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The [Tuesday] PapersHow funny that Bill Daley tries to leverage the (tarnished) halo of Barack Obama in his announcement of a run for governor - or at least in the formation of an exploratory committee, which both gives him an out and allows him to start raising money. Here it is:
* I don't believe I've ever seen Bill Daley without a tie. But he's just a regular guy like us now. * If Daley actually follows through with this run - still an "if" in my book - he may hurt a Lisa Madigan bid not so much in splitting the anti-Quinn vote but in simply turning off voters faced with choosing between a Daley and a Madigan. Without Bill in the race, Lisa looks a little fresher. * Bruce Rauner has already amended his rhetoric and is campaigning against the Quinn-Madigan-Daley machine - the same machine that got his daughter into Payton. * If it came down to Rauner vs. Daley, which I highly doubt it will, Illinois would have a choice between a private equity specialist and a banker. * Mr. Daley, Rahm Emanuel says your brother really screwed up Chicago, and you were his chief advisor during that time. Did you screw up Chicago or is Rahm just plain wrong? * Also: NAFTA, JPMorgan. * The Bill Daley chief of staff narrative. * Bill Daley on his nephew R.J. Vanecko: "He's basically a good kid." Did you ever encourage him to cooperate with police, then? You know, appeal to his basic good nature? A dead kid's mother would have liked some answers. - Shoot, Aim, Ready "The plan comes less than a month after the Board of Education voted to shut down 50 public schools, mostly on the South and West sides of the city." So CPS decided to close scores of schools before even drafting a 10-year facilities plan and then after the fact produced a five-year educational plan. (If you can call it that, because it reads more like a McKinsey slidedeck.) Backwards, much? * "[B]oard member Mahalia Hines said just having a plan down on paper gets everyone on the same page. "I think that my favorite part is that we actually have a plan that I can get my hands around," Hines said. Hines has been on the board for two years. * As she was voting to close 54 schools, Hines was heard on a live mic saying "I don't even want to talk to the press. Once this is over, I'm out." One of the "pillars' of the new CPS plan is transparency. * In its story about the plan, the Trib soft-pedaled this nugget: "Last week, the Tribune reported that enrollment figures for students from schools being closed may have been inflated because some school officials had signed up students without parental approval. Byrd-Bennett said the district 'found little or no evidence of that.'" So Byrd-Bennett investigated? And what were the findings exactly? What constitutes "little?" Because the Trib reported actual real people doing what is alleged. And those people were told to take those actions by higher-ups. "If, in fact, there is any evidence that someone wanted to inflate their numbers or do something that was inappropriate and without direction from this team, we'll do course correction and move forward," she told the paper's editorial board. But the Tribune provided evidence right there in its report. And you just said you found little or no evidence yourself, yet now it sounds like you didn't even investigate! * Over at the Sun-Times, education reporter Lauren FitzPatrick expressed frustration with the staged roll-out of the new plan:
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* And yet, here are the first six paragraphs of her story, under the extremely charitable headline "Byrd-Bennett Wants To Get CPS Students Prepared For College:" Within weeks of confirming the closure of a record 50 Chicago Public Schools, the schools chief unveiled some details of an ambitious five-year plan to get the city's students prepared for college. It falls to the second half of the story for some truths to be delivered, placing them as secondary and in the form of "critics" carping about the narrative Byrd-Bennett has been allowed to put in place. The plan was short on specifics and devoid of any discussion on how a school system struggling to erase a $1 billion shortfall without pension relief can afford to do anything new, let alone bankroll Byrd-Bennett's "five pillars." With some tweaking, that could be the lead: "Chicago schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett continued her carefully stage-managed victory tour Monday by introducing a new five-year plan long on the jargon of corporate consulting and scant on detail - like how to pay for it - while largely avoiding reporters even as she touted "transparency" as one of the district's new values." Isn't that a more accurate representation of what happened? * The end seems to be Fran Spielman's contribution to the story - though, again, with tweaking, it could be the lead: Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who championed many of the initiatives comprising the plan, is a master of message control and media packaging who attempts to sell his plans as new, even when they're not. But here's the thing: Rahm can only be a master of message control and media packaging if the media goes along with him. You're the one he's controlling! The end result is basically writing a story as if it came out of Rahm's PR shop and then declaring at the end that "We've been had because he's really good at this." * Sarah Karp's report for Catalyst sets a more sober tone - and appears under the headline "Education Plan: Big On Ideas, Short On Money:" For the first time since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took over CPS, his CEO laid out an education plan, calling for high academic standards, more focus on parental engagement and greater accountability for the district, including an annual scorecard. Click through for the rest of her examination. * Finally . . . oh hell, don't get me started. Here's Carol Marin giving Byrd-Bennett an easy 10-minute ride, a segment just slightly longer than the 8:49 spent on the Blackhawks after it. CPS knows it can always find a safe harbor at WTTW. * How in the world that constituted an interview as opposed to hosting an official's talking points is beyond me. - The NSA Black Hole Toews And Kane Chicago's Door & Prince's Protege It's Just Kids Playing A Game, Badly Beast Of Burden - The Beachwood Tip Line: Not a game. Posted on June 11, 2013 |
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