Forrest Claypool - Quare desine/Why Resign? Club Fed, n'cest pas?

Quare Desine- Latin:  Why resign?

Forrest Claypool resigned on December 8, 2017 - A day that will live in someone's calendar.

Why? Quare desine,  as  the Latin Fathers asked. Here' a bit of Why

Claypool wanted CPS to hire Jenner & Block to handle the case. The firm’s lawyer who signed the deal with the Claypool administration was Randall Mehrberg. He’d been the top lawyer for the Chicago Park District in the 1990s, when Claypool was parks chief under then-mayor Richard M. Daley. Mehrberg later gave tens of thousands of dollars to Claypool’s political campaigns.
Mehrberg also was a volunteer adviser to Claypool in the mayor’s office when Claypool was Emanuel’s chief of staff, in 2015.
After Claypool went to CPS, Mehberg left City Hall, too. He went to work at Jenner & Block, where he began focusing on what would be CPS’ case against the state.
On March 1, 2016, Mehrberg sent a message to Claypool from his new job: “I started at Jenner today. I will get the file opened.”
Two days later, the firm started billing CPS, records show.
Claypool wanted Marmer to supervise the Jenner & Block lawyers working for the cash-strapped public schools. And Marmer did, the Chicago Sun-Times has reported, citing internal emails.
By April 2016, Mehrberg had sent Marmer copies of a draft lawsuit, and Marmer reported to Claypool on the case’s progress. Also that month, Mehrberg emailed Claypool to tell him he and Marmer had a “good conversation” about the planned suit.
“Great,” Claypool replied.
But there was one problem. Under the school system’s ethics code, officials can’t supervise the work of any CPS contractor with whom they have a “business relationship.” And Marmer was getting a $1 million severance package from Jenner & Block, in five $200,000 yearly installments through 2018.
Four in-house lawyers agreed Marmer shouldn’t be supervising his old employers. Two outside lawyers consulted in the spring of 2016 agreed.
But Claypool scurried to find a seventh — this time favorable — legal opinion from political supporter J. Timothy Eaton in June 2016.
By that time — May 12, 2016 — the Sun-Times had filed the first in a series of Freedom of Information Act requests for CPS records on the deal.
CPS didn’t comply with the requests until after the school board approved the deal with Jenner & Block in late July 2016. A Sun-Times report on the issue prompted CPS Inspector General Nicholas Schuler to begin investigating.
On Tuesday — 16 months later — Schuler handed Board of Ed members a searing report that called for Claypool’s firing, saying the CEO lied repeatedly to him in a “full-blown cover-up” of a clear ethical violation by Marmer.
Schuler wrote that Claypool refused to pay one of the outside lawyers and got the other to alter the work description on his firm’s invoices, all to hide what was going on.
“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

Quare desine?  Why resign?

“None of this should have happened,” Schuler said.

No, it should not have happened and the Sun Time and the Tribune and the goofs at WTTW and WBEZ knew  all along that some shoe was about to drop and they were helping the powers that be make hurt go away.

The media never takes a chance at losing access - sneedless to say.

The 5th Floor's reliable Sneed of the Sun Times wrote this on December 6th:

Well, that may no longer be a question in the case of former top cop Garry McCarthy, who detests Mayor Rahm Emanuel — the man who fired him — and the man whose job he wants.“An announcement on McCarthy’s decision could come as soon as the aftermath of the Super Bowl,” said a top McCarthy supporter who cites recent polling as a hopeful sign McCarthy will green-light a bid next month for mayor of Chicago.
“The polling was encouraging,” the source said.
Sneed has learned a polling firm called We Ask America, which is run by XPS, described as “a political fulfillment firm owned by the Illinois Manufacturers’ Association,” did some polling “which did not shut the door” on the McCarthy movement, a top political source said.
• Backshot: A McCarthy for Mayor Exploratory Committee was created after papers were filed with the Illinois State Board of Elections in mid-September.• Big bucks shot: “Garry knows the campaign is going to cost $10 million and he’s got a lot of  money to raise — and it’s not going to happen until he gets into the race,” said the source, who is one of his backers — but asked to remain anonymous.
“But from what we’ve seen so far his sidewalk support is huge. . . . I can’t tell you how many people come up to him on the street and ask him to run. I’ve been with him when it happens and it is astounding. And we’ve heard rumblings Rahm’s approval rating is not great.”
• Upshot: But an attempt to reach McCarthy was unsuccessful on Wednesday.

The Same Day - the usually reliable Fran Spielman wrote this:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel is in a no-win position now that Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool has been exposed as a liar and the architect of a cover-up.
If Emanuel fires Claypool, he’ll be turning his back on a friend of nearly 40 years whose tenure has included impressive results on both the education and school funding fronts.
The mayor would also be emboldening the Chicago Teachers Union in the run-up to the 2019 mayoral election by serving up the head on a platter the union has long demanded.
If Emanuel keeps Claypool — even after he “repeatedly lied” to Inspector General Nicholas Schuler — it will invite CPS employees to do the same, send a dangerous message to students and gamble that a schools CEO whose integrity has been tarnished can still function.

Uh, oh!!!!!!!!! Conflict!!!!! Bet a call from the Nine Digit Midget on Five shook up Comrades Tom Frisbee and Tom McNamee a bit.

On December 8th, Fran Spielman wrote this about Rahm orchestrated public fellation for Forrest:

On Friday, Emanuel called his longtime friend “selfless” at least half a dozen times in as many minutes as he praised Claypool for restoring faith in the schools after his predecessor, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, left amid a bribery scandal that sent her to prison.
“He can walk out with his head high because he did the job well, and he will always be my friend,” the mayor said. “He did a great job for the children of the city of Chicago.
“Wherever he has worked, he’s left an incredible, indelible mark on every endeavor,” Emanuel said. “He has been selfless, and more than just selfless, he has been courageous to take on institutional inertia and make the entity — whether it was the park district, the CTA or CPS — better.”
In the 103-page report Schuler delivered to the school board Tuesday, he painted a different picture of Claypool. He said he “repeatedly lied” during the investigation of Marmer for overseeing work for CPS done by his former law firm even as he was receiving payments toward a $1 million severance. (emphasis my own) 
 

And?

How about asking if Claypool doctored the wording on Marmer's contract?

That is a felony, or as Claypool weaseled, “Good men can make stupid mistakes.”

Do good men lie and shop for lawyers in the pursuit of justice for CPS kids?

More telling though is this - Why is the Chicago media slow-rolling a block-buster scandal?

Why is Fran Spielman backpedaling? Here is a hint:

David Axelrod, formerly a top aide in the Obama White House and a close friend of Emanuel and Claypool, had predicted Thursday that Claypool would remain in office.
“The mayor never asked him to” resign, Axelrod said after Claypool quit. “But it’s also obvious that this would be an issue as we enter political season, and that would make it hard to do the job.”

Why bring out Comb-over Dave?

Abusing Federal budget - cover-ups after the crime!  Claypool a practiced lawyer has two or more predicate acts in the Marmer case alone commited by by the head of an organization and a criminal conspiracy with his old college rommie? Can you say RICO?

Why resign?

Hell, why not indict?

I think the Feds are snuffling very close to Rahm's rump and where Rahm's rump ranges, there you will find  Claypool.

The media, as expected the Sun Times and as follows the Tribune ( with the exception of John Kass) works for City Hall the County Building and the money infrastructure of Illinois all serving the few - the clouted and the bullet proof.

Things are chaotic with that crazy old Trump in the White House and even crazier with an independent Justice Department.

The Tribune wrote this weasel-word editorial for Forrest and Rahm the day before Forrest Claypool resigned"

Is this a firing offense? Based on what we know, no. We take ethics in government — and everywhere else — seriously. We strongly support the IG’s role in keeping a vigilant eye on CPS brass. You don’t need a long memory to recall that the last CPS chief, Barbara Byrd-Bennett, now resides in prison on corruption charges.
But every rules violation isn’t a firing offense. This looks like a case in which the actions that drew the ire of the IG in the first place are less serious than later efforts to cover them up. But lying to the ethics watchdog is a serious matter. We think Claypool now understands that.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago Board of Education members should consider the high stakes here. Ask yourselves: Are Chicago’s schoolchildren better off today because Claypool leads the district? We think the answer is an unqualified yes. Claypool was whistled in to do a grueling job: Get CPS in shape. He deserves a large share of credit for helping to shore up the district’s finances and boost its academic performance.
One more factor: From what we’ve heard, there’s plenty of friction between Claypool and Schuler. They’ve battled over the IG’s report on problems at the school at Cook County Jail, for example. We don’t know where all of this is headed.
For now, Claypool is on notice that he can’t pick and choose which ethics policies he’ll follow. This brouhaha may or may not get him fired. Everyone else who thinks ethics rules maybe don’t apply to them — including politicians and school officials — watch and learn.

Bite me, Bruce!

Watch this - from your editorial yesterday:

 It’s easy to see why Claypool concluded that he couldn’t continue under an ethics cloud. Even if he had the support of Emanuel, the optics of Inspector General Nicholas Schuler’s report were terrible. Headlines about how Claypool engaged in a “full-blown cover-up.” And how the schools chief “pushed the matter beyond all bounds when he chose to lie through two separate OIG interviews,” in the words of Schuler’s report.
“It goes without saying that if any line employee had done that much, he or she would be fired,” the report concluded.
We didn’t think Claypool’s transgressions amounted to a firing offense.

No. it is a felony.  Did Claypool doctor a contract ( one of many, many, many more - Ventra/Bombardier) ? Hmmmm?

Claypool, Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked schools chief, has staunchly defended Marmer’s actions since the Sun-Times reported last year that Marmer is getting the $1 million package from Jenner & Block LLP, the Chicago firm hired to help CPS sue the state to try to win more funding for city schools.
But Schuler says six lawyers — four at CPS and two from outside firms — privately advised school officials that Marmer was violating the ethics code by supervising Jenner & Block’s work.
Only after CPS went to a seventh lawyer, in June 2016, did Claypool secure a legal opinion defending Marmer’s conduct. That opinion came from J. Timothy Eaton, a lawyer who has contributed to Claypool’s political campaigns.
“The clear inference is that Claypool had to shop through six lawyers until he found a seventh one who would publicly clear Marmer,” Schuler wrote to the Board of Education in the confidential report, which the Sun-Times reviewed

Good men make mistakes. Right?

 Political Weasels and Career Grifters lie, hide, doctor and cover-up.

Why Resign?  Quare desine?

Is it because the Feds are about to put the bracelets on some protected Progressive Species?


Rahm Emanuel?
Claypool?
Mike Quigley ( with Claypool over the voting machines?)

Maybe all  squirming in one big net?

The media knows and is not saying.  They will know when we know.  That is why we have contempt for the media - they print and report only what they want.

Fran Spielman indicated that she was on to something on December 8th.   Why back off?

Maybe we already know answer.

Things are chaotic!  It's a crisis!  Let's not waste a crisis!

So, Forrest Claypool Walks into a Pay Day Loan Store . . .What Bruce Dold's Chicago Tribune Will Not Tell You.

The Chinless Wonder has done it again!   Forrest Claypool took out  huge Pay Loan for the children of CPS!  What a guy!

Forrest Claypool can do all of these things

• Fires key Park District personnel and calls it "Cost-cutting."
• Scapegoats people for Richie Daley
• Works with Quigley and Orr to ramrod Venezuelan Voting Machines - machines got hacked by the Russians
• Bombardier cars that don't fit the CTA rails
• Tries to hire ex-cons to do the work of union people
• Smears the union leader who objects
• Pushes Ventra Card
• Gives lawyer a CPS sinecure
• Gives CPS jobs to his CTA posse
• Increases CPS debt

and get away with it and move on to ever more lucrative pay days at our expense and fatten up his already lard-assed pension life.  Not only that, he gets protected by Carol Marin, Eric Zorn, Mary Schmich, the goofs at the Sun Times, WTTW, WBEZ and of Bruce Dold. 

Ain't he great?  He is a media protected, multiple tax-payer funded pension collector and career government grifter.  He is Forrest Claypool.

For any mossback sneak from down state Illinois, Claypool is a role model.  If the Better Government Association was anything other than flak-maker for the Chicago Oligarchs, Claypool would have been a private sector sneak and at best an orange jumpsuit run-way model.

That said, TRY AND FIND  the name of FORREST CLAYPOOL anywhere in its long article.

"Although the Board believes that it has the capacity to borrow both in the short-term and the long-term credit markets, there can be no assurance as to the terms on which the Board will continue to be able to procure such funding, whether the Board's existing statutory borrowing authority will provide sufficient borrowing capacity, or if market access will continue to be available to the Board," the district said in bond documents.(emphases my own)

The Board is Forrest.  In the recent past Tribune features we see Forrest Claypool

•  In Voice of the People, a reader takes the Tribune to task for its editorial regarding the "crisis" surrounding the Chicago Public Schools led by Forrest Claypool. It is unfortunate to see that there still are those who feel we should function with an..
• In your Tuesday editorial titled “We will do whatever is necessary,” you pull no punches in criticizing Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool. You say, for example, that he made a "foolhardy assumption” by relying on a "huge cash infusion from the...
•          Claypool: Illinois' school funding is unfair to CPS students In its recent editorial, the Tribune   correctly identifies the cause of the Chicago Public Schools fiscal crisis: the outsized  payments it must make to the teacher pension fund. The Tribune fails to note, however, that      the state of Illinois imposes this...
• Chicago Public Schools CEO Forrest Claypool vowed recently that CPS will open on time in the fall despite the district's perpetual cash crunch. "We will do whatever is necessary ..." Claypool said in a City Club of Chicago speech. That's a refreshing...

There's no BOARD in CPS!  There's Forest Claypool . . .until he steps on his Johnson and gets shelter from Bruce Dold's investigative and editorial purse puppies.

So, Forrest goes all Pay Day Loan on your wallets again.  You have only yourselves and the Chicago media to blame.

Forrest Claypool will ride all over our backs once again and as long as Chicago and Cook County residents enjoy the consequences of living in a Banana Republic. 

The Racoon on the Fifth Floor and this Skunk of a Grifter created more debt, mayhem and misery for generations to come. 

 

Claypool Wouldn't Know the Truth Unless It Came With a Government Paycheck

DNA Erica Demerest photo

Forrest Claypool - say it with me, please " Forrest Claypool."  There; isn't that like a Yoga moment, or cucumbers on the eyelids?

For most Chicago journalists, just saying " Forrest Claypool" is a tonic akin to a seventh grade fat boy getting a Saint Valentine's Day card from a tween stunner - the Hope, Oh the Hope!

You see over the last forty years, Chicago newspapers gave up integrity for access.  Columnists and Editorial Boards care more about the news morsels tossed by a Daley, a Blago,  an Obama, a Rahm, a Mike Quigley, or a Pat Quinn than it does about getting out the full story. Public television and radio, WTTW& WBEZ share the agendas of the elected Progressives who run this city, county and this state and the activists and PACs who help keep them in power, They feed at the same tax-funded trough.

I'm just a working stiff, with a mortgage and a new tax on something I own or don't own every sixty seconds in Cook County. To me, the name " Forrest Clayyyyyyyyyyyypoooooooooool " portends a looming grift - a government sanctioned pinch of my wallet.  Forrest Claypool to my waxless ears is akin to the names of great grifters, cads, bounders, cut-purses and ne'er-do-wells of common culture Reese Kilgore, Butch Cavendish, Velma Valento, Bill Sykes and of course Galworthy's hideous Soames Forsyte. .  Uriah Heep is Congressman Mike Quigley's sole property, though Forrest Claypool would give Wee Mike a run for his money.

Thanks to the capriciously snorting snouts of Chicago's iconic news hounds, Forrest Claypool does not get away with murder, only character assassination of better persons -Amalgamated Transit Union Local #308 Bob Kelly.  Why only yesterday, Forrest Claypool celebrated the continued employment of 65 felons turned CTA apprentices with this -"Despite Mr. Kelly's commitment to end the rail car servicer apprentice program and put his own union members out of work, we've been able to work with Local 241's leadership to find a place for these individuals, guaranteeing them the opportunity to work and put food on their families' tables for another year," CTA President Forrest Claypool said previously." And often.

Robert Kelly has been portrayed in our collective Chicago media as cross between Simon Legree and Sir Percival Glyde, from the moment that the doomsday clock on the Forrest Claypool, Rahm Emanuel, Michael Pfleger CTA School for Felons was announced last March. Though the ex-cons were placed in rail cleaning posts, no one bothered to let the union governing such labor in on the plans.  Kelly wanted the workers placed in the jobs at the Local 308 recommended salaries, but Rahm Pinchpenny Savior and Forrest Claypool chained the workers to Micky D salaries in the name of Saul Alinsky.

But Kelly has said he wanted the CTA to pay the rail workers more money. The 65 rail apprentices are dues-paying union members, but they’re paid a considerably lower wage than their union counterparts, and they don't get benefits.
“What do I say to people when I say you’re going to do the exact same work next to a guy making $25 an hour and benefits, and I'm not going to pay you benefits?" Kelly asked on "Chicago Tonight" recently.
"They're using these people to save money. Give them the right wages, health, pension, benefits. Let’s give these people a real second chance. Let’s do it. I will sign that deal tomorrow, turn these people over, and give them a real shot at life,” Kelly said.

The SPIN fed to the gaping maws of the Chicago news hounds avoids the facts, minutes, calendars and records of Forrest Claypool.  No one from WTTW to Chuck Goudie to Eric Zorn will bother with the facts missing from a good Claypool news feed.

Claypool is such a gutless, sniveller that he and Rahm hired Citizen Michael Pfleger to perform the character hit on Bob Kelly.  Michael Pfleger wrote a Jeremiad on the alleged nasty nature of Bob Kelly in the always complicit Chicago Tribune, followed by an idiotic smear piece about Kelly's daughter winning a scholarship in the Sun Times.  Pfleger led a December protest that included accomplished grifter and activist Rep. Bobby Rush and a score of Pfleger acolytes at the offices of ATU 308, during the Local's Christmas Party. Now, Michael Pfleger has issued a Fatwa on Kelly via one of his FaceBook pages.

Post by Father Michael Pfleger.

Claypool knows enough to duck a working man in an honest forum.  I have never met Bob Kelly, but I have had more than enough personal contact with Forrest Claypool for one lifetime - usually at political fund-raisers for good people in public life who must admit Claypool on the guest list or near their coat tails.  Usually those same people find themselves subject to scurrilous charges on TV or in a column, later to be dropped.

Claypool would not know the truth if it came with a government check.  He does not need to know it.  Forrest Claypool is fine. Rahm Emanuel is fine.  Michael Pfleger is fine.

Chicago?  Not so good.

Robert Kelly?  We shall see.

CTU Boss Jesse Sharkey Wants Forest Claypool to Pick up Another Govt. Pension, After Getting Bounced from CPS

The ISO have found a leadership position within the CTU in the form of Jesse Sharkey, who is vice president. And Sharkey turns out being a run-of-the-mill sellout artist working to undermine teachers' conditions and benefits. This can't go on forever, they're running on borrowed time. I expect they think they're stalling until martial law is placed on the United States as part of a new authoritarian framework, which they will no doubt welcome. Comments from ISO member International Socialist Website

 
"He (Forrest Claypool) is unfit to be CEO.  He has earned the contempt of teachers and parents across the city" Jesse Sharkey ISO/CTU

Wow.  Harsh.

You won't read the above comment in your Sun Times, Sneedless to say, nor will you read this anywhere in the Chicago Tribune, but the Boss of the CTU, which just made Rahm rollover again, wants career grifter and poly-pension portfolio collector, Forrest Claypool out as CEO pf CPS and into the starting blocks of yet another pension package. This was in DNAinfo Chicago

Three days after the teachers union reached a tentative agreement on a new contract with the district, Sharkey, the union's second in command, said Claypool had "run the system off the edge of a cliff."
"He is unfit to be CEO," Sharkey said. "He has earned the contempt of teachers and parents across the city" by threatening mass layoffs and deep program cuts to schools.
Sharkey, however, stopped short of calling for Claypool's ouster.

Forrest Claypool herded with Progressives, but used Regular Democrats and then cast them into the darkness.


Never do a solid for a Lefty.

Forrest Claypool has put the gratitude blade into the kidneys of scores of City Hall and Cook County regulars, as well as fellow Progressives,but nowhere near the hundreds of working people at Chicago Park District, CTA and CPS in exercising Claypool policies of smoke and mirrors - fire long-time competent employees and hire more very temporary unskilled 'apprentices.'

When Claypool was Rahm Emanuel's CTA CEO he orchestrated the vilification of Amalgamated Transit Workers President Bob Kelley in months long Orwellian Morality Drama featuring Pastor Pfleger, Danny Davis, Bobby Rush, ex-cons and community activists, because Kelly stood up for his people.

The Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times pooh-pooh notions that Claypool is a fraud at best and louse in fact.

Now, the International Socialist puppet master of Chicago Teachers Unions, Jesse Sharkey ( another buzzcut Bolshevik, like Jon Podesta and Locke Bowman, for those of us keeping track) wants Claypool's wispy scalp the lodge pole outside of his CTU wickiup, in order to show off to his tribe the Medicine of ISO.

Strong Medicine.  Ask Leo Trotsky.

Well, I gotta go along with Red Jesse.

Forrest Claypool is a skunk of the first waters. However, I would rather not watch Forrest Claypool collect another pension.