BUDGET WATCH: Who needs a 'Budget Book' to read before the 'hearings' in this second year of the REIGN OF RAHM?
The hearings on Chicago's public education budget, a $5.2 billion affair, are all being held Wednesday, July 11, 2012. Those who wish to testify should get there between 5:30 and 6:30 and ask for a copy of the budget we're supposed to be discussing and see what happens.
But for anyone who is used to hearings on public school budgets using budget books printed by the public schools in public schools, this year, Year Two in the REIGN OF RAHM, continues the RAHM REVOLUTION, brought to your by the arrogance and ignorance of the ONE PERCENT OF THE ONE PERCENT.
For starters, you can get a copy of the budget book anywhere, because books are being banned by the ONE PERCENT OF THE ONE PERCENT during the REIGN OF RAHM.
Second, the public schools budget hearings will not be held in the public schools. Instead, they are going elsewhere.
The "hearings" in Wednesday are being done away from the public and away from the city's public schools at:
1. Malcolm X College.
2. Daley College.
3. Kennedy King College.
And all at the same time!
What, you may ask — After more than a hundred of year, has CPS abandoned CPS schools in favor of the City Colleges of Rahmdom?
Yes. After the mere teachers and PSRPs of the public schools voted to reject the REIGN OF RAHM by a strike authorization vote of more than 90 percent, RAHM has ruled that the public schools are not to be trusted as a site of the BUDGET HEARINGS. And the public is not to be trusted with actual copies of this $5.2 billion PROPOSED BUDGET on how Chicago will spend Chicago's money on educating Chicago's children.
And that is the answers (yes, that's not a typo, but a deliberate plural).
Reality is scripted on orders from the RHETORICIANS OF RAHM during the second year of the REIGN OF RAHM.
WHY THE CITY COLLEGES INSTEAD OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS? Rahm has completely taken over, purged, and tamed (for the most part) the administration of Chicago's City Colleges. Henceforth, Chicago City Colleges are going to be one of his mindless showpieces for even more mindless corporate cliche and cluelessness. What better place to showpiece a "schools budget" that ignores schools, is written in MBASpeak, and somehow misses things like teachers and students than at "colleges" which are now ordered to teach and preach the current generation of corporate cliche with a straight face?
Everyone who intends to "testify" on the so-called "budget" should begin this week with a Treasure Hunt called "Find The Budget." Any citizen who can get an actual copy of an actual book might qualify for a prize. These will be rarer than press conferences (as opposed to carefully scripted press releases "quoting" the "Chief Executive Officer") were CPS officials have to answer questions.
This will be better than "Where's Waldo".
Go to a public library. "Budget hearings for the schools are this week. Can you give me a copy of the budget to read before I go to the hearings?"
Ask your alderman. "Budget hearings for the schools are this week. Your office used to get a copy of every proposed budget. Can you give me a copy of the budget to read before I go to the hearings? And by the way, why do you vote for every spasm of corporate nonsense the spews from the RAHM?"
Try your local school (every one of which used to get a copy of the Proposed Budget): "How can I testify about the budget if I can even read one in a school that's going to have to live under it?"
Try even the branches of City Colleges wherein the hearings are to be held. See if you can get a "copy" of this $5.2 billion document without investing in a MacBook Pro (like I'm typing this on) and a high-speed HP printer.
This budget is typical of the guy who has already said that at least 25 percent of the kids in public schools in "his" city will never amount to anything. And since their public school parents don't amount to enough to afford to buy the computers necessary to read the budget, what does Rahm care? This is truly the stuff that has made the "one percent" the love of the world. One hundred percent of the families at the school to which Rahm sends his own kids (the University of Chicago Lab School) can access the budget on line, even if most of their neighbors a mile south or a mile north can't. The dimmer bulbs among them can afford to hire an interpreter in NEWSPEAK to explain it to them. Of if those trained in Orwell aren't available on Craig's List, they can get someone from the MBA program at nearby University of Chicago Business Ashram, where they now train everyone needed to operate Chicago's public schools (like, say, the newly baptized security chieftain). The also have lots of translators available from among the TFAs at one of the University of Chicago charter school "campuses" to the north and south of you if you're at the Lab School.
RAHM'S REIGN, YEAR TWO, has ruled that the 99 percent are not allowed to sit in a library (which will probably be closed or on half hours anyway) and read the "budget book" as a book. After all, if it's not on your Kindle or iPad, it isn't real to the one percent of the one percent represent by the Rahms.
