines.

Seriously, I have encountered many Chicago-area school administrators who are viewing Madigan and his staff to keep them apprised of what is happening in state government and why Rauner is too eager to throw that whole system out-of-whack.

Those people will now be less hostile toward the governor; a few may even come around to seeing his way of thinking. But I suspect he’s still going to have more than his share of enemies who will linger on long after this current partisan spat is resolved.

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Illinois Legislature addresses sex ed issue for kids in an adult manner

Being a “blue” state is a complicated matter.

There are those ideologues of a conservative bent who want to believe that everything that happens in this state is somehow out of touch with “real America.” Heck, there are those residents of the rural parts of Illinois who think the Land of Lincoln is somehow lost.

BUT IT DOESN’T always work out that way.

Take the whole political fight over gay marriage. If any state ought to have been capable of being at the forefront of altering the laws on this issue, it should have been one with as dominant an urban area as Chicago is over the rest of the state.

Yet as we all know, that issue got all tangled up. It never did come up for a vote in the Illinois House of Representatives, and the conservative-leaning interests are taking pride in that fact.

The Baptist religious influence that impacts many African-Americans has the black caucus being separate from the rest of the Democratic majority on this issue. It’s not clear when this issue will come up for a vote again.

SO MUCH FOR Illinois being some sort of liberal bastion that won’t respect the concerns of the ideologues!

Keeping that fact in mind, we ought to consider it a part of the partisan balancing act that is the real way things work amongst our political people.

SEX ED: From the Statehouse ...

How else to consider the fact that the Legislature this spring approved, and Gov. Pat Quinn last week signed into law, a measure that expands the content of what is taught in the public schools as part of sex education programs.

The change, which along with many other new laws will take effect Jan. 1, says that sex education programs must include provisions about birth control methods. Existing laws allowed for schools to offer sex education programs that emphasized abstinence – as in telling children that “no sex” is their only option.

AND IF BY chance they chose to ignore that advice in their daily lives? Then I guess they were just on their own – going about their lives in ignorance.
 

... to school boards across Illinois?

The ideologues, many of whom were the same ones who ranted and raged this spring against gay marriage becoming a legitimate concept in Illinois, hated this bill too. They want to say that parents should be the only ones determining what their children know about sex.

Ignoring the fact that some people are determined to keep their kids clueless – leaving them vulnerable to the realities (which can be scary) of life. It most likely was this bill's relative anonymity (compared to the gay marriage issue) that let it slip through the legislative process and gain approval.

Although those people who really hate the idea of sex education including information about contraception and protection for health reasons still have an out.

SCHOOL DISTRICTS HAVE the option of dropping sex education programs altogether – if they so wish. It has me wondering if the ideologues who failed to get the General Assembly to kill this bill will now be nagging their local school boards.

All in an effort to get them to do away with sex ed, health class, personal biology, or whatever label the local schools choose to put on the issue of letting young people know that sex isn’t just about Whoopee!!?!

And yes, I have dealt with enough school board officials throughout my decades as a reporter-type person to know that some of them will be susceptible to such an appeal. This issue may turn into a reminder about how the real governing of our society is done at the local level that most people pay no attention to.

Before anyone starts to nag me on the grounds that I’d feel differently about this issue if I had kids of my own, I should point out that I have two nephews and two nieces who are exactly the age that they’re going to be impacted by this change.

I’D RATHER THEY have some sense of reality about this issue, even if it might make someone else feel uncomfortable.

That strikes me as being less embarrassing than having a youthful family member either pregnant or suffering from chlamydia because he/she truly didn’t know any better!

  -30-

No “boobies” in Jr. High makes sense

I usually don’t have a problem with writing a commentary that mocks a small-town mentality for being ridiculously strict. Yet this is one occasion where I can’t help but side with the school officials of a rural Indiana community who have a problem with a student going around school with “boobies” wrapped around their wrists.

If they were a little bit older, I could see the argument being made by the parents of a student who is upset that she can’t wear her “I (heart) boobies” wristbands to school as a way of showing support for breast cancer research.

BUT THIS IS junior high school we’re talking about. 12- and 13-year-olds who really haven’t reached any level of maturity. The kind who likely would have thought Beavis and Butthead (He’s named “Butt,” heh, heh, heh) were cool, except that those characters are so old I doubt that current pre-teens have a clue who they are.

I know that if a kid had showed up at school when I was in Junior High with such a wristband, it would have created a distraction. And based on the fact that I have a nephew who is now in that age bracket (and another who is just barely older), I don’t have any sense that people have changed with the passage of time.

Not even in Monticello, Ind., where the Glander family is upset that their eighth-grade son can’t have “boobies” on his wrist.

While I realize that the marketing campaign using “boobies” is part of a serious attempt to make people aware of the problem of breast cancer and of the research that is trying to find a cure, I’d argue it is definitely a message meant for adults.

IT IS WHY I dispute the line of logic offered up in the lawsuit filed by the family that says the junior high student’s older siblings were allowed to wear identical bracelets to class at high school.

There is a big difference in maturity at that age level.

So do I think the American Civil Liberties Union (which filed the lawsuit in federal court for northern Indiana on behalf of the family) is a bit misguided in taking on this particular issue and trying to claim it is some sort of constitutional right for pre-teens to wear such wristbands? Yes.

In fact, I was always of the understanding that, legally, the amount of rights that minors had were limited. They have a right to be protected from physical abuse. But expression can be limited.

AND NOW, THIS issue is going to spread. We probably will wind up at the Supreme Court of the United States someday, on account of the fact that differing states have courts ruling in differing ways.

Such “boobies” wristbands can be banned by school officials in Wisconsin, although federal judges in Pennsylvania have ruled that “boobies” wristbands aren’t “vulgar” or “lewd” – and therefore cannot be prohibited on students as any part of a dress code.

Great minds such as those possessed by Clarence Thomas will ultimately have to resolve this issue!

So what should we think, in the interim?

DO I ACTUALLY sympathize with the officials at Roosevelt Middle School in Monticello, Ind., for realizing that some of their students aren’t mature enough to see this bracelet and its silly slang term for the serious issue at stake – and would merely use it as an excuse to mock (she’s got boobies, heh, heh, heh)?

Yes!

And do I think that the real injustice in this whole affair is that a U.S. District judge in Lafayette, Ind., had to waste time this week in contemplating an order that says the school officials can continue to ban the boobie bracelet while the lawsuit at-large is still pending?

Heck, yeah!!!!!

  -30-

A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Who gets in the last word on Blagojevich?

Prosecuting attorneys who want to turn former Gov. Rod Blagojevich into another notch of victory on their records formally ended their questioning during his criminal trial. Not that such a move means that Milorod will now sit down and shut up.

BLAGOJEVICH: Will he get last word?



For Tuesday became the day that Blagojevich continued to testify, as his own attorneys now ask him questions that relate to the most embarrassing moments the former governor had during his days of questioning by prosecutors.

IT’S CALLED “REDIRECT,” and it is limited to bringing out the additional details that would be relevant, but that prosecutors didn’t want to hear in response to their own questions. It was meant to give Blagojevich the "final" say, as was Blagojevich's stunt of walking up to Assistant U.S. Attorney Reid Schar after his testimony ended Tuesday and trying to shake his hand.

In short, we’re engaged in a serious back-and-forth between the prosecution and defense to see who can have the last word in terms of Blagojevich’s testimony during his own criminal trial – in which closing arguments (hopefully) will begin by week's end.

In his final bit of questioning on Tuesday by prosecutors, the federal government tried to get Blagojevich to say that he wanted to give his appointment of a U.S. Senate seat from Illinois to Rep. Jesse Jackson, Jr., D-Ill., in exchange for a campaign contribution that would bolster his own future political options.

Anyone who knows anything about the level of pettiness that can occur among Illinois politicos knows (and it has come out during the trial as well) that Blagojevich and Jackson didn’t get along. My guess is that Jackson is the absolute LAST person Blagojevich would have wanted to have the position.

THE IDEA THAT he would try to “shake down” the allies of Barack Obama to let the incoming president have a say in who would replace him in the Senate would be more believable.

Then again, this is a prosecution that started out their questioning of Blagojevich last week by asking him if he really was a “convicted liar” (a reference to the lone conviction that prosecutors got during his first trial).

If one looks at this objectively, that question is so loaded and stupid that it undercuts the credibility of prosecutors. Then again, I doubt many people care these days if Blagojevich’s feelings get hurt.

What else is notable these days along the shores of Lake Michigan – aside from the intense heat (heat index readings of up to 103 degrees) that is causing many of us to spend as much time in air-conditioned facilities as possible?

CHICO: Still a part of political scene



A REWARD FOR A HARD-FOUGHT CAMPAIGN?: So Gery Chico, the one-time Chicago Board of Education president and holder of other education-related posts who ran an aggressive campaign for mayor, gets to move on to his next political position.



It seems that the Chicago attorney has found his niche in positions that allow him to be an apparent expert in public education. For Gov. Pat Quinn on Tuesday officially named Chico to be head of the Illinois State Board of Education.



Quinn says he liked Chico’s campaign rhetoric about education related issues, and likes the idea of putting public education across Illinois into the hands of someone who once ran the Chicago Public Schools (along with Paul Vallas) and most recently was in charge of the City Colleges of Chicago.

It also means that Chico can continue to have a life in public service outside of the realm of Mayor Rahm Emanuel – who never would have appointed Chico to any post. It will be interesting to see how things play out the first time that Chico and new Chicago schools CEO Jean-Claude Brizard wind up in conflict on some point.

SENSE PREVAILS. NO CHARGES: Quinn ordered the Legislature back to Springfield for a special session. But the intriguing “news” from the capital city comes from the state’s attorney for Sangamon County, Ill.

Scene of the "crime?" Not according to the state's attorney for Springfield.



He’s not going to file criminal charges against state Sen. Mike Jacobs, D-East Moline. We can all now breathe a sigh of relief. Although the sight of a “perp walk” for a sitting senator could have been entertaining.

Jacobs is the senator who touched/ poked/slapped/pushed/punched Senate colleague Kyle McCarter, R-Lebanon, in the chest following a shouting match over a bill related to Commonwealth Edison (Jacob’s father, former legislator Denny Jacobs, is one of their lobbyists).

McCarter is the guy who has been screaming how he wants “Justice!!!” for the physical assault he had to endure. Now, he’s not going to get it, with State’s Attorney John Milhiser issuing a statement saying the spat is, “best resolved internally by the Senate and not the criminal courts.”

THE QUINTESSENTIAL SOX – PEAVY OR DANKS?: I can’t make up my mind which Chicago White Sox pitcher is more representative of the 2011 season.

Jake Peavy is the one-time National League Cy Young Award winner who hasn’t pitched anywhere near that level of excellence in Chicago, and is now the subject of “day to day” scrutiny of his right groin, which suffered a strain when he pitched Sunday against the Detroit Tigers.

John Danks, of course, has been gaining national attention because he went the first two months of this season without registering a “win.” He took that 0-8 record into Monday night’s game against the Seattle Mariners, who will now be the first team whom Danks actually managed to beat in ’11.

So are the White Sox, who as of Tuesday had won six of their last eight games, turning things around for this season, as symbolized by Danks? Or is the Sout’ Side’s ballclub destined to be remembered this season for a groin pull?

  -30-

Whole lot of nuthin’ is what ‘moment of silence’ in the public schools amounts to

As a reporter-type person, I have had many occasions to set foot in high schools – including the ones I attended – during the 28 years since I graduated and went away to college.

Yet I don’t look at these teenagers and long for those days of innocence when my biggest concern was a chemistry final and my biggest wish was that the cute blond girl who sat next to me in English class would actually give me the time of day, let alone speak to me.

I LOOK AT what comes off as the excessive security measures we impose in the schools and all the other many requirements we have implemented on students, and my only reaction is to be thankful that I’m not a student these days. I don’t know how I’d handle all the stupid stuff that exists these days for students to cope with.

That is pretty much what I think of the latest new requirement that public high school teenagers are having to deal with – the moment of silence.

In theory, I like the idea. Everybody shut up for a few seconds! Pipe down, you’re all giving me a headache with your racket.

Of course, cutting down on the amount of aspirin a high school teacher consumes during the school day (unless, by chance, there is some sort of regulation against the teacher being able to take an aspirin or any other kind of medication while on school property) is NOT the reason that officials pushed for this moment of silence.

THIS WAS THE compromise devised years ago by the people who seriously believe that the day in public school – which is a mixture of all kinds of kids from families with religious beliefs ranging from pious to apathetic to non-existent – should start with a prayer.

These people are going to pretend that the quiet time is being used by these kids to pray to a god that he may give them the strength to get through another day of the bureaucratic mess that has become high school in the early 21^st Century.



Anybody who expects this scene to take place in a Chicago-area public school today is delusional.



I know better. Because I see that while the layers of nonsense we have added to the school day (it amazes me the number of checkpoints I encounter whenever I set foot in a modern high school, rather than just getting a pass from the principal’s office) have increased, the basic mentality of the people themselves hasn’t changed.

I wouldn’t be surprised to learn, if I were capable of reading minds, that the number of students who think prayer is stupid outnumbers the number of students who actually use the quiet time to pray.

I’M ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED that those students combined would be significantly outnumbered by students whose thoughts ranged elsewhere.

I couldn’t help but notice a Chicago Tribune report by which a reporter (who probably got the third degree from school officials before being let anywhere near the entrance to the school buildings) actually asked teenagers what they thought about on the first day of quiet time – which in some schools was Tuesday.

Homework. Chores and errands. Some just sat and meditated quietly, although one kid got herself quoted in the Tribune by claiming to have remembered the people who died nearly 10 years ago in New York at the World Trade Center.

Not that you could accomplish much in the five to 10 seconds that most school districts seem to be setting aside to comply with this state law, which is new in enforcement but has actually been on the books for a few years.

THIS WAS OUR General Assembly at work, coming up with a measure in 2007 meant to appease people of a certain socially conservative ideological bent while not actually giving them what they want. If we had, class on Tuesday would have started with a lot of reciting of “Our father, who art in Heaven, …”

Which is why this worked its way through the court system, with an injunction in place to prevent the law from being enforced. Until a federal appeals court recently upheld the idea of a moment of silence, saying it doesn’t necessarily violate the idea of keeping organized religion separate from government (or public school) activity.

Yes, I think the idea of a ‘moment of silence’ is silly, in large part because it is too brief to accomplish anything. And I wouldn’t want to see it lengthened because I don’t trust the motivations of the people who push the most for this concept.

If there is any consolation to me and others who opposed this idea, it is that the mindset of the modern teenager (whose music and clothes are just as tacky as the junk we wore back in the early 1980s) hasn’t changed much.

THE PEOPLE WHO wanted this ‘moment of silence’ as a symbolic victory of sorts toward bringing back school prayer would be seriously upset to learn that at least one teenage boy is using his quiet time to ogle that girl sitting next to him.

Too bad the teacher can’t come along and whack him with a ruler for his “impure” thoughts. That is, unless a bill permitting such activity is the next goal of those state legislators who fought so hard to get this moment of silence.

“Thank God I’m no longer in high school.” That’s my thought for a moment of silence.

  -30-

Illinois’ regional differences crop up once again in bill offering four-day school week

I can remember a moment more than a decade ago when the Illinois House of Representatives was considering a bill that would make it state law that people could not ride in the backs of pickup trucks unless those trucks were equipped with seat belts and everybody was strapped in.

Who ever heard of a pickup truck with seat belts in the back? Not me. Not anybody.

I CAN RECALL one rural Illinois legislator being particularly critical of the measure on the grounds that this bill (which was sponsored by a Democratic legislator from the North Side) was a case of a Chicago person trying to put a city-way of viewing an issue into the minds of all Illinoisans.

Because it was just the way things were done that people would pile up in the back of a pickup truck for a ride.

That bill went down to defeat, becoming one of those moments when the Legislature quit being Democrat versus Republican and became urban versus rural – with suburban people using the rare moment to “stick it” to the city.

Now what made me remember this incident, that I believe took place in 1997?

IT WAS UPON learning that the Illinois House on Monday gave an overwhelming vote of support (81-21, to be exact) for a bill that would allow public school districts in Illinois the option of converting their schedules to four-day weeks.

In short, students would go to school for four days, and have the other three off.

Such a concept is in place in 19 other states, and tends to be used by school districts in those states that cover rural communities – particularly districts that cover many miles of territory (instead of the typical suburban school district that usually covers a town and part of another) and has many students who have to be bused in from isolated areas.

This is a rural concept that a political person wants to impose on Illinois (although I would hope the Chicago Public Schools would have the sense to realize how ridiculous it is). That political person is state Rep. Bill Black, R-Danville, who during his decades in the Legislature has developed not only a reputation for being blunt-spoken, he also was the lawmaker who spoke out all those years ago on the absurdity of trying to impose an “urban” idea on the rest of the state.

COULD IT BE that some people don’t appreciate the irony of Black criticizing one region’s officials for trying to look out for public safety with ideas that were totally comprehendible to anybody in Chicago, but is willing to impose his “region’s” ideas on the rest of the state?

Now the one difference is that it would be the local school boards that would decide whether they want to bother with the idea of a four-day school week.

The Chicago Teachers Union already is making it clear they don’t approve, and there also are the complaints from some parents who rely on the fact that their kids are in school Monday thorugh Friday to account for their presence and activity while the parents are at work.

So I don’t expect to see Chicago Public Schools students getting a three-day weekend any time soon.

I WOULD EXPECT a lot of the suburban districts whose officials already are concerned that their students don’t spend enough time in the classroom would not be quick to endorse the idea either.

So perhaps this really is a concept that would be taken seriously only by those school districts in isolated parts of central and Southern Illinois, where Black told reporter-types that some officials have approached him saying that a four-day school week would help them save money at a time when school districts are likely to have their state aid payments hacked to pieces.

Specifically, they say the cost of transportation is running high, since those rural districts can be spread out over large areas, and all school districts these days are having to pay more to the companies that operate school bus routes because the companies are charging the districts more money to cover the rising costs of fuel for the buses.

Yes, that is one factor. But I question how much the overall savings really could be, since you would now have to have longer school days. Which means teachers working more hours per day. Which I’m sure means the potential for them to pick up more money if such labor is expected.

THERE IS ALSO the fact that I don’t like the idea of making more widespread the differences in public schools based on where they are. It undermines the concept even further that a student at a public school – regardless of which school he/she attends – ought to be capable of having equal opportunity of obtaining a basic education.

I’m skeptical that having three-day weekends all the time would not negatively impact the ability of students to retain what they have learned. Those rural school districts, particularly when one gets into Southern Illinois, are some of the worst funded in the state. They make the Chicago Public Schools look like a financial paradise, by comparison.

I’d hate to have to think we’re going to have to start looking down on anyone educated in a rural public school in Illinois because they imposed this measure to save themselves the cost of some gasoline for the school buses.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Illinois Senate could still kill off the concept (http://www.suntimes.com/news/politics/2117024,house-bill-four-day-school-week-032210.article) of a four-day school week in Illinois.

What does it say about me (http://nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_63741a97-2b44-5303-945c-547facf94529.html) that I'm in agreement with Rich Daley on an issue?

Legislators face a tough decision

Our political people in Springfield are going out of their way to avoid voting on anything that could be perceived as a tax increase. They don’t want to tick off voters come the Nov. 2 elections.

Yet I’m starting to wonder at what point will their refusal to do something about the serious financial problems this state confronts will come back to bite them in the tushy. For the fact is that the state’s shortfalls are causing struggles for many entities that rely on state funding to survive.

THUS FAR, STATE officials have lucked out.

Because many people are seeing cuts in programs they rely on, or are hearing their local school districts talk about making serious cuts in education, in order to balance their budgets with the lesser amounts of money the state is likely to give them during the upcoming school year.

I say state officials are lucky because the people see these cuts and seem to be blaming the local folks.

They’re assuming it is financial incompetence on the part of the local program officials, or school board officials who don’t have a clue what they are doing, that are causing these cuts to be made.

I HAVE LOST count of the number of times I have heard school superintendents make pleas to their local residents to call up their state legislator and complain about the activity in Springfield. All I know is that if that message ever does resonate with the public, there are going to be a whole lot of angry people marching on the Statehouse to complain.

That is a thought our Legislature ought to have kept in mind on Wednesday when Gov. Pat Quinn made (finally!) his budget address for the state fiscal year beginning July 1.

His past attempts to get the Legislature to approve something in the way of a tax hike to raise enough revenue to maintain government services (some of which people depend upon to survive) at adequate levels have failed.

So this year, he’s talking about the massive cuts to programs, which I wonder is just a scare tactic to get people to consider some alternative? I note that legislative officials already are saying Quinn’s budget proposal (which calls for $2.2 billion in spending cuts, mostly to education; taking out $5 billion in loans; and extending by an even more ridiculous time period the schedule by which government pays its bills) is dead.

YET I HAVE not heard of anyone offering a serious alternative – except for some talk of passing six-month budgets that would allow for any potentially negative vote to be taken in the weeks AFTER this year’s general election.

That’s just running away from the problem.

Yet so far, the legislators have been able to take cover in the fact that Illinois residents are quick to blame their local officials for the problems that are being imposed upon them by the state.

I do understand that the economic conditions causing these problems are unlike anything I have seen in recent decades. This is a unique situation – one that is going to require a unique solution if Illinois government is ever to become a worthy entity capable of providing for the many who rely upon it for various services.

I ALSO REALIZE that when I hear parents complain that their local school district is going to decimate itself by making severe cuts in the number of teachers, educational or extra-curricular activities or supplies, I do believe that no self-respecting school official would even consider making these cuts if they could avoid it.

So I do believe that some of the local hostility is irrational. These are conditions that are going to be dumped upon us, and there are going to be some people who will suffer as a result.

So I don’t blame local officials, or even Illinois legislators, for causing the situation, as much as I wonder why they’re so reluctant to take on the hard-nosed actions that will be required to resolve the problems.

I believe that part of the duty of an elected official is to make the tough decisions that aren’t always popular, but are necessary for our government to survive as a worthwhile entity. Because if it can’t provide, then we have to take the Libertarian sentiment into account and question why we even have it?

ONE OTHER POINT that I noticed recently. State Sen. Bill Brady, R-Bloomington, also the Republican nominee for governor, plans to campaign by claiming Quinn has mis-managed the whole situation and is wrong for thinking that additional revenue is a solution.

Yet Brady doesn’t seem to have the support of one-time Gov. Jim Edgar, who recently told WBEZ-FM that Brady’s proposed solutions were “naïve” and that he’s not campaigning for anybody come November.

Edgar is far from a radical and I recall his use of the no-tax hikes rhetoric during his two terms as governor. But if even he’s seeing that our political people are going to have to swallow some of the vile-tasting medicine being offered by Quinn to resolve this situation, we might have to take into account that it will have to happen.

Or else legislators will have to hope that Illinoisans don’t ever some to their senses and turn their disgust on the Statehousse for their inaction.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Pat Quinn is spewing a lot of “crazy talk,” as far as his government colleagues in the (http://www.suntimes.com/news/maxedout/2094100,CST-NWS-quinn10web.article) Legislature are concerned. Could it be that talk includes a little bit of truth?

Jim Edgar is going to maintain (http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=40533) his silence this election cycle.

Don’t get haughty. It could happen here

As a reporter-type person, I have been to enough rallies with a white supremacist tinge to them to know they all border on being comical – in a warped, twisted way.

So I would guess the events expected to take place Saturday in Belleville, Ill., (a town of about 41,000 people located just across the Mississippi River from St. Louis) will create enough moments that some of us will be inclined to laugh at the sight of those bumpkins located some 300 miles to the southwest of us.

THAT TOWN HAS its own racial “incident” going down this week. It seems that a fight on a school bus involving teenage boys resulted in a white kid getting smacked around by a batch of African-American “youths.”

And as has become the reality of modern-day news judgment, this became a story largely because of the existence of video – a security camera installed on the school bus gives us images of the whole fight.

I’m not going to dispute that the kid who was beaten up suffered some pain, nor that there isn’t an element of stupidity to the whole incidents. Be honest, most brawls result from knuckleheads losing control of themselves.

But the degree to which this is becoming a circus goes far beyond the stupidity level of the original incident.

IT SEEMS THERE will be a rally at the courthouse for St. Clair County, even though the officials who normally would have to issue a permit for such an event tell the Belleville News-Democrat newspaper that no one has contacted them.

Yet local police were aware of the event, and they say they will provide the oversight to ensure that the protest does not become a physical brawl in and of itself.

This rally is being promoted by a website called www.illinoissafechildren.com, which uses the rhetoric often touted by groups that are willing to use the muscle of white supremacist organizations but does not want to be tainted by their warped view of the world – they’re not directly responsible for who shows up.

But it seems that several groups that are white supremacist (although they will engage you in the deadly dull debate that they are really “white racialist” or “white nationalist”) also are taking up the cause.

SO WHAT WE’RE likely to see from our perch up here in Chicago is a batch of knuckleheads from all across the Midwestern U.S. (and perhaps a few from further away) who are willing to wear swastika armbands or the various blood drop insignias of the Ku Klux Klan (or perhaps just a few independent misfits whose bodies are too tattooed for them to hold down a regular job in open society) who will take great pride in being able to come outside and express their “views” in public.

They’ll be able to say “n----r” in public without having everybody around them treat them like a circus freak.

We’ll hear about how this is an example of white society being subjugated, and we’re bound to hear how this is a “hate” crime. The whole purpose of this rally, like all these white supremacist rallies on government property, is to try to somehow redirect the focus of society to a time when these nitwits were allowed to think of themselves as respectable human beings.

Now as it turns out, a local minister is disgusted enough with this spectacle that he’s planning a counter-demonstration across the street from the courthouse, saying he wants to offer decent people offended by the

I’D LIKE TO be able to laugh at this and say only in Southern Illinois could something this ridiculous occur.

But then I look at the situation in Chicago and realize that our own racial comprehension is hardly any better.

Would a similar brawl on board a school bus in a Chicago suburb create the same reaction? It could, except for the fact that so many parents (using the rhetoric of “finding a good school for my kid”) have managed to put their children into schools without much racial diversity that it might be hard to find a school bus with both black and white kids on board in significant numbers.

Just recently, I wrote a story for a newspaper in the Chicago suburbs about the perception among some local residents that a particular town has had significant increases in crime, even tough the Illinois State Police crime statistics don’t bear that perception out.

THE RESPONSE TO that story has been an ongoing debate on the Internet as to race and why it is just reality that having more black people in that town than there were 30 years ago means there is more crime.

I’m not even claiming that this particular town is unique. Our racial hang-ups make it simple reality that something this stupid could happen here too.

But the fact is that some of us have our racial hang-ups, and all it would take is one stupid, trivial incident to occur so that we in the Chicago area would become the travel destination of choice for the white supremacists who want to wear their Klan-sloganed t-shirts in public (I doubt we’ll see many actual white robes in Belleville).

Then, it would be St. Louis’ chance to laugh at “those goofs up in Chicago,” who be us.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: How long will it be until Belleville gets to laugh at the silliness (http://www.bnd.com/homepage/story/936032.html) taking place somewhere in the Chicago area, if not the city proper?

The commentary in many ways is more revealing than the actual story to which people (http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/illinois/article_5a1d79ae-69b1-5787-8043-d9e90b049256.html?mode=comments) are allegedly responding.

People who screech “no” usually don’t have enough vision to see the future

There is one thing I have learned during just over two decades of covering public policy and attempts to implement major projects – there’s always someone who will screech “no.”

And while I’m not saying that every objector is a crackpot, the fact is that there are people whose objection is centered around the fact that they don’t want anything in their “backyard.”

THEY’RE THE “NIMBY” crowd – they will scream “no” just because it will be the only time anyone will pay attention to them.

So if you get the impression that the people who are opposed to bringing the 2016 Olympic Games to Chicago are not swaying me to their side, you’d be correct.

And if you figure out that I think a new group calling itself “No Games Chicago” is a batch of Facebook fans with way too much free time on their hands, you’d be correct. There are those among us who would like this rendition of an Olympic Stadium for Chicago to remain just a dream. Illustration provided by Chicago 2016.

But these people are going to get their moment of public attention – their 15 minutes of fame, so to speak – this week, when the International Olympic Committee makes its trip to Chicago to give our home city the once-over to see if we are worthy of hosting the summer Olympics to be held seven years from now.

THESE PEOPLE USE a weblog and a Facebook page to promote their idea, which if you don’t give it much thought sounds so noble.

“Better Housing – Schools – Buses and Trains.”

They’re trying to push the idea that the money spent to give Chicago some quickie cosmetic improvements and build (or upgrade) the athletic facilities required for an international spectacle such as the Olympics would be better put to use to upgrade education, housing and public transportation for the masses.

Now I know some people are going to read this commentary and respond that my cynicism has made me snotty (if not elitist). But whenever a major project that would significantly alter the face of the city is put forth, you will always get some local resident who will complain that they don’t want change, and would rather see the money go elsewhere.

IN FACT, THEY will always cite schools or hospitals or mass transit or something along those lines as a better use for the money that would have paid for construction.

I’m skeptical, in part because even if we did put that money into these areas, there’s the likelihood that these people would complain that we’re still not spending enough. This is empty rhetoric, nothing more.

But another problem is that we, the people of Chicago and the surrounding suburbs that comprise the metropolitan area, can’t often agree on what constitutes “improvement” in those areas.

We could take some of this construction money and try to direct it to the Chicago Public Schools. But what about those people who don’t put their kids in the public school system? They’re going to complain that they’re not getting a share of this money.

OR EVEN IF they’re in public school systems, what if they’re in the suburban areas (roughly two of every three Chicago-area residents live in a suburb, rather than the city proper)? Is there a guarantee that every single one of the 129 municipalities of Cook County (just over 260 if you count the five collar counties as well) would get money for their school systems?

Put money into mass transit? What about people who don’t want to use mass transit, and who view the very concept as some sort of “communist plot” to take away a person’s automobile (some people really are that paranoid)?

My point is that when these people cite their mantra (“Better Housing – Schools – Buses and Trains”) all through this week, we need to keep in mind that it is a false promise.

There’s also the fact that the Olympic Games, if they truly come to Chicago, have the ability to force Chicago officials to confront certain problems that confront public policy and public life.

WHILE IT WOULD be nice if city officials were willing to confront these problems without the motivation of having the world’s eyes on the city for a couple of weeks in the future, the reality is that it likely will take such an event as an Olympics to provide the impetus.

Take the streets around Washington Park that recently got repaved so that they would not look so decrepit when Olympic officials see the site being considered for a primary Olympic Stadium in Chicago.

Critics complain that other Chicago streets should have received repairs first because they are in worse shape. But would we really be better off if those South Side streets near the stadium site had not been fixed up.

I doubt it’s a matter of Olympic-related streets being repaired out of order. Likely, nothing would have happened if not for the Olympic impetus.

THERE’S ALSO THE fact that this particular group is going to get far more attention than it deserves, just because the Olympics officials will be in town.

On what do I base this observation?

I note their presence on Facebook, where they describe their site as “a spot to bring together all those opposed to Chicago’s bid for the 2016 Olympics.” Yet all they had (at least as far as Sunday afternoon is concerned) is 740 “members.” That’s out of the many millions of people who decide to waste their time on their computers with Facebook.

So excuse me for thinking these are a few hundred people who can’t see into the future far enough for the potential benefits that an international spectacle as the Olympics could bring to the metropolitan area.

BECAUSE THE BOTTOM line is that the Olympics themselves will lose money. That fact is well documented from past Olympics. But that is if you base your perspective solely on the gate receipts raised from tickets sold to the events themselves.

An event such as the Olympics is more about using the presence of the athletic events in our hometown to provide the motivation for many improvements to the community.

Even if the construction is originally done just for the two weeks of the Olympics, they can then be reused for decades to come for purposes that will improve the quality of life in our city.

For that reason, we all ought to be in favor of the idea.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: If you’re absolutely determined to grouse about the 2016 Olympic Games, here is a Facebook site (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=19962749751) and a weblog (http://nogames.wordpress.com/) for you.

Is Barack Obama truly the key to the Olympic Games being awarded to Chicago some seven years (http://www.suntimes.com/sports/olympics/1501045,daley-obama-chicago-olympics-032809.article) from now?

The “Just Say ‘No’” types will always exist (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/28/AR2009032801758.html?hpid=moreheadlines), regardless of the issue.

“Moment of Silence” for prayer silenced in Illinois (for now, at least)

Anybody who has observed the news and public policy for the past couple of decades like I have has an impression of atheist activist Rob Sherman as fairly shameless, and more than willing to drag his children into his political crusades.

Yet this week, a Sherman-inspired measure resulted in a Chicago-based federal judge doing the right thing when striking down the “moment of silence” that religious activists pushed the General Assembly to approve.

U.S. DISTRICT JUDGE Robert Gettleman issued a ruling that called the law “a subtle attempt” to bring back prayer in the public schools. He noted that the people affected by the now-unconstitutional law were children who were at an “impressionable age” when it comes to religious thought. Sherman filed the lawsuit that challenged this law on behalf of his teenage daughter, Dawn.

The simple fact is that there are some people who seriously can’t handle the thought that “the American Way” of life prohibits them from imposing their particular religious beliefs on other people.

Many of these people are among the ones who seriously believe that our society has gone downhill ever since prayer in the public schools was found to be a violation of provisions of the Constitution that call for a separation between organized religion and the government.

To them, the “moment of silence” was always the compromise measure they were willing to put up with so as to get something resembling a prayer back into the beginning of the school day.

WHEN THOSE PEOPLE lobbied the Illinois Legislature to approve the measure, they argued that a “moment of silence” could be used by the children for whatever they wanted. In theory, the children could spend the moment thinking about Hannah Montana or anything else they chose to do.

The reality is that people in some of the smaller communities where such thought is publicly popular would have felt compelled to think some sort of religious thought during those moments.

And in those communities, woe be unto the individual whose religious beliefs might not fall in lock step with the bulk of the community.

Personally, I always thought the concept of a “moment of silence” was an attempt to crack the door open just a tad toward getting religious thought back into the public schools. I thought the Legislature was misguided when they went along and approved the measure (mostly out of fear that these supporters of the idea would create a vocal ruckus that could cost them votes).

IF IT SOUNDS like I think some of the legislators who voted to approve the idea were cowardly, you’d be correct.

If anything, the idea of a “moment of silence” almost could work in communities where the population is larger and more diverse. In such places, the idea that not everybody would have the same “thought” during a “moment of silence” would be accepted more readily.

Yet it is some of those rural communities, many of which have intentionally isolated themselves from urban Chicago, where such ideas play the best.

If I thought seriously that such ideas would be restricted purely to the rural communities, I wouldn’t mind so much. I would just add such ideas to the list of why I have no personal desire to ever live in rural Illinois. Having lived in both Bloomington and Springfield for a couple stretches of my life, I feel like I have lived close to it enough to get a feel for it, and why I wouldn’t want to be there.

SO IN THE same way that some rural people think of gun control measures as an urban idea that does not apply to their way of life, I’d say such goofy ideas as a “moment of silence” are rural concepts that just don’t fit in with life in a place like Chicago.

I only hope the idea is dead for good.

Because I won’t be surprised if the concept’s supporters try to get the General Assembly to approve another version of the same basic concept – one that would slip the same idea with technical changes so as to comply with the letter of the law, as expressed in Gettleman’s ruling on Wednesday.

In the current political climate where many Democrats are concerned that Rod Blagojevich’s so-called sins will reflect badly upon them, I could easily see Dems in the Legislature being willing to approve such a revival of the “moment of silence” out of a misguided belief that it would lessen the likelihood of such people turning out in strong support of a Republican for governor, Senator, and all the other state government posts, during the next statewide elections in 2010.

SO FOR THE time being, we do not have children being pressured to “pipe down” so they can reflect on God (that’s what the point really was). If that means a little bit less intimidation in the public schools, that’s a good thing.

Because I honestly believe that parents who seriously want their children to receive religious indoctrination in between mathematics and social studies ought to just accept the fact they need to pay tuition to a parochial school.

If it means that Sherman’s latest crusade has helped people to realize the truth of that statement, then he has accomplished at least one good thing during his adult life.

I may even forgive him for the time some two decades ago that he showed up at the now-defunct City News Bureau of Chicago at about 3 a.m. on a weekend, just to make me have to listen to a tape he had of then-President Ronald Reagan making some half-wit comment about religion.

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SCHOOL DAZE: Are espresso machines a true waste of Chicago school funding?

When it comes to public schools, particularly at the high school level, budgets are a complex issue, complicated by the fact that people rarely agree on what constitutes a waste of taxpayer dollars.

There are those individuals who are convinced that the school budgets could be balanced if only they’d drop the football program and all the dollars that get spent on expensive equipment and field maintenance.

OTHERS WANT TO live their lives in a 19th Century mentality, and view anything aside from textbooks and chalk for the blackboards as a waste of funds.

I still remember the snickering that took place in a high school district in suburban Lansing when the local school received a donation (as in free of charge) of two plasma-screen televisions, which school officials decided to install in the student cafeteria to make it possible for them to watch in-house videos of an educational nature.

That ticked off the old-timers, who just can’t stand the image of students watching a television screen, even if it’s while munching on a sandwich.

But then, there are the more blatant incidents that are harder to justify on any level.

TAKE THE CHICAGO Public Schools, which recently got dinged by its inspector general for a series of espresso machines that were purchased.

Just over $70,000 was spent to buy 30 machines that were intended for use by the culinary arts programs (the modern-day equivalent of home economics, only geared more toward restaurant work rather than work in one’s home kitchen).

In the overall scheme of things, $70,000 is miniscule. And having such machines to teach students learning restaurant work how to make a decent cup of coffee can be a justifiable expense.

But the Chicago Tribune newspaper reported recently that the inspector general discovered a dirty little secret – most of those machines were never used. Twenty-two of them were discovered to be still packed up in the boxes in which they were delivered.

OF THE REST of the machines, one cannot be accounted for, while three others were being used at schools – but not as part of any culinary arts class. They are being used to give faculty at the schools a better quality cup of coffee.

It must be a nice perk if you happen to be an employee of one of those two high schools in Chicago. It’s not the kind of thing that’s going to get me too worked up, although it is worth a chuckle.

But what is more outrageous is the way the espresso machines were purchased.

It turns out that the school district officials who wanted to purchase all the machines put the paperwork together for the order so that it appeared to be separate purchases from 21 different schools.

THAT MEANT THE total amount of each order was so small that the purchases could just be made.

There were none of the requirements applied that would have called for competitive bidding, and that a purchase be made from whoever could provide the espresso machine at the lowest cost to the school district.

While a school district inspector general exists to root out details and present things in a potentially onerous manner, it is significant that the inspector general for the Chicago Public Schools estimates that the total purchase could have been about $12,000 cheaper – had school officials not been so eager to get around the rules requiring competitive bidding.

Now $12,000 might not be a lot of money – it wouldn’t pay the salary of a single teacher (not even in the lowest-budget of rural Illinois school districts). But it could have covered the cost of a few more textbooks, or perhaps a dozen more computers that could have been installed in some high school’s computer laboratory.

CONSIDERING THAT THE focus of many education programs these days is incorporating computers and technology into the learning experience so as to make students feel comfortable with using these confounding machines, it becomes a significant example of waste.

It certainly is more significant an example than those people who want to complain because a high school is letting its students watch a little television during their downtime.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: The espresso machine “caper” was one of 1,012 instances of alleged waste (http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/content/education/chi-chicago-schools-cappuccino-cjan07,0,6818226.story) investigated by the Chicago Public Schools’ inspector general’s office during the 2007-08 school year.

The televisions received by T.F. South High School in suburban Lansing may have been (http://www.nwi.com/articles/2008/12/19/news/illiana/doc2961d6abb70ce2f78625752400026715.txt) donations, but they still managed to offend many of the people who get worked up over issues related to budgetary waste.