-- Connecting the dots between our economy, government and business --
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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In the screwy world of progressive crazy, the new CPS “need based funding” model will solve the “community dis-investment” by fully staffing empty schools local parents & kids don’t want with +$100g CTU members who don’t live in the “community”all on the taxpayers dime….EQUITY!!!!
Keep in mind some of the Covid windfall purchased laptops for underprivileged students to use during the lockdown. Most if not allof these laptops are now considered missing and still the youths fell behind in their studies.
If you think cooking the gradebooks (wow! look at that graduation rate!) was pervasive, just wait. Principals, especially in the borderline low-income neighborhoods, will be forced to do an Al Capone style ledger shuffle and encourage parents to „fudge” the lunch forms (used to determine income status) just to maintain. These borderline schools (just like our C students) will fall through the cracks – not poor enough to be feted with cash from the komisar, but not rich enough to gather independent financial support from the community oligarchs. Once again, in the name of „equity”, they will exacerbate the divide… Read more »
Perhaps the policy could have been titled “No Failure Left Behind”?
I’m confused by article, has CPS spent all of it’s $2.8 in COVID funds or not? Or how $much$ does it CPS have left to spend?:
Sounds to me like they already blew through the COVID funding that we all paid them and now they are broke again. Of course there is no accounting for how that was spent. Likely spent on “new programs” that made it easy to funnel money to various individuals or pet vendors. A couple school districts I know of spent tens of millions of COVID money on Audio Enhancement Systems for each and every class room, apparently that was needed to address the reduced volume in the teachers voice while wearing a mask. Those systems now are collecting cob-webs and not… Read more »
Remember CTUs demand that every classroom be provided with high-quality air purifiers as a condition of returning to the classroom? My rough estimate is $2.5 million for them. Mine hasn’t been turned on since June 2021, and sits in the corner. A few teachers use theirs occasionally, but we have never been given replacement filters, so who knows what they are blowing into the room.
They were just following the science.
From each according to his abilitie to each according to his need…….
You beat me to writing this exact thing. Kudos.
Absolutely, funnel more money into failing schools through programs that don’t work, the majority of the students don’t want to learn and many of the parents could seemingly care less. The administration of this district is just flailing around spending money to somehow justify their existence, they don’t have any solutions for the problems. This is a bunch of people sitting around talking and saying “hey, lets try this!” It is amazing that once again and always CPS is facing another $400M deficit. No matter how much money you give them, no matter how it is spent (which is always… Read more »
If consistency was the hobgoblin of little minds, then only geniuses work here.
Maybe its just me, but I can see this becoming an absolute disaster. They’re fully embracing all of academia’ fringe idea about education should be taught, and implementing them in the most disastrous and calamitous manner. You think test scores are bad now? Wait until all of the families with high performing children leave the city for the suburbs. No cops in schools? That’s going to be an absolute clusterF*** of gang shootings, fights and mayhem. Neighborhood schools? Wasn’t that a problem during Rahm’s tenure that the gang bangers couldn’t mix in the schools so they shuttled the kids around… Read more »
Your continued comparison of the methods of these far-left “leaders” to those of communists, first thought of as outlandish by some, now doesn’t seem outlandish at all.
These ideas are not my own, I freely admit. They are taken from Jack Posobiec and Jessy Kelly who speak out often and always about the communism threat (and a smaller extent, James Lindsey. As I repeatedly say, people wrongly believe that communism is about state control of the redistribution of assets. It is not. Communism, from the very beginning, has always been society’s malcontents giving power to hurt, maim and kill the malcontent’s perceived enemies. Redistribution is a secondary effect of the malcontents control. Their revolution always, always, always, leads to massive societal upheaval and death because they bring… Read more »
I used to be puzzled by billionaires like Pritzger or Soros or Gates or Zuckerberg promoting socialism. I thought since they made their wealth in a market economy that it was a paradox that they supporedt socialism. But then I read this quote from the late Gary Allen: “If one understands that socialism is not a share-the-wealth program but is in reality a method to consolidate and control the wealth, then the seeming paradox of super-rich men promoting socialism becomes no paradox at all. Instead, it becomes logical, even the perfect tool of power-seeking megalomaniacs. Communism, or more accurately, socialism,… Read more »