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Tuesday Morning News

Thanks for the Tafoya report. (I shared a classroom with his Dad, Bernie Sr., at Amundsen High School for years, by the way). It's nice we're finally seeing some major media attempts to put this "death list" scam into perspective.

Not only does Mayor Daley try (with the assistance of both the Tribune and Sun-Times) to portray this as a "school" problem, but his advocates are also using it to divert attention from the fact that under his administrations (first as State's Attorney; since as Mayor), the drug gangs have spread across more than half of Chicago.

Three years ago, the Sun-Times had the guts (once; never repeated) to note that Daley was trying to use the reading scores "good news" story to divert attention from the fact that several Chicago city workers had been busted as part of a heroin ring operating out of the Water Filtration Plant (out by Navy Pier).

Daley held a quickie press conference at Mitchell Elementary School to tout the reading scores. Flanked by Michael Scott and Arne Duncan, he prattled on and on about how things were, as usual, going "up." As usual, the Daley people had squeezed the press into the smallest possible room (the school library) after filling most of that room with a cheerleading section (which included several principals and at least one AIO). The goal is always to control the environment and focus on Daley's version of reality.

The "schools have gone up" event took place at around 10:00 in the morning. Fran Spielman, of the Sun-Times, was there and tried to ask Daley a question about the drug gangs operating on city property on city time. Daley's answer was amazing. He said that drug peddling was going on all the time and said that you could probably go a couple of blocks from where we were and find someone selling drugs! He was talking as if he were some block club Dad complaining -- not noting that as Mayor of Chicago it was his job to have stopped that activity (preferably, a decade or two earlier, as far back as when he was State's Attorney).

Even the most jaded reporters were kind of shocked at that statement. One of the cute nonentities from Fox News came in with a puffball question about how great the schools were to get Daley back on script, but to no avail. When I began to try to ask my question (about how the "reading" scores haven't really been going "up", but how the "bottom" schools were staying the same year after year after year), Jackie Heard literally ended the press conference (with the "cut" signal) in the middle of things.

As long as the major media give Daley a free pass to tell his lies over and over (most recently, Andy Shaw's silly "Tell us how wonderful your schools are Arne" questions last Monday at Englewood), these monstrosities will go on and on. Even people as corrupt as Mary Mitchell (who's self censored on the schools "miracle" stuff for more than a decade) have begun to notice that this is getting out of hand.

Drug gangs are killing, not "guns." For that matter (my favorite recent question), will Daley now go to Springfield for a ban on baseball bats, too?

The day someone does a factual report on the extent of the gang control over territory (and the long standing sorting out of the city's high schools, by People or Folks or Neutrons) and the profits from the drug sales, I'll take interest. I'll be even more interested when my colleagues do the stories on how the gangs (again, People and Folks) have such control inside both Cook County Jail and the Illinois Department of Corrections that tier and jail assignments are made on the basis of gang affiliation.

That stuff is part of the Daley administration. Those deals were made by Daley. That "terrorism" has been allowed to rule Chicago by Daley.

It's nice to know that other major cities recognize that the public schools are the victims of these murders, not the center of attention for them. Only in Chicago can the cover up be this extensive and last this long, with this many enablers (from the Sun-Times and Tribune to the Father Pflegers and other media hounds).

Tuesday Morning News

Regarding: WBBM’s report that other major school districts not reporting the number of students murdered through out the day. Bernie Tafoya missed the bigger picture, not only do school districts like NYC and LA not keep a running count of students killed, neither did Chicago until two years ago. Duncan is quoted as stating: “Other cities don’t do this, other school systems don’t do this. They sort of choose to sweep it under the rug. I refuse to do that.â€

Mr. Duncan made no decision related to this issue it was made by Mayor Daley. In fact the decision to use CPS as a major lobbying tool in the battle over gun control was made by Daley for fiscal reasons. The Chicago City Council has started to revolt over some of Daley’s obsessions. The City of Chicago spent millions of dollars bring forward litigation against a number of suburban gun shops and gun makers that case was filed in 1998, and it was finally dismissed unanimously by the Illinois Supreme Court in 2004 with the court writing: “The mere fact that defendants' conduct in their plants, offices, and stores puts guns into the stream of commerce does not state a claim for public nuisance. It is the presence and use of the guns within the city of Chicago that constitutes the alleged nuisance." In this case Daley attempted to use Cook Count Hospital claiming the guns were costing $433 million in shooting related costs.

The CPS filed at the expense of tax payers an amicus brief in a case before the US Supreme Court DC Gov v. Heller that involved that city’s highly restrictive gun laws. The argument of the CPS was that if DC’s gun laws get set aside so will Chicago’s because they are similar and more CPS student will be killed. The CPS provided no evidence in its brief as to why if the current Chicago law were struck, more CPS students would die.

Last night on PBS’s Chicago Tonight show Mr. Duncan was asked repeatedly by Carol Marin why CPS had the right to send students to Springfield as anti-gun lobbyists. Duncan simply repeated his canned reply and expressed distain for the General Assembly which rejected CPS lobbying efforts on this issue. Amazingly, never once on the entire Chicago Tonight show was the question asked: are more CPS students being killed this school year than in years past? The truth of the matter is there have been years with more students killed and years with fewer students killed. The one thing that did come out during the show, mostly due to the comments from a representative of Cease Fire, was state the most likely killer of a CPS student was another CPS student.