Bad Mayor Monday: Vallas X Lightfoot, a Chicago Double Feature

and James. Hello, welcome to Hell. Hi, I'm tornado free. San Diego did have a tornado warning yesterday. Luckily I'm in the ever stable Pacific Northwest where nothing bad can happen. Yeah, it's contractually contractually obligated. It says no, no no bad things, No no earthquakes here that that are overdue, no forest fires or record temperatures. It's great up there. So true.

So today we're doing a sort of special episode of Shitty Mayor Mondays, which is that we are we are doing the Chicago double feature because our previous Shitty Mayor, Lloyd Lightfoot I, managed to become the first I think I think the first Chicago mayoral candidate in forty years

who was an incumbent and lost reelection. And not only yes, she lose reelection, she went out so okay, the way the way the Chicago mayor elections have like a trillion candidates, like I think they were like nine this time, and if no one can get about fifty percent, it goes to a runoff, and she got knocked out before the runoff,

which is unbelievably funny. Um, So we're gonna talk about her first as the sort of Loyd Lifewood is sort of the shitty Chicago mayor passed, and then we're gonna talk about the maybe future shitty Chicago mayor, Paul Vallis, who sucks so much that he was the reason I specifically wanted to do this series. But first, what do you talk about fucking Lory Lightfoot, a person who I don't I don't know. I feel like people outside of

Chicago don't know much about her. Yeah, I mean I know that she's like like has gerebody failed to do all the things that he was supposed to do and in a kind of general sort of Democrat Matt model has sucked. But I'm excited to hit the specifics. Yeah, she's a super well okay, Ay. The funniest thing about her is it's just just Google pictures of her hats. She has just like an incredible hat game. It's just always appearing and just an incredible like she has so

many hats. It's it's wild. It's just every single picture she's in it's just like a random, different, wild hat. It's amazing. But she's also kind of in some sense, like a kind of uniquely incompetent politician. So okay, So Lightfoot was elected mayor in like an absolute landside in twin nineteen, and she ran this very weird campaign which it was based on sort of three main things. It was one was not being a machine candidate. And this

is actually very important, is it. Lightfoot is not actually part of the Chicago political machine that controls like most policy. Why there's there's the kind of that kind of separate parts of the machine. This is a complicated thing we're not going to fully get into here. But she's like not a machine candidate. She like kind of is an outsider in some sense um, and that was a big

part of why people voted for her. There's another thing, which is this sort of like identity tokenism thing, which is like, I'm going to be the first black, lesbian mayor of Chicago, which she is. And then the third thing she was running on was building a ship ton of police academies. Now I now, in twenty nineteen, I was in Chicago fifth election and I was like, do not fucking vote for her. She's gonna build these cop academies. And everyone was like, no, it's gonna be great. She's

not the machine she's like. So she gets elected in twenty nineteen, and this means that when she gets into office, like almost immediately, twenty twenty happens. And Okay, so no mayor has like a good response of twenty twenty. Um Lfefoot's is like catastrophic. So I've talked about this a bit at the show, But but what twenty twenty in Chicago is this really really kind of wild and weird thing.

It doesn't map onto a lot of the other sort of twenty twenties, but like the first thing that happens basically is Chicago has this thing called I think it's I think it's the Magnificent Mile. It's something milds I can remember when it was magnificent, a miracle because it's a fucking bullshit tourist thing, but it's it's like the Chicago's like it's like a mile of like really rich shopping districts, and the cops just lost control of it. Like people just took it. It was like fully looted.

It was just this, It was just this. There was this sort of incredible moments of like Chicago's working class that it'd been getting shit on for two hundred fucking years, like finally stormed their way into their pas and just the fucking Bougee part of Chicago would destroyed it and it fucking ruled. But after that happened, Lifefoot was like, oh shit, we can never let protesters get back there again.

So she started raising the fucking drawbridges that lead that lead across the fucking rivers, like she was like she basically turned the entirety of like like that that event part of Chicago into a fucking fortress that you could not get onto. Amazing. I just raised she did this,

like she raised the bridges multiple fucking times. Like we're gonna get to another story of her raising the bridges where it's like it's un like like she doesn't so many times that like even times where she claimed she didn't do it on purpose, people are like, I think she raised the bridges. This is you know, and so this is her basically when when she raises the bridges, she just like declares war basically on like half of Chicago.

And okay, so this is like not a great thing to do if if you're trying to be a popular politician, is to just like physically declare war and like do fucking medieval fortress shit to like half half your fucking city. And so her popularity starts tanking immediately. This is in like the this is I'm guessing as a consequence of the Black Lives Matter protest, right, yeah yeah, yeah yeah. So her reprover rating is like fucking absolutely dog should I think, Oh, I'm trying to find I should have

looked this up earlier. I meant to, and I forgot. I think her approve rating was like thirty percent when she left office. It might even be lower than that. Yeah, so but you know, but she she she does this kind of unique thing where she basically goes around and

alienates like every single voting block in the city. I guess before we get to this, we should get we should get to how she pissed off the cops, because one of her big things where she came into office was she was trying to sort of like do this alliance with the police. But instead of her sort of actually like forming this, you know, she she was trying

to form sort of sent a right wing bass. Right, She's trying to both sort of play this kind of like identity tokenism thing and then also build a bass with the cops. But a the cops are racist and be Okay, do you two know the story or about the Chicago Columbus statue. I don't think. Wait, is that one of the ones that got taken down? Sort of?

I think this is one of the ones that So in twenty twenty, I wrote a story about how to tear down statues and then became the guy that everybody sent pictures of statues getting torn down to for a while. So I'm sure I've seen it. Amazing. Yeah, it was great. Ben Shapira had a whole fucking seizure about it. We've got lots of trouble with various federal agencies, but yeah,

it was a very amazing story I did. Don't don't affiliate link to the ingredients to things which may or may not be illegal if you combine those ingredients in your story. So true. Yeah, yeah, many popular mechanics editors have tried this. It was great. I was on Russia today, not not with my knowledge, but yeah, tell us about this, tell us about this other statue. Me okay, So there is a giant like statue thing sitting on our like sitting on this big column that was made nineteen thirty three,

and it's it's this giant statue of Christopher Columbus. I'm also on this statue. So there there, there, there's like a series of like important Italian people like on the column. One of these things, one of the people who has picked it on this column like very much seems to be Benito Mussolini holding a bunch of fascies. Cool. Now, the sculptors, the sculptor's son denies this, but this was made nineteen thirty three. It really looks like he is

definitely holding fascies. So all right, this this statue, this is like in like the middle of the fucking city, right in like this park in the middle of the city. Um and this became the so okay so in twenty twenty.

In Chicago, the way the protests work is you have like the first initial like phase where the cops like lose control of the city, and then the cops kind of like retake it over the next few days and there's a kind of lull, but then it starts another like sort of wave of it starts back up again, like a rounds specifically around this statue, and there's this whole thing that cops are trying to keep it up, and there's this whole thing where like there's like like

rings of activists like surrounding a group of cops standing around the statue, like throwing shit at them, and it fucking ruled and eventually the city is like, Okay, we're gonna We're just gonna take down the fucking statue. And this was a lightfoot thing, but but this pissed off the cops and specifically so we talked about this before on the show, but like this is one of the sort of unique things about Chicago is that Chicago has like I guess the technical term is like white ethnic

like groups that like do shit. And one of those things is like there's like an Italian American cop association that is very powerful, and the Italian American cop Association is like, like, we will keep the statue at all costs. This is like our fucking guy, like, hey, we're yeah, and and Lightfoot is like, you guys, If you guys don't take this statue down, people are gonna fucking like burn the Miracle Mile again. And she gets to this giant fight of them, and these emails eventually get I

think I can't remember saying. I think they get released part of a court case or something, but these these emails come out that it like Lightfoot is yelling that she has the biggest balls of anyone on the table. She's gonna put her balls at the table because she's trying to like keep the cops alive. So she gets in this giant fight. It just pisses off all of the cops in the city. So she's she she has pissed off like like from from from from the initial

wave of protests at the Drawbridge stuff. She has pissed off like anyone who's even sort of vaguely centered left and anti racist and like a huge proportion of the city's black population and then she like systematically she's now pissed off like the sort of like white ethnic cop groups who are also very powerful, and then she does something like like really genuinely unforgivable and horrific, which she is. In twenty twenty one, Chicago police shot thirteen year old

Adam Toledo. She's so much Chicago paper called the tribe. At a press conference after the shooting, Mayor Louis Lightfoot out to find the people responsible for quote, putting a gun in the hands of Toledo, who Chicago police and prosecutors insisted was armed. So, okay, they shoot this kid who is fucking thirteen years old. His name is Adam Toledo, and immediately the cops of prosecutors and the mayor said that he's armed. They're going to find the person who

put the gun in his hand. So two and a half weeks later, the video comes out and it turns out that not only was Adam Toledo not armed, the cops shot him while he was while his hands were up while complying with their instructions. I think I've seen this,

buddy cam. Yeah, yeah, it's fucking awful. And then like two years, two days later they killed another guy, and there were there was, there was, there was there was another round of like huge protests, I mean, and they weren't as big as twenty twenty one, but like there was another round of like really big protests in this and Lightfoot was you know, like actively involved in a conspiracy to lie about this fucking thirteen year old kid who was killed and called blood. And so this pisses

off like this. This this like basically means that her support among like the Latino population drops to basically zero because she fucking accused a thirteen year old kid of being a gang, an armed gang member, and then he got fucking after he got shopped by the cops. So well, the other fun thing about this is so our like prosecutor Kim Fox is like there's like this whole thing about how she's like a progressive prosecutor and like the

rights trying to unseat her. None of the fucking officers involved in this or the other shooting two days later were ever charged with anything after they again it shot like killed in cold blood a thirteen year old kid

with his hands up. Now, the sort of regular Chicago right hates her because she's both black, and a lesbian and there's some like well, we'll talk about this a bit when we gets a Vallis, but there's just genuinely unhinged, horrifying sort of like racism and like homophobia, and like she's getting basically like splash damage transphobia from it because

of how racist these people are. And so but that means that like, you know, she has like no support, right she she managed to get she like she she manages to get into a fight with Chicago is like normally pretty conservative like Black Caucus and the Black Hawcus gets so pissed at her, but they forced through a police reform bill that has just like oversy committees. She's

just like win. And so you know, like on on Forbruary twenty eighth, there's an election and all of the sort of like everyone in the city of Chicago is like she's fucked Like she's a unique She's like a uniquely unpopular candidate. Everyone fucking hates her. She has systematically pissed off every single possible voting block in the entire

city of Chicago. And she loses, and you know, there's this whole sort of media junket that happens her Everyone it's like, this is like a referendum on crime in Chicago, and it's like, no, no, it's not like everyone just hates Lightfoot because she sucks, and she sucks some like a unique combination of ways that pisces off everyone who

can possibly vote in the city. And so she gets sixteen percent of the vote, which I think sixteen percent of the vote is like the actual sort of like top limit cap of the number of people in Chicago who Jenny Winely like her. Like, I think it's exactly fifteen sixty percent of the city and there's fucking no one else. So she comes in third. It's also very funny she spends the entire like a bunch of her money running campaign ads, like against the guy who comes

in fourth instead of the other two. Yeah, and so the man who came in second, who is on the by the time this episode comes out, the election will be fucking tomorrow. Um. The person who came in second in that vote is Brandon Johnson, who's the progressive candidate. He's backed by like the teachers Union. He's like fine, he is like as good as you're going to get for a mayor. Oh though I will remind people that like Johnston is say much better candidate the other fucking

guy we're gonna talk about. But i we need to talk about a little bit about the limits of electoral politics, and like, you know, I'm I'm just gonna point out here if that like Nepal, for example, of routinely elects Maoist governments and like, do you know, how do you know how much Baoism those guys do, Like fucking nun, there is no Maoism happening, right. There were some cool socialist mayors in Spain who led the population of the city to expropriate the landowners around the city in the

nineteen thirties. Yeah, but that was in the nineteen thirties, is about twenty Those are old. Most people's fucking grandchildren are like maybe around. But yeah, like you're you're not gonna get you know, like we're not going to get a socialist city off of this. On the other hand, the person who comes in first, who Brandon Johnson will be facing tomorrow when you listen to this, is a demon in human form. He is near your liberal lives

as a bag man. He is the fucking reactionary republican dog of the Chicago political machine, and that Manton's name is Paul Vallis, and as as as Vallis would fucking want, we are going to talk about him after we go to ADS. All Right, we're back from ADS. We're here to talk about Paul Vallis. Just the worst guy. Okay, So Paul Vallis sucks ass, um. The thing he's most famous for sucking ass for is for being the school

privatization guy. So we're gonna start with him. The beginning of a sort of political career is in two thou In nineteen ninety five, he gets appointed as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools, and he holds that position from nineteen ninety five to two thousand and one. Now, okay, so there's a few things that he like, really likes. One is insulating schools entirely, insuletting any mechanism and any sort of like part of how a school works from

any kind of community democratic control. Chicago used to have these sort of like democratic councils that could like do stuff within the school and violence is like, fuck that, We're getting rid of all that shit, like absolutely not. The other thing he loves is charter schools. So we

should explain what a charter school is. Yeah, so okay, the way a charter school works is that instead of like the state or like the city or a town or like a local government running a school, which is the way that schools normally work, you instead give out a charter to either like technically an NGO or just a for profit company, and then that company takes a bunch of tax money, like takes a tax money that would have gone to a public school and then uses

it to run their own fucking school. So bait like it is. It is privatization that they've relabeled like charter quote unquote because if they actually called it privatization to schools, people would fucking hate it. And Vallis loves this shit. This is this is what he spends most of his time across like on multiple continents doing schools bullshit, like attempting to push for the other specific thing that he really likes this and this this is like this is

sort of the Paul Vallas signature. Like classic thing is military academies. They used to like basically not be military academies in Chicago, and Vallas is like, We're gonna open so many fucking military academies and these are these are like regular and the thing is okay, like there are sort of like disciplinary quote unquote military academies, which is like you get sent there instead of prison. These are like just like normal schools that are like quote unquote

military academies. But these schools like they're they're barely schools. Like like there there there. There are a lot of people who went to these schools who in multiple cities. And we'll get into more of this sort of later when we get to Philly, but like people will go to these schools and like their textbooks have pages torn

out of them and like which page Smith? You know, here's the thing, right, you would think this is like like a kind of like Republican style, like uh, we're taking out the pages to talk about like Columbus being bad Like no, no, no no, no, just random fucking like just pages torn out of it because they like these schools on any fucking money, Like they don't have actually curriculu. There's like they just like don't have sports. They just don't have like anything to fucking do. Um. And then

this is another thing with charter schools. So all right, if you want to like be a regular teacher, you have to have like teaching teaching certificates, all right, if you work at a charter school. Yeah. So I think that the standards depend on the state some of them. I think Illinois is like two thirds of the teachers

have to have teaching certificates. But that means that a lot of kids are being taught by teachers with no teaching certificates, which is like, you know that teaching and it turns out is not in fact easy enough that you could just put a random person there who doesn't know how to do it, and you know, like have kids be taught correctly. Ademies, these Milter academies, they have teachers who just like don't fucking teach right, like they're

they're they're just a complete shit show. But he opens a bunch of these and but okay, and the other big thing the Vallas is supposed to and this is the thing all all the people who like Fallois would do this thing where they're like he's like a budget wizard, and he's like the guy he's like the technocrat, like smart policy want guy who you bring in to like like bail out a school district that's underwater financially and

oh boy, oh boy, is that not true? He Okay, So there there's there's a very good report called Passing the Buck, which is written by the Action Center on Race in the Economy or ACRE, which I recommend people. Look, genuinely, people should go read this. It's like twelve pages long. It's very short, and like, uh, like it's not even twelve like three of those pages dissertations. And they wrote

a report on Vallis's time in various school districts. And here's some of the ship that he did to make it look like he had his balanced, his budget balanced. So all right, let's let's talk about his pension scheme. I feel like I actually should explain how pensions work,

because like, nobody fucking has them anymore. So a pension is a thing where like you, the worker, or in this case the Chicago teachers, you take some of your current pay and instead of taking the money now, it gets taken out of your paycheck and put towards a pension fund to fund your retirement. And then this fund is invested in the stock market to get returns to

pay out pensions that like support you when you retire. Right, Yeah, So in nineteen ninety nine, Vallis was like, oh, hey, the Chicago pension system is funded, so we're gonna take the teacher's money and use it to pay other budget shortfalls. Great, so this is good. Anyways, after he does this for for thirteen consecutive years, Chicago stops paying into its pension system altogether, and the result of this is a nine point six billion dollar hole in the pension system that

Chicago has to like pay off. And this is a huge part of like where are the sort of modern like budget deficits in Chicago come from, like things that are used to like justify shutting schools down. Is that like they just didn't pay into this. They just stop paying into the pensions, and the stead took the money that they're supposed to go to teachers and use it to like make their budgets look clean. So if he if he had just done this, it would have been

bad enough. But but vallas Is like is a very very specific kind of like neoliberal techniccrat dipshit. And that kind of neoliberal technicrat dipshit is the the extremely interested in financial instruments guy who was like a kind of person that I think I think we see less of these days because the most not the modern version of

this or like crypto people. Right, but back in like the nineties and two thousands, there were a bunch of guys whose things were like really really conflbuted financial instruments, and everyone thought they were fucking geniuses. Um now, now if if you if you were alive in two thousand and eight, you know where this is going. But vallis the second thing he does to sort of like like quote unquote balance his budget sheet is he takes out the government equivalent of a payday loan. So here's here's

a passing the buck. Quote. Vallas literally borrowed against Chicago school children's futures when he took out a six hundred and sixty six million dollars in capital appreciation bonds. Also when I said, he was like like a demon sixty six million dollars with the satanic loud. Yeah, yeah, we're doing this satanic panic but for this guy who fucking sucks.

So yeah, you took out the loans and capital appreciation bonds a form of debt in which the borrower pays nothing for several years but then has to pay very large sums to make up for skipped payments. A capital appreciation bonds a b is a long term bond with compounding interest on which the borrower is not permitted to make any principal or interest payments for many years, but the interest still. Yeah, crazy, but you're not allow Why would we Why would you take that? Why would you?

Why would you do that? That seems like a really bad decision. Oh, it's a terrible it's a terrible decision. I'm not a big sunny guy. The Valis's assumption was that like, Okay, we don't have any money now, but property values will continue to go up and just keep going up forever, so we can pay this bond back when we have money from higher from property taxes. And yeah, so okay, I really if I'm gonna finish this thing

on these these just dogshit bonds. In this way, it is similar to a negative amortization mortgage, in which the outstanding principle actually grows over time because the unpaid interest gets tacked onto the amount owed and compounds. Yeah. Very Amusingly, California was doing something similar to this with with restitution payments recently, or some some place in California were at least In one case that I looked into for a story I wrote, it was it was ruled illegal under

the Eighth Amendment. Oh my god, a cruel and unusual interest payments. It's good to see the Chicago he's doing it. Yeah, there's actually a funny story about this that, like one of the size stories of this is that the guy who's running the school system in California like gets this same offer from like bond salesman people, and he's like, no, what the fuck. This is the dumbest thing I've ever seen. But Vallas does this. Vallas is going to do this

in multiple cities. So I'm gonna finish reading this thing. Because of the structure, borrowers often end up paying extraordinarily high interest rates over the lifetime of the bonds. Former California State Treasurer Bill Lockney called CIAB is the school district equivalent of a pain a loan. So the result of this is that out of the six hundred and sixty six point two million dollars right that Valas takes out,

they pay one point five billion dollars in interest. The interest rate over the lifetime of this bond is two hundred and twenty three percent good. This is the guy who's supposed to be like the really smart tychn crap reformer guy who understands financial stuff, who you bring into

like solve school districts. And he took out a load with two hundred and twenty three percent fucking interest is this is the kind of interest rate then, in the words of David Graber, were once reserved for organized crime, and now is you know normally normally this kind of loan. He's like a thing. It's like this is like a very predatory sort of like yeah, it's like a predatory

banking thing. Valis think this to himself on purpose because he's dumb, and I mean also like he's trying to I mean and part of part of the other sort of undercaracter this, it's not just that he's really stupid, it's that he's trying to pay off his buddies in

the in the finance sector. Yeah, and then you know there is the other part of the story, right, It's like all of these all these school districts just get fucking looted to pay off these like fucking stupid ass hedge funds, and then he just bounces somewhere else and leaves him people with it. Yeah, and you know, so I talked a bit earlier about how, like valais Is assumption on these bonds was like, well, we'll be fine because well, the housing markets will keep going up forever.

But then two thousand it happens, and this has a bunch of effects. One of the big ones is that Vallas was taking out bonds with variable interest rates. Oh no, no, okay, we have talked about this on this show before. Right, there are entire country they are like entire like like multi national political movements that don't exist. There are entire

countries who fucking don't have manufacturing checkers anymore. Like there are there are places where the life expectancy felled by twenty years because they're they're they're fucking leaders took out these kind of like variable interest rate loans and got de strobe in the interest rate spikes and guess what happened in Chicago interest rate spikes And okay, so Vallas's successors look at this and are like, this is the

stupidest fucking you know. Well, but okay, Valles's success by the way, is Artie Duncan, who's the guy that Obama puts in charge of of the Department of Education, and Arnie Duncan is like, Okay, do you know how we're going to solve the problem of these the the the risk from these adjustable rate interest rates credit default swaps? Oh god, So all right, I'm not going to explain how a credit default swap works because it's fucking annoying

as hell. But credit default swaps are one of the things, like one of the very specific financial instruments that are that are like specifically responsible for the two thousand and eight collapsed. Yes, and now these technically aren't credit default swaps, right, These these are technically what are called interest default swap or like interest swaps, and they're but they're exactly the same thing as a credit as a credit default swap,

but instead of credit as interest. So the underlying asset, right is like as a bond and not like a loan or whatever. But otherwise it's exactly the same thing. And this this man, you know, and these these swaps have this thing where like if you can't pay you get these like unbelievably high like fees that start happening. So when when these bonds blow up, they managed to cost they managed to cost Chicago another thirty one million dollars because they're credit default swap. He just blew up.

So all right, so this has a two thousand and two and two thousand and two, he ran for governor or against Rob fucking Blogoyevich. Who is Robbo? Who is rob a Bligoiovich? You just did the first syllable and then let your let to take the rest. And Vala sucks so much that Rob Lugoyevich is able to outflank him on the left bye bye bye, running against him saying, hey,

look at all these schools he privatized. And so he gets claw bared in the primaries by Rob fucking b the man who okay, so this is what we will cover this one day fully on the show because it's really funny. But Rob Lagoievic is the man most famous for getting arrested for trying to sell Obama's Senate seat, like he tried to sell a Senate Oh he's Oh, he's amazing. He's now just on Tucker talking about political persecution.

Oh yeah, yeah's extremely funny. Oh yeah he was on yesterday, wasn't he Yeah yeah yeah Trump, Yeah, how he was persecuted first, and now Trump is being persecuted. It's amazing, It's great, really, really the canary in the coal mine of hey grifting politicians. Look, Garrison, look if they if they can go after Rob Lay trying to sell Obama Senate seat, they could go after you for trying to

sell Barack Obama Senate seat. That's true. You know who else is trying to sell Barack Obama Senate seat products and services that support this very podcast. No, they're really not allowed to do that. None of them would ever commit a crime I under any circumstances. I still think I think a fair number of these corporations probably engage in some some sort of political lobby. Yeah, that's true, But I don't trying to buy him a Senate seat, Garrison.

That's totally different, different, the same, the same, totally fine. Thanks Ronald Reagan. All right, we're back, and we're now we're we're now, we're now sending Vallas too, are I don't I don't actually know if Chicago and Philadelphia or sister cities, but like I think they should be. I don't know. I am I am very in favor of the Chicago Philadelphia Alliance. Same vibe. Yeah, so they both stood in for Gotham City in the Christopher Nolan trilogy.

So I'm doing a Bagman reference again. There's there's a whole. There are like so many different specific there. David Grabber writes about this, like there there are so many different like parts of places where they filmed, like the Dark Night where people tried to protest and got arrested for blocking the road. Like this happened in multiple cities. Yeah. No one wants the city to turn into la So you have to stand up against that shit immediately. You

do not let it happen in your hood. Yeah, it could, it could happen here. Okay, So after Vallas gets clabbered in in in the mayoral race, she gets brought in by Philadelphia to try to like fix their school system.

And he, uh, excuse me. His planning to do this is by doing a bunch of military academies again and then doing also doing charter schools, and so I should I should explain like his other sort of so the big sort of rationale thing behind charter schools, this school choice, which is this thing that was specifically invented as a way to let race his parents avoid integration. Yeah, this is like goes along with Sody mentioned the homeschooling when

we've talked about this in other episodes. But he's like a huge like Valist to this day is a giant like school choice guy. Um. And you know, but the other thing, the other thing about Valist, I don't think people realize that much he even though he's a Republican a lot of the time, like he kind of flips back and forth being a Democrat being a Republican. But he's he's like after he loses to rob or even even sort of before that, like he is an actual

sort of Chicago machine guy. And because he's a Chicago machine guy when he gets into the stuff that he starts doing the stuff where he like he'll just like like he takes over the school district and like fires much people and like installs his cronies and all these departments and all these people are getting like he's like buying off people with budget allocations, and he starts selling off buildings to raise money. So he sells off like the district headquarters in order to buy like a more

expensive district headquarters. And here's a quote from the book Not Paid For Us, which is a really really great book about sort of the history of racism in education in Philadelphia. And this is a quote from a long time activist Lee Roy Simmons before I start reading this. The district headquarters was called twenty first and Parkway. There was doors in twenty first and Parkway worth one million dollars,

then big brass doors in the fronts. Those doors were worth one million dollars with all the carving on them. People don't know how much they got for it. To this day, I can't get an answer about how much did you sell that building for where the money went. The school district sold twenty first and Parkway in a package with Kennedy Center. There were brand new trucks parked at Kennedy Center. They had forgot were there. There was a printing press in the Kennedy Center that could print

all new magazines and they never used. There were books and calculators and every time it went through there there were boxes of unused stuff in the Kennedy Center and nobody knew. And they sold that in the contents and the package with twenty first of Parkway, and nobody knew how much that was. There was some art that was priceless on the walls at twenty first of Parkway. No one can find the art. There were priceless pieces of art hanging in schools across the city and all that

was sold in a package and nobody saw where it went. Yeah, so like and this is this is again, this is like this is classic Chicago corruption ship, right, Like we're not gonna say how much we sold this building for. We're not gonna say who who we sold it too, Like we're gonna build a more expensive building. And you know, if you look into it, you look into who the contractors are as like always someone's uncle or like brother

or some shit. Um, there's just you know, like there's printing presses that are gone, like priceless works of art just vanished. It's like this is this is like you know, it's sort of incredible sort of Chicago political machine stuff. Um. And this gets into what I think about I think the Chicago political machine that is really interesting, which is that these people are like, on the one hand, they're unbelievably corrupt. On the other hand, a lot of them

are sort of real like hardline like doctrinaire neoliberals. This is I mean, this is sort of the thing with Arnie Duncan, right, Like like Obama actually comes out of this machine too, when he's a lot more sort of like doctrinaire about this stuff than the sort of modern people are. And you know, and Valis is like one of the sort of like big guys here, and you know, so he's really really in favor of charter schools and

so they get enormous amounts of money. Um, he also does this thing he yeah, this is also from not paid for Us. He funnels money into just like a ship ton of NGOs in order to like do education programming or whatever. And so there's a sort of constellation forms of these like you have you these corporations doing like education stuff or like running schools, and you have these like nonprofits running like the like the education material.

And it's it's this sort of like this this is sort of arch neoliberal thing where instead of the state administering a service, what you have is this like based basically a bunch of like contracting grifters who come in and suck up all of the money and then provide absolutely dogshit services. Now I'm going to read another quote

from this book. Because the people they are paying these contracts who are fucking wild on the SRC is like one of the bodies that's in charge of, like one of the state bodies as in charge of, like the

Philadelphia School District. One of the SRC's most problematic contracts was with K twelve Inc. For three million dollars to quote, provide academic and curriculum support, access to K twelves online curriculum and assessments, academic enrichment via summer and extended day programs, professional development, teacher planning and rending materials, and community involvement activities.

Conservative radio talk show host William Bennett was the founder of KG twelve, Inc. He had been an adviser to former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush Durin a show in two thousand and five, he said the following, and this is a direct quote. If you want to reduce crime, you could, if that was your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and wray reprehensible thing to do, but your

crime weight would go down. So they peeled this guy three million fucking dollars to both of VAL's pro choice credentialssume. This is this is the most pro choice thing I've ever seen from him, is the genocide guy because the eugenics guy. Yeah yeah, well you see, they all have a have a weakness. That is, has anyone looked to the curriculum that that providing. I'm serious the thing it's unclear to me that they ever, like actually really provided

much of anything. It does sound like a like if you were going to make up a company to grift at the education system, K twelve Inc. Would be a great name. Yeah, And then that's that's the thing about like all these charter schools too, right. It's like like, okay, so like there are some for profit corporations you do charter school stuff, and they stick in the charter school business because they decide that's how they want to make

their money. A lot of these things come in, take a state contract, the school immediately implodes and then leave and then they just walk out with self a million dollars. And this is like this is a recurring pattern over

and over again with charter schools. He also brings in Teach for America, who is this like just genuinely evil organization that tries to break teachers unions by recruiting these like incredibly idealistic and naive young college grads and like throwing them into like into failing schools as this thing to like, Ah, you're gonna like go serve the community and like you know, you're you'll learn on the job and you'll you'll become an educator and you're like helping

these disadvantaged kids. And it's a disaster. These these these people, the people who do this have no fucking idea how to teach because they you know, they don't have teachers ever, gets right, They're just like college grads and at any any of you who have been around college grads, like you think those people are responsible enough to fucking teach kids, Like Jesus Christ, Yeah, I meant of that was like

a big thing. Like I don't know if it still happens or not, like I remember, right, yeah, reference letters for students like ten fifteen years ago for that. Yeah, Like I I mean, I know, I had to like talk out classmates of mine like out of doing it, because we were like you are doing you are doing union busting and also this will destroy your life and the life of the children you have to teach. Yeah,

it's a very strange system that. Yeah, take someone who by virtue of having any degree, it's automatically an educator. But to be fair, that is how universities work as well. Yeah, you get get your master's degree in and they're like, well fuck it, get in there. They'll just give you grad students with no degrees, right, Like that's that's the

thing too. Yeah, but yeah, yeah, and you know to to to to to get out together into those kinds of Like the other thing that's happening here is is he has this really valas has this really really racist kind of like we need to like enforce discipline in schools thing. And so they have all these and this happens to Chicago too, that have these like zero tolerance policies that have done i mean, irreparable damage to like tons of thousands of kids. I'm gonna read. I'm going

to read a thing from Tribe about Philadelphia. Quote. Test results were posted on data walls in the school buildings to show which classes were making the most progress. WHOA it was humiliating, said Grill was a teacher. A lot of our kids were left behind, were behind, and a lot of a lot of our kids suffered trauma, and trauma affects the way you learn. So they were behind, they weren't on grade level, and it made them feel like failures. I hated giving those tests. Wow yeah yeah,

people like to be wrong about Georgio. Well, but that that's some more wedding and shit, right that like and like these are like fucking yeahs like these are like these are literally children like you were. You were publicly shaming people who were like twelve. It's just it's just horrible. Yeah that, Like we've known for a very long time that that doesn't work when you're educating kids, like I

have done Pettigougy training and get it. No one with any intent to actually help kids is shaming kids in the classroom, or young people or anyone of any age for that matter. I just checked out what K twelve Inca Doing. It's great. They're now offering online high school. Oh great, yeah, yeah, you can go to a faith prep academy developed Christian character, oh find Yeah, yeah, this is great. This is this is what I this is

what I youth need. Yeah it sucks so um. The other thing again, we keep trinkling around this because this happens a bunch of times. Like again, vals this whole thing is supposed to be about, like about balancing budgets, right in two thousand and seven, by the time he's like like at the near the end of his like time in Philly, he's fucked everything up so badly that that for in like just one year of the budget,

Philly schools were seventy three million dollars in the whole. Now, the thing about this, this is where most stories about Valais's time in Philadelphia end. But wait, there's fucking more so that that seventy three million dollars short fall was. It was the one years short fall. Right. Remember back in Chicago where Valas is like variable interest rate bonds

like blew up in the school's faces. Um, this time, Vallis is the guy directly who did the credit the fault swaps, and uh, these these the interest rates on these things are locked in literally for decades and just like like some of these aren't expiring to like twenty thirty one, right, and just so far they've cost one hundred and sixty one million dollars. Great, yeah, and test test scores fucking go down under him. It's a ship show. Yeah, and so two thousand and seven they kick him out

because they're like, what the fuck are you doing? Like Unfortunately, the place they kick him out too, is is and you're you're not gonna like this post Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, so fuck's sake? Yeah, yeah, why why do we have to inflict like the failed suns of neoliberalism and the people of New Orleans that's gonna get worse by the way, Okay, great, yeah, um, so this is really bad, right New Orleans? Now, Okay, so I think there's there's some kind of controversy about

how exactly accoculate this. At the very least sixty three out of the sixty six like New Orleans like big, like sorry, let me let me rest at the very least sixty three out of the sixty six like schools that they run, like at the very least like that that are directly run by the state, our charter schools. Um, there's three more that are also charter schools but are kind of administrated by the district. So there is a huge debate as to whether there are technic any public

schools left in in fucking New Orleans. Jesus, Yeah, they fired like and this this was this was before Valis came into office. But in New Orleans they fired the entire every teacher in the fucking city. They fired all the unions, literally, all the union teachers were replaced them with non union people. M Vallis comes in and starts implementing some shit that is just like I like prison camp shit. Oh god, here's from here's from tribe again.

According to Biguard, a lot of kids were arrested for quote disruption of a school process if they showed up late to class and refused to be kicked out for tardiness. And again they are being arrested for refuge for wanting to stay in school. Yeah, black kids, black girls were arrested for having quote rat tail combs, which have long,

sharp handles from grating hair. Yeah. In one instance, Biguard said, a six year old student was expelled and charged with possession and distribution of a controlled substance because he brought toms to school and gave them to his classmates thinking they were candy. What the fuck they charged a six year old? Yeah? God, Yeah, they're the levels of fucking cruelty that have to exist, like a cop has to see a six year old and not be like, oh, lull,

those are toms like the kitch. Body should neat too many of those. Let me go tell them they didn't know they were kiddy because he's six Jesus Christ. Yeah, just like just just Jetty Whitely, like abhorrently evil shit. Yeah. See, this is like, maybe now is a good time to point out that, like, in the wake of yet another terrible school shooting, people will want to put more cops in schools. This is what happens when we put cops

in schools, right, they brutalize our fucking children. Yeah, and like it's not Yeah, like the state doing violence to children is not the way we protect children. Yeah. What I want to say, the more your school represents the levels of law enforcement that are into prison camp, the more the actual experience of the children will become like prison camps. Yes, yes, yea yeah, but also just literally, I mean that's god. I love to go to the

Panoptic on high school, Garrison. What are you talking about. It's just the Panoptic on high school where if you don't, if you don't get kicked out of your fucking class for being late, they arrest you. The coalent again. Yeah,

just so speaking speaking of disciplining and punishing. So these charter schools, they do think that charter schools always do right, which is sometimes if you know, if you look at people who talk about educational reform, they'll be like, charter schools have like really great like test numbers and a that's just like not true, right, that they're only looking at the really good charter schools. But you know, here's

the thing. If you give a public school the amount of money that a really good charter school has, it will also be a really good school. But but there's the second thing that charter schools can do that other schools can't, which is that charter schools could just fucking kick students out. And this is one of the ways that they maintain their test numbers is they just kick

out kids over and over again. You don't do who aren't initially doing well on tests, so they don't have to teach them and like bother to improve their test scores. And in New Orleans they get in trouble because the kids they were kicking out where kids with disabilities who they were illegally yeah, who they were illegally not like giving individual education plans too, and also they were there

is everything right. These charter schools are all run by different private corporations, and so there's no system of tracking whether when a kid gets kicked out whether they can actually get it go to another school. So they're just leaving these disabled kids, like in the fucking win with no school to go to. And this this was so illegal that after a lawsuit, like I think it might still be going to this day. It was going like

twenty fourteen. Like the school the Philadelphia school system was like undersizaship by the federal government because they committed so many crimes against disabled students. Jesus Christ, that is brutal. Yeah, it's awful. Fuck kind of education for a lot of my adult life in this ship makes me furious. Yeah, I just wanted so what youed you to? Guess where do you think they sent Paul Vallis next after he got kicked out of I try trying to run of New Orleans? Did they send him to set up a

finishing school for girls in Kabul? No? But similar similar vibes. Oh, for fock's sake, it dude, it's outside the continental US. Yes, it's not Iraq. No Puerto Rito. It's Haiti after yep, yep. So now we have talked about this before on the show. In twenty ten, there was a just unbelievably heartwrenchingle catastrophic earthquake killed two hundred and twenty thousand people and also destroyed like almost every building in Haiti, and this kicks off phase two of the UN occupation of the country.

We talked about this in our episodes on Lulu and Bill Scenaro. This is this is when the UN guys from the Paul bring in Cholerado, a bunch of the operation. Right. Yeah, So right after this happens, so the US just like sends Marines in, right, and no one in Haiti asked

for it. We just we just fucking invade um and they bring in Paul Vallis, like specifically Paul Vallis, and also Arnie Duncan, who's again Obama's fucking education secretary, gets bring in to rebuild the Haitian school system on New Orleans model. Now, okay, weirdly, if they had actually implemented New Orleans model, it would have been an improvement, because they hate the way the Haitian school system worked was ninety percent private and the tuition was forty percent of

someone's annual budget, like like a family's annual budget. Yeah, so that's the friends in Haiti who couldn't afford to pay for school trying. It's fucking horrible. Vallis is supposed to like change this, right, he gets brought in. They bring in the Clinton Foundation instead. What happens is the Clinton Foundation buys a bunch of trailers to use as schools for the from from specific the same people who got in trouble for selling for maldehyde ridden trailers to

female drink Katrina. And then you know, okay, and I never think that I I can't emphasize enough. They called the grifft trailer ink or something. Yeah, they fucking suck well. But also also even the trailers were good, Right, there's a real issue with trying to use trailers to teach kids in a place that is hot, yeah, which is that it is one hundred fucking degrees inside these trailers. These trailers are made of metal, so if you touch

the side of the thing, you get burned. Kids at people, people who like teachers who were taught there, routinely talk about how every kid and they're every kid in their fucking class was having heat stroke and they were just like giving them painkillers for heat stroke because that's all they could do. And yeah, it is punishingly hot if you haven't let that works in that part of the world a lot, and it is. It's hot enough without banking a tin can. Yeah, and Valis's fucking education for them.

They don't fucking work. They don't do shit right. Age education system is still fucked just by all the body of the Clinton Foundation and the like, all these experts got paid. Like it's still really bad. I vallist like specifically, like very specifically defended. The use of trailers is like a thing you teach people in UM. Yeah, and you know this stuff I'll continue used to the present day.

The US has been trying to find another excuse, just trying to find a way to do another intervention in Haiti. So she's still on the New Orleans job. I think, while he's doing this Haiti job and then he takes another job in Chile. Yeah, why I don't know. The people people get well because because the the Interamerican Development Bank gives him half a million dollars to run two thousand schools there. So again. He's now he's now splitting his time between New Orleans, Haiti and Chile. It's it's

almost impossible to find it. I spent a lot of time looking. It's like it's really hard to find like anything about what actually he was doing in Chile. What we do know was when when he got there, he was met by the enormous two thousand and eleven Chilean student protests, which then later turned into the twenty thirteen Chilean student protests, which turned into the two thousand and fifteen Chilean student protests, which turned into two thousand and

nineteen Chilian student protests. So you know, I mean, I just I just want to like you. It is possible to run Paul Vallas out of your country. A couple of different places, or at least your school jests were also a country. A couple of places have done it. And then after that they s ended up Bridgeport, Connecticut for some reason, where he gets run out after doing like he gets he flees Connecticut, like trying to escape a lawsuit about all the illegal anti union stuff that

he did. I really love the image of someone trying to desperately flee from Connecticut. Yeah, like it's so small. How how hard is it to leave Connecticut? It seems pretty easy. Tone, I mean, the one the video I actually want to see is him getting out of Philly. See see getting out of Philly sounds actually hard getting out of just Connecticut, Like come on, come on, Yeah, the video I want to suse him getting sent back to Haiti by himself. Oh god. Yeah. So he runs

again into fourteen. Sogovis gets arrested for you know, selling a Senate seat, and he tries to run for lieutenant governor on on a slate, on like a ticket with Pat Quinn who had been the governor because he'd been the lieutenant governor Undergoish, and they like, actually they managed to lose in Illinois to a Republican, which is like a think that should not happen unless a Democrats would like really fuck up, which I mean it happens, right,

but like, yeah, socrats can make can make electoral mistakes. Are you sure to be fair? To be fair? This one wasn't. This wasn't even an electoral thing. This was just the guy tries to sell a fucking Senate sea. People were so add it into the next election, They're like we will vote for Bruce Rowner, who is just like a fucking absolute dipshit. But okay, so she So he has now lost two consecutive runs for governor, right

governor and lieutenant governor. Now this year he actually he would he had another bid where he was maybe gonna run, and then he stopped. And now now he is one of the candidates for the mayor of Chicago. Now while he's been doing his campaigning for this, some other fun stuff has been happening. Um, so he has an absolutely unlistenable podcast past Please no. I considered pulling clips from this, and then I was like, I'm not. I can't inflict

this on you. Absolutely it sucks. Yeah, I would simply leave this zoom call. I'm not. I was gonna like, I was gonna talk about one of the things that he said a couple of things that he well, okay, one that he said on this one of they said on a different show. One of the things was he starts ranting about this thing called culturally responsive teaching, which is this kind of liberal like anti racist. Yeah, this

is a big thing. Like if anyone ever starts talking about culturally responsive teaching and starts yelling about it like they're a racist, like that those are the only people who like actually like consistently. I mean like it's not like there art criticisms of it, but like almost everyone who talks about this on like a school board level

is like a really weird racist guy. So she starts raving about how this means that everyone's gonna get handed a copy of Mao's Little Red Book and then says, quote, what is this the cultural revolution? Now? We have covered the cultural revolution over the course of the show in the Atlanta episodes, and I'm just gonna simply say no and move on to read this unbelievably racist thing that he said. I'm just gonna read this. It's it's real bad.

But for that matter, if you're a black child, you go home and listen to your parent when your parent has failed to be successful in addressing the ways these historically racist obstacles that have denied them a chance to equal opportunity. Here's the guy he's talking to, Paul. I wonder, if you're a black kid, why don't you become a criminal if you're hearing this stuff in school, everyone with the white skin is an oppress. Or if you're a

black skin. You're the oppressed. That makes it pretty easy to justify any pretty bad conduct in in my opinion, you're absolutely right. So this is valence comes back. But what you're also doing, you're giving these you're giving people an excuse for bad behavior. You're almost justifying is Rams book in Fox. So you're right, You're absolutely right. Where is the accountability, you're the victim. What's happening is it becomes a justification for everything, and I think that's a

very dangerous thing. So Vas arguing that talking about racism is actually a thing that encourages black people to do crime, which is like that that sounds kind of racist, may just a little bit he maybe with supremisist gives up racist vibes. Yeah. Um, So, speaking of racist vibes, his son is a cop in Santa Fe and he was one of three cops who shot a black guy in the back after calling him boy. Um. The cops, including Vast Yeah, they start screaming boy at him and they

shoot him in the back. And the cops, including val As his son, claimed to have found a gun next to his body. Um. And in a completely unrelated story, US Special Forces units in Afghanistan ricchie Lee carried a K forty sevens in the combat zone so they could drop the next to the body of people they killed Ridge and declared them insurgents. This has no relation to the previous story at all. I am simply relaying facts two interesting and unrelated stories. Yeah, didn't. Valis also is

he's the guy who claimed his Twitter was hacked? Right, Oh yeah, yeah, so very way back at the beginning of this episode, I talked a bit about the racism against Looie Lightfoot and like one of the tweets that he liked is a tweet like calling Laura man like Lord life Foot a man like it's just unbelievably racist, like homophobic, transphobic shit. And he claims that his account was hacked and people were liking tweets without his permission. Yeah, right,

that's all they did. They just liked some racist streets. There's like a bunch of other like and the other thing. It's like, okay, Like Paul Bells doesn't like actually live in Chicago. You mentioned this. He lives in Like, he claims to live in Polo's Heights, which is also not Chicago, but it's unclear whether he even lives there. Or if he's in like some kind of like even more insane outlying suburb that's even less Chicago than the stuff is

and he like, he likes, he likes. He one of the things he likeing tweets calling it like shit cago and stuff, and it's like, well, yeah, it's because he doesn't live in the city. He's not actually like these are like a bunch of his support, a bunch of the money he's getting, or from like drained suburban like reactionaries. And Okay, so I want to tell one last story about him that pisses me off a lot, which is the story of a Wake Illinois. So Awake Illinois is

like Illinois's version of Protect Texas Kids. It's a group that does Nazi protests at drag events. They managed to destroy a bakery called Uprising for trying to hold a drag bunt brunch so that they Awake did all this thing of like, ah, they're grooming kids, and then the Proud Boys showed up and attacked it, and then someone like vandalized it and they nearly had to close the entire bakery until a go fund me raised thirty thousand dollars for them to survive. They are like, these people

are unbelievably homophobic. They rant about groomers constantly. They're like really transphobic. Anyways, Paul Vallis spoke at one of their fundraisers. Oh god, So after this came out, Vallis distanced himself from the group, saying you didn't know what they represented

and just wanted to support school choice. AWAKE responded by going, hey, what the fuck, You absolutely know who we are, and they released another video of Vallis and another AWAKE event where he said that AWAKES president Shannon Adcox should run

for governor. So if elected, would I probably be the most openly homophobic democratic like mayor in the country, which is a pretty wild like which is pretty wild claim, but like I can't think of anyone else who actually like showed up at an event where people just screaming about groomers. Like yeah, and of the Democrats, he is just a Republican, Like he's he's like like a pre right wing like Republican who runs the Democrat because Chicago political machine is also just so far right. I thought

this was because low Lightfoot defounded the police. Mayor. Oh, I thought that's what happened. And people want the police back. That's what That's what I that's what I've sold. You know. The thing is actually very funny about the elections is like, so there is elections for these like police district councils are just supposed to be these like civilian oversight boards

and the like reform. There's kind of there was an alliance to sort of like reform defund and abolitionist candidates, and they did fucking amazing and the pro police candidate got fucking Clawbard. And it mean, while every single national story about the Hill action was like Chicago crime, I was like, you guys don't understand how much everyone here hates the police, Like I like, they murdered a thirteen

year old like fucking two years ago. I yeah, good, Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna hedge my thing here by saying there's so much other Paul Valle shit, I couldn't fit. Like I really wanted to talk about Keith Thornton, who is Chicago's George Santos, who like his thing is that he stole nine to eleven dispatcher Valor and is like keep showing up in pictures with vallis just just Google Keith Thornton and you will have a good time. Like, there are so many other Vallis things that he did

that are awful. There are probably things that he's done that we'll never know about because he did them in like I don't know, like like what the fuck he was doing in Chile. We probably won't ever know all the things he didn't hate e U. Yeah, don't let this guy become the fucking mayor of Chicago. He will leave the city utterly destroyed. Let's go Brandon. I I'm so annoyed that people are on ironically, let's go brandon ing in Chicago now for Brandon Johnson. It's bringing it back.

We're taking it back. We were reclaiming it. I reclaim Yeah, I'm so bad like bringing Brandon back. Okay, I got in trouble with my boss in twenty fifteen for saying fuck Hillary, like you fucking little bitches. You could just you can just say that. You you could just say fuck Joe Biden, like all of you are cowards. Yes it was. It is deeply cowardly afraid of saying fuck. But at the same time they think they're gonna staged an armed overthrow of the government anyway. Oh there's actually okay,

this is the thing I actually should mention. There are a bunch of ties between um, there are a bunch of ties between Vallas and guys who were at J six like and like a lot of Jay Sax people support him. He's like, he's like he is the MAGA candidate. That's like there's like, oh, there's a whole thing there that I didn't get into because I don't know. There's so much you could do, like seven episodes just about Paul Vallas and how much he sucks. But yeah, stop

him if if he fucking gets elected. We're doing that. We're doing that. We're doing the fucking Chileans student protests because yeah, hate him. Opie has a bad day. It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated

monthly at cool zonemedia dot com, slash sources. Thanks for listening,