Rahm Emanuel: A Symbol of Much of What Is Wrong with America
Nearly 60 percent of his 103 donors received "contracts, zoning changes,
business permits or some other tangible benefit"
By Paul Bucheit
April 06, 2015 "ICH"
- America's is a sickness of the mind, the unwavering belief by
people in power that free-market capitalism will somehow work for everyone.
As with a virus that refuses to die, the effects are insidious, because the very
rich have convinced themselves that they made it on their own, and that others
have only themselves to blame if they are poor.
Rahm Emanuel is Mayor
1%. He speaks a politician's words to entice many Chicagoans to vote for
him, but his actions are on behalf of his friends and colleagues in the business
world.
Snubbing the Needs of Average People
The author of Mayor 1%, Kari
Lydersen, tells the story of Helen Morley, a resident of the southwest side
of Chicago and a regular patient at one of the mental health clinics closed by
Mayor Emanuel. At Chicago's 175th birthday party in 2012, Morley pleaded, "Mayor
Emanuel, please don�t close our clinics! We�re going to die...There�s nowhere
else to go." Emanuel ignored her. According to Lydersen, Morley and others
believed that the mayor "didn�t understand the role these specific clinics
played in their lives and the difficulty they would have traveling to other
locations."
The same can be said for Chicago's shuttered public schools, once the vital
centers of their communities. The state of Illinois cut education
spending by a greater percentage than any other state in fiscal 2012, and
for 2013 it was third-worst in percentage cuts
per student. Privatizers rushed in and blamed the public system. As a
result, 50 neighborhood schools were closed in Chicago, opening the way for charter
schools, which take taxpayer money but have little
accountability to the public and an obligation only to their investors. In
the end, 2,000 public school employees were fired by
Emanuel, including over 1,000 teachers.
Parent Ronald Brooks, whose daughter's school Lafayette was shut down, spoke in
the aftermath of the mayor's action: "Lafayette was more than a school. It was
an institution....the heart and soul of our community."
Lafayette, which was reportedly underutilized,
was replaced by a selective publicly-funded contract arts
school with approximately the same enrollment as
before the closing.
Cozying Up to Cronies
According to the Chicago
Tribune, "The mayor regularly courts his benefactors behind closed
doors.." Nearly 60 percent of his 103 donors received "contracts, zoning
changes, business permits, pension work, board appointments, regulatory help or
some other tangible benefit."
Democracy Now cites a report by the International Business Times which found
that Emanuel uses no-bid, no-contract voucher payments to quietly pass along
money to his contributors. It was also reported by the Chicago
Tribune that the lawyers for Chicago's infamous parking meter deal
contributed over $100,000 to Emanuel's campaign chest. City attorneys touted
the 'benefits' of
the deal.
In another egregious episode,
Mayor Emanuel appointed Deborah Quazzo, a managing partner at GSV Advisors, to
the Chicago Board of Education. The Chicago
Sun-Times reported that Quazzo's business affiliates subsequently tripled
their business with the public schools. Tellingly, GSV founder Michael
Moe related his goal for the future: "An education revolution in which
public schools outsource to private vendors such critical tasks as teaching
math, educating disabled students, even writing report cards."
Making Deals that Send Our Tax Dollars to Wall Street
Rahm Emanuel has made Chicago look
good for tourists, sprucing up the downtown (Loop) business district, adding
retail stores and office space. But the funding comes at the expense of average
citizens. The mayor's plan for a South Loop hotel and basketball arena is using Tax
Increment Financing (TIF) funds (our tax money, meant for blighted
neighborhoods), and stands to enrich a
hedge fund that contributed to Rahm's campaign fund and then invested in the
hotel as the deal was being finalized.
According to Crain's
Chicago Business, Emanuel has borrowed high-interest money that won't come
due until he's out of office. For example, instead of paying $120.8 million in
bonds owed now, he refinanced, thus adding another $228.8 million in interest
over 30 years. Like Mayor Daley before him, Rahm hides the costs until someone
else is around to take the blame.
Even the vital area of pre-K education is set up to benefit big business, with
progressive-sounding social
impact bondslikely to double the profits of Goldman Sachs and other investors in
the next few years. Said Chicago reporter Rick
Perlstein: "[The mayor] struck a deal with a bunch of investment banks to
use the preschoolers of Chicago as collateral.." The deal was arranged with little
debate, and with little
understanding of the long-term risk.
And what about Chicago's (and Illinois') massive deficit? In recent years the
state's largest corporations have been payingonly
about a third of
their required state taxes. Threats to
leave the city seem empty in one of the nation's busiest trading centers. Yet
Mayor Emanuel opposes even
a tiny tax on the quadrillion
dollar business of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, whose profit
margin in recent years has been higher than any of the top 100 companies in
the nation.
His Legacy
The mayor claimed credit for a minimum
wage increase, even though he didn't act until the State of Illinois began
putting the plan in place. He took credit for a longer
school day for the kids, but he didn't provide the necessary funding. He
took credit for coal-burning power plant closings that
resulted largely from neighborhood activism.
Like its mayor, Chicago has two faces. The rest of the nation sees the glitz and
glamour of Chicago's magnificent downtown, but the city's south and west sides,
according to urban analyst Daniel
Hertz, are more dangerous than in the 1990s. This is part of the sickness: a
persistent inequality, moreso of wealth than of income, that plagues America and
manifests itself in the questionable dealings of a man like Rahm Emanuel. He may
best be remembered as the privatizerof
Chicago and, as Perlstein suggested,
"a strikingly corrupt mayor."
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