Welcome to the Mayoral Tutorial; our interactive, investigative, agitational and educational website; where we hope we’re creating better citizens, one click at a time. The owners of this website are not responsible for anyone who, after visiting us and becoming dangerously informed, takes to stalking leaders of the media, foundations, corporations or the Emanuel Administration to confront them with the kinds of questions anyone with the sense God gave a house cat would ask but our media won’t. Remember: Democracy is a participatory contact sport. Get off the bench. Show up. Have fun. Play games. Learn things.
by Will Durst on 2013/05/20
Up until about an hour ago, most Americans thought Benghazi was the guy who palled around with John Cassavetes back in the 60s, but now it’s obvious we’re talking about the foreign policy arm of a multi- ramped tar pit the President has found himself swimming- up to his armpits. Yes, friends, it’s pity time at the White House.
by Don Washington on 2013/05/14
Last week you may have missed that while virtually every low-income black and brown community in the city is fighting to keep their schools open Mayor Emanuel took a $1.6 billion dollar bat to their collective community kneecaps. It’s called the Plan Forward. It is the second phase of the Chicago Housing Authority’s (CHA) “controversial” Plan for Transformation and if past performance is the best indicator of future outcomes the one thing people in need of affordable housing can be sure is going to happen is that they are about to share some sacrifice in the face of “economic realities”.
by Will Durst on 2013/05/12
You do realize that Washington DC is not the real world, don’t you? It’s a state of mind. An altered state of mind. Where you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Slammed when you stand and rammed when you run. Berated if you lie and lambasted for the truth. Where even the slightest of breeze can carry the pollen of disaster. And the pack on top knows the best way to avoid getting a face full of disaster pollen is to spread the dried residue of other exquisite catastrophes first. Ream or be reamed.
by Don Washington on 2013/05/12
Syria is teaching us that our country is not broke and that it will find money to pursue militarism in pursuit of capitalism but will not dedicate an additional dime to mitigate the consequences of unchecked capitalism in ways that cannot help to be racist. Syria, Nietzsche said that he who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes into you. In the investigative world you can often discern more about what’s wrong and/or what’s not going on by the questions that are not asked or the issues not raised when a piece of public policy is being discussed or acted on.
by Don Washington on 2013/04/22
The response to the Newtown shootings was one for the ages. There were more votes in the United States Senate to eradicate the common sense concealed carry laws of states that have less shooting deaths; 57 than to pass a watered-down, symbolic to meaningless background check provision that would have not stopped the Newtown shootings from happening, 54. The excuse here, the Constitution gives us the Second Amendment right to be armed to the teeth in case the government takes our rights away. Fair enough, the psychotics on the Supreme Court seem to agree with that point of reflection who am I to disagree?
by Don Washington on 2013/04/08
It’s almost time for Gov. Pat Quinn to run for re-election and his most likely opponent will be Chicagoan Bruce Rauner. Now Gov. Quinn will be the “progressive” Democrat in the race and Bruce will be the “conservative” businessman in the race. Progressive currently means that you work to destroy worker protections and pensions. Conservative currently means that if the free market can’t or won’t solve a problem by creating huge profits, then setting the weak, old, poor, young and sick adrift on ice floes is not a moral failing it’s just a consequence of market forces and therefore okay. Sadly, our job as voters will be desperately trying to tell them apart, which will be really hard because it will be a matter of degrees and not a question of difference.
by Will Durst on 2013/04/08
Forget the robin. Ignore the tulips. Do not let the Easter Bunny, hummingbirds or awakening bears hoodwink you. The first baseball thrown in anger is the true harbinger of spring and calendar alarm for the lazy discard of the heavy encumbrances of winter. Ditch the parka and pull out the windbreaker. Stash the boots and burn the long underwear. Trust me. Burn the long underwear.
by Don Washington on 2013/04/08
There is not enough space to detail in any meaningful way what Michael meant to this city and to the “movement” for social justice across this country. That his passing is likely to be missed by the Tribune and the Sun-Times and the rest of media is a reminder to all of us of a grim reality. That being that we live in a world where men whose worth seems to be weighed by how little they care about humanity and instead by how much they can profit from controlling and curtailing the aspirations and wellbeing of human beings. Michael was not one of those men. The good minister lived a life that could be measured in compassion and weighed by his concrete actions in service of a higher moral good.
by Don Washington on 2013/04/04
We mark his birthday not his death and we certainly don’t talk about the year before his death. In 1967 the Civil Rights Movement he had been produced by and helped build had largely disowned him over the speech that most defines his philosophy. The speech that no one quotes but most exemplifies his entire life was Beyond Vietnam. That speech had the NAACP and most of the Civil Rights Movement disassociating their selves from him. That speech turned the Johnson Administration and the national press against him and that was the good news. It was as if they had never heard a word he had ever said and did not know him or his calling but they weren’t the only ones who did not understand Martin King.
by Don Washington on 2013/04/03
Public policy is where politics, power and values come together in fiscal and physical form. It’s the point where we find the money to create the things the public needs to maintain a functioning society and decide who recieves the benefits of our shared public trust… the commons. The Emanuel Administration has made a principled decision to transfer $140 million dollars to a private engineering firm to oversee a public contract and is raising money from non-profits to help find the cash to do so. It has also decided to assume $100 million in debt that the entire public will have to pay back to create an amusement. Since we’ve learned that physical education, the arts and science are public education “frills” what would you call an amusment park near the Magnificent Mile? One would think such a thing would be the very definition of “frill” in a city that doesn’t have the fiscal basics to educate, protect or maintain services for its neediest citizens.
by Don Washington on 2013/04/02
Since the Reagan Administration there have been two alarming public financing trends and Ventra fare card deal brings them both together. One trend shifts taxes away from corporations to human beings and then from really wealthy human beings and on to regular people. This leads to underfunded public services, which makes them vulnerable to the second trend. The second trend is the “financialization” of the commons. This is where an under-funded public service is handed over to a private provider who then charges the public to use something its taxes should be paying for but aren’t because of the shifting of the tax burden from those that can pay to those that either can barely pay or can’t. This is the kind of arrangement that brought Elliot Ness to Chicago to chase down Al Capone without all the bullets.
by Will Durst on 2013/04/01
The nation held its collective breath and turned not just blue but a veritable rainbow of colors as the Supreme Court spent a goodly part of two days hearing oral arguments on gay marriage. Well, at least they were in the same room as arguments about gay marriage were oralled. In a position to eavesdrop on a series of gay marriage arguments; if they were of a mind to.
by Don Washington on 2013/03/28
If you are interested in ideas like context and connection the recent trials and travails of the Emanuel Administration are riveting. Before anything else gets said let’s get a couple of things and words properly defined. Change and reform are not the same word for a reason. Change means that something was working one way and now it works another way. Reform means that something was not working properly and the new thing being done makes it work more properly.
by Don Washington on 2013/03/28
It’s called plutocracy, a form of government where the wealthy few control the legal system, political process and socio-economic priorities to protect and expand their wealth, defend themselves from accountability and limit the capacity of the general public to utilize democracy to compel change. They don’t want less government they just want government to have less power to investigate, control, create or prevent their activities. Last week the Illinois Supreme Court gave us a prime example of just how pervasive plutocracy is right here in Illinois in minature when it ruled against “Silent Joe” Ferguson, the City of Chicago’s Inspector General (IG). It also made it plain how much frick-frackin’ trouble the rest of us are in.
by Don Washington on 2013/03/26
The people most affected by this madness of random school closings have to demand more than their schools back. We would like our schools back as Best Practice Schools. A Best Practice School has fifteen to twenty kids in a classroom, it has a parent led Local School Council that runs its budget and selects its principal. A Best Practice School has recess, art, science and physical education. A Best Practice School has implemented the Chicago Teacher Union’s Quality Education Initiative. These ideas will make all the schools better. The people affected by our Mayor’s malciousness should also say that they will willingly go to the new schools if the Mayor proves that he is concerned about their children’s education and immediately makes all the “Welcoming Schools” Best Practice Schools. Looks like someone cares about children and education and once again it turns out that it’s not Rahm. You may have noticed that I’m not slapping Barbara Byrd-Bennet around. I’m not because she’s just a flunky…
by Don Washington on 2013/03/26
While the Tutorial Staff reorganized itself I’ve been reading budgets and that might sound boring but budgets come from a set or assumptions, lay out a series of priorities as to what will get done when and most importantly what is not going to get done ever. They are also moral documents. As yet another guy far smarter than I said: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” Initially I was reading these budgets to compare and contrast them with taunting commentary but then I realized two things. One the Congressional Budget Office hasn’t scored any of these budgets so what I’ve been reading might be better or worse than I think and by better or worse I mean way better or worse.
by Don Washington on 2013/03/24
Last week Emanuel’s hatchet woman, Barbara Byrd-Bennett released the sixty one buildings that will be no longer be schools next year. As predicted no one reacted well to being on this list and the schools are in places where parents have the least apparent political power and most need schools to function and the resulting chaos that it will cause next year is off the charts. The Emanuel Administration could give a flying f&*k about any of this. The subtext in all of their answers to all of the screaming sounds something like this: “We know what we’re doing and you all would be well-served by shutting up and letting us get on with our work.” A prescient question would be what exactly is that work but today we’re not doing prescient… we’re doing practical. What exactly will the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) be doing with these sixty-one shuttered buildings?
by Don Washington on 2013/03/01
Yesterday we covered the fact that budgeting by crisis is just a smoke screen to allow the President, the GOP and their campaign investors who have captured our government for their own uses to do what they all agree they want to do. What they don’t want to do is address our huge and growing economic crisis which started in 2007 and is getting worse or fix our society’s other problems. What these myopic, greed heads want is more and they want it from us. This isn’t just getting blood from stones; its stealing futures from children to keep some over-bred aristocrat in cashmere sweaters and Club Med trips.
by Don Washington on 2013/03/01
Debt Ceilings, Fiscal Cliffs and Sequestration; you, me and everyone with thumbs has been caught up this four-star clusterf#@k in a vain attempt to understand and explain this three ring insanity since Obama got his first Tea Party Congress in 2010. And now the unblocked, blindside linebacker-bad news from hell. Nobody, not the President, not the GOP and not their shared campaign investors is upset about what’s happening. It’s the plan to do what they’ve been doing since 2010 only eventually faster. This entire monkey dance is an exercise in distraction and what’s really happening is going to make you lose hope in the concept of change.
by Will Durst on 2013/02/02
Hey! You! Yes, you. Sorry. Just trying to get your attention to impart an important warning here. For the next couple weeks, it’s imperative all you good folks out there stay alert and keep your wits about you. Remove the earbuds, no texting while walking and you’d be well advised to brandish a stainless steel umbrella on the street because its awards season and golden- plated statuettes are being tossed about like manhole covers during an underground methane explosion. We’ve made it through the Golden Globes and the Screen Actor Guild Awards, with the Grammies and Oscars right around the corner, so this seems the perfect time to weigh in with the barnacle on the belly of the awards ship: the 15th annual Will Durst Political Animal Awards.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/30
Here in Chicago we are setting a record pace for gun deaths and injuries and the places where one is most likely to need trauma treatment they are least likely to survive long enough to get it. This is because the nearest trauma centers are on the edge of and sometimes even outside of the twenty minute life and death window that people dying and injured need to not die or be permanently injured. So here we have a need, a powerful demand, looking to be met. It is fertile ground for a market but there’s no money in saving the lives of the poor and uninsured so there is no one interested in providing those services. It is the reality of a socioeconomic system that sees the people who most need public services as not worthy of them.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/28
False Assumption 2: The best way for the government to help education is to set empirical standards that can be measured by testing and guide precious public funding to the best performing schools. This centralized control will make it possible for policy makers to both measure and evaluate creativity, innovation, day to day classroom management, teaching practice and instruction, effective strategies and best practices in education. This would be the most generous way to interpret the No Child Left Behind Act, Renaissance 2010, Race to the Top and all the clones, spawn and bastard step-children of these centralized command and control plans. This assumption is one of the primary wedges that comes at the public like an angry inside fastball to split taxpayers from existing schools, public policy wonks from education practitioners, administrators from teachers, parents from teachers and teachers from each other. You can probably tell by my descriptions that I am not a fan of these programs but that’s because
by Don Washington on 2013/01/24
The Chicago Public Schools are closing elementary schools, implementing core curriculum, firing teachers, expanding charters and getting deep into the weeds of the Race to the Top program. There is no one rational who can argue that nothing is happening in regards to the nearly $5.3 billion dollar education budget in this city. Since what we do at the Tutorial is read lots of public policy and media and try to give you some context we’ve noticed a string of dubious and in some cases easily disprovable assumptions that are at work in the city. These assumptions cut across news coverage, public policy and the Emanuel Administration’s strategic and logistical planning like the through line of a tragic Russian joke. Here’s what just one of them is.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/21
A lot has happened nationally that has had the Tutorial staff running around trying to get a handle on how that stuff affects Chicago but a lot of horrible and fantastic things are happening right here in Chi-town. Here are some of our favorites that we are keeping an eye on and will be writing more about in the year to come.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/21
You are going to hear a lot about if King were alive he would angry at this or asking for that and I have had the great good fortune to work with men who worked directly with King, Rev. Calvin Morris and Rev. James Orange and their wisdom on King sticks with me. In one way or another they told me that King is dead. What he would be doing or thinking now is not important. What he did, taught and stood for is what is important. No one can know who or what he would be angry about or endorsing now. You just can’t know so stop using his name like totem, fetish, shield or idol and start putting his words into action. His legacy is your action to bend the famous arc of the universe back toward justice.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/17
The city, state and country are broke so we can’t afford to meet our pension obligations to retired workers. I am sure that you have heard this before in every mainstream media source from your local newspaper to your local right-wing radio beacon of hope. Whenever you are near someone talking like this from the media you should consider slapping the taste out of their mouths because they should know better. That they don’t know better says a lot about how bad they are at their jobs. The reason I’m writing on this today is that last week the laughably inane Retiree Health Care Commission report claimed to demonstrate that Chicago cannot pay its retirees pensions and one of my favorite stenographers to power Fran Speilman ran with the story like she was Gayle Sayers headed for open field. To call both this conclusion and Fran’s enthusiastic embrace of it foregone is an understatement of epic proportions.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/17
The city, state and country are broke so we can’t afford to meet our pension obligations to retired workers. I am sure that you have heard this before in every mainstream media source from your local newspaper to your local right-wing radio beacon of hope. Whenever you are near someone talking like this from the media you should consider slapping the taste out of their mouths because they should know better. That they don’t know better says a lot about how bad they are at their jobs. The reason I’m writing on this today is that last week the laughably inane Retiree Health Care Commission report claimed to demonstrate that Chicago cannot pay its retirees pensions and one of my favorite stenographers to power Fran Speilman ran with the story like she was Gayle Sayers headed for open field. To call both this conclusion and Fran’s enthusiastic embrace of it foregone is an understatement of epic proportions.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/15
In just a little bit President Barack Hussein Obama is going to inaugurated for a second time. This time there will not be high hopes and a belief that change is coming. This time no one who has been paying attention believes that this man is going to lift a finger in regards to human, civil, labor or human rights; environmental justice or economic inequality. We know he isn’t going to depoliticize the State or Justice Departments and he is not going to fight media consolidation, seriously address unemployment, hold a bank accountable, close GITMO or stop prosecuting whistleblowers while letting powerful corporate entities off every hook they put themselves on at our expense. I say all this because I’ve been watching him pick his cabinet and at every step along the way the need to be worried cannot be understated.
by Will Durst on 2013/01/15
Okay. Bent over. Hands on knees. Breathing hard. Whew. Made it. “Pant. Pant.” For a while there, didn’t seem like it’d ever happen, but somehow we mercifully staggered across the annum finish line finally placing 2012 irrevocably in the rear view mirror. Make no mistake, the political climate is still volatile. Rash. Mad. Loud. Pulsating forehead vein above arcing spray of spittle loud. And the double- crossing chicanery hasn’t mellowed a bit of a spot of an iota from the fever pitch of last year’s quadrennial heights.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/09
When the good people of Chicago elected the compassion-challenged and empathy-impaired Rahm Emanuel to run our city like a business; he was going to be a numbers guy that got results; the problem here are the numbers are bad and the results comical… in that Russian tragedy kind of way. What we are getting is public policy by balance sheet and it looks like governance by flying monkeys, holding a Chinese fire drill around a burning building. That may sound unkind but when major contractors can be caught breaking the law like respectable banks and not only not face jail time, lose their contracts or even come under any additional oversight I feel like I’m not being unkind enough. It may even sound like an insult to flying monkeys but when you resurrect a program you killed to do something you said you don’t believe in and that your own police department doesn’t want that is a special kind of stupid. This is promulgating a public policy that is somewhere between Catch 22 and an Eugène Ionesco play.
by Don Washington on 2013/01/04
Your job, when you read how the media is going to cover Rahm’s response to gun violence is not to be spun. Imagine for a moment that Mayor Rahm Emanuel approached public safety with the same ermine ferocity that he went down to Springfield to destroy the Chicago Teacher’s Union, eliminate public pensions and secure a ten trillion dollar set of tax breaks for the CME Group over the next ten decade? Can’t see it right, well if we apply foot to ass with enough intensity we may get a semblance of something that can make the entire city safer. There are strategies that Mayors who actually like humans and not just wealthy ones with corporations deploy. Hell, I’d even let Rahm take credit for it.
by Will Durst on 2012/12/30
And so we bid a not- so- fond farewell to the bow of another large unwieldy year as it sinks slowly over the horizon wobbling unsteadily towards the graveyard of memory. And cheers erupt from we folks on shore waving the double- handed “L for loser” sign above our heads. “So long. See ya. Don’t let the door slam you in the butt on the way out. And if you got any brothers or sisters, don’t give them this address.”
by Don Washington on 2012/12/26
If all my years of organizing, drafting legislation, investigating unethical and criminal political organizations and building effective/transformational grassroots direct action campaigns has taught me anything it’s that public policy is where philosophy meets capacity. If you have a philosophy whose principle point of reflection is government/social contract by balance sheet you accept a reality that endorses a high level of economic violence and dislocation. This in turn breeds poverty, cuts services in direct proportion to low economic status, pulls resources away from areas that need them, uses force/policy to eradicate/contain those areas and concentrates wealth and power in the hands of a small group of elites. What, you ask does this have to do with gun violence in general and Chicago’s out of control mayhem in specific? I’m glad you asked.
by Don Washington on 2012/12/19
The Presidential Election been over for six weeks and the media is chronicling the GOP’s “attempts” to change as it grapples with defeat. The truth is that GOP and its’ base have evolved into the clenched, irrational fist of plutonomy intent on protecting the prerogatives of organized money and limiting if not eliminating the power of organized people to resist it. The GOP and its’ base has completed a truly terrifying apotheosis from a movement standing athwart history yelling STOP to one actively killing it both literally and figuratively. The GOP doesn’t have a problem democracy does.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/29
At bottom Mayor Emanuel is not capable of doing the right thing and by that I mean something that doesn’t make corporations richer and Chicagoans, in Chicago’s neighborhoods poorer. What we are watching is the redistribution/extraction of wealth from the poor and dwindling middle class and the dropping of salaries bombs primarily in neighborhoods where as jobs fade violence grows… hmm… could our new Mayor, via his economic policies, be a primary cause of the uptick in violence in our city, damn… that is a high bar for darkness but the man has been busy.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/29
The band of idiots known as the State of Illinois legislature just gave Mayor Rahm Emanuel permission to keep secret the schools he plans to close until it is too late to muster any kind of resistance to them and right when schools start. If you are trying to keep score that means right when parents are preparing their kids for school and their kids and teachers are supposed to be going to school their schools will be closing. The sheer level of chaos this will kick off will make the Chicago Fire look like a pillow fight. What the hell is wrong with these people? Are they not from here because some of them are and they voted for this lunacy as well!
by Don Washington on 2012/11/29
Don Washington’s First Law of Politics is a simple one. “Never do anything that confuses your friends and inspires your enemies to act.” It would be nice if the Democratic Party, at any level, could follow this simple rule but it’s almost is if there wasn’t an election they just won or maybe… and this is the bad, bad, news they aren’t breaking the rule… we’re just not their friends. I don’t say this lightly. Who would have thought that the greatest threat to a dignified retirement, the existence of unions, public education, public services period, the social safety net… such as it is and tax fairness would be the damn Democrats? What is it about the Democrats that routinely has them giving us the wrong stuff?
by Don Washington on 2012/11/27
Everybody is losing their natural minds about the Fiscal Cliff. If you have been reading the Tribune, Washington Post and/or New York Times, listening to NPR and watching PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, CNN and God strike you with lightning FOX you are rightfully confused about what the hell is going on. Once again, our corporate media friends are not helping you. So let’s get demystified and Dangerously Informed on the Fiscal Cliff.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/24
Everybody is losing their natural minds about the Fiscal Cliff. If you have been reading the Tribune, Washington Post and/or New York Times, listening to NPR and watching PBS, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNBC, MSNBC, C-SPAN, CNN and God strike you with lightning FOX you are rightfully confused about what the hell is going on. Once again, our corporate media friends are not helping you. So let’s get demystified and Dangerously Informed on the Fiscal Cliff.
by Will Durst on 2012/11/24
Seriously? Both political parties talking pre-emptive smack barely a week after the election. Partisan politics? Again? So soon? Not even time to catch our breath? For crum’s sakes, give it a rest, you guys. Besides, shouldn’t you be out on recess?After all, it’s Thanksgiving. Yes. Already. The earliest Thanksgiving possible. That’s what happens when November first is on a Thursday. Merchants are dancing the happy dance. Shoppers too. Retail workers, not so much. Black Friday Creep seems destined to devour Halloween.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/15
Last time President Obama won there was a honeymoon and the assumption that he had progressive values so progressives gave him time to “play chess” and find common ground… reality check my friends… it will not happen this time. Right from jump-street we’ve rejected the Grand Bargain and if the Democratic Party wants to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory all they have to do is go along with this nonsense. Context is everything and this time progressive forces are already not being quiet from Keystone to the Grand Bargain we are in the streets. We remember how in 2010 the President came out and helped blue dogs and corporate Dems beat progressives in the primaries and it won’t happen this time.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/12
Today is Veteran’s Day, a day that most of the country doesn’t really honor and when it does try to honor men and women who have worn a uniform and volunteered to risk and life, sanity, limb and morality it doesn’t know how. Veteran’s Day used to be called Armistice Day… it was so named because it was a solemn, international day of mourning. It was created to commemorate the nine million soldiers whose blood watered the fields of Europe over the course of the Great War… the War to End All Wars… and it saddens me that the irony that it was just a dress rehearsal for real brutality and depravity that continues to this day. This is not the fault of those in uniform. I wish them peace in a world that needs it.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/12
On Election Day 87% of Chicagoans allowed to vote for an elected school board, did so. The good news for the Mayor is that that would be nine or ten points lower than the union vote to go on strike. It speaks to a level of unrest and anger that should alarm anyone currently in charge as it has aldermen acting like autonomous beings, reporters acting like journalists and citizens acting like… well citizens. It has transformed Aldermen like Joe Moore (49th) and “Fighting Joe” Moreno (1st) into possibly private citizens next time out and is in the process of transforming a ragtag band of Aldermen into points of opposition. (They would be Ald. John Arena (45th), Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd), Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) Ald. Tim Cullerton (38th), Ald. Rick Munoz (22nd), Ald.Robert Fioretti (2nd), Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), Ald. Toni Foulkes (15th) and Ald. Nicholas Sposato (36th). The vote is just the latest clash that has people chanting for a number of candidates to unseat Mayor Emanuel. What the hell is going on?
by Will Durst on 2012/11/12
Holey moley catfish. Well, thank god that’s finally over. Further thanks that the climax was quick and clean. Almost surgical. Not as long a night as many first thought it might be. Except for Karl Rove that is, who for all we know is still scribbling numbers to prove the call on Clinton’s re- election win in 1996 was premature. And as usual, Florida did all it could to gum things up, but was eventually rendered irrelevant. And long may it remain so.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/12
Last Tuesday night President Obama won a second term and every day since then you have read somewhere in the paper how this is a win for Chicago in general and Mayor Rahm Emanuel in specific. When he was named an Obama surrogate we were as curious as to how he would play to a national audience as he was so we followed his efforts. After all he is a small mammal with big dreams and our media’s narrative guaranteed that the Mayor would get great coverage no matter what he did. What we discovered was not a masterful politico creating favors for Chicago but something for more… for lack of a better word…entertaining.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/08
Whenever a politician wins an election their victory speech is always equal parts empty patriotic rhetoric, thank you notes, spin and announcements. The announcements mean something and President Obama made four. He will be reducing our deficit, reforming our tax code, fixing our immigration system and freeing us from foreign oil and he will be doing this by seeking bipartisan support with the people who gridlocked the entire government for four years. This is not a promising start to his second term. More disturbingly though he has informed us that this will require both difficult compromises and shared sacrifice. Let me clue you in on who that compromise is going to sacrifice and how much sharing is about to break out in regards to reducing the deficit and reforming the tax code.
by Will Durst on 2012/11/05
Looking for the dead solid skinny on the upcoming presidential election? You’ve come to the right place. As a public service, we’re going to tell you right here and now who wins this thing and why.
by Don Washington on 2012/11/05
My grandmother told a story about a brick thrown threw her window. Half of the words on the note tied to it were misspelled but one wasn’t… nigger. Good to know that even then conservative “activists” were displaying the depth of hardcore ignorance that has come to define say the Tea Party. After all one of their core values is tradition. The rock wasn’t meant for my grandmother though it was meant for an activist neighbor but then again… of course it was. As my grandmother said: “It didn’t matter to asses that threw it which one of us got this message hatred’s blind boy… don’t let them take anything from you. Fight them, vote.”
by Don Washington on 2012/10/30
Another election is upon us and Tutorial staffers have been arguing with each other for weeks to bring you our considered guidance. You will notice that we’re not recommending you vote for any particular candidate but have a lot to say about the referenda and judges. As the Front Man I am going to “pull rank” and say a few things about candidates… Sorry staff but I promise I will not endorse anyone. That said if you feel the need to vote for a guy on Team Elephant the resulting karma is likely to kill you. I will also let you in on a disturbing possibility in the General Election.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/30
It’s called Climate Destruction™. It’s the point where the cupidity and irreversible logic of unregulated capitalism meets the selfish interests of an elite political class and breaks the frick-frackin’ Arctic, Amazon, Crop Growing Regions, Ozone Layer, Natural Aquifers and the weather… that’s right breaks the weather. We’ll talk about that later but the bottom line is that what I just said and what follows will be more than what was and has been said by both candidates about one of the top three things that are threats to say… the safety, security and survival of the country. Think it’d be an issue in a Presidential campaign but that’s because you’re rational and you think the political system should respond to society’s needs and threats to it. Well, if the environment were Muslims or poor black people I’m sure we could muster up a violent and ineffective, anti-Constitutional, extra-legal but racist response but it’s not.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/22
Afternoon kibble-servants, are you all ready to go to the final Presidential Debate tonight? Last week we tried to warn you that the places where Obama and Romney agree are what stand between you and these “progressive” ideas of yours. I believe that between them competing for which one would, best destroy the environment and not being able to disagree on lowering corporate tax rates proves my point. Tonight Obama/Romney will be talking foreign policy. Since both Monday Night Football and the NLCS Game 7 are happening it is likely that you have better things to do than watch something that will either make you angry or hopeless.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/17
Every political machine functions in a particular way. The Marmoset Machine is no different; it is government as if run by a multinational corporation and that means it looks out for its investors first, foremost and always. Sadly for say ordinary citizens what its investors want and what citizens want/need, are not always in alignment. When they are out of alignment is when the difference between being a citizen/constituent and consumer/customer is most stark. That is when the insanity of running a government like a business and its sometimes terrible consequences play themselves out in the worst way possible. It is in this context that I suggest you view JC Brizard’s departure.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/15
There have now been two “debates” between Obama/Biden and Romney/Ryan and the shared perspective of our political class breaks the heart. The agreed upon reality between the camps is bereft of faith in the principles of democracy and an abrogation of the Enlightenment’s social contract between the governed and their governing class. The contract that obligates the government to meet the material needs of the mass of its citizens not merely facilitate the economic wants of a powerful oligarchy. The social contract that binds us together is an anathema to concentrated wealth and power but both Obama/Biden and Romney/Ryan are intent on walking away from that contract and writing a new one that enshrines the cynical politics of the corporate elite over the concrete needs of a society in peril.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/09
You may or may not know that Chicago has a Board of Ethics. In a city where the Mayor gave away our public streets as part of a deal negotiated by his brother’s bank and a political thug now runs a growing collection of badly performing but sure to expand charter schools the existence of such an entity probably comes as a surprise to you. So when news reached you that our newest Mayor for Life had replaced this collection of… shall we less than enthusiastic defenders of the public trust, I suspect that you were neither surprised nor upset. After all, does it matter which set of puppets is in place? I hardly think so but we should all take a moment to get a sense of what all of this means in the most transparent Chicago Mayoral Administration of the 21st century.
by Will Durst on 2012/10/06
A surprisingly large segment of America tuned into the first Presidential debate, but for some odd reason, President Obama did not appear among them. Who was in charge of his debate prep, Clint Eastwood? Even an empty chair would have provided a sturdier obstinacy. The Committee to Re- Elect the President will obviously try to convince us that, like the economy, the Commander- in- Chief’s sub- par debate performance can be traced back to the Bush Administration, but darker forces may be at work here. The Ghosts of Debaters Past.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/06
After the now infamous 47% speech, which didn’t even come up during the debate, it seems that Mitt Romney has been given a pass on his less than empathic worldview. But it’s not the callousness that bothered me or the rest of the Tutorial staff. He’s a conservative Republican, that’s a synonym for callousness. No, what bothers everyone around here about Mitt is that he honestly appears to have no idea how the economy works… or he is truly a more monstrous and cynical sociopath than anyone has given him credit for. To be fair, however, he doesn’t have be evil or ignorant… he could be a subtle and destructive blend of both.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/03
Hello hairless apes I see that on Wednesday your President Obama will be “debating” Mr. Romney. Debate, it offends my feline intelligence to call it that. After all, a man who does not know how to ask a question outside of either of their comfort zones, Jim Lehrer, will be “moderating” a set of questions agreed upon by two men, Obama and Romney, who between have to share their combined vertebrate to form half a backbone. That you expect to be enlightened by this little set-to is why my species has yours cleaning our boxes and lording it over you in your own homes.
by Don Washington on 2012/10/01
There are more lessons than one can count or catalogue from the Chicago Teacher’s Union’s (CTU) successful initial defense of student learning and their working conditions against Mayor Emanuel’s most recent attempt to do more damage to both. The one that has stuck with me is that the Mayor and his campaign investors pose an existential threat to the concept of a government designed to meet the needs of people, instead of creating the conditions for corporations to profit. They do not want to reform or improve “government” they want to transform it into a mirror of the private sector with all the uncertainty, inequality and profit-taking opportunities that entails.
by Will Durst on 2012/09/22
Its time to start worrying about Mitt Romney. Seriously. The guy may just be running the worst campaign ever. And yes, that includes the McDLT, print ads for organic hemp underwear and France in 39. Not to mention McCain/ Palin in 08. Which currently holds the gold standard for lousy campaigns. Sure to be a Hall of Fame inductee in a couple years.
by Don Washington on 2012/09/18
A lot has been said about the recent conflict between Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the parents, students, teachers and citizens concerned about the concept of fully funded, quality public education. I did not say Teacher’s strike because this was not about what the teachers are doing; it was about the adversarial relationship that Mayor Emanuel and all of the members of the investor class he truly represents have with unions, civil society and the common public good.
by Will Durst on 2012/09/17
Let’s speak about The Bounce, shall we? The Bounce being the jump that a three- day, red- white- and blue infomercial is expected to produce on a candidate’s polling. The idea is to use The Bounce as a slingshot of momentum to whip you down the campaign straightaway directly into the swivel seat behind the desk of the Oval Office. Or close enough to let the Supreme Court appoint you. One or the other.
by Don Washington on 2012/09/15
Mayor Emanuel is not interested in finding, providing or protecting adequate resources for Chicago school children. I can say this because as I’ve discovered and CPS admits it doesn’t have enough money to hire the adequate minimum number of teachers, counselors, social workers, psychologists, school nurses and I could go on but you get the point. CPS doesn’t have enough money to provide text books, materials and equipment for every kid in every class in CPS and it doesn’t have enough money to heat, cool clean or keep ceilings from falling on the heads of every child in every building that CPS owns. I know this because we are in a strike and his supporters reveal his values.
by Don Washington on 2012/09/15
Mayor Emanuel is not interested in finding, providing or protecting adequate resources for Chicago school children. I can say this because as I’ve discovered and CPS admits it doesn’t have enough money to hire the adequate minimum number of teachers, counselors, social workers, psychologists, school nurses and I could go on but you get the point. CPS doesn’t have enough money to provide text books, materials and equipment for every kid in every class in CPS and it doesn’t have enough money to heat, cool clean or keep ceilings from falling on the heads of every child in every building that CPS owns. I know this because we are in a strike and his supporters reveal his values.
by Don Washington on 2012/09/03
I just spent the better part of Labor Day with the members, supporters and allies of the Chicago Teacher’s Union, the last union standing the first line of defense for civil servants, working people and the middle class in many places across this country. The odds are good that you have never heard this formulation of what’s at stake as the Chicago Teacher’s Union bargains with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the forces that animate his dark, little heart, such as it is. For the past thirty-two years or so labor unions have been under the kind of assault common to a battered wife hoping her husband will change after just one more trip to the emergency room.
by Will Durst on 2012/09/02
And now a few words about the Republican National Convention. AKA: Women with Big Hair and the Men in White Shoes Who Love Them. And white certainly was the operable word in Tampa. Mashed potatoes on paper plates with a side of leeks white.Had to feel bad for the one black guy the networks kept cutting to during the speeches. They tried everything to make him look like a crowd. Different camera angles. Probably had his own wardrobe assistant. “Now put on the cowboy hat. Okay. Okay. Let’s try a handlebar mustache.” Must have been someone’s driver.
by Don Washington on 2012/09/02
A functioning, fair and just society for the majority of people has a minimum price and Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his campaign investors are not interested in paying it. They are creating a leaner, meaner city at a time when people are so lean they are see through and becoming so mean that life itself is becoming desperate the cheap. It is the philosophy of a balance sheet not a society and it defines a philosophy that is not fit for mammals with functioning thumbs.
by Don Washington on 2012/08/30
There are those that forget that Mayor Rahm Emanuel was/is an investment banker and that he spent his entire Congressional career as the FIRE sector’s pet marmoset. He was their pet for so long that virtually any terrible thing you can imagine the FIRE sector was involved in Vice Chairman, White House Advisor, Congressman, Board Member, Chief of Staff and now Mayor Emanuel either got his little paws dirty, bloody or caked with something terrible by taking part in it directly or doing his part in making the conditions for catastrophe possible. I bring this up because whenever our little marmoset of a Mayor leaves his cage and wields power outside of the Chicago it is always on behalf or at the behest of his campaign investors or those like them. I mean he really is Mayor Marmoset 1%.
by Don Washington on 2012/08/18
Last week while I was out fighting evil elsewhere Mayor Rahm Emanuel engaged in a feat of spin so grand that I swear to God the everyone in Chicago not rendered unconscious by the sheer number of “g’s” it generated had to have been disoriented by how far backwards in time they were thrown when the earth reversed its directional axis. What in the name of Lee Atwater am I referring to… why the estimated city budget gap and the fact that you had to hold two disparate realities in your head not consider asking witch doctors to cast a spell on the Mayor or any one of the Abrahamic clergy in the city to perform a full on exorcism on him… just be sure that Satan wasn’t making Mayor Emanuel do and say the things he just did.
by Don Washington on 2012/08/18
Remember when Mayor Rahm Emanuel was running around the city holding toy press conferences where he and some guy in a suit that cost more than say, your first four months of mortgage payments would shake hands and say that they were creating jobs in Chicago? Well no so long ago we woke up to the reality that Motorola is not even transferring the 3,000 jobs they promised they’d be sending downtown. Welcome to job creation 1% style. Some notes, by the way on the differences between job creation and job transference as they, like wealth creation and wealth transfer are radically different endeavors… hence the two different words; creation and transference.
by Will Durst on 2012/08/18
Planetary props to the city of London for a monumentally memorable 30th Olympiad. It was obvious from The Opening Ceremonies that these would be Games nobody would soon forget. From the Queen jumping out of a helicopter to Charles Dickens wearing a top hat at Stonehenge contracting black lung disease during the Industrial Revolution or whatever was going on there. Beautiful, is what it was. And odd.
by Don Washington on 2012/08/07
As the election gets closer and closer like some terrible statue from a Dr. Who episode the Tutorial suspects that given the “quality” of the media coverage you may not know why you are voting for Obama or Romney or even if. Based on what’s in the media and the level of media conversation here are ten reasons to vote for either of the two major candidates that hold about as much content as voting for Obama for say bailing out Wall Street and the Healthcare Insuance industry or for Romeny for a new round of tax cuts and having run the Olympics and MAYBE Bain Capital?
by Will Durst on 2012/07/30
Who knows why Mitt Romney doesn’t release his old tax records. Maybe he’s stubborn. Nobody likes being told what to do. Could be an incredibly simple explanation like he lost them and is embarrassed. For all we know the accordion file of old returns fell off a shelf in the garage and is buried under a pile of old bikes and unopened anniversary gifts. Promised to release his 2011 tax records when he files on or around October 15th. Wrong way, Mitt. We don’t care about the five years you’ve been running for president. We want to know what you did before the national spotlights were trained on you. Who are you in the dark? Do you change into tights and a cape? Or is the King of Bain really Bane? You’re so Bane, you probably think this column is about you.
by Don Washington on 2012/07/25
Last week the US Conference of Mayors met to trade tips with each other on how to run things and how things should be run. Our Mayor, Rahm Emanuel, was one of the two rock stars of the conference, the other being the Michael Bloomberg of New York City. Two interesting things here; both of these men are thought of as CEO Mayors, men of means who are dedicated to bringing fiscal sense to an out of control public sector and most every other Mayor in that room thinks that these two guys know what they’re doing. Know what they’re doing… just like our CEO President, “W” they haven’t a clue and this is what happens when numbers mean nothing.
by Don Washington on 2012/07/24
You may not realize it but Mayor Rahm Emanuel is on a charm offensive. He’s working with Ceasefire a group his police department finds so unappetizing that police blogs are spreading rumors that McCarthy might be on his way out as the city’s top cop. He’s advocating for an expansion of 2006 Sanctuary Ordinance. He’s busily repackaging old crime-fighting and violence prevention ideas as if they are his own and has actually appear in black and brown neighborhoods as of late, including taking an 11 mile hike. What in the name of all demons on the far side of Hell could have caused our little Marmoset of a Mayor to attempt to win the hearts and minds of people he’s spent his entire administration ignoring? The word you’re looking for is reality.
by Will Durst on 2012/07/21
You might say it was a turbulent week for Mitt Romney. You could also say a light lemon sugar wash makes for ineffective mosquito repellent. He claims to have totally left Bain Capital to run the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics even though his company handed the government multiple signed documents stating otherwise and now financial questions plague his campaign like a swarm of dive- bombing bees in a bathroom stall.
by Don Washington on 2012/07/20
Last night the long-awaited Chicago Educational Facilities Taskforce (CEFT) meeting at UIC was cancelled due to worries that an unexpected level of democracy was going to break out in the City of Chicago. I think it instructive to look at last night’s cancellation in context of the Marmoset Machine’s ugly throw down with what it thought was the Chicago Teacher’s union but instead is turning out to be an entire community of parents, teachers, public policy experts and children that is kicking his furry, skinny backside up and down State Street.
by Will Durst on 2012/07/20
All of America should drop to its knees and thank the GOP for providing us with replacement fireworks. As you undoubtedly are aware, cities all over the country this year were forced to cancel Fourth of July festivities due to fear of fire, glitchy computers and twitchy bureaucrats. Like there’s another kind. The Republican House took great pains to salve our sensory deprived souls by trying to set off enough indoor fireworks to make the San Diego Big Bay Bust look like a fluttering votive candle. It was designed to be a spectacular explosion fueled by ego, obstinacy and behavior so self- absorbed, the casual bystander might assume we were in the middle of an election year.
by Will Durst on 2012/07/20
All of America should drop to its knees and thank the GOP for providing us with replacement fireworks. As you undoubtedly are aware, cities all over the country this year were forced to cancel Fourth of July festivities due to fear of fire, glitchy computers and twitchy bureaucrats. Like there’s another kind. The Republican House took great pains to salve our sensory deprived souls by trying to set off enough indoor fireworks to make the San Diego Big Bay Bust look like a fluttering votive candle. It was designed to be a spectacular explosion fueled by ego, obstinacy and behavior so self- absorbed, the casual bystander might assume we were in the middle of an election year.
by Don Washington on 2012/07/11
Before we get into this I feel as if some basic physics and civics may be of use as a guide to then next thousand words or so. The physics you need to follow this post are that in macro space-time the concept of cause and effect holds up and the arrow of time moves in one direction. The civics you need, that governments have the power to tax and spend… it’s what defines them. Where/who/how they get the money and what they spend/invest the money on is what defines a government’s values. Governments are not businesses. A government provides services and looks out for the interests of the entire society by defending and improving the commons. The commons are things that are communally owned because it would be a Night of the Living Dead disaster if they responded to market forces alone. Got all that, good… now do not fall asleep! I promise all this studying will pay off with hilarity and maybe fully justified anger.
by Don Washington on 2012/07/09
Son of frack-frackin’…. here are three numbers $13.3 million and $14.6 million. Here is another number $15.5 million. These are big numbers and what you, being in possession of a working brain can see is that each one is larger than the next what you don’t realize is how connected they are. That’s why my tiny mind is on spin, scream and try not lead a mid-sized riot through the CME building.
by Don Washington on 2012/07/05
It’s the day after the 4th of July and on the 4th of July I read the Constitution and wrestle with the anger and sadness I feel when I realize that the 21st century could be the one in which it dies and the country whose highest values it enshrines dies with it. That’s the problem with a living document, it can be killed but more terrifying it can be tortured, broken and deformed into an instrument of oppression that carries the force of law. On the 4th of July the cynical, innocent and ordinary people give homage to soldiers who have fought and died on foreign battlefields as if they died for our rights and liberties. The cruelty of this rhetoric sickens the soul and prevents us from focusing on a reality that will help us form a more perfect union.
by Don Washington on 2012/06/28
Today the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and what the ruling reveals is how little the ACA has to do with addressing the ongoing healthcare crisis that continues to devour America one hapless citizen at a time. The ACA is a microcosm of the entire Obama Administration. It was designed to defend the core priorities of the powerful and shield them from the consequences of their inexcusable behavior, while asking the rest of us to defend a remedy that fails to address the heart the issue it was crafted to solve.
by Don Washington on 2012/06/27
Yesterday our City Council gave Mayor Rahm Emanuel one more building block in his monument to crony capitalism. It is an edifice worthy of the Robber Barons from which he is descended and of the financial forces that he serves and his hoping to one day join as an equal, instead of well-treated, if not special servant. I am referring to the soon to be ordinance, which will allow the Mayor to grant contracts, based on… factors other than cost. All by itself, this terrible idea will give Mayor Emanuel even less transparency and accountability to work with but it’s not all by itself… no it’s part of a pattern of practices that exemplify crony capitalism at its worst and would make Jay Gould turn green with envy.
by Will Durst on 2012/06/24
And now, your report from the front lines of the G- 20 summit recently concluded in Los Cabos, Mexico. And the good news is… no knife fights. Very little broken furniture; and for the very first time in recent memory, the proceedings were judged to be more boring than watching varnish harden, which is considered a huge coup for the host country. So, Viva Mexico!
by Don Washington on 2012/06/19
Integrity is fading. David Hoffman has given away what little he had left by signing on to the transparent window dressing that is the Infrastructure Trust’s oversight board. Mayor Emanuel, if he ever had any integrity, is putting out propaganda and outright lies with his TIF film and going all Orwellian with his Rahm’s Readers. That’s right the man who has done everything in his power to make it difficult for children to read, by closing down and underfunding both libraries and schools has a reading club. This kind of behavior can best be described as hypocritical ironic chutzpah. As bad as Mayor Daley was he simply a dumb thug with pretensions of civilization and a thin skin… He fostered an environment that made high-end theft a given. He didn’t even pretend to have any integrity and just acted shocked at each disclosure of malfeasance. Rahm is a horse of a different color. He knows he’s too smart to play dumb so he’s about the business of legalizing the indefensible…
by Will Durst on 2012/06/18
From out of the green mist enveloping the campaign doldrums they come. Relentlessly. Doggedly. Cattedly. Trudging blank- faced and soulless. Armies of cash hungry zombies brandishing partisan pickaxes, shovels and crowbars, with only one goal rattling around their feverish brains. Campaign booty. Pieces of 8. Entire 8s. Eight figured 8s.
by Don Washington on 2012/06/11
On June 5th there were three elections that people are not talking about as exactly connected to each other and no one but me is talking about how they are all directly connected to Chicago and the machinations of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. You see in Wisconsin, San Jose California and San Diego California two Republicans and one Democrat demonstrated that it doesn’t matter which party a politician belongs to it matters if they have campaign investors and if their moral compass is on loan from Dick Cheney or Jamie Diamond. With apologies to Mark Twain history doesn’t repeat it rhymes and the tune Mayor Emanuel is whistling is the same one that just knocked the hopes, aspirations and possibilities of ordinary people half way back to the 18th century. Which side are you on boy, now means you are either with organized people, human beings or organized money… corporate monsters.
by Don Washington on 2012/06/07
There are a lot of terrible things about Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s daily activities but the worst one by far is that every day he’s up making public policy and cutting deals that would make Satan walk away from the table in disgust. I mean yes, Satan is the Western epitome of evil and Rahm is just a mere mortal walking the earth among us even if he will never admit that such is the case… but Satan can’t help but do evil… he’s a metaphysical being just trying to hold up his end of the Divine Contract. Rahm, on the other hand, doesn’t have to do real harm to the hopes and lives of ordinary and unfortunate people… he just revels in it and makes a tidy pile of money for himself and his friends while he does so. While we’re worried about health clinics he’s hurting teachers. We’re upset about NATO he’s fleecing the police. The man is an evil that truly never sleeps.
by Don Washington on 2012/06/05
So Gov. Walker won… damn. We are trouble but remember people: “Democracy is the battle that never ends. You are either fighting for something or losing everything. Don’t you be the prick-rat-bastard that gives away the rights of someone not even born yet; because you could not get directly involved in democracy today. Get off the bench, get your head up and stay involved. Fight these pricks on whatever issue you’re fighting them. If you don’t have an issue, find an issue. If you don’t have a handy GOP legislator to plague make it your business to plague one nearby. Be constructive, be active and never give up because the battle never ends.
by Will Durst on 2012/06/05
Permanently capitalizing the P in Presumptive Nominee, the Texas primary shoved Mitt Romney right over the delegate precipice, and now with the nomination locked up tighter than a rusted pickle jar 20,000 leagues beneath the sea, the campaign has taken a sudden turn towards the nebulous. Ambiguous Ville. Candidates don’t make mistakes in the murky bog of summer. Even when they do, the atmosphere is too hazy to notice.
by Don Washington on 2012/05/31
NATO has come and gone and if you, like me, watched the mainstream media spring into action you are either really sure that there are a bunch of villages in need of their idiot back or the act of consuming said media has knocked so many I.Q. points out of you that you’re reading the damn Redeye and watching the Jersey Shore for intellectual stimulation. I don’t know about you but before NATO got here I had a lot of things I wanted to know. I had actual questions that were burning a hole in my little dangerously informed soul that I thought someone, somewhere in media land would want answered too. But I can see from what I read, heard and saw that there are actual hamsters on frick-frackin’ wheels that know more and are more curious than some our intrepid mainstream news people about NATO!
by Don Washington on 2012/05/31
Usually a Tutorial hackfest article focuses on one media “professional” that is unworthy of opposable thumbs and cognitive reasoning skills but the NATO Summit being what it was, we figured that we’d go more… global. We concentrated on the combined mainstream media might of the Tribune, Sun-Times and WBEZ because that’s where most people get the best mainstream news that they are going to get in Chicago. That coverage would lead one to believe that most of the members of the Chicago Media Complex couldn’t cover an end table with a football field sized table cloth. Their aggregate performance being so inept that renowned media critic Ellen Ripley had the best solution for our media complex: “…nuke the site from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
by Will Durst on 2012/05/26
Disregard the almanac. And the calendar. Forget whatever the meteorologist or the astrology charts or your next- door neighbor with the hair growing out of a mole shaped like the state of Delaware on his nose told you. The true worm- hole opening to summer is not the upcoming solstice on Wednesday, June 20th; it is, has been, and forever shall be the last Monday of May, Memorial Day.
by Don Washington on 2012/05/23
In part I am writing the article because of what a Facebook friend of the Tutorial left on the Tutorial’s wall. She asked: “Are we are all in this together? What if our working class cop brethren don’t think so or never thought so? What if all they have for us condescension and derision for all protesters no matter what they say about just doing their job? What if we are the enemy?” Without knowing it she defined the issue cleanly. What we saw on our streets this weekend was what happens when militarized police force sees a whole segment of the population as the enemy. And that is another milestone on the road to democracy’s funeral.
by Don Washington on 2012/05/18
This is a long post. If you have a lot to do because NATO is here all you have to read are the next paragraph. The City of Chicago has no idea how much this whole thing is going to cost. When they say they do they are lying to you. The City of Chicago is going to lose money on this event no matter what happens. This means that you and I are going to pay for the little fellah’s 1% leadership sleep over party. We might get a police riot we can’t pay for because we don’t have enough insurance to pay for it because no one would insure our police plus policemen from around the country. So if we do have a police riot then it’s going to cost us a lot more money than we thought. The only thing being showcased is Mayor Emanuel’s willingness to use force and his clever capacity to control people. You can’t show case a city by closing its museums, sealing off its public transit and arresting dissidents/citizens but it is a hell of an audition tape for larger office and speaking fees on HOW to shut down democracy.
by Don Washington on 2012/05/15
The worst thing about Mayor Rahm Emanuel is that his evil is not confined to the City of Chicago and when it leaks out of the confines of the city that’s when it does the most damage to the lives of the working people who live in it. You might remember when his little cloven hooves travelled down to Springfield and virtually stripped Chicago teachers of any labor rights they’ve ever had while insuring that over the next decade CME Group and a few other corporate bandits will not pay taxes on $85 million a year… that sums up to almost a trillion, with a “t” dollars in taxes on the money they will be taking from us. Good to know who is being sacrificed as we get our fiscal house in order.
by Don Washington on 2012/05/14
When a union says that they’ve negotiated a historic “win-win” with an administration whose concept of fairness begins and ends with the eventual destruction of unions and privatization of all municipal services you know that someone has lost and it’s not the Administration. Such is the case with Laborers Local 1001, who apparently have learned nothing from what happened to the host of presently extinct private union organizations around the country. A union not concerned about the welfare of its future members has no future.
by Don Washington on 2012/05/08
I did not know Chris Drew well but what I did know of him was that he was an activist, a good man and dedicated soul. He was a Champion of the City and though monuments and newspapers will not note his passing all of us are the poorer for him not being with us. Jay Becker passed on this Facebook message about how Chris lived and who he was and I thought here at the Tutorial we’d mourn one of our own… an ordinary person, being an extraordinary citizen in a time of deep struggle and desperate strife. Chris Drew got off the bench and was directly involved in democracy. Thank you Chris, rest well.
by Will Durst on 2012/05/06
Since Governor Romney has sewed up the nomination tighter than one of Chris Christie’s old suits, the only remaining Republican election drama is which name the Bairn of Bain Capital intends to place on the bottom of his bumper sticker. Yes, friends, it’s once again time to play that quadrennial game sensation sweeping the nation: Let’s Guess Mitt’s Vice Presidential Pick!
by Don Washington on 2012/05/02
America is a country that is always at war with itself. We live at the point where what it claims to be clashes with the hard-cold reality of what it actually is. The claim that we are the land of the free has never been true for every soul under the Stars and Stripes. In fact every “freedom” we enjoy was won with someone’s blood and taken from those in power not given by our Constitution or won on some distant shore in some foreign war. We must clearly face that we live in a time of scapegoats or solutions.