Speaker 1: Welcome to Shitty Mayor Mondays, a name we're not actually
Speaker 1: allowed to use as a title of our podcast because
Speaker 1: it breaks a bunch of search shit in the background.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Mio Wong, coming to you live from
Speaker 1: a crumbling basement and contested Chicago that may or may
Speaker 1: not be hit by a tornado in the next hour.
Speaker 1: This is it could happen here, so true. It could
Speaker 1: all happen within this next recording session. It could happen
Speaker 1: in me it's basement. Yeah with me, I'm of Garrison
Speaker 1: and James. Hello, welcome to Hell. Hi, I'm tornado free.
Speaker 1: San Diego did have a tornado warning yesterday. Luckily I'm
Speaker 1: in the ever stable Pacific Northwest where nothing bad can happen. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's contractually contractually obligated. It says no, no no bad things,
Speaker 1: No no earthquakes here that that are overdue, no forest
Speaker 1: fires or record temperatures. It's great up there. So true.
Speaker 1: So today we're doing a sort of special episode of
Speaker 1: Shitty Mayor Mondays, which is that we are we are
Speaker 1: doing the Chicago double feature because our previous Shitty Mayor,
Speaker 1: Lloyd Lightfoot I, managed to become the first I think
Speaker 1: I think the first Chicago mayoral candidate in forty years
Speaker 1: who was an incumbent and lost reelection. And not only yes,
Speaker 1: she lose reelection, she went out so okay, the way
Speaker 1: the way the Chicago mayor elections have like a trillion candidates,
Speaker 1: like I think they were like nine this time, and
Speaker 1: if no one can get about fifty percent, it goes
Speaker 1: to a runoff, and she got knocked out before the runoff,
Speaker 1: which is unbelievably funny. Um, So we're gonna talk about
Speaker 1: her first as the sort of Loyd Lifewood is sort
Speaker 1: of the shitty Chicago mayor passed, and then we're gonna
Speaker 1: talk about the maybe future shitty Chicago mayor, Paul Vallis,
Speaker 1: who sucks so much that he was the reason I
Speaker 1: specifically wanted to do this series. But first, what do
Speaker 1: you talk about fucking Lory Lightfoot, a person who I
Speaker 1: don't I don't know. I feel like people outside of
Speaker 1: Chicago don't know much about her. Yeah, I mean I
Speaker 1: know that she's like like has gerebody failed to do
Speaker 1: all the things that he was supposed to do and
Speaker 1: in a kind of general sort of Democrat Matt model
Speaker 1: has sucked. But I'm excited to hit the specifics. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she's a super well okay, Ay. The funniest thing about
Speaker 1: her is it's just just Google pictures of her hats.
Speaker 1: She has just like an incredible hat game. It's just
Speaker 1: always appearing and just an incredible like she has so
Speaker 1: many hats. It's it's wild. It's just every single picture
Speaker 1: she's in it's just like a random, different, wild hat.
Speaker 1: It's amazing. But she's also kind of in some sense,
Speaker 1: like a kind of uniquely incompetent politician. So okay, So
Speaker 1: Lightfoot was elected mayor in like an absolute landside in
Speaker 1: twin nineteen, and she ran this very weird campaign which
Speaker 1: it was based on sort of three main things. It
Speaker 1: was one was not being a machine candidate. And this
Speaker 1: is actually very important, is it. Lightfoot is not actually
Speaker 1: part of the Chicago political machine that controls like most policy.
Speaker 1: Why there's there's the kind of that kind of separate
Speaker 1: parts of the machine. This is a complicated thing we're
Speaker 1: not going to fully get into here. But she's like
Speaker 1: not a machine candidate. She like kind of is an
Speaker 1: outsider in some sense um, and that was a big
Speaker 1: part of why people voted for her. There's another thing,
Speaker 1: which is this sort of like identity tokenism thing, which
Speaker 1: is like, I'm going to be the first black, lesbian
Speaker 1: mayor of Chicago, which she is. And then the third
Speaker 1: thing she was running on was building a ship ton
Speaker 1: of police academies. Now I now, in twenty nineteen, I
Speaker 1: was in Chicago fifth election and I was like, do
Speaker 1: not fucking vote for her. She's gonna build these cop academies.
Speaker 1: And everyone was like, no, it's gonna be great. She's
Speaker 1: not the machine she's like. So she gets elected in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and this means that when she gets into office,
Speaker 1: like almost immediately, twenty twenty happens. And Okay, so no
Speaker 1: mayor has like a good response of twenty twenty. Um
Speaker 1: Lfefoot's is like catastrophic. So I've talked about this a
Speaker 1: bit at the show, But but what twenty twenty in
Speaker 1: Chicago is this really really kind of wild and weird thing.
Speaker 1: It doesn't map onto a lot of the other sort
Speaker 1: of twenty twenties, but like the first thing that happens
Speaker 1: basically is Chicago has this thing called I think it's
Speaker 1: I think it's the Magnificent Mile. It's something milds I
Speaker 1: can remember when it was magnificent, a miracle because it's
Speaker 1: a fucking bullshit tourist thing, but it's it's like the
Speaker 1: Chicago's like it's like a mile of like really rich
Speaker 1: shopping districts, and the cops just lost control of it.
Speaker 1: Like people just took it. It was like fully looted.
Speaker 1: It was just this, It was just this. There was
Speaker 1: this sort of incredible moments of like Chicago's working class
Speaker 1: that it'd been getting shit on for two hundred fucking years,
Speaker 1: like finally stormed their way into their pas and just
Speaker 1: the fucking Bougee part of Chicago would destroyed it and
Speaker 1: it fucking ruled. But after that happened, Lifefoot was like,
Speaker 1: oh shit, we can never let protesters get back there again.
Speaker 1: So she started raising the fucking drawbridges that lead that
Speaker 1: lead across the fucking rivers, like she was like she
Speaker 1: basically turned the entirety of like like that that event
Speaker 1: part of Chicago into a fucking fortress that you could
Speaker 1: not get onto. Amazing. I just raised she did this,
Speaker 1: like she raised the bridges multiple fucking times. Like we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to another story of her raising the bridges
Speaker 1: where it's like it's un like like she doesn't so
Speaker 1: many times that like even times where she claimed she
Speaker 1: didn't do it on purpose, people are like, I think
Speaker 1: she raised the bridges. This is you know, and so
Speaker 1: this is her basically when when she raises the bridges,
Speaker 1: she just like declares war basically on like half of Chicago.
Speaker 1: And okay, so this is like not a great thing
Speaker 1: to do if if you're trying to be a popular politician,
Speaker 1: is to just like physically declare war and like do
Speaker 1: fucking medieval fortress shit to like half half your fucking city.
Speaker 1: And so her popularity starts tanking immediately. This is in
Speaker 1: like the this is I'm guessing as a consequence of
Speaker 1: the Black Lives Matter protest, right, yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So her reprover rating is like fucking absolutely dog should
Speaker 1: I think, Oh, I'm trying to find I should have
Speaker 1: looked this up earlier. I meant to, and I forgot.
Speaker 1: I think her approve rating was like thirty percent when
Speaker 1: she left office. It might even be lower than that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so but you know, but she she she does this
Speaker 1: kind of unique thing where she basically goes around and
Speaker 1: alienates like every single voting block in the city. I
Speaker 1: guess before we get to this, we should get we
Speaker 1: should get to how she pissed off the cops, because
Speaker 1: one of her big things where she came into office
Speaker 1: was she was trying to sort of like do this
Speaker 1: alliance with the police. But instead of her sort of
Speaker 1: actually like forming this, you know, she she was trying
Speaker 1: to form sort of sent a right wing bass. Right,
Speaker 1: She's trying to both sort of play this kind of
Speaker 1: like identity tokenism thing and then also build a bass
Speaker 1: with the cops. But a the cops are racist and
Speaker 1: be Okay, do you two know the story or about
Speaker 1: the Chicago Columbus statue. I don't think. Wait, is that
Speaker 1: one of the ones that got taken down? Sort of?
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the ones that So
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty, I wrote a story about how to
Speaker 1: tear down statues and then became the guy that everybody
Speaker 1: sent pictures of statues getting torn down to for a while.
Speaker 1: So I'm sure I've seen it. Amazing. Yeah, it was great.
Speaker 1: Ben Shapira had a whole fucking seizure about it. We've
Speaker 1: got lots of trouble with various federal agencies, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a very amazing story I did. Don't don't
Speaker 1: affiliate link to the ingredients to things which may or
Speaker 1: may not be illegal if you combine those ingredients in
Speaker 1: your story. So true. Yeah, yeah, many popular mechanics editors
Speaker 1: have tried this. It was great. I was on Russia today,
Speaker 1: not not with my knowledge, but yeah, tell us about this,
Speaker 1: tell us about this other statue. Me okay, So there
Speaker 1: is a giant like statue thing sitting on our like
Speaker 1: sitting on this big column that was made nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 1: and it's it's this giant statue of Christopher Columbus. I'm
Speaker 1: also on this statue. So there there, there, there's like
Speaker 1: a series of like important Italian people like on the column.
Speaker 1: One of these things, one of the people who has
Speaker 1: picked it on this column like very much seems to
Speaker 1: be Benito Mussolini holding a bunch of fascies. Cool. Now,
Speaker 1: the sculptors, the sculptor's son denies this, but this was
Speaker 1: made nineteen thirty three. It really looks like he is
Speaker 1: definitely holding fascies. So all right, this this statue, this
Speaker 1: is like in like the middle of the fucking city,
Speaker 1: right in like this park in the middle of the city.
Speaker 1: Um and this became the so okay so in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: In Chicago, the way the protests work is you have
Speaker 1: like the first initial like phase where the cops like
Speaker 1: lose control of the city, and then the cops kind
Speaker 1: of like retake it over the next few days and
Speaker 1: there's a kind of lull, but then it starts another
Speaker 1: like sort of wave of it starts back up again,
Speaker 1: like a rounds specifically around this statue, and there's this
Speaker 1: whole thing that cops are trying to keep it up,
Speaker 1: and there's this whole thing where like there's like like
Speaker 1: rings of activists like surrounding a group of cops standing
Speaker 1: around the statue, like throwing shit at them, and it
Speaker 1: fucking ruled and eventually the city is like, Okay, we're
Speaker 1: gonna We're just gonna take down the fucking statue. And
Speaker 1: this was a lightfoot thing, but but this pissed off
Speaker 1: the cops and specifically so we talked about this before
Speaker 1: on the show, but like this is one of the
Speaker 1: sort of unique things about Chicago is that Chicago has
Speaker 1: like I guess the technical term is like white ethnic
Speaker 1: like groups that like do shit. And one of those
Speaker 1: things is like there's like an Italian American cop association
Speaker 1: that is very powerful, and the Italian American cop Association
Speaker 1: is like, like, we will keep the statue at all costs.
Speaker 1: This is like our fucking guy, like, hey, we're yeah,
Speaker 1: and and Lightfoot is like, you guys, If you guys
Speaker 1: don't take this statue down, people are gonna fucking like
Speaker 1: burn the Miracle Mile again. And she gets to this
Speaker 1: giant fight of them, and these emails eventually get I
Speaker 1: think I can't remember saying. I think they get released
Speaker 1: part of a court case or something, but these these
Speaker 1: emails come out that it like Lightfoot is yelling that
Speaker 1: she has the biggest balls of anyone on the table.
Speaker 1: She's gonna put her balls at the table because she's
Speaker 1: trying to like keep the cops alive. So she gets
Speaker 1: in this giant fight. It just pisses off all of
Speaker 1: the cops in the city. So she's she she has
Speaker 1: pissed off like like from from from from the initial
Speaker 1: wave of protests at the Drawbridge stuff. She has pissed
Speaker 1: off like anyone who's even sort of vaguely centered left
Speaker 1: and anti racist and like a huge proportion of the
Speaker 1: city's black population and then she like systematically she's now
Speaker 1: pissed off like the sort of like white ethnic cop
Speaker 1: groups who are also very powerful, and then she does
Speaker 1: something like like really genuinely unforgivable and horrific, which she is.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty one, Chicago police shot thirteen year old
Speaker 1: Adam Toledo. She's so much Chicago paper called the tribe.
Speaker 1: At a press conference after the shooting, Mayor Louis Lightfoot
Speaker 1: out to find the people responsible for quote, putting a
Speaker 1: gun in the hands of Toledo, who Chicago police and
Speaker 1: prosecutors insisted was armed. So, okay, they shoot this kid
Speaker 1: who is fucking thirteen years old. His name is Adam Toledo,
Speaker 1: and immediately the cops of prosecutors and the mayor said
Speaker 1: that he's armed. They're going to find the person who
Speaker 1: put the gun in his hand. So two and a
Speaker 1: half weeks later, the video comes out and it turns
Speaker 1: out that not only was Adam Toledo not armed, the
Speaker 1: cops shot him while he was while his hands were
Speaker 1: up while complying with their instructions. I think I've seen this,
Speaker 1: buddy cam. Yeah, yeah, it's fucking awful. And then like
Speaker 1: two years, two days later they killed another guy, and
Speaker 1: there were there was, there was, there was there was
Speaker 1: another round of like huge protests, I mean, and they
Speaker 1: weren't as big as twenty twenty one, but like there
Speaker 1: was another round of like really big protests in this
Speaker 1: and Lightfoot was you know, like actively involved in a
Speaker 1: conspiracy to lie about this fucking thirteen year old kid
Speaker 1: who was killed and called blood. And so this pisses
Speaker 1: off like this. This this like basically means that her
Speaker 1: support among like the Latino population drops to basically zero
Speaker 1: because she fucking accused a thirteen year old kid of
Speaker 1: being a gang, an armed gang member, and then he
Speaker 1: got fucking after he got shopped by the cops. So well,
Speaker 1: the other fun thing about this is so our like
Speaker 1: prosecutor Kim Fox is like there's like this whole thing
Speaker 1: about how she's like a progressive prosecutor and like the
Speaker 1: rights trying to unseat her. None of the fucking officers
Speaker 1: involved in this or the other shooting two days later
Speaker 1: were ever charged with anything after they again it shot
Speaker 1: like killed in cold blood a thirteen year old kid
Speaker 1: with his hands up. Now, the sort of regular Chicago
Speaker 1: right hates her because she's both black, and a lesbian
Speaker 1: and there's some like well, we'll talk about this a
Speaker 1: bit when we gets a Vallis, but there's just genuinely unhinged,
Speaker 1: horrifying sort of like racism and like homophobia, and like
Speaker 1: she's getting basically like splash damage transphobia from it because
Speaker 1: of how racist these people are. And so but that
Speaker 1: means that like, you know, she has like no support,
Speaker 1: right she she managed to get she like she she
Speaker 1: manages to get into a fight with Chicago is like
Speaker 1: normally pretty conservative like Black Caucus and the Black Hawcus
Speaker 1: gets so pissed at her, but they forced through a
Speaker 1: police reform bill that has just like oversy committees. She's
Speaker 1: just like win. And so you know, like on on
Speaker 1: Forbruary twenty eighth, there's an election and all of the
Speaker 1: sort of like everyone in the city of Chicago is
Speaker 1: like she's fucked Like she's a unique She's like a
Speaker 1: uniquely unpopular candidate. Everyone fucking hates her. She has systematically
Speaker 1: pissed off every single possible voting block in the entire
Speaker 1: city of Chicago. And she loses, and you know, there's
Speaker 1: this whole sort of media junket that happens her Everyone
Speaker 1: it's like, this is like a referendum on crime in Chicago,
Speaker 1: and it's like, no, no, it's not like everyone just
Speaker 1: hates Lightfoot because she sucks, and she sucks some like
Speaker 1: a unique combination of ways that pisces off everyone who
Speaker 1: can possibly vote in the city. And so she gets
Speaker 1: sixteen percent of the vote, which I think sixteen percent
Speaker 1: of the vote is like the actual sort of like
Speaker 1: top limit cap of the number of people in Chicago
Speaker 1: who Jenny Winely like her. Like, I think it's exactly
Speaker 1: fifteen sixty percent of the city and there's fucking no
Speaker 1: one else. So she comes in third. It's also very
Speaker 1: funny she spends the entire like a bunch of her
Speaker 1: money running campaign ads, like against the guy who comes
Speaker 1: in fourth instead of the other two. Yeah, and so
Speaker 1: the man who came in second, who is on the
Speaker 1: by the time this episode comes out, the election will
Speaker 1: be fucking tomorrow. Um. The person who came in second
Speaker 1: in that vote is Brandon Johnson, who's the progressive candidate.
Speaker 1: He's backed by like the teachers Union. He's like fine,
Speaker 1: he is like as good as you're going to get
Speaker 1: for a mayor. Oh though I will remind people that
Speaker 1: like Johnston is say much better candidate the other fucking
Speaker 1: guy we're gonna talk about. But i we need to
Speaker 1: talk about a little bit about the limits of electoral politics,
Speaker 1: and like, you know, I'm I'm just gonna point out
Speaker 1: here if that like Nepal, for example, of routinely elects
Speaker 1: Maoist governments and like, do you know, how do you
Speaker 1: know how much Baoism those guys do, Like fucking nun,
Speaker 1: there is no Maoism happening, right. There were some cool
Speaker 1: socialist mayors in Spain who led the population of the
Speaker 1: city to expropriate the landowners around the city in the
Speaker 1: nineteen thirties. Yeah, but that was in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: is about twenty Those are old. Most people's fucking grandchildren
Speaker 1: are like maybe around. But yeah, like you're you're not
Speaker 1: gonna get you know, like we're not going to get
Speaker 1: a socialist city off of this. On the other hand,
Speaker 1: the person who comes in first, who Brandon Johnson will
Speaker 1: be facing tomorrow when you listen to this, is a
Speaker 1: demon in human form. He is near your liberal lives
Speaker 1: as a bag man. He is the fucking reactionary republican
Speaker 1: dog of the Chicago political machine, and that Manton's name
Speaker 1: is Paul Vallis, and as as as Vallis would fucking want,
Speaker 1: we are going to talk about him after we go
Speaker 1: to ADS. All Right, we're back from ADS. We're here
Speaker 1: to talk about Paul Vallis. Just the worst guy. Okay,
Speaker 1: So Paul Vallis sucks ass, um. The thing he's most
Speaker 1: famous for sucking ass for is for being the school
Speaker 1: privatization guy. So we're gonna start with him. The beginning
Speaker 1: of a sort of political career is in two thou
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety five, he gets appointed as the CEO
Speaker 1: of Chicago Public Schools, and he holds that position from
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five to two thousand and one. Now, okay,
Speaker 1: so there's a few things that he like, really likes.
Speaker 1: One is insulating schools entirely, insuletting any mechanism and any
Speaker 1: sort of like part of how a school works from
Speaker 1: any kind of community democratic control. Chicago used to have
Speaker 1: these sort of like democratic councils that could like do
Speaker 1: stuff within the school and violence is like, fuck that,
Speaker 1: We're getting rid of all that shit, like absolutely not.
Speaker 1: The other thing he loves is charter schools. So we
Speaker 1: should explain what a charter school is. Yeah, so okay,
Speaker 1: the way a charter school works is that instead of
Speaker 1: like the state or like the city or a town
Speaker 1: or like a local government running a school, which is
Speaker 1: the way that schools normally work, you instead give out
Speaker 1: a charter to either like technically an NGO or just
Speaker 1: a for profit company, and then that company takes a
Speaker 1: bunch of tax money, like takes a tax money that
Speaker 1: would have gone to a public school and then uses
Speaker 1: it to run their own fucking school. So bait like
Speaker 1: it is. It is privatization that they've relabeled like charter
Speaker 1: quote unquote because if they actually called it privatization to schools,
Speaker 1: people would fucking hate it. And Vallis loves this shit.
Speaker 1: This is this is what he spends most of his
Speaker 1: time across like on multiple continents doing schools bullshit, like
Speaker 1: attempting to push for the other specific thing that he
Speaker 1: really likes this and this this is like this is
Speaker 1: sort of the Paul Vallas signature. Like classic thing is
Speaker 1: military academies. They used to like basically not be military
Speaker 1: academies in Chicago, and Vallas is like, We're gonna open
Speaker 1: so many fucking military academies and these are these are
Speaker 1: like regular and the thing is okay, like there are
Speaker 1: sort of like disciplinary quote unquote military academies, which is
Speaker 1: like you get sent there instead of prison. These are
Speaker 1: like just like normal schools that are like quote unquote
Speaker 1: military academies. But these schools like they're they're barely schools.
Speaker 1: Like like there there there. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people who went to these schools who in multiple cities.
Speaker 1: And we'll get into more of this sort of later
Speaker 1: when we get to Philly, but like people will go
Speaker 1: to these schools and like their textbooks have pages torn
Speaker 1: out of them and like which page Smith? You know,
Speaker 1: here's the thing, right, you would think this is like
Speaker 1: like a kind of like Republican style, like uh, we're
Speaker 1: taking out the pages to talk about like Columbus being
Speaker 1: bad Like no, no, no no, no, just random fucking like
Speaker 1: just pages torn out of it because they like these
Speaker 1: schools on any fucking money, Like they don't have actually curriculu.
Speaker 1: There's like they just like don't have sports. They just
Speaker 1: don't have like anything to fucking do. Um. And then
Speaker 1: this is another thing with charter schools. So all right,
Speaker 1: if you want to like be a regular teacher, you
Speaker 1: have to have like teaching teaching certificates, all right, if
Speaker 1: you work at a charter school. Yeah. So I think
Speaker 1: that the standards depend on the state some of them.
Speaker 1: I think Illinois is like two thirds of the teachers
Speaker 1: have to have teaching certificates. But that means that a
Speaker 1: lot of kids are being taught by teachers with no
Speaker 1: teaching certificates, which is like, you know that teaching and
Speaker 1: it turns out is not in fact easy enough that
Speaker 1: you could just put a random person there who doesn't
Speaker 1: know how to do it, and you know, like have
Speaker 1: kids be taught correctly. Ademies, these Milter academies, they have
Speaker 1: teachers who just like don't fucking teach right, like they're
Speaker 1: they're they're just a complete shit show. But he opens
Speaker 1: a bunch of these and but okay, and the other
Speaker 1: big thing the Vallas is supposed to and this is
Speaker 1: the thing all all the people who like Fallois would
Speaker 1: do this thing where they're like he's like a budget wizard,
Speaker 1: and he's like the guy he's like the technocrat, like
Speaker 1: smart policy want guy who you bring in to like
Speaker 1: like bail out a school district that's underwater financially and
Speaker 1: oh boy, oh boy, is that not true? He Okay,
Speaker 1: So there there's there's a very good report called Passing
Speaker 1: the Buck, which is written by the Action Center on
Speaker 1: Race in the Economy or ACRE, which I recommend people. Look, genuinely,
Speaker 1: people should go read this. It's like twelve pages long.
Speaker 1: It's very short, and like, uh, like it's not even
Speaker 1: twelve like three of those pages dissertations. And they wrote
Speaker 1: a report on Vallis's time in various school districts. And
Speaker 1: here's some of the ship that he did to make
Speaker 1: it look like he had his balanced, his budget balanced.
Speaker 1: So all right, let's let's talk about his pension scheme.
Speaker 1: I feel like I actually should explain how pensions work,
Speaker 1: because like, nobody fucking has them anymore. So a pension
Speaker 1: is a thing where like you, the worker, or in
Speaker 1: this case the Chicago teachers, you take some of your
Speaker 1: current pay and instead of taking the money now, it
Speaker 1: gets taken out of your paycheck and put towards a
Speaker 1: pension fund to fund your retirement. And then this fund
Speaker 1: is invested in the stock market to get returns to
Speaker 1: pay out pensions that like support you when you retire. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety nine, Vallis was like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: the Chicago pension system is funded, so we're gonna take
Speaker 1: the teacher's money and use it to pay other budget shortfalls. Great,
Speaker 1: so this is good. Anyways, after he does this for
Speaker 1: for thirteen consecutive years, Chicago stops paying into its pension
Speaker 1: system altogether, and the result of this is a nine
Speaker 1: point six billion dollar hole in the pension system that
Speaker 1: Chicago has to like pay off. And this is a
Speaker 1: huge part of like where are the sort of modern
Speaker 1: like budget deficits in Chicago come from, like things that
Speaker 1: are used to like justify shutting schools down. Is that
Speaker 1: like they just didn't pay into this. They just stop
Speaker 1: paying into the pensions, and the stead took the money
Speaker 1: that they're supposed to go to teachers and use it
Speaker 1: to like make their budgets look clean. So if he
Speaker 1: if he had just done this, it would have been
Speaker 1: bad enough. But but vallas Is like is a very
Speaker 1: very specific kind of like neoliberal techniccrat dipshit. And that
Speaker 1: kind of neoliberal technicrat dipshit is the the extremely interested
Speaker 1: in financial instruments guy who was like a kind of
Speaker 1: person that I think I think we see less of
Speaker 1: these days because the most not the modern version of
Speaker 1: this or like crypto people. Right, but back in like
Speaker 1: the nineties and two thousands, there were a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys whose things were like really really conflbuted financial instruments,
Speaker 1: and everyone thought they were fucking geniuses. Um now, now
Speaker 1: if if you if you were alive in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, you know where this is going. But vallis
Speaker 1: the second thing he does to sort of like like
Speaker 1: quote unquote balance his budget sheet is he takes out
Speaker 1: the government equivalent of a payday loan. So here's here's
Speaker 1: a passing the buck. Quote. Vallas literally borrowed against Chicago
Speaker 1: school children's futures when he took out a six hundred
Speaker 1: and sixty six million dollars in capital appreciation bonds. Also
Speaker 1: when I said, he was like like a demon sixty
Speaker 1: six million dollars with the satanic loud. Yeah, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: doing this satanic panic but for this guy who fucking sucks.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you took out the loans and capital appreciation
Speaker 1: bonds a form of debt in which the borrower pays
Speaker 1: nothing for several years but then has to pay very
Speaker 1: large sums to make up for skipped payments. A capital
Speaker 1: appreciation bonds a b is a long term bond with
Speaker 1: compounding interest on which the borrower is not permitted to
Speaker 1: make any principal or interest payments for many years, but
Speaker 1: the interest still. Yeah, crazy, but you're not allow Why
Speaker 1: would we Why would you take that? Why would you?
Speaker 1: Why would you do that? That seems like a really
Speaker 1: bad decision. Oh, it's a terrible it's a terrible decision.
Speaker 1: I'm not a big sunny guy. The Valis's assumption was
Speaker 1: that like, Okay, we don't have any money now, but
Speaker 1: property values will continue to go up and just keep
Speaker 1: going up forever, so we can pay this bond back
Speaker 1: when we have money from higher from property taxes. And yeah,
Speaker 1: so okay, I really if I'm gonna finish this thing
Speaker 1: on these these just dogshit bonds. In this way, it
Speaker 1: is similar to a negative amortization mortgage, in which the
Speaker 1: outstanding principle actually grows over time because the unpaid interest
Speaker 1: gets tacked onto the amount owed and compounds. Yeah. Very Amusingly,
Speaker 1: California was doing something similar to this with with restitution
Speaker 1: payments recently, or some some place in California were at
Speaker 1: least In one case that I looked into for a
Speaker 1: story I wrote, it was it was ruled illegal under
Speaker 1: the Eighth Amendment. Oh my god, a cruel and unusual
Speaker 1: interest payments. It's good to see the Chicago he's doing it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's actually a funny story about this that, like one
Speaker 1: of the size stories of this is that the guy
Speaker 1: who's running the school system in California like gets this
Speaker 1: same offer from like bond salesman people, and he's like, no,
Speaker 1: what the fuck. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: But Vallas does this. Vallas is going to do this
Speaker 1: in multiple cities. So I'm gonna finish reading this thing.
Speaker 1: Because of the structure, borrowers often end up paying extraordinarily
Speaker 1: high interest rates over the lifetime of the bonds. Former
Speaker 1: California State Treasurer Bill Lockney called CIAB is the school
Speaker 1: district equivalent of a pain a loan. So the result
Speaker 1: of this is that out of the six hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty six point two million dollars right that Valas takes out,
Speaker 1: they pay one point five billion dollars in interest. The
Speaker 1: interest rate over the lifetime of this bond is two
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty three percent good. This is the guy
Speaker 1: who's supposed to be like the really smart tychn crap
Speaker 1: reformer guy who understands financial stuff, who you bring into
Speaker 1: like solve school districts. And he took out a load
Speaker 1: with two hundred and twenty three percent fucking interest is
Speaker 1: this is the kind of interest rate then, in the
Speaker 1: words of David Graber, were once reserved for organized crime,
Speaker 1: and now is you know normally normally this kind of loan.
Speaker 1: He's like a thing. It's like this is like a
Speaker 1: very predatory sort of like yeah, it's like a predatory
Speaker 1: banking thing. Valis think this to himself on purpose because
Speaker 1: he's dumb, and I mean also like he's trying to
Speaker 1: I mean and part of part of the other sort
Speaker 1: of undercaracter this, it's not just that he's really stupid,
Speaker 1: it's that he's trying to pay off his buddies in
Speaker 1: the in the finance sector. Yeah, and then you know
Speaker 1: there is the other part of the story, right, It's
Speaker 1: like all of these all these school districts just get
Speaker 1: fucking looted to pay off these like fucking stupid ass
Speaker 1: hedge funds, and then he just bounces somewhere else and
Speaker 1: leaves him people with it. Yeah, and you know, so
Speaker 1: I talked a bit earlier about how, like valais Is
Speaker 1: assumption on these bonds was like, well, we'll be fine
Speaker 1: because well, the housing markets will keep going up forever.
Speaker 1: But then two thousand it happens, and this has a
Speaker 1: bunch of effects. One of the big ones is that
Speaker 1: Vallas was taking out bonds with variable interest rates. Oh no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: we have talked about this on this show before. Right,
Speaker 1: there are entire country they are like entire like like
Speaker 1: multi national political movements that don't exist. There are entire
Speaker 1: countries who fucking don't have manufacturing checkers anymore. Like there
Speaker 1: are there are places where the life expectancy felled by
Speaker 1: twenty years because they're they're they're fucking leaders took out
Speaker 1: these kind of like variable interest rate loans and got
Speaker 1: de strobe in the interest rate spikes and guess what
Speaker 1: happened in Chicago interest rate spikes And okay, so Vallas's
Speaker 1: successors look at this and are like, this is the
Speaker 1: stupidest fucking you know. Well, but okay, Valles's success by
Speaker 1: the way, is Artie Duncan, who's the guy that Obama
Speaker 1: puts in charge of of the Department of Education, and
Speaker 1: Arnie Duncan is like, Okay, do you know how we're
Speaker 1: going to solve the problem of these the the the
Speaker 1: risk from these adjustable rate interest rates credit default swaps?
Speaker 1: Oh god, So all right, I'm not going to explain
Speaker 1: how a credit default swap works because it's fucking annoying
Speaker 1: as hell. But credit default swaps are one of the things,
Speaker 1: like one of the very specific financial instruments that are
Speaker 1: that are like specifically responsible for the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight collapsed. Yes, and now these technically aren't credit default swaps, right,
Speaker 1: These these are technically what are called interest default swap
Speaker 1: or like interest swaps, and they're but they're exactly the
Speaker 1: same thing as a credit as a credit default swap,
Speaker 1: but instead of credit as interest. So the underlying asset,
Speaker 1: right is like as a bond and not like a
Speaker 1: loan or whatever. But otherwise it's exactly the same thing.
Speaker 1: And this this man, you know, and these these swaps
Speaker 1: have this thing where like if you can't pay you
Speaker 1: get these like unbelievably high like fees that start happening.
Speaker 1: So when when these bonds blow up, they managed to
Speaker 1: cost they managed to cost Chicago another thirty one million
Speaker 1: dollars because they're credit default swap. He just blew up.
Speaker 1: So all right, so this has a two thousand and
Speaker 1: two and two thousand and two, he ran for governor
Speaker 1: or against Rob fucking Blogoyevich. Who is Robbo? Who is
Speaker 1: rob a Bligoiovich? You just did the first syllable and
Speaker 1: then let your let to take the rest. And Vala
Speaker 1: sucks so much that Rob Lugoyevich is able to outflank
Speaker 1: him on the left bye bye bye, running against him saying, hey,
Speaker 1: look at all these schools he privatized. And so he
Speaker 1: gets claw bared in the primaries by Rob fucking b
Speaker 1: the man who okay, so this is what we will
Speaker 1: cover this one day fully on the show because it's
Speaker 1: really funny. But Rob Lagoievic is the man most famous
Speaker 1: for getting arrested for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat,
Speaker 1: like he tried to sell a Senate Oh he's Oh,
Speaker 1: he's amazing. He's now just on Tucker talking about political persecution.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah's extremely funny. Oh yeah he was on yesterday,
Speaker 1: wasn't he Yeah yeah yeah Trump, Yeah, how he was
Speaker 1: persecuted first, and now Trump is being persecuted. It's amazing,
Speaker 1: It's great, really, really the canary in the coal mine
Speaker 1: of hey grifting politicians. Look, Garrison, look if they if
Speaker 1: they can go after Rob Lay trying to sell Obama
Speaker 1: Senate seat, they could go after you for trying to
Speaker 1: sell Barack Obama Senate seat. That's true. You know who
Speaker 1: else is trying to sell Barack Obama Senate seat products
Speaker 1: and services that support this very podcast. No, they're really
Speaker 1: not allowed to do that. None of them would ever
Speaker 1: commit a crime I under any circumstances. I still think
Speaker 1: I think a fair number of these corporations probably engage
Speaker 1: in some some sort of political lobby. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: But I don't trying to buy him a Senate seat, Garrison.
Speaker 1: That's totally different, different, the same, the same, totally fine.
Speaker 1: Thanks Ronald Reagan. All right, we're back, and we're now
Speaker 1: we're we're now, we're now sending Vallas too, are I
Speaker 1: don't I don't actually know if Chicago and Philadelphia or
Speaker 1: sister cities, but like I think they should be. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I am I am very in favor of
Speaker 1: the Chicago Philadelphia Alliance. Same vibe. Yeah, so they both
Speaker 1: stood in for Gotham City in the Christopher Nolan trilogy.
Speaker 1: So I'm doing a Bagman reference again. There's there's a whole.
Speaker 1: There are like so many different specific there. David Grabber
Speaker 1: writes about this, like there there are so many different
Speaker 1: like parts of places where they filmed, like the Dark
Speaker 1: Night where people tried to protest and got arrested for
Speaker 1: blocking the road. Like this happened in multiple cities. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No one wants the city to turn into la So
Speaker 1: you have to stand up against that shit immediately. You
Speaker 1: do not let it happen in your hood. Yeah, it could,
Speaker 1: it could happen here. Okay, So after Vallas gets clabbered
Speaker 1: in in in the mayoral race, she gets brought in
Speaker 1: by Philadelphia to try to like fix their school system.
Speaker 1: And he, uh, excuse me. His planning to do this
Speaker 1: is by doing a bunch of military academies again and
Speaker 1: then doing also doing charter schools, and so I should
Speaker 1: I should explain like his other sort of so the
Speaker 1: big sort of rationale thing behind charter schools, this school choice,
Speaker 1: which is this thing that was specifically invented as a
Speaker 1: way to let race his parents avoid integration. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like goes along with Sody mentioned the homeschooling when
Speaker 1: we've talked about this in other episodes. But he's like
Speaker 1: a huge like Valist to this day is a giant
Speaker 1: like school choice guy. Um. And you know, but the
Speaker 1: other thing, the other thing about Valist, I don't think
Speaker 1: people realize that much he even though he's a Republican
Speaker 1: a lot of the time, like he kind of flips
Speaker 1: back and forth being a Democrat being a Republican. But
Speaker 1: he's he's like after he loses to rob or even
Speaker 1: even sort of before that, like he is an actual
Speaker 1: sort of Chicago machine guy. And because he's a Chicago
Speaker 1: machine guy when he gets into the stuff that he
Speaker 1: starts doing the stuff where he like he'll just like
Speaker 1: like he takes over the school district and like fires
Speaker 1: much people and like installs his cronies and all these
Speaker 1: departments and all these people are getting like he's like
Speaker 1: buying off people with budget allocations, and he starts selling
Speaker 1: off buildings to raise money. So he sells off like
Speaker 1: the district headquarters in order to buy like a more
Speaker 1: expensive district headquarters. And here's a quote from the book
Speaker 1: Not Paid For Us, which is a really really great
Speaker 1: book about sort of the history of racism in education
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia. And this is a quote from a long
Speaker 1: time activist Lee Roy Simmons before I start reading this.
Speaker 1: The district headquarters was called twenty first and Parkway. There
Speaker 1: was doors in twenty first and Parkway worth one million dollars,
Speaker 1: then big brass doors in the fronts. Those doors were
Speaker 1: worth one million dollars with all the carving on them.
Speaker 1: People don't know how much they got for it. To
Speaker 1: this day, I can't get an answer about how much
Speaker 1: did you sell that building for where the money went.
Speaker 1: The school district sold twenty first and Parkway in a
Speaker 1: package with Kennedy Center. There were brand new trucks parked
Speaker 1: at Kennedy Center. They had forgot were there. There was
Speaker 1: a printing press in the Kennedy Center that could print
Speaker 1: all new magazines and they never used. There were books
Speaker 1: and calculators and every time it went through there there
Speaker 1: were boxes of unused stuff in the Kennedy Center and
Speaker 1: nobody knew. And they sold that in the contents and
Speaker 1: the package with twenty first of Parkway, and nobody knew
Speaker 1: how much that was. There was some art that was
Speaker 1: priceless on the walls at twenty first of Parkway. No
Speaker 1: one can find the art. There were priceless pieces of
Speaker 1: art hanging in schools across the city and all that
Speaker 1: was sold in a package and nobody saw where it went. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so like and this is this is again, this is
Speaker 1: like this is classic Chicago corruption ship, right, Like we're
Speaker 1: not gonna say how much we sold this building for.
Speaker 1: We're not gonna say who who we sold it too,
Speaker 1: Like we're gonna build a more expensive building. And you know,
Speaker 1: if you look into it, you look into who the
Speaker 1: contractors are as like always someone's uncle or like brother
Speaker 1: or some shit. Um, there's just you know, like there's
Speaker 1: printing presses that are gone, like priceless works of art
Speaker 1: just vanished. It's like this is this is like you know,
Speaker 1: it's sort of incredible sort of Chicago political machine stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: And this gets into what I think about I think
Speaker 1: the Chicago political machine that is really interesting, which is
Speaker 1: that these people are like, on the one hand, they're
Speaker 1: unbelievably corrupt. On the other hand, a lot of them
Speaker 1: are sort of real like hardline like doctrinaire neoliberals. This
Speaker 1: is I mean, this is sort of the thing with
Speaker 1: Arnie Duncan, right, Like like Obama actually comes out of
Speaker 1: this machine too, when he's a lot more sort of
Speaker 1: like doctrinaire about this stuff than the sort of modern
Speaker 1: people are. And you know, and Valis is like one
Speaker 1: of the sort of like big guys here, and you know,
Speaker 1: so he's really really in favor of charter schools and
Speaker 1: so they get enormous amounts of money. Um, he also
Speaker 1: does this thing he yeah, this is also from not
Speaker 1: paid for Us. He funnels money into just like a
Speaker 1: ship ton of NGOs in order to like do education
Speaker 1: programming or whatever. And so there's a sort of constellation
Speaker 1: forms of these like you have you these corporations doing
Speaker 1: like education stuff or like running schools, and you have
Speaker 1: these like nonprofits running like the like the education material.
Speaker 1: And it's it's this sort of like this this is
Speaker 1: sort of arch neoliberal thing where instead of the state
Speaker 1: administering a service, what you have is this like based
Speaker 1: basically a bunch of like contracting grifters who come in
Speaker 1: and suck up all of the money and then provide
Speaker 1: absolutely dogshit services. Now I'm going to read another quote
Speaker 1: from this book. Because the people they are paying these
Speaker 1: contracts who are fucking wild on the SRC is like
Speaker 1: one of the bodies that's in charge of, like one
Speaker 1: of the state bodies as in charge of, like the
Speaker 1: Philadelphia School District. One of the SRC's most problematic contracts
Speaker 1: was with K twelve Inc. For three million dollars to quote,
Speaker 1: provide academic and curriculum support, access to K twelves online
Speaker 1: curriculum and assessments, academic enrichment via summer and extended day programs,
Speaker 1: professional development, teacher planning and rending materials, and community involvement activities.
Speaker 1: Conservative radio talk show host William Bennett was the founder
Speaker 1: of KG twelve, Inc. He had been an adviser to
Speaker 1: former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush Durin
Speaker 1: a show in two thousand and five, he said the following,
Speaker 1: and this is a direct quote. If you want to
Speaker 1: reduce crime, you could, if that was your sole purpose,
Speaker 1: you could abort every black baby in this country, and
Speaker 1: your crime rate would go down. That would be an
Speaker 1: impossibly ridiculous and wray reprehensible thing to do, but your
Speaker 1: crime weight would go down. So they peeled this guy
Speaker 1: three million fucking dollars to both of VAL's pro choice credentialssume.
Speaker 1: This is this is the most pro choice thing I've
Speaker 1: ever seen from him, is the genocide guy because the
Speaker 1: eugenics guy. Yeah yeah, well you see, they all have
Speaker 1: a have a weakness. That is, has anyone looked to
Speaker 1: the curriculum that that providing. I'm serious the thing it's
Speaker 1: unclear to me that they ever, like actually really provided
Speaker 1: much of anything. It does sound like a like if
Speaker 1: you were going to make up a company to grift
Speaker 1: at the education system, K twelve Inc. Would be a
Speaker 1: great name. Yeah, And then that's that's the thing about
Speaker 1: like all these charter schools too, right. It's like like, okay,
Speaker 1: so like there are some for profit corporations you do
Speaker 1: charter school stuff, and they stick in the charter school
Speaker 1: business because they decide that's how they want to make
Speaker 1: their money. A lot of these things come in, take
Speaker 1: a state contract, the school immediately implodes and then leave
Speaker 1: and then they just walk out with self a million dollars.
Speaker 1: And this is like this is a recurring pattern over
Speaker 1: and over again with charter schools. He also brings in
Speaker 1: Teach for America, who is this like just genuinely evil
Speaker 1: organization that tries to break teachers unions by recruiting these
Speaker 1: like incredibly idealistic and naive young college grads and like
Speaker 1: throwing them into like into failing schools as this thing
Speaker 1: to like, Ah, you're gonna like go serve the community
Speaker 1: and like you know, you're you'll learn on the job
Speaker 1: and you'll you'll become an educator and you're like helping
Speaker 1: these disadvantaged kids. And it's a disaster. These these these people,
Speaker 1: the people who do this have no fucking idea how
Speaker 1: to teach because they you know, they don't have teachers ever,
Speaker 1: gets right, They're just like college grads and at any
Speaker 1: any of you who have been around college grads, like
Speaker 1: you think those people are responsible enough to fucking teach kids,
Speaker 1: Like Jesus Christ, Yeah, I meant of that was like
Speaker 1: a big thing. Like I don't know if it still
Speaker 1: happens or not, like I remember, right, yeah, reference letters
Speaker 1: for students like ten fifteen years ago for that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I I mean, I know, I had to like
Speaker 1: talk out classmates of mine like out of doing it,
Speaker 1: because we were like you are doing you are doing
Speaker 1: union busting and also this will destroy your life and
Speaker 1: the life of the children you have to teach. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a very strange system that. Yeah, take someone who
Speaker 1: by virtue of having any degree, it's automatically an educator.
Speaker 1: But to be fair, that is how universities work as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you get get your master's degree in and they're like,
Speaker 1: well fuck it, get in there. They'll just give you
Speaker 1: grad students with no degrees, right, Like that's that's the
Speaker 1: thing too. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, and you know to
Speaker 1: to to to to get out together into those kinds
Speaker 1: of Like the other thing that's happening here is is
Speaker 1: he has this really valas has this really really racist
Speaker 1: kind of like we need to like enforce discipline in
Speaker 1: schools thing. And so they have all these and this
Speaker 1: happens to Chicago too, that have these like zero tolerance
Speaker 1: policies that have done i mean, irreparable damage to like
Speaker 1: tons of thousands of kids. I'm gonna read. I'm going
Speaker 1: to read a thing from Tribe about Philadelphia. Quote. Test
Speaker 1: results were posted on data walls in the school buildings
Speaker 1: to show which classes were making the most progress. WHOA
Speaker 1: it was humiliating, said Grill was a teacher. A lot
Speaker 1: of our kids were left behind, were behind, and a
Speaker 1: lot of a lot of our kids suffered trauma, and
Speaker 1: trauma affects the way you learn. So they were behind,
Speaker 1: they weren't on grade level, and it made them feel
Speaker 1: like failures. I hated giving those tests. Wow yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: people like to be wrong about Georgio. Well, but that
Speaker 1: that's some more wedding and shit, right that like and
Speaker 1: like these are like fucking yeahs like these are like
Speaker 1: these are literally children like you were. You were publicly
Speaker 1: shaming people who were like twelve. It's just it's just horrible.
Speaker 1: Yeah that, Like we've known for a very long time
Speaker 1: that that doesn't work when you're educating kids, like I
Speaker 1: have done Pettigougy training and get it. No one with
Speaker 1: any intent to actually help kids is shaming kids in
Speaker 1: the classroom, or young people or anyone of any age
Speaker 1: for that matter. I just checked out what K twelve
Speaker 1: Inca Doing. It's great. They're now offering online high school.
Speaker 1: Oh great, yeah, yeah, you can go to a faith
Speaker 1: prep academy developed Christian character, oh find Yeah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is great. This is this is what I this is
Speaker 1: what I youth need. Yeah it sucks so um. The
Speaker 1: other thing again, we keep trinkling around this because this
Speaker 1: happens a bunch of times. Like again, vals this whole
Speaker 1: thing is supposed to be about, like about balancing budgets,
Speaker 1: right in two thousand and seven, by the time he's
Speaker 1: like like at the near the end of his like
Speaker 1: time in Philly, he's fucked everything up so badly that
Speaker 1: that for in like just one year of the budget,
Speaker 1: Philly schools were seventy three million dollars in the whole. Now,
Speaker 1: the thing about this, this is where most stories about
Speaker 1: Valais's time in Philadelphia end. But wait, there's fucking more
Speaker 1: so that that seventy three million dollars short fall was.
Speaker 1: It was the one years short fall. Right. Remember back
Speaker 1: in Chicago where Valas is like variable interest rate bonds
Speaker 1: like blew up in the school's faces. Um, this time,
Speaker 1: Vallis is the guy directly who did the credit the
Speaker 1: fault swaps, and uh, these these the interest rates on
Speaker 1: these things are locked in literally for decades and just
Speaker 1: like like some of these aren't expiring to like twenty
Speaker 1: thirty one, right, and just so far they've cost one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty one million dollars. Great, yeah, and test
Speaker 1: test scores fucking go down under him. It's a ship show. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so two thousand and seven they kick him out
Speaker 1: because they're like, what the fuck are you doing? Like Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: the place they kick him out too, is is and
Speaker 1: you're you're not gonna like this post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans,
Speaker 1: so fuck's sake? Yeah, yeah, why why do we have
Speaker 1: to inflict like the failed suns of neoliberalism and the
Speaker 1: people of New Orleans that's gonna get worse by the way, Okay, great, yeah, um,
Speaker 1: so this is really bad, right New Orleans? Now, Okay,
Speaker 1: so I think there's there's some kind of controversy about
Speaker 1: how exactly accoculate this. At the very least sixty three
Speaker 1: out of the sixty six like New Orleans like big,
Speaker 1: like sorry, let me let me rest at the very
Speaker 1: least sixty three out of the sixty six like schools
Speaker 1: that they run, like at the very least like that
Speaker 1: that are directly run by the state, our charter schools. Um,
Speaker 1: there's three more that are also charter schools but are
Speaker 1: kind of administrated by the district. So there is a
Speaker 1: huge debate as to whether there are technic any public
Speaker 1: schools left in in fucking New Orleans. Jesus, Yeah, they
Speaker 1: fired like and this this was this was before Valis
Speaker 1: came into office. But in New Orleans they fired the
Speaker 1: entire every teacher in the fucking city. They fired all
Speaker 1: the unions, literally, all the union teachers were replaced them
Speaker 1: with non union people. M Vallis comes in and starts
Speaker 1: implementing some shit that is just like I like prison
Speaker 1: camp shit. Oh god, here's from here's from tribe again.
Speaker 1: According to Biguard, a lot of kids were arrested for
Speaker 1: quote disruption of a school process if they showed up
Speaker 1: late to class and refused to be kicked out for tardiness.
Speaker 1: And again they are being arrested for refuge for wanting
Speaker 1: to stay in school. Yeah, black kids, black girls were
Speaker 1: arrested for having quote rat tail combs, which have long,
Speaker 1: sharp handles from grating hair. Yeah. In one instance, Biguard said,
Speaker 1: a six year old student was expelled and charged with
Speaker 1: possession and distribution of a controlled substance because he brought
Speaker 1: toms to school and gave them to his classmates thinking
Speaker 1: they were candy. What the fuck they charged a six
Speaker 1: year old? Yeah? God, Yeah, they're the levels of fucking
Speaker 1: cruelty that have to exist, like a cop has to
Speaker 1: see a six year old and not be like, oh, lull,
Speaker 1: those are toms like the kitch. Body should neat too
Speaker 1: many of those. Let me go tell them they didn't
Speaker 1: know they were kiddy because he's six Jesus Christ. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just like just just Jetty Whitely, like abhorrently evil shit. Yeah. See,
Speaker 1: this is like, maybe now is a good time to
Speaker 1: point out that, like, in the wake of yet another
Speaker 1: terrible school shooting, people will want to put more cops
Speaker 1: in schools. This is what happens when we put cops
Speaker 1: in schools, right, they brutalize our fucking children. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: like it's not Yeah, like the state doing violence to
Speaker 1: children is not the way we protect children. Yeah. What
Speaker 1: I want to say, the more your school represents the
Speaker 1: levels of law enforcement that are into prison camp, the
Speaker 1: more the actual experience of the children will become like
Speaker 1: prison camps. Yes, yes, yea yeah, but also just literally,
Speaker 1: I mean that's god. I love to go to the
Speaker 1: Panoptic on high school, Garrison. What are you talking about.
Speaker 1: It's just the Panoptic on high school where if you don't,
Speaker 1: if you don't get kicked out of your fucking class
Speaker 1: for being late, they arrest you. The coalent again. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just so speaking speaking of disciplining and punishing. So these
Speaker 1: charter schools, they do think that charter schools always do right,
Speaker 1: which is sometimes if you know, if you look at
Speaker 1: people who talk about educational reform, they'll be like, charter
Speaker 1: schools have like really great like test numbers and a
Speaker 1: that's just like not true, right, that they're only looking
Speaker 1: at the really good charter schools. But you know, here's
Speaker 1: the thing. If you give a public school the amount
Speaker 1: of money that a really good charter school has, it
Speaker 1: will also be a really good school. But but there's
Speaker 1: the second thing that charter schools can do that other
Speaker 1: schools can't, which is that charter schools could just fucking
Speaker 1: kick students out. And this is one of the ways
Speaker 1: that they maintain their test numbers is they just kick
Speaker 1: out kids over and over again. You don't do who
Speaker 1: aren't initially doing well on tests, so they don't have
Speaker 1: to teach them and like bother to improve their test scores.
Speaker 1: And in New Orleans they get in trouble because the
Speaker 1: kids they were kicking out where kids with disabilities who
Speaker 1: they were illegally yeah, who they were illegally not like
Speaker 1: giving individual education plans too, and also they were there
Speaker 1: is everything right. These charter schools are all run by
Speaker 1: different private corporations, and so there's no system of tracking
Speaker 1: whether when a kid gets kicked out whether they can
Speaker 1: actually get it go to another school. So they're just
Speaker 1: leaving these disabled kids, like in the fucking win with
Speaker 1: no school to go to. And this this was so
Speaker 1: illegal that after a lawsuit, like I think it might
Speaker 1: still be going to this day. It was going like
Speaker 1: twenty fourteen. Like the school the Philadelphia school system was
Speaker 1: like undersizaship by the federal government because they committed so
Speaker 1: many crimes against disabled students. Jesus Christ, that is brutal. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's awful. Fuck kind of education for a lot of
Speaker 1: my adult life in this ship makes me furious. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wanted so what youed you to? Guess where
Speaker 1: do you think they sent Paul Vallis next after he
Speaker 1: got kicked out of I try trying to run of
Speaker 1: New Orleans? Did they send him to set up a
Speaker 1: finishing school for girls in Kabul? No? But similar similar vibes. Oh,
Speaker 1: for fock's sake, it dude, it's outside the continental US. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's not Iraq. No Puerto Rito. It's Haiti after yep, yep.
Speaker 1: So now we have talked about this before on the show.
Speaker 1: In twenty ten, there was a just unbelievably heartwrenchingle catastrophic
Speaker 1: earthquake killed two hundred and twenty thousand people and also
Speaker 1: destroyed like almost every building in Haiti, and this kicks
Speaker 1: off phase two of the UN occupation of the country.
Speaker 1: We talked about this in our episodes on Lulu and
Speaker 1: Bill Scenaro. This is this is when the UN guys
Speaker 1: from the Paul bring in Cholerado, a bunch of the operation. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So right after this happens, so the US just like
Speaker 1: sends Marines in, right, and no one in Haiti asked
Speaker 1: for it. We just we just fucking invade um and
Speaker 1: they bring in Paul Vallis, like specifically Paul Vallis, and
Speaker 1: also Arnie Duncan, who's again Obama's fucking education secretary, gets
Speaker 1: bring in to rebuild the Haitian school system on New
Speaker 1: Orleans model. Now, okay, weirdly, if they had actually implemented
Speaker 1: New Orleans model, it would have been an improvement, because
Speaker 1: they hate the way the Haitian school system worked was
Speaker 1: ninety percent private and the tuition was forty percent of
Speaker 1: someone's annual budget, like like a family's annual budget. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's the friends in Haiti who couldn't afford to
Speaker 1: pay for school trying. It's fucking horrible. Vallis is supposed
Speaker 1: to like change this, right, he gets brought in. They
Speaker 1: bring in the Clinton Foundation instead. What happens is the
Speaker 1: Clinton Foundation buys a bunch of trailers to use as
Speaker 1: schools for the from from specific the same people who
Speaker 1: got in trouble for selling for maldehyde ridden trailers to
Speaker 1: female drink Katrina. And then you know, okay, and I
Speaker 1: never think that I I can't emphasize enough. They called
Speaker 1: the grifft trailer ink or something. Yeah, they fucking suck well.
Speaker 1: But also also even the trailers were good, Right, there's
Speaker 1: a real issue with trying to use trailers to teach
Speaker 1: kids in a place that is hot, yeah, which is
Speaker 1: that it is one hundred fucking degrees inside these trailers.
Speaker 1: These trailers are made of metal, so if you touch
Speaker 1: the side of the thing, you get burned. Kids at people,
Speaker 1: people who like teachers who were taught there, routinely talk
Speaker 1: about how every kid and they're every kid in their
Speaker 1: fucking class was having heat stroke and they were just
Speaker 1: like giving them painkillers for heat stroke because that's all
Speaker 1: they could do. And yeah, it is punishingly hot if
Speaker 1: you haven't let that works in that part of the
Speaker 1: world a lot, and it is. It's hot enough without
Speaker 1: banking a tin can. Yeah, and Valis's fucking education for them.
Speaker 1: They don't fucking work. They don't do shit right. Age
Speaker 1: education system is still fucked just by all the body
Speaker 1: of the Clinton Foundation and the like, all these experts
Speaker 1: got paid. Like it's still really bad. I vallist like specifically,
Speaker 1: like very specifically defended. The use of trailers is like
Speaker 1: a thing you teach people in UM. Yeah, and you
Speaker 1: know this stuff I'll continue used to the present day.
Speaker 1: The US has been trying to find another excuse, just
Speaker 1: trying to find a way to do another intervention in Haiti.
Speaker 1: So she's still on the New Orleans job. I think,
Speaker 1: while he's doing this Haiti job and then he takes
Speaker 1: another job in Chile. Yeah, why I don't know. The
Speaker 1: people people get well because because the the Interamerican Development
Speaker 1: Bank gives him half a million dollars to run two
Speaker 1: thousand schools there. So again. He's now he's now splitting
Speaker 1: his time between New Orleans, Haiti and Chile. It's it's
Speaker 1: almost impossible to find it. I spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time looking. It's like it's really hard to find like
Speaker 1: anything about what actually he was doing in Chile. What
Speaker 1: we do know was when when he got there, he
Speaker 1: was met by the enormous two thousand and eleven Chilean
Speaker 1: student protests, which then later turned into the twenty thirteen
Speaker 1: Chilean student protests, which turned into the two thousand and
Speaker 1: fifteen Chilean student protests, which turned into two thousand and
Speaker 1: nineteen Chilian student protests. So you know, I mean, I
Speaker 1: just I just want to like you. It is possible
Speaker 1: to run Paul Vallas out of your country. A couple
Speaker 1: of different places, or at least your school jests were
Speaker 1: also a country. A couple of places have done it.
Speaker 1: And then after that they s ended up Bridgeport, Connecticut
Speaker 1: for some reason, where he gets run out after doing
Speaker 1: like he gets he flees Connecticut, like trying to escape
Speaker 1: a lawsuit about all the illegal anti union stuff that
Speaker 1: he did. I really love the image of someone trying
Speaker 1: to desperately flee from Connecticut. Yeah, like it's so small.
Speaker 1: How how hard is it to leave Connecticut? It seems
Speaker 1: pretty easy. Tone, I mean, the one the video I
Speaker 1: actually want to see is him getting out of Philly.
Speaker 1: See see getting out of Philly sounds actually hard getting
Speaker 1: out of just Connecticut, Like come on, come on, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the video I want to suse him getting sent back
Speaker 1: to Haiti by himself. Oh god. Yeah. So he runs
Speaker 1: again into fourteen. Sogovis gets arrested for you know, selling
Speaker 1: a Senate seat, and he tries to run for lieutenant
Speaker 1: governor on on a slate, on like a ticket with
Speaker 1: Pat Quinn who had been the governor because he'd been
Speaker 1: the lieutenant governor Undergoish, and they like, actually they managed
Speaker 1: to lose in Illinois to a Republican, which is like
Speaker 1: a think that should not happen unless a Democrats would
Speaker 1: like really fuck up, which I mean it happens, right,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, socrats can make can make electoral mistakes.
Speaker 1: Are you sure to be fair? To be fair? This
Speaker 1: one wasn't. This wasn't even an electoral thing. This was
Speaker 1: just the guy tries to sell a fucking Senate sea.
Speaker 1: People were so add it into the next election, They're
Speaker 1: like we will vote for Bruce Rowner, who is just
Speaker 1: like a fucking absolute dipshit. But okay, so she So
Speaker 1: he has now lost two consecutive runs for governor, right
Speaker 1: governor and lieutenant governor. Now this year he actually he
Speaker 1: would he had another bid where he was maybe gonna run,
Speaker 1: and then he stopped. And now now he is one
Speaker 1: of the candidates for the mayor of Chicago. Now while
Speaker 1: he's been doing his campaigning for this, some other fun
Speaker 1: stuff has been happening. Um, so he has an absolutely
Speaker 1: unlistenable podcast past Please no. I considered pulling clips from this,
Speaker 1: and then I was like, I'm not. I can't inflict
Speaker 1: this on you. Absolutely it sucks. Yeah, I would simply
Speaker 1: leave this zoom call. I'm not. I was gonna like,
Speaker 1: I was gonna talk about one of the things that
Speaker 1: he said a couple of things that he well, okay,
Speaker 1: one that he said on this one of they said
Speaker 1: on a different show. One of the things was he
Speaker 1: starts ranting about this thing called culturally responsive teaching, which
Speaker 1: is this kind of liberal like anti racist. Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a big thing. Like if anyone ever starts talking
Speaker 1: about culturally responsive teaching and starts yelling about it like
Speaker 1: they're a racist, like that those are the only people
Speaker 1: who like actually like consistently. I mean like it's not
Speaker 1: like there art criticisms of it, but like almost everyone
Speaker 1: who talks about this on like a school board level
Speaker 1: is like a really weird racist guy. So she starts
Speaker 1: raving about how this means that everyone's gonna get handed
Speaker 1: a copy of Mao's Little Red Book and then says, quote,
Speaker 1: what is this the cultural revolution? Now? We have covered
Speaker 1: the cultural revolution over the course of the show in
Speaker 1: the Atlanta episodes, and I'm just gonna simply say no
Speaker 1: and move on to read this unbelievably racist thing that
Speaker 1: he said. I'm just gonna read this. It's it's real bad.
Speaker 1: But for that matter, if you're a black child, you
Speaker 1: go home and listen to your parent when your parent
Speaker 1: has failed to be successful in addressing the ways these
Speaker 1: historically racist obstacles that have denied them a chance to
Speaker 1: equal opportunity. Here's the guy he's talking to, Paul. I wonder,
Speaker 1: if you're a black kid, why don't you become a
Speaker 1: criminal if you're hearing this stuff in school, everyone with
Speaker 1: the white skin is an oppress. Or if you're a
Speaker 1: black skin. You're the oppressed. That makes it pretty easy
Speaker 1: to justify any pretty bad conduct in in my opinion,
Speaker 1: you're absolutely right. So this is valence comes back. But
Speaker 1: what you're also doing, you're giving these you're giving people
Speaker 1: an excuse for bad behavior. You're almost justifying is Rams
Speaker 1: book in Fox. So you're right, You're absolutely right. Where
Speaker 1: is the accountability, you're the victim. What's happening is it
Speaker 1: becomes a justification for everything, and I think that's a
Speaker 1: very dangerous thing. So Vas arguing that talking about racism
Speaker 1: is actually a thing that encourages black people to do crime,
Speaker 1: which is like that that sounds kind of racist, may
Speaker 1: just a little bit he maybe with supremisist gives up
Speaker 1: racist vibes. Yeah. Um, So, speaking of racist vibes, his
Speaker 1: son is a cop in Santa Fe and he was
Speaker 1: one of three cops who shot a black guy in
Speaker 1: the back after calling him boy. Um. The cops, including
Speaker 1: Vast Yeah, they start screaming boy at him and they
Speaker 1: shoot him in the back. And the cops, including val
Speaker 1: As his son, claimed to have found a gun next
Speaker 1: to his body. Um. And in a completely unrelated story,
Speaker 1: US Special Forces units in Afghanistan ricchie Lee carried a
Speaker 1: K forty sevens in the combat zone so they could
Speaker 1: drop the next to the body of people they killed
Speaker 1: Ridge and declared them insurgents. This has no relation to
Speaker 1: the previous story at all. I am simply relaying facts
Speaker 1: two interesting and unrelated stories. Yeah, didn't. Valis also is
Speaker 1: he's the guy who claimed his Twitter was hacked? Right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, so very way back at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this episode, I talked a bit about the racism
Speaker 1: against Looie Lightfoot and like one of the tweets that
Speaker 1: he liked is a tweet like calling Laura man like
Speaker 1: Lord life Foot a man like it's just unbelievably racist,
Speaker 1: like homophobic, transphobic shit. And he claims that his account
Speaker 1: was hacked and people were liking tweets without his permission. Yeah, right,
Speaker 1: that's all they did. They just liked some racist streets.
Speaker 1: There's like a bunch of other like and the other thing.
Speaker 1: It's like, okay, Like Paul Bells doesn't like actually live
Speaker 1: in Chicago. You mentioned this. He lives in Like, he
Speaker 1: claims to live in Polo's Heights, which is also not Chicago,
Speaker 1: but it's unclear whether he even lives there. Or if
Speaker 1: he's in like some kind of like even more insane
Speaker 1: outlying suburb that's even less Chicago than the stuff is
Speaker 1: and he like, he likes, he likes. He one of
Speaker 1: the things he likeing tweets calling it like shit cago
Speaker 1: and stuff, and it's like, well, yeah, it's because he
Speaker 1: doesn't live in the city. He's not actually like these
Speaker 1: are like a bunch of his support, a bunch of
Speaker 1: the money he's getting, or from like drained suburban like reactionaries.
Speaker 1: And Okay, so I want to tell one last story
Speaker 1: about him that pisses me off a lot, which is
Speaker 1: the story of a Wake Illinois. So Awake Illinois is
Speaker 1: like Illinois's version of Protect Texas Kids. It's a group
Speaker 1: that does Nazi protests at drag events. They managed to
Speaker 1: destroy a bakery called Uprising for trying to hold a
Speaker 1: drag bunt brunch so that they Awake did all this
Speaker 1: thing of like, ah, they're grooming kids, and then the
Speaker 1: Proud Boys showed up and attacked it, and then someone
Speaker 1: like vandalized it and they nearly had to close the
Speaker 1: entire bakery until a go fund me raised thirty thousand
Speaker 1: dollars for them to survive. They are like, these people
Speaker 1: are unbelievably homophobic. They rant about groomers constantly. They're like
Speaker 1: really transphobic. Anyways, Paul Vallis spoke at one of their fundraisers.
Speaker 1: Oh god, So after this came out, Vallis distanced himself
Speaker 1: from the group, saying you didn't know what they represented
Speaker 1: and just wanted to support school choice. AWAKE responded by going, hey,
Speaker 1: what the fuck, You absolutely know who we are, and
Speaker 1: they released another video of Vallis and another AWAKE event
Speaker 1: where he said that AWAKES president Shannon Adcox should run
Speaker 1: for governor. So if elected, would I probably be the
Speaker 1: most openly homophobic democratic like mayor in the country, which
Speaker 1: is a pretty wild like which is pretty wild claim,
Speaker 1: but like I can't think of anyone else who actually
Speaker 1: like showed up at an event where people just screaming
Speaker 1: about groomers. Like yeah, and of the Democrats, he is
Speaker 1: just a Republican, Like he's he's like like a pre
Speaker 1: right wing like Republican who runs the Democrat because Chicago
Speaker 1: political machine is also just so far right. I thought
Speaker 1: this was because low Lightfoot defounded the police. Mayor. Oh,
Speaker 1: I thought that's what happened. And people want the police back.
Speaker 1: That's what That's what I that's what I've sold. You know.
Speaker 1: The thing is actually very funny about the elections is like,
Speaker 1: so there is elections for these like police district councils
Speaker 1: are just supposed to be these like civilian oversight boards
Speaker 1: and the like reform. There's kind of there was an
Speaker 1: alliance to sort of like reform defund and abolitionist candidates,
Speaker 1: and they did fucking amazing and the pro police candidate
Speaker 1: got fucking Clawbard. And it mean, while every single national
Speaker 1: story about the Hill action was like Chicago crime, I
Speaker 1: was like, you guys don't understand how much everyone here
Speaker 1: hates the police, Like I like, they murdered a thirteen
Speaker 1: year old like fucking two years ago. I yeah, good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna hedge my thing here by saying
Speaker 1: there's so much other Paul Valle shit, I couldn't fit.
Speaker 1: Like I really wanted to talk about Keith Thornton, who
Speaker 1: is Chicago's George Santos, who like his thing is that
Speaker 1: he stole nine to eleven dispatcher Valor and is like
Speaker 1: keep showing up in pictures with vallis just just Google
Speaker 1: Keith Thornton and you will have a good time. Like,
Speaker 1: there are so many other Vallis things that he did
Speaker 1: that are awful. There are probably things that he's done
Speaker 1: that we'll never know about because he did them in
Speaker 1: like I don't know, like like what the fuck he
Speaker 1: was doing in Chile. We probably won't ever know all
Speaker 1: the things he didn't hate e U. Yeah, don't let
Speaker 1: this guy become the fucking mayor of Chicago. He will
Speaker 1: leave the city utterly destroyed. Let's go Brandon. I I'm
Speaker 1: so annoyed that people are on ironically, let's go brandon
Speaker 1: ing in Chicago now for Brandon Johnson. It's bringing it back.
Speaker 1: We're taking it back. We were reclaiming it. I reclaim Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm so bad like bringing Brandon back. Okay, I got
Speaker 1: in trouble with my boss in twenty fifteen for saying
Speaker 1: fuck Hillary, like you fucking little bitches. You could just
Speaker 1: you can just say that. You you could just say
Speaker 1: fuck Joe Biden, like all of you are cowards. Yes
Speaker 1: it was. It is deeply cowardly afraid of saying fuck.
Speaker 1: But at the same time they think they're gonna staged
Speaker 1: an armed overthrow of the government anyway. Oh there's actually okay,
Speaker 1: this is the thing I actually should mention. There are
Speaker 1: a bunch of ties between um, there are a bunch
Speaker 1: of ties between Vallas and guys who were at J
Speaker 1: six like and like a lot of Jay Sax people
Speaker 1: support him. He's like, he's like he is the MAGA candidate.
Speaker 1: That's like there's like, oh, there's a whole thing there
Speaker 1: that I didn't get into because I don't know. There's
Speaker 1: so much you could do, like seven episodes just about
Speaker 1: Paul Vallas and how much he sucks. But yeah, stop
Speaker 1: him if if he fucking gets elected. We're doing that.
Speaker 1: We're doing that. We're doing the fucking Chileans student protests
Speaker 1: because yeah, hate him. Opie has a bad day. It
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