I am completely confounded and amazed that anyone outside of Chicago would expect anything inside of Chicago to work as it should. We are blessed to have a democratic republic yet citizens in Chicago and the state of Illinois choose to live under the auspices of a one-party government, kinda like they have in China, Russia, or Upper Volta. Chicago has the highest sales tax in America, and we more often than not also tally the highest gas prices despite our terribly convenient central location on the map that should translate into efficient transportation costs.
From last year’s City Hall’s parking meter fiasco to the Mayor Daley’s 2003 tantrum that destroyed Meigs Airfield, Chicago does some awfully dumb stuff that would embarrass an intelligent community. Illinois is not much better; every other governor goes to prison, and still we almost had a weird pawn broker running for lieutenant governor. And just what is our one-party candidate for the senate’s connection to a suspicious bank that his family owns? Furthermore, our major offering to Washington D.C. first won a senate seat vacated by a one-term republican who could not play well with others and quit. And who did Barack Obama defeat to get that seat? Alan Keyes. You gotta be kidding.
So it stands to reason that we also have or certainly had the worst public school system in the country, as it was described by Ron Reagan’s Secretary of Education, Bob Bennett. No one in their right mind that isn’t on a city payroll would dare to say our schools are adequate. How can they be? For fifteen years the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) have been led by men whose collective classroom teaching time is zero. These guys supervise hundreds of principals despite never having run a school themselves. I expected no less from them than what we got: smoke-and-mirrors.
However, since all these guys have college degrees in one form of business or another, I at least expected some modicum of reasonable financial administration. After all the first non-educator CPS CEO, Paul Vallas was an accountant, and his successor Arne Duncan has a degree in marketing from Har-Vard, and the current wiseman, Ron Huberman earned an MBA from the University of Chicago.
To put it in the local vernacular, how come it is CPS is facing a budget deficit of a billion dollars? I cannot lay this entire debacle on Huberman; no single City Hall flunkey is clever enough to screw up a billion bucks in one year. I have to put the blame on Duncan; he smiled his way through seven years as the CPS CEO. Rational people realize that Duncan did nothing to improve the schools, but if we also have this huge money problem, that pretty much means he did nothing at all! The 435,000 children in CPS are lost causes educationally and have been for two decades. CPS was however, at least friendly to its adult employers and contractual suppliers. That may suddenly change.
Uh, I hope my friends who are working in the system are paying attention. Huberman held a press conference Thursday and said after cuts in such areas as transportation, sports and after-school programs, summer school, food service and all-day kindergarten, CPS would still be left with a "substantial 2011 deficit."
Listen up! Huberman singled out pension obligations as a major financial problem, stating in a handout that pension obligations "are placing an enormous strain on our daily operating budget. We are entering the next stage of this budget crisis – a stage where we must put everything on the table," he said.
For those of you who enjoy this one-party government, I hope you realize that Huberman is setting the table for cutting pension benefits. Chicago teachers may have a separate pension system from the state’s Teacher Retirement System, but if Chicago teachers get their pensions reduced, the state system will probably follow suit.
Those of you that are fortunate enough to have a municipal, county, state, or federal pension program need to understand that virtually no one in the private sector does. Corporations have eliminated the cost of pension funding by opting to offer 401 (K) self-directed tax-deferred savings plans for its employees.
The handwriting is on the wall. I suggest you read it before you vote.
Note: As a former Friend of Meigs I just had to sneak in this photo of a 310 outbound from the south end of the field.
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