Huzzah! The Strike Ends! Okay.

Karen, you know what's coming and from whom -tic-tock;tic-tock . . .

The voucher bill failed because Republican legislators — and the weak-willed GOP leadership — caved to state teachers unions that fund Republican campaigns and viewed vouchers as a threat. But charter schools are ascendant. John Kass Chicago Tribune

Now, it is time to relect -

• What's the over and under Jean Claude's time left on the job?
• When will the next schools crisis demand another "march" ?
• When will Rahm and Jesse Sharkey share a meal at Manny's Deli?
• Where will the money come from to make the contract valid?
• How's Pat Quinn?
• When will parents get serious about School Reform? Vouchers.
•  What's over and under on Karen Lewis' tenure as CTU President.
• When does Jesse Sharkey make his move to purge Karen Lewis?
• How's Pat Quinn these days?
• When will the Illinois GOP become something other than Judy Barr Topinka's path to another job?

If you thought the CTU -CPS September Skunk and Coon fight was weird, stay tuned.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-chicago-teachers-strike-quotes-20120919,0,3987402.story

How Much is that Elephant in the Room? The Elephant Wearing Glasses, but not talking and wearing Red on Red! That One?

“I am tired of billionaires telling us what we need to do for our children as if they love our children more than we do,” Lewis continued, as the crowd the union estimated at 25,000 waved signs and cheered. “I want them to turn off the air conditioning at 125 S. Clark, and work like we work. I want them to turn off the air conditioning on the fifth floor of City Hall and let them work like we work.” Chicago Sun Times

Karen Lewis, Leo High School has been standing in solidarity with you on the air-conditioning issue since 1926.  No air-conditioning, no way, no how!  I knew that when I signed a contract with Bob Foster in 1995.  He didn't have no air-conditioning himself.  Our building was constructed beginning in 1921 when air-conditioning was limited to Swift and Armour meat storage houses and box-cars in Canaryville's Stockyards.  Some things will just not configure, or evolve as John Dewey pretends.  

I wish we had a few billionaires concerned for our kids, like CPS.  We have a handful of millionaires pumping in hard dollars, to be sure, but mostly old or aging white guys who managed to safe a few dollars extra, or young black guys making their way in the world thanks to their Leo High School Catholic education. Thanks be to God.

Karen Lewis excoriated Bruce Rauner, a philanthropic capitalist, who wants the best education for Chicago public school children in last Friday's Pre-Wisconsin Style Occupy Union Park Rally column meant to gin-up rage against the machine.

Millionaire capitalist Bruce Rauner, ranked No. 90 on Chicago Magazine's "100 Most Powerful Chicagoans," and who donated enough money to the Noble Network of Charter Schools to get his name on one, published a scathing opinion aimed at Chicago Public Schools teachers in Wednesday's Tribune. The amount of anger and venom Rauner spits out at our hardworking CPS teachers is beyond reprehensible. Chicago Tribune op-ed Sept 14, 2012

Donated money to a school? Let's kick him in the nuts!  

As a Director of Development, I was appalled by a beneficiary of private largess taking a donor to the canvass at all, much less while in the process of squeezing more money from the CPS public coffers emptied with glee by Ms. Lewis et al since 2001.  I could only imagine my life expectancy in the Leo Community were I to call Andy O'Spud Class of 1940 and beef that his recent contribution of $ 200,000 for financial aid assistance was shabby.

My pelt would be drying on the portals of Leo, before I hung up the phone. Not Karen Lewis. She continued in this  
manner on Saturday with the above pasted quote from the Sun Times  at the Hey,Hey, Ho, Ho-fest in Union Park on Ashland Ave. before an estimated 2,500 ( or 10% of the Chicago Membership of CTU). 

 Karen Lewis, I believe in my craven, mean-spirited, child-hating heart of hearts, is merely the gut-wind for the ISO doctrinaire VP of CTU -Jesse Sharkey.  Jesse Sharkey is the CTU leader the media has been told to lay-off. He is much like the daffy Andy Thayer, or odious Kevin Clark who merges Hamas Propaganda Boosterism with Anti-Catholic domestic terrorism in the name of Gay Rights.  Jesse is leader of International Socialist Organization( ISO) and Kevin Clark is a national leader of Hamas affiliated International Solidarity Movement (ISM).

The teachers strike, it seems to me, is more about creating havoc than righting work-place wrongs.  The media has beating the phrase Elephant in the Room,  into a pliable metal of metaphor meant to maintain this havoc.  Who is the elephant? Rahm??? Penny Pritzker??? Bruce Rahm????  What is the Elephant and how much do he cost?  

In an earlier news conference, a grim Lewis ticked off a long list of concerns that her members mentioned about the contract. She said "the big elephant in the room" is CPS' plans to close upwards of what she said could be 200 schools. Teachers are "extraordinarily concerned about that," she told reporters. "It undergirds everything they talked about" in the House of Delegates meeting.
Yes, CPS could be looking at closing and consolidating schools. The real elephant in the room: CPS is exhausting its reserve funds this year and faces an estimated $1 billion budget deficit next year with a massive pension payment hike.

Close schools and Karen Lewis will lose membership and numbers is what Jesse Sharkey is all about.
Numbers keep the havoc going!  Numbers of dollars, schools closed, or not closed, air-conditioners, kids in a class, days off, test scores and enemies to be vilified.  You gotta keep the hate going.

There is great jazz tune by Oscar Brown Junior about a child's incessant demands for something over there - in this case a stuffed elephant.


This sums up the continuing strike by Chicago Public School Teachers and no one in the media will ever point to the real Elephant in the Room - the buss-ciut Brooks Brothers Commie in the Red Duds standing behing Karen Lewis and tellling here what to say and do.

Dat Elephant over dere?


The time will march days will go
And little baby's going to grow
I gotta tell her what she needs to know
I'll help her along and she'll be strong

And she'll know right from wrong
As life's parade goes marching by
She's gonna need to know some reasons why
I don't have all the answers but I'll try to do what I can
We'll make a plan

You give the kid your best and hope she’ll pass the test
And finally send her out into the world somewhere
And though she's grown up I bet I never will forget
Mummy, can I have that big elephant over there?

Hey why they do that there? And how you put that there?
Hey mummy, up here! Hey mummy, what that say up there?
Hey mummy, what is fair? How come I have to share?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
And mummy can I have that big elephant over there?
http://www.suntimes.com/news/15177062-418/union-head-teachers-tired-of-billionaires-telling-us-what-to-do.html
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-09-14/news/ct-perspec-0914-lewis-20120914_1_cps-teachers-charter-schools-karen-lewis
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-edit-union-0917-bd-20120917,0,6966289.story

Talkers and Do-ers: My exchange with a Lawyer and Karen Lewis a Be-smears Philanthropist

 " Hey,Hey! Ho,Ho! Spell Czecher Haz Gotta Go! ( repeat as obnoxiously often as if Andy Thayer were Thay-er"

The CPS Strike may be history.  Maybe. I don't believe so,

I do not believe that the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union, Karen Lewis and her ISO guru Jesse Sharkey, have had anywhere near enough face-time on camera to work their gums.

National labor activists who embarassed themselves in Madison Wisconsin last year are trucking to Chicago tomorrow for an MSNBC flavored bongo and gong sing-along in Union Park near Pilsen.

CTU members and CPS teachers are frustrated and rightly so.  I know many excellent CPS teachers who are burdened by the clowns from both CTU and CPS.  Policies and practices get heaped on them like taxes showered on Chicago citizens and they are expected to not only teach, care for, keep-track of and love their students, but also change the social order and tuck-point the dysfunctional families who send their children to spend hours of the day in their charge.

God love them!  Rahm is playing to cash-cows and public relations at the expense of common sense, whether that means tossing a million dollars to the gang-banger pensioners of CeaseFire, turning Gresham, Englewood and Grand Crossing neighborhoods into the care of Calypso Louis' Bow-tie Precision Marching Teams, or Draconianly changing the schedules of some schools, while appeasing the Mommies and Daddies of Magnet School kiddies, or TIFing more schools into Charters. He wants to be President.

Then there is Karen Lewis.  Ms. Lewis is a face of CTU, the heart of CORE and soul of ISO.  CORE is the Caucus of Rank and File Educators.  ISO is the International Socialist Organization*.  The VP of CTU is Jesse Sharkey an ISO wheel and one time teacher at Senn High School - not listed on staff these days.

Karen Lewis and Jesse Sharkey have "Hey,hey'd and Ho, Ho'd" everyone else in CTU to an Occupy TV moment. They are not about the money, they are about ending the capitalist-running-dog 1% patriarchal hegemony.  Got that?  T'aint too hard.  Bill Ayers understands it and Carol Marin and Eric Zorn eat it up.

So do the loud-mouths and layabouts.  This week John Kass praised Leo High School that Karen Lewis had smeared as not a real school, as this Catholic college prep school for inner city men was open on Monday.  It was a very nice and accurate contrast to the Karen & Jesse Show.

A web-paper that publishes my stuff, Chicago Daily Observer linked John Kass' article: Here is one comment from an anonymous goof -DMLawyer:

DMLawyer said:The school will be closed in a couple of years.
White flight to the burbs (Br. Rice, Marist, etc.) was the start of its demise.

I have heard that Leo was on its last legs from guys- in-the- know since 1966.  White flight?  How about that Viking ship in Lincoln Park? So, I responded. 

Pat Hickey said:Where have you been genius?
White flight occurred in the late 1960′s.

Too piquant?  Sorry, that's how I roll when confronted with a spitting bi-ped purported to have been educated somewhere.

Not to be outdone, the pettigogger rose to his full height and rejoined -

DMLAwyer said:
And the effects are still being felt.
At least you finally acknowledge its occurence and have stopped making excuses for racism.

At Least I did that. Yes, yes, and a chastened Honkey-ass bigot I be there, DM. Lord, forgive my bull-whipping of colored folks. Old habits, I guess. 

Sorry.  There I go again. Now, I am just as bad as DMLawyer and would not deem to take a back-seat to any man when an old-timey micturating party is afoot and I responded, thus -

Pat Hickey said:Write check to Leo, DML. All them folks you like to tag as racist do. Nothing kills racism like involvement. Step up; the sidelines are way to thick with talkers. Leo is all about doing -Facta Non Verba. Or do you just like to talk?

I am a pretty nice guy.  Unless someone insults people I love.  Why would anyone publicly ridicule people who do good, without any prompting and also do it so very badly.  Imagine pushing your shopping cart down the aisle and catching the eye of a stranger, give the wink and smile and salute him or her with a cheery greeting of " 'Morning!"  only to be acknowledged with a "#$% You and all you White Flight #$%^-ers!"  -
( that actually  happens to me all the time, but only with family and close friends -never total strangers in my neighborhood)  Why would one do such a thing? Because they feel that they can and, in my experience, these people happen to be educated, wealthy and Progressive.  That is when, I wear my guts on my sleeve and can be singularly unpleasant and even, God forgive me, sarcastic.

Now, I talk . . .in my sleep, Y'all!  My mouth goes like duck's ass when given have the mereest chance . . .No, really. I do chat some.

I also do. I do what I can and often a bit more.  I teach black kids, white kids, Mexican kids and, when the moon sits just right, my very own kids.  I can work a mop, turn on the boilers at Leo, fix the sump pump, chauffer the Canaryvillains, raise money, write grants, write articles, ask for help, make friends, fix bridges and buy lunches.  So does Dan McGrath, Mike Holmes, Mike Joyce, Aurora Latiffi, Mrs. Townsend, Gunny Frank Wilson and most everyone who draws a modest pay check at Leo every two weeks.

Most importantly, I can ask for money.  When I make a phone call, the person on the other side of the line knows I am about to lift his wallet, or rummage her purse.  Most people are willing to step in and help the mission.  We have millionaires, but mostly working stiffs. Some of our most loyal givers are on a fixed income.  All participate.  They mentor the kids, come to assemblies and games and love our lads. I value their gifts.

Karen Lewis has the luxury to slap people who have volunteered to help the public schools.  Today in the Tribune. Karen Lewis insults CPS donor Bruce Rauner. Mr. Rauner is what we at Leo call a "Big Hitter" - someone with oodles of the long-green-difference.  If my Rauner were giving to Leo and he told me that rotting dead alewife made a great deoderant, I'd be smelling like the dumpster behind DiCola's Fish on a hot August afternoon and happy about my new found scent. 

Karen has her own distinctive air - here is some of her gut-wind in today's Tribune

Rauner's solution to all these problems is to increase the number of Teach for America interns in CPS schools, to expand charter schools and to increase standardized testing. Obviously he knows absolutely nothing about education. If he even subscribed to any of the numerous education newspapers, like Education Week, he would know studies are showing Teach for America is not improving educational outcomes at low-income schools, that charter school performance nationwide is only on par with public school counterparts and that excessive standardized testing can have an adverse effect on students.
How much money has Bruce Rauner personally invested in all of these "solutions"?

Well, Bruce???? Tongue got your cat?

Mr.  Bruce Rauner is being impugned as a fat-cat capitalist opportunist by the ethically challenged leadership of CTU in preparation for the Big Labor Pay-Back for Walker Thru Rahm Rally tomorrow.  Money, marbles or chalk ? Jesse Sharkey, a practiced Commie scribe with many articles on his belt for ISO, wrote this piece for the svelt-talented Ms. Lewis.

Karen Lewis does not get direct dough for CTU from Mr. Rauner.  Mr. Rauner is about improving public education. He is a doer.  I disagree that Mr. Rauner's money is well-spent and that it is certainly misdirected.  Bruce Rauner should pop his dough into The Big Shoulders Fund and support Catholic Schools. I'm just sayin'!

Karen Lewis is educated, wealthier than most people I live near, and very Progressive.  

* Now a strike by the CTU over issues that are murky and confusing to the average citizen threatens to distract the electorate just as the Obama campaign picks up lost momentum.How could this have happened?
The ironic answer is that President Obama himself deserves some of the blame. At the top of the CTU leadership is a group of political activists for whom the health and well being of students is not the top priority much less the bread and butter concerns of their fellow union teachers. Instead, they are the hard core of a highly ideological milieu that has over the last decade or more burrowed their way into the teachers’ union.
Now they have their hands on the levers of power of a large urban union and are doing what no sane union leader would do, namely striking at a point where they are least likely to gain allies among Democrats and others on the left whom they normally could, and should, count on in a battle of this magnitude.
Only a group with a different agenda than that of the genuine labor movement would take such a huge risk. Actually, from their standpoint – one which advocates “r-r-radical” change – it makes a peculiar kind of sense because it appears to demonstrate their intransigence. While stalwart militancy can be a valuable trait in a labor leader, mindless militancy of the sort on display among the top leaders of the CTU is dangerous. For too long the democratic left inside the AFT and elsewhere hasignored these risks.
What animates this “mindless militancy”? It is the so-called “social justice” ideology propagated by a sectarian element in American schools of education and among their teacher graduates by individuals like Linda Darling-Hammond, Bill Ayers, Mike Klonsky, Gloria Ladson-Billings, Peter MacLaren and others. Thus, Karen Lewis, the new “fist in the air” fire brand president of the CTU in the words of her ally the Maoist education activist Mike Klonsky. Lewis recently traveled to Seattle not to discuss the tragedy of poor student outcomes in our nation’s schools but to rally the “Shock Doctrine” troops among the social justice crowd to take over the teachers’ union.
Keep in mind that I put quotes around “social justice” because this crowd’s “social justice” ideology has nothing to do with the social justice agenda of the genuine labor movement or the civil rights movement. This is, instead, an agenda about gaining political power, not for the students and teachers of our blighted urban schools, but for the advocates of “social justice” and its allied ideas such as multiculturalism and identity politics.
While proposed as something radical it is important to keep in mind how conservative and reactionary this ideology is, in fact. It represents a retreat from the genuinely progressive and radical agenda of the civil rights movement and the labor movement. And it is therefore not a surprise to realize that this new “social justice” agenda emerged in the wake of the defeat of those earlier democratic movements in the late 70s and early 80s.
The ideology actually leads the labor movement backwards into the divisive morass of politically correct identity politics. In the world of education, for example, it actually helped support the pro-corporate school “choice” movement by the formation of politically correct small schools like the “Social Justice” high school in Chicago. Not a surprise that figures like Ayers and Klonsky back the same idea as one supported by the Gates Foundation.
Thus, instead of creating democratic, transparent institutions that can lead us out of the crisis in our schools, this “social justice” crowd functions like a mirror image of the corporate education reform crowd they so loudly denounce. This faux radical milieu has, in fact, given up, sometimes explicitly, on wider social solutions, such as integration, to the problems of city schools. They promote absurd arguments that the schools are the moral equivalent of apartheid and promote a form of reparations for slavery in the name of repaying what they call the “education debt” that allegedly has accumulated over 400 years. Professor Stephen Diamond: Santa Clara University School of Law

http://stephen-diamond.com/
 http://www.cdobs.com/archive/featured/what-teachers-strike-chicago-leo-is-going-great/#comments
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/ct-perspec-0914-lewis-20120914,0,7374511.story

Leo High School - One of the "Unreal" Catholic Schools Reported by John Kass

Martez Hampton, a gentleman scholar-athlete of Leo High School's Junior Class has the answer - School Reform is Vouchers.


We had the pleasure of John Kass in the house on the opening day of the CPS Strike.  John's visit was prompted by Karen Lewis' announcement of the strike of all CPS teachers with her statement "Real school will not be open (Monday)."

Leo High School is as real as it gets.  John Kass is a south side guy who knows a plateful full of BS is not a prime rib dinner.

Since real school wasn't open, I was compelled to visit an unreal school.A South Side school where 100 percent of the students graduate, and 100 percent are accepted to college. A Roman Catholic all-boys school that draws from poor and working-class neighborhoods, a school where there are no cops or metal detectors, no gang recruitment, no fear.
An unreal school that is mostly black, but with a smattering of whites and Latinos, and where every student who sees a stranger in the halls goes up to the newcomer, introduces himself, shakes his hand, looks him in the eye and calls him Mister.
Leo High School, at 79th and Sangamon, seemed pretty unreal to me, too.

The entire Leo High School Family, students, staff, parents and Alumni ( 1930 -Present) thank you John for you visit and your great appeal to reason on what constitutes Genuine School Reform.



http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/columnists/ct-met-kass-0912-20120912,0,7520520,full.column

The CPS/CTU Raccoon & Skunk Fight is On! Catholic Schools Open for Business

“We have failed to reach an agreement that will prevent a labor strike,” Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis said. “No CTU members will be inside of our schools Monday.” - Tribune

I am here at the Eight Seven Years Young Leo High School, a college preparatory school for young men of the Archdiocese of Chicago.  Proco Joe Moreno and Mayor Rahm noted this summer that Catholics share not their Chicago Values.

The CTU is Chicago Values 2012.  CPS is Chicago Values 2012.  Together, Chicago Values 2012 have given parents and their children the fruits of Chicago Values.

Leo is a four story brick and mortar facility with more re-bar than Fortress Europe.  It is a solid building built upon a deep and thick foundation and the Gospels of Christ.  There is no central air-conditioning and the old structure retains heat like sponge.  In Chicago's winters, the Sangamon Wind whips the The Hawk through the portals and keeps the 1921 twin Kewanee Boilers working like Poblano with two shovels.

Our students receive a quality education and learn to be competitive and caring men.  It costs money - their families, our teachers, our Alumni and our partners work to pay the bills.  More so, the school, like all Catholic schools, is rooted in Catholic Values, not Chicago Values 2012,

These are the fruits of Chicago Values, 

At a raucous House of Delegates meeting last month, teachers yelled “strike!” and “hell no!” as union leaders discussed the district's latest contract offer. Days later, the union filed its legally required 10-day strike notice and set the date for a walkout on Sept. 10, the beginning of the second week of school for the majority of CPS students. Over the course of negotiations, Lewis emerged as a powerful voice for teachers' rights and a lighting rod for criticism. A veteran science teacher and activist, Lewis took over the union's leadership in 2010 amid uncertain times.
 With little movement in contract talks heading into summer, Lewis was credited with channeling teacher angst with a historic strike vote. The June vote strengthened the union's position at the bargaining table and ratcheted up opposition to Emanuel's reform agenda.
 As contract talks pushed into their final days, Lewis was front and center, calling Emanuel a “bully” and “a liar” in front of thousands at a massive rally at Daley Plaza on Labor Day.
 And on Sunday, Lewis led the teachers in a strike.

The mask is off this being a Labor Issue, as Karen Lewis and CTU's  public salaried brothers and sisters of SEIU will scab, cross their picket-lines and draw pay.  Those are Chicago Values 2012. " Condoms for Kids and Abortion for when the condoms fail". Kids, stay away from Chick Fil A and school for the next few days!"

Public education is a mess. This strike is being portrayed in the Chicago Tribune as " well it is about time we had a strike."  They are running a swell retrospective on Teacher Strike's past.  There is a "Teachers are Swell" sympathy piece by a parent in full solidarity with CTU, while SEIU comrades cross picket lines without losing a wink of sleep.

Chicago Values 2012?

Not if my life depended upon it.

Up Date:

7:55 AM. - I passed scores of Red T-shirted CTU members at Bronzeville Academy on 35th; Hendricks Math and Science Academy at 43rd & Princeton and Graham Elementary at 44th & Union -  I picked up Joe S at 35th & Kind Drive; then Nick, AJ, White Chocolate, Ryan & Sean at Pizza Nova on 43rd and then
Mitch, Sal, Tommy and BK at Graham.

We did not honk, but smiled and waved.  Faces dropped when they saw the Leo High School Logo and van full of Bronze and Canaryvillains off to school . . .A Catholic School.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/chi-chicago-public-schools-chicago-teachers-union-contract-talks-strike,0,1578458,full.story

CPS/CTU A Skunk Fighting a Raccoon - Catholic Schools Open Everyday!!

It's All About the Children! All is relative and as John Dewey demands of American Public Education All must be Verifiably Satisfying.  Got that?

I got it years ago, when I studied Philosophy of Education at Loyola University.  Truth is a moveable feast for John Dewey that begins and ends with "Inquiry."

Inquire about leadership in American Public Education -Arne Duncan e.g.

Inquire about Chicago political leadership: Rahm's busy raising cash from Hollywood and what's left of 1%-ers for Obama.

Inquire about the  Public Service Union Solidarity - SEIU is set to cross the picket lines.

Inquire about a 19% increase in an average public salary that amounts to $ 71,000 per annum.

Inquire about length of school day.

Inquire about tenure, accountability, pension, health benefits, sick-days, and school calendars/

Inquire about test scores, college placement, drop-out rates.

If one must, do inquire. Like I said, I got it ( as in understood John Dewey education as a pernicious,  power mad and "cosmic impiety" that assaults truth).



In the next 24 hours, either CPS will cave and toss more money to Karen Lewis in verifiably satisfying manner, or a strike will take place in verifiably satisfying manner.  Either way, it is the public education you, the taxpayer, votes for, agrees whole-heartedly with, or must live with.

In any event, Catholic Schools in Chicago will be open for learning, sharing and strengthening the values God finds verifiably satisfying. In today's Gospel from Mark, Jesus cures a deaf-mute.  Get a load of these beauties!




Chicago Public education is a skunk fighting a raccoon, in my empirical understanding of its dysfunctional operations.



Stock up on the moral and education tomato juice, Citizens, or get used to smell.

On Monday The Children Will Be in School -Catholic Schools

No less a political genius* and storied-back benching alderman than Thundering Dick Simpson of U of I at Cement City offers this concerning the looming CPS/CTU Strike -


" (Karen) Lewis can claim victory if a short strike ends with a contract favorable to teachers, according to Dick Simpson, a political science professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. (Karen) Lewis could argue the teachers union flexed its muscles and the Emanuel administration caved.

"The problem isn't so much if the teachers strike," Simpson said. "The question is how long they strike and on what terms it's settled." ( Emphases and Parentheticals, my own) -Thundering Dick Simpson - author of They's CarUption In the Soberbs!

My God!  Why is this man not more of an influence universal? The insight!  The grasp of the obvious!  The cool Dewey-esque arrival at the conclusion inquired of! 

On what meat does this our Dick feed?

Any way.

Leo High School, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Cajetan, St. Barnabas, Mother McAuley, St. Ben's, Gordon Tech, Marist, Brother Rice, St. Rene Groupil, St. Benedict the African . . .etc. and etc. will all be open for school on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Yadda, Yadda, Yadda until Columbus Day and then . . .till when summer comes.

Simeon and Morgan Park?  Could be, but then again maybe not.

You can count on Catholic Schools, Lutheran Schools, Dutch Christian Schools and the nopn-sectarian private schools, because the teachers and staff want to be there to practice their professions. If a teacher is unsatisfied with his or her contract, that teacher can say Adios!  More importantly, if a teacher is really unsatisfactory and should be selling Groupon futures and Green Energy ventures over the phone, the school can say, "Here's your hat; leave the keys; leave the stapler and the globe and best of luck in all of your future endeavors!"

School Monday!  Long strike, short strike, outcomes political and actual notwithstanding, Catholic Schools ( and our Protestant and non-Christian compeers) will educate your child, because God is our platform.

For those who think not, keep asking Thundering Dick Simpson what he really thinks. 

Stuff like what is the edge of bowling ball like?

* N.B. - If one were to seek a political insight from a practiced professional and genuine scholar in this Proco Joe Burg, one must consult Dr. Paul Green of Roosevelt University. To paraphrase the eminent restaurateur and lay-historian Jackie Schaller of Schaller's Pump - " Thundering Dick Simposn couldn't carry Paul Green's jockstrap. . .too heavy."

http://www.enotes.com/julius-caesar-text/act-i-scene-ii

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/education/ct-met-teacher-strike-politics-20120909,0,6197296,full.story

Our Rahm-Shackles - Chicago's Covenant of Debt

Huzzah!  Two coal fired ComEd Plants are shut!

Neighborhood and environmental activists are celebrating as Chicago’s last two coal-fired electricity plants enter a three-month decommissioning phase. But the closings are leaving dozens of Midwest Generation workers without a job.

The company, a subsidiary of California-based Edison International, says its Crawford station in the city’s Little Village neighborhood burned its last lump of coal more than a week ago after operating since 1924. The Fisk station, constructed in 1903 in nearby Pilsen, shut down Thursday night.

Real Estate opportunities abound! (Well, at least until January 2013 when President Flat-line begins work on his museum) Allison Davis get to dealing; call Valerie Jarrett, while these opportunities for Federal Green grants can be converted like a lazy Catholic into a Unitarian!   

Yes, Sirree Bob!!!!   Glad them coal burners went south; kept me sleepless some days.

Obvious is irony is sarcasm, the gateway drug to cynicism.  Passed through them portals sometime ago, but scratch a cynic and reveal a tender hearted sweetie-pie.  I recall another such cynical Catholic Hillaire Belloc, who refereed the bouts between GK Chesterton and George Bernard Shaw in their wholesome debates over socialism v. capitalism.  Belloc poetically predicted,  in 1928,the joy of our Community Activists who brought down Old King Coal and cleared the properties for Allison Davis and Val Jarrett 2012-

    "Our civilization
    Is built upon coal.
    Let us chant in rotation
    Our civilization
    That lump of damnation
    Without any soul,
    Our civilization
    Is built upon coal.

    "In a very few years,
    It will float upon oil.
    Then give three hearty cheers,
    In a very few years
    We shall mop up our tears
    And have done with our toil.
    In a very few years
    It will float upon oil."

Belloc understood the nonsense of polemics and the progressive Fabian need to caricature not only people but inanimate objects.  Wittily skewered the faux outrage and pious claptrapping with this -

We Chicagoans are Rham-shackled, rickety, near collapse. Ramshackle is a distortion of the word ransacked.  You know, Looted.  A condition of unbalance due to a sacking of what is within.

Much of the Rahm-shackle condition was created by the Daley Regime -post-Pat Huels Daley; the University of Chicago vintage Daley.  Rahm is merely the full fruition of this organically grown Man-eating plant.

The murders reflect the Thug Comfort Zone created by this alliance of real estate bandits, academics, media pawns, and lawsuit Lotto lawyers.  Chicago is what the catoonist-satirist Jules Feiffer created in his play Little Murders*(1967) - an urban dystopia of random killings, rampant feminism, emasculated males, overwhelmed and undermined police, garbage strikes and power outages.  People, Feiffer predicted would be isolated, afraid and desperate because the society through government wanted it that way.

The public schools will open under threat of strike, but open they will, in order to get the school head-count tax buckeens. CTU loudmouth,Karen "Foghorn Leghorn" Lewis makes the late Tony " Big Tuna" Accardo seem like a Hubbard Street dancer and has the Obama White House ( Valerie Jarrett, LLc) tying Rahm's leash-like for Foghorn Leghorn Lewis' Rahm Rump Challenge:



Make no mistake, as President Flat-line likes to say, Rahm wil shuttle twixt Charlotte and Chi-town with a bundle of boodle for Foghorn Lewis. Strike? I think not.  Valerie Jarrett and Allison Davis are no where near finished developing slum properties for future government subsidized gambits.  Praise Jesus!


Here in my own back yard, Rahm and the real estate rangers are getting their oily fingers on the keys to the soon to be abandoned Beverly Art Center: a Personal PAC approved and abortion friendly real estate transaction in the making with Fifth Third Bank!

We are Rahm-shackled. Wobbly, looted and hooked to this condition as long as we vote badly.  Show me a Democrat with the heart of lion or Kevin Joyce and I will vote for him.  Show me a Republican who is not shod in tassled loafers and I may vote for GOP.  Show me more Pat Quinns, Sheila Simons, Dick Durbins, Toni Preckwinkles, Rahm Emanuels, Mark Kirks, Forrest(s) Claypools, Deb Shores and Jans Schalowsky and I will show you the door with great force, as well as the big blue recycling bin in my alley for your paper products.

Val Jarrett and Allison Davis have more real estate to parlay into slum housing with the two coal burners knocked out and another on the way in Morgan Park.  Rahm Shackled - it's a Chicago Value. So is random killings, abortion and isolated people.

*Little Murders (1967) Jules Feiffer
Patsy Newquist is a 27-year-old interior designer who lives in a New York rife with street crime, noise, obscene phone calls, power blackouts and unsolved homicides. When she sees a defenseless man being attacked by street thugs, she intervenes, but is surprised when the passive victim doesn't even bother to thank her. She ends up attracted to the man, Alfred Chamberlain, a photographer, but finds that he is emotionally vacant, barely able to feel pain or pleasure. He permits muggers to beat him up until they get tired and go away.

Patsy is accustomed to molding men into doing her bidding. Alfred is different. When she brings him home to meet her parents and brother, he is almost non-verbal, except to tell her that he doesn't care for families. He learns that Patsy had another brother who was murdered for no known reason. Patsy's eccentric family is surprised when she announces their intention to wed, then amazed when their marriage ceremony conducted by the atheistic Rev. Dupas turns into a free-for-all.

Determined to discover why her new husband is the way he is, Patsy coaxes Alfred into traveling to Chicago to visit his parents. He hasn't seen them since he was 17, but asks them to help with a questionnaire about his childhood at Patsy's request.
Alfred ultimately agrees to try to become Patsy's kind of man, the kind willing to "fight back." The instant that happens, a sniper's bullet kills Patsy, again for no apparent reason. A blood-splattered Alfred goes to her parents' apartment, New Yorkers barely noticing his state. He descends into a silent stupor, Patsy's father even having to feed him.

A ranting, disturbed police detective, Lt. Practice, drops by, almost unable to function due to the number of unsolved murders in the city. After he leaves, Alfred goes for a walk in the park. He returns with a rifle, which he doesn't know how to load. Patsy's father shows him how. Then the two of them, along with Patsy's brother, take turns shooting people down on the street.

http://www.wbez.org/news/activists-rejoice-coal-fired-plants-shut-down-102129
http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/debate.txt
 http://www.amazon.com/Little-Murders-Penguin-plays-screenplays/dp/0140481184

CPS Strike? No Problem. Send the Kids to Catholic Schools

Hey, Folks!  Which Chicago educator is in it for the money?

The Chicago Teachers Union filed a 10-day strike notice Wednesday that moved the city closer to its first teacher walkout in 25 years and left the district racing to finalize a plan if more than 402,000 students are locked out of the classroom. 

Parents also were left wondering what they'll do if their children have no classroom to go to.

Do what thousands of Chicagoans do already!  Send your kids to Catholic Schools.

Karen Lewis and the CTU waited to set the strike order so that CPS can get the enrollment count set for State funding.  All about the children?  I think not.

Catholic Schools are tuition driven -some folks call them "Pay Schools."  You bet.  You get what you pay for. For the last three years, every Leo graduate was accepted at the colleges of choice and then some - Northwestern, DePaul, Valparaiso, Purdue, U of I, and Loyola.

Catholic schools provide safe, structured, caring and academically rigorous environments where students are challenged to accept their better angels.

Tuition is a shared sacrifice between the parents, students and the teachers.  Catholic schools are staffed by people who are committed to teach and motivated by Faith.

When was the last time any one can remember a Catholic School strike?

Tough one.

Tuition is a challenge and Catholics help people of every race, creed and color meet that challenge - The Big Shoulders Fund is one great resource for parents.

Click the links below and find a Catholic School in Chicago.  You can depend upon Catholic Education.

Public Schools???? Not so much.

http://schools.archchicago.org/schools/elementaryschoolsearch.aspx
http://schools.archchicago.org/schools/highschoolsearch.aspx
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-cps-strike-notice-0830-20120830,0,1018577.story

CPS May Very Well Strike; Leo High School Treats Kids Right!

Here is the Map of Success - 2011 Leo Grads are going to school all over America!

When asked by (WLS AM Bill)Cameron whether the conditions were ripe for a strike this year, she (Teachers Union President Karen Lewis)said: “I think it’s very high. Because people are very upset and people feel disrespected.”

Chicagoist 8/15/2011 ( parentheses my own)

Earlier in the piece we find this, "she (Lewis) did not predict that teachers will ultimately go on strike, only that the probability is high that members will call for a strike vote." What's the deal? Will teachers be going on strike any time soon?"

Leo High School opens this week, but we have on-going registration. Leo High School is a Catholic college preparatory high school, often called a "pay school" by families more familiar with public education. There is tuition. Tuition is a covenant between the school and the family of the student. Picking up a financial obligation the family is assured that their student will have an opportunity to succeed in academics, participate in a glorious athletic program, be treated with attention to the student's needs. To help families meet their end of the covenant, there are thousands of Leo Alumni and the Big Shoulders Fund - a Catholic foundation dedicated solely to helping inner city families get a great Catholic education.

Leo High School had a great year last year.

1. 100% college placement

2. Leo graduates received hundreds of thousands of dollars in college scholarships

3. Leo families were helped by Leo Alumni, private and corporate foundations and generous individuals to the tune of $ 840,000

4. Leo tested and registered the largest incoming class of freshmen in twelve years, including white and Hispanic students

5. Leo 2011 graduate Eder Cruz was named a Gates Millenium Scholar

6. Leo's Track team won its sixth IHSA State Championship - Leo is the only non-public high school to win the IHSA Track Title in its 115 year history and Leo Captured Titles in both Class A and Class AA

The probability is high that Chicago Teachers Union will vote for a strike. Leo High School and all other Catholic schools will open this month an get down to the business of helping students.

Enroll, now. If you think that tuition is costly, imagine what a morale challenged public school faculty might cost your child. Leo High School has not been disrupted by violence in the school. The police officers of Gresham Sixth District only have come to the school to correct problems outside of the school that might impact on the safety of our Leo Men. The business of Leo High School is all about the student.

In fact, all summer long students have popped in to visit and ask for summer reading ideas from President Dan McGrath, chat with Principal Phil Mesina and learn some great study skills from Leo's Vice president and Gunny Mr. Frank Wilson, USMC, lift weights, shoot hoops, box in the Leo facility run by Mike Joyce, snitch candy from the Ms. Adams and Ms. Hemp in the office and pay Mrs. Townsend parcels of tuition, while Mom and Dad were at work.

Mike Holmes, Leo Director of Admissions and Leo Alumnus Mike Anderson have brought in many families seeking help for their sons who having a difficult time at other schools, or are concerned about meeting the costs of tuition.

Here is a transcript of a message left on my voice mail -" This is Pat Nolan, Class of '51. It was great seeing you guys at the Leo Golf outing. I'm sending my 21st Century (Spring Mailing) with my gift. I was little late in getting it in the mail. I hope all is well at Leo."

Pat Nolan and hundreds of other Leo Men have the kids who were here all summer, even though school was out, on their minds and in their hearts.

The teachers have been back since last week. The Maintenance( Ron Reynolds, James Crawford and Derrick De Berry) men have the place looking great. These gentlemen are solid gentlemen and great role models who do as much teaching throughout the day than many people calling themselves educators that I have encountered. They teach pride by example and respect for every task.

No Strike - Leo Treats Families Right. Take a look at the Leo High School Website

Call Mr. Mike Holmes here at Leo ( 773) 224-9600 and arrange a sit-down with any or all of us. Pop in for a visit even when school starts. Our students are our best reflection of the Leo Brand.

Leo High School
7901 S.Sangamon Street
Chicago, IL 60620

Open for business every year since 1926 - business is good!

Facta Non Verba! Deeds not Words!