RAHMWATCH: Are election ethics for suckers -- and teachers!? CPS School workers are being warned not to wear 'Chuy' buttons, while Rahm's people blanket one CPS phone system with Rahm propaganda... CPS using Board phones and texts to promote Rahm's re-election!
Maybe one of the things that Rahm Emanuel learned during his years as a hatchet man for Richard M. Daley, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama is that "ethics are for suckers." (As readers here know, Rahm's public career has actually been spent mostly muscling money out of rich people for his employers, who began with Richard M. Daley during the early 1990s -- not in elective office, which he has held only briefly twice). Currently, all seven members of the Chicago Board of Education were appointed by Rahm Emanuel. Rahm also appointed Barbara Byrd Bennett, who is "Chief Executive Officer" at America's third largest school system. And the current CPS communications chief, Bill McCaffrey, worked for Rahm at City Hall before being hired by CPS last year at $160,000 a year to do "communications" for the school system.
The above graphic is part of the message CPS officials and teachers are receiving from CPS less than four weeks prior to the April 7 municipal election runoff. Anyone who goes to "Action.Chicagotogehter.org/commit" is told to sign a pledge to vote for Rahm. And now, this....
Substance has confirmed that Mayor Rahm Emanuel's re-election campaign is using Chicago Board of Education communications networks, including text messages, to promote a get out the vote campaign for Rahm. This comes at the time when teachers and other school workers are being warned they will be disciplined if they wear Chuy buttons or otherwise violate the so-called "ethnics" guidelines issued by Rahm's buddy David Vitale and the Chicago Board of Eduction. On March 11, we received messages from a number of people at CPS:
Basically, we have been told, "Rahm's people" are sending texts on Board of Education - CPS cell phones. CPS gives them out to principals and other workers, and principals and other administrators pay a fee every pay period to use this system. One of the messages people are getting is the slogan "Chicago Together" -- Mayor Emmanuel's theme song.
Are they useing Board property illegally, we are being asked, on Board cell phones? Looks like it. Welcome to Chicago!
Anyone who clicks on the link provided in these "Chicago Public Schools" messages is sent electronically to a website where you are asked to tell them you will be voting for Rahm when early voting begins March 23.
Also, on March 12, The Mayor's Press Office announced that Rahm will use a CPS school (Ariel Community Academy) for a publicity stunt featuring, among others, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
