Categories
Accountability education and schooling

A Public Fraud in the Midwest

The standard case for government-​run industry runs like this: some goods, by their very nature, are best provided by government … to ensure high quality and low cost.

City sewers, firefighting, roads and education are traditionally explained as requiring government operation, organization, and tax funding.

The trouble is, it’s no longer plausible, really, to say that one of the most expensive and omnipresent of these industries, “public education” (government schooling) guarantees much of anything.

Certainly we aren’t getting quality at low cost.

But a few folks do get wealthy.

I wrote about Barbara Byrd-​Bennett a few weeks ago. She’s the Chicago public school administrator who had to resign her CEO-​ship because of the overwhelming evidence against her scamming Chicago’s schools … for over $2 million in kickbacks.

And now, it turns out, she has a prehistory — in the Motor City. “Federal investigators were looking at Barbara Byrd-Bennett’s role in a $40 million textbook contract that was awarded while she worked in Detroit,” explains the Chicago Sun-​Times, “long before she became Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s schools chief.…”

Republican, democratic government relies upon an alert press and citizenry to catch folks like Byrd-​Bennett. Why? Because government, by its nature, is most efficient in delivering wealth from many into the hands of the few. Having it serve the many is difficult, and requires eternal vigilance.

Which is one reason why we need limited government: the more extensive government’s scope, the harder to keep track of all the frauds and exploitative con jobs.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.


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Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Chicago, school, education, graft, corruption, illustration, Common Sense, Paul Jacob

 

Categories
Accountability folly government transparency national politics & policies

Democrats’ Own Private Government

Don’t feel lonely, Mrs. Clinton. You’re not the only public official shielding public actions from the public by using private modes of communication — a private email account and server, or texts on a personal cell phone.

Meet fellow Democrat Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The Chicago Tribune* recently took the Emanuel administration to court for the second time in three months. The paper charges the mayor is “[violating] state open records laws by refusing to release communications about city business conducted through private emails and text messages.”

Still pending is the World’s Greatest Newspaper’s first lawsuit against the mayor’s office, seeking the full disclosure of emails specifically concerning a $20-​million-​dollar no-​bid public school contract, over which the Feds have now launched a criminal investigation.

The Trib argues in its legal complaint that Freedom of Information Act requests “have been met with a pattern of non-​compliance, partial compliance, delay and obfuscation.” But on Chicago Tonight, Mayor Emanuel offered that, “[W]e always comply and work through all of the Freedom of Information [requests] in the most responsive way possible.”

Probably all just a big misunderstanding …

What’s especially droll is to find presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, two Democrats who have long fought against privatizing any government function or service no matter how inefficiently performed or delivered, suddenly embracing a creative new approach to privatizing government … beginning with their own transparency and accountability.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

 

* In full disclosure, my brother, Mark Jacob, works for the Tribune.

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Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago, transparency, government, collage, photomontage, JGill, Paul Jacob, Common Sense

 

Categories
education and schooling too much government

Freedom Is a Brown Bag

American society still features a fair degree of freedom and respect for the individual. We’d all be pretty shocked were a public-​school bureaucrat to dredge up Plato’s old notion of forcibly removing babies from the care of their parents and letting the state raise them communally.

We’re not that far gone. Nobody advocates the utter communization of the care and feeding of the young. 

Instead, we confront more incremental yet ever-​bolder assaults on parental responsibility and rights in favor of such Grand Liberal Ideas as Puritanical State-​Subsidized Nutrition. Thus, the educrats at a Chicago public school, Little Village Academy, prohibit kids from bringing lunch from home.

Yep. Not only are students prohibited from toting squirt guns and pictures of paper knives, at LVA they’re now also prohibited from importing such dangerous products as Coca Cola and Twinkies. It’s all about “healthier choices,” blathers a Chicago Public School spokeswoman, who stresses that it’s up to individual schools whether to adopt such bans. After all, what could be “healthier” than training families to be dependent on the state for homogenized sustenance?

Not surprisingly, some Little Village kids dislike the cafeteria food. Sometimes they throw it in the garbage. “We should bring out own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!” they shout when asked about the policy.

They should do more than chant. They should flout the ban en masse.

They can’t all be arrested for smuggling in peanut-​butter-​and-​jelly sandwiches.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
ballot access

The Competition in Chicago

When politicians begin messing with ballot access and signature requirements, watch out. Usually, they’re up to no good. (Always.)

Illinois State Representative Joseph Lyons would likely disagree. He’s sponsoring a bill to equalize the number of signatures required to get on the ballot for a Chicago alderman position. Currently, many wards require just a few hundred signatures. Lyons wants to up that to 500 per ward. Every ward should be equal, dontcha know.

Besides, he says, “To get 500 signatures should not be a burden.” Then comes his kicker. “The more friends you’ve got, the easier it should be. And if you don’t have any friends, you shouldn’t be running for alderman.”

And there’s the rub. Just who are his friends that would benefit?

Could they be his current Democratic buddies who already serve as aldermen, and don’t want the competition?

Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, is certainly skeptical about this reform. Quoted in an excellent Chicago Tribune article, she insists that the bill would have “a big effect in low voter-​turnout wards.” But then, as she admits, she’s interested in getting more people to run for office, not making it harder to do so. 

We know where Lyons stands on this. He’s like most politicians. Once he and his buddies get in, they want to keep the competition out.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

Categories
insider corruption

Moonlighting as President?

The presidency of the United States isn’t easy.  So, what does it say when a president takes a second job?

Our federal union’s chief executive, Barack Obama, has gone and done just that: He now serves as public relations flak for the city of Chicago. The Windy City wants to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, so he flew off to Copenhagen to lobby the International Olympic Committee.

Now, I wasn’t rooting for Chicago to get the Olympics. I have friends there, folks I’d rather not see fleeced with higher taxes to pay for it — nor forced to suffer the many inconveniences of such an event.

But here’s my real problem with Obama’s moonlighting: It shows that his priorities are way out of whack. Why is he being side-​tracked with something so insignificant as where an athletic event will be held?

Oh, we’ve been told he can zoom there and back on Air Force One in no time, not to worry. But don’t be fooled. Time and focus on this Olympic bid business costs both Obama and his staff. Cost is opportunity foregone. The executive branch has enough to do without adding on the Olympics.

Could it be that Obama shares that ol’ special-​interest class obsession with using a public position for the benefit of one’s own — as well as one’s buddies’ — private interests?

Next thing he’ll be running GM in his spare time.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.