The 'CHAINSAW' Fraud of the 1990s and the 'TURNAROUN' Fraud of today... Memories of two decades of corporate fraud from 'Chainsaw Al Dunlap' and 'Chainsaw Paul Vallas' to Rahm Emanuel and 'J.C,' Brizard... Teach-In to fill Saturday December 3 for more than a thousands teachers and activists as lates
A major Teach-In on the current state of Chicago's public schools and against the continued privatization of the schools under Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his hand-picked foreign leadership "team" at the Chicago Board of Education will be taking place at Chicago's Martin Luther King High School (4445 S. Drexel Blvd.) on Saturday December 3, 2011, beginning at 10:00. The large turnout for the meeting is expected to swell given the November 29 announcement by Emanuel that his school board will try to close ten of the city's inner city public schools (two high schools and eight elementary schools), fire all the teachers and other staff in them (from the principals to the janitors) and subject the schools to a corporate program called "Turnaround" that all evidence showed has failed in the public schools just as it turned out to be a failure and fraud in Chicago and elsewhere when corporate America was hailing a CEO named Al Dunlap as the "turnaround master" in the early days of corporate "school reform."
During the mid-1990s, Al Dunlap was a role model for the generation of corporate executives who brought the economy of the USA down in two major bursting bubbles (tech stocks; housing). But while his frauds were riding high, Al Dunlap and his methods, which claimed to be the kind of ruthless "surgery" that could save companies, were hailed by corporate America and the corporate media. His photograph, prominently displaying his West Point ring (a soldier who never saw combat, Dunlap's method was to manipulate a willing corporate media with stuff like that), was on Page One of the Chicago Tribune Business section, and the myth of the "Chainsaw" executive was exported to public education. (Just before Dunlap was exposed as a fraud, Forbes magazine was calling Chicago Schools CEO Paul Vallas "Chainsaw Paul; the Dunlap fraud at Sunbeam and the subsequent exposes suddenty ended that corporate branding of school reform).
Finally, lawsuits by shareholders and other victims of the Dunlap "Turnaround" method brought down the frauds. A book (now out of print, by the way, but in the Substance library) by one of the best business reporters in the USA took care of the rest, for anyone who bothered to pay attention. The "Chainsaw" version of "Turnaround" was bullshit when it was used to destroy corporations and enrich executives and lawyers, and it's bullshit, as we've proved in Chicago, when it's used to supposedly turnaround supposedly "failing" public schools.
Below are a few words about the book that exposed Dunlap (and the corporate "turnaround" crowd in a major way:
The Notorious Career of Al Dunlap in the Era of Profit-At-Any-Price, Author: John A Byrne
"Chainsaw" Al Dunlap was the manifestation of 90s greed. First breaking into headlines as the controversial head of Scott Paper, Dunlap's ruthless scaling down of the company left a wake of anger and resentment, even as Scott's stock value soared.
This is the notorious businessman's story, told as a cautionary tale, complete with larger-than-life (but real) financiers and wheeler-dealers, unbelievable (but true) business practices, and a good old-fashioned come-uppance that sees the villain suffer the fate he deserves.
A thrilling and enlightening look at the mad pursuit of wealth, 'Chainsaw' is a fascinating story loaded with implications for everyone with a stake in American business.
The shadow of every business fraud since the 1990s now hangs over Chicago's schools. For more than a decade, corporate America's "reform" of public schools has been an attack on public education itself. "Class War" was being waged by the wealthy against the rest of us. But now, in growing numbers, we are fighting back more and more effectively. (The fight back was always going on, but for many years the numbers fighting back were small, and the attacks larger).
Dunlap's shadow will be hovering over King High School on December 3, even though most of those participating in the Teach-In will not have heard of him, or of how the nation's corporate media tried to bestow on former Chicago Schools CEO Paul Vallas the Dunlap nickname "chainsaw" — before it was discovered the "Chainsaw Al Dunlap" was a complete fraud, and that his "turnaround" of corporations like Chicago's Sunbeam actually destroyed the corporations while making Dunlap and other executives a very very wealthy man.
