The [Wednesday] Papers

"Republican legislative leaders on Wednesday are expected to unveil proposals to allow Chicago Public Schools to declare bankruptcy and to put the financially struggling school district under state supervision, sources said Tuesday," the Tribune reports.

"It's the latest move as Gov. Bruce Rauner and Mayor Rahm Emanuel continue to play the blame game over CPS' $480 million budget shortfall that threatens layoffs and has led to heavy borrowing to keep the state's largest school district afloat.

"House Republican leader Jim Durkin and Senate Republican leader Christine Radogno are scheduled to unveil the proposals at a Wednesday morning news conference."

I could be wrong, but it's hard not to see this as a ham-handed negotiating tactic designed to put pressure on Emanuel and House Speaker Michael Madigan to cut a deal. The problem is that doubling down by introducing a hostile, extreme proposal is exactly the wrong thing this situation needs right now; essentially Republicans are making a threat that will almost certainly prove empty. This is a time for carrots, not sticks. Unfortunately, the governor does not seem to have that tactic - otherwise known as governing - in his toolkit.

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This tweet also adds a nice dimension to the discussion. (I'm not embedding it here because Twitter is still working on a fix for a coding change that is breaking pages on sites built a certain way, like mine. I'm assured the fix is coming; we'll see. That's why any page on this site with an embedded tweet on it right now is broken.)

To which I added this.

But I digress.

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"Declaring bankruptcy would allow the district to ditch its union contracts, which dovetails with Rauner's broader union-weakening push."

Here's the scary part: Maybe it's not a negotiating tactic at all, but what they've wanted all along. Raise Your Hand tweeted this:

"in 2012 on @wttw Chi tonight, @GovRauner said if it were up to him, he'd blow up the district and create small networks of contract scls."

You can hear it for yourself at the 10:17 mark.

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Tactic or goal, it's really not the governor's business to decide how the city of Chicago runs its schools. (Maybe he should focus on how New Trier High School is run; it wasn't good enough for his daughter, so he clouted her into . . . a Chicago public school.)

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LOL ABC7: Emanuel, Rauner Appear Optimistic About Ongoing CPS Talks.

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Irony Is Dead, Pt. 3,293,973
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel To Speak At Mayors' Meeting On Reducing Violence And Strengthening Police/Community Trust.

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See also: Rahm Emanuel Faces Wrath Of Chicago's Black Community Over Police Violence.

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