Ben Joravsky of Chicago Reader (via Reader Supported News) supplies a lot sounder explanation for Rahm Emanuel’s savagery toward the Chicago Teachers Union than most of the editorials I’ve seen:
“My theory is that he knew next to nothing about the schools when he got elected. And what he did know was shaped by campaign rhetoric, which was itself largely based on his efforts to impress out-of-town pundits, who had themselves bought into the conventional wisdom that just about everything wrong with schools today can be blamed on bad teachers and the unions who protect them.”
It’s really something to ponder: the fact that Democratic elected officials (as we in New York know from our own Governor) are now on the forefront of the campaign to break the public unions.
And the Democrats wonder why their base didn’t show up in 2010?