Rahm Emanuel: Symbol of a Sick America

[RiverLover]

Rahm Emanuel: Symbol of a Sick America
4/6/2015


It's people like Rahm Emanuel, the privatizer of Chicago and "strikingly corrupt mayor," who snub the needs of average people and manifest a persistent inequality that plagues America. This is just part of a sick America.

America’s is a sickness of the mind, the unwavering belief by people in power that free-market capitalism will somehow work for everyone. As with a virus that refuses to die, the effects are insidious, because the very rich have convinced themselves that they made it on their own, and that others have only themselves to blame if they are poor.

Rahm Emanuel is Mayor 1%. He speaks a politician’s words to entice many Chicagoans to vote for him, but his actions are on behalf of his friends and colleagues in the business world....

...According to the Chicago Tribune, “The mayor regularly courts his benefactors behind closed doors..” Nearly 60 percent of his 103 donors received “contracts, zoning changes, business permits, pension work, board appointments, regulatory help or some other tangible benefit.”

Democracy Now cites a report by the International Business Times which found that Emanuel uses no-bid, no-contract voucher payments to quietly pass along money to his contributors. It was also reported by the Chicago Tribune that the lawyers for Chicago’s infamous parking meter deal contributed over $100,000 to Emanuel’s campaign chest. City attorneys touted the ‘benefits’ of the deal.

In another egregious episode, Mayor Emanuel appointed Deborah Quazzo, a managing partner at GSV Advisors, to the Chicago Board of Education. The Chicago Sun-Times reported that Quazzo’s business affiliates subsequently tripled their business with the public schools...

...The mayor claimed credit for a minimum wage increase, even though he didn’t act until the State of Illinois began putting the plan in place. He took credit for a longer school day for the kids, but he didn’t provide the necessary funding. He took credit for coal-burning power plant closings that resulted largely from neighborhood activism...

...This is part of the sickness: a persistent inequality, more-so of wealth than of income, that plagues America and manifests itself in the questionable dealings of a man like Rahm Emanuel...

Read much more~
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/04/06/rahm-emanuel-symbol-of-a-sick-america/