The Pay of Chicago School Teachers and Selected Others, including Rahm Emanuel

[Octafish]

The Pay of Chicago School Teachers and Selected Others

Center for Economic and Policy Research
Wednesday, 12 September 2012 03:53

Since the Chicago school teachers went out on strike Monday, many political figures have tried to convince the public that their $70,000 average annual pay is excessive. This is peculiar, since many of the same people had been arguing that the families earning over $250,000, who would be subject to higher tax rates under President Obama's tax proposal, are actually part of the struggling middle class. They now want to convince us that a household with two Chicago public school teachers, who together earn less than 60 percent of President Obama's cutoff, have more money than they should.

Anyhow, if we want to assess whether someone is getting too much money, we always have to ask the follow-up question, compared to what? Here are a few comparisons that I have found useful.

The first comparison number is the annualized pay that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel got for a 14-month stint as a director at Freddie Mac. President Clinton appointed him as a director shortly after he left the administration. It's not clear exactly what Mr. Emanuel did as a director, he was not appointed to any board committees. While Emanuel's stint ended just as the housing bubble was building up steam, Freddie Mac was involved in an accounting scandal during this period for which it was forced to pay several million dollars in fines.

CONTINUED...

http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/beat-the-press/the-pay-of-chicago-school-teachers-and-selected-others?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+beat_the_press+%28Beat+the+Press%29

PS: I'm so old, I remember when Democrats supported unions, not management.

[tama]

1. Kleptocrats

pure and simple.

[Octafish]

2. American Kleptocracy

Here's a nice read from 2010 for those interested in what's going on...

How Fears of Socialism and Fascism Hide Naked Theft

by William J. Astore
Tom Dispatch.com April 21, 2010

EXCERPT...

Of Red Herrings and Missing Pallets of Money

SNIP...

Consider this: America is not now, nor has it often been, a hotbed of political radicalism. We have no substantial socialist or workers' party. (Unless you're deluded, please don't count the corporate-friendly "Democrat" party here.) We have no substantial fascist party. (Unless you're deluded, please don't count the cartoonish "tea partiers" here; these predominantly white, graying, and fairly affluent Americans seem most worried that the jackbooted thugs will be coming for them.)

What drives America today is, in fact, business -- just as was true in the days of Calvin Coolidge. But it's not the fair-minded "free enterprise" system touted in those freshly revised Texas guidelines for American history textbooks; rather, it's a rigged system of crony capitalism that increasingly ends in what, if we were looking at some other country, we would recognize as an unabashed kleptocracy.

Recall, if you care to, those pallets stacked with hundreds of millions of dollars that the Bush administration sent to Iraq and which, Houdini-like, simply disappeared. Think of the ever-rising cost of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, now in excess of a trillion dollars, and just whose pockets are full, thanks to them.

If you want to know the true state of our government and where it's heading, follow the money (if you can) and remain vigilant: our kleptocratic Houdinis are hard at work, seeking to make yet more money vanish from your pockets -- and reappear in theirs.

CONTINUED...

http://ucimc.org/content/american-kleptocracy

Thank you, tama, for the kind reminder.

[tama]

3. Thank David Graeber

"kleptocracy" was his answer to the question how should we call this system if not democracy (which was what Occupy assemblies practiced and Founding Fathers feared and loathed). So the system has been kleptocracy from the beginning (stealing America from Natives etc.), never a democracy. Democracy was and is what indigenous nations practice, making decisions collectively for the good of the whole tribe, and the social movements of West are now relearning meaning of democracy from indigenous peoples.

[byeya]

4. Selfish greed cloaked in the best econo-speech money can buy made legal by laws enacted by the most

venal congresspeople money can buy sanctified by the Filthy Five on the US Supreme Court.

[bobthedrummer]

5. Packers play Bears in primetime tonight Octafish, and God bless the "job creators" since even blood

money is "free speech" wisely portioned out by the most loving and kind "people" of all human history, the Corporations.

The main point is that the Packers play the Bears in primetime tonight here in Wisconsin unless something prevents that-the NFL players and officials are organized, and tonight's game is being officiated by scabs.

Then there is the "enemy within" our Party, I'm talking about the DLC. I'm so old I remember Mr. Mayor being a major DLC member-what kind of Democrats are they?

I'm so old I remember when NFL/AFL players and officials worked other jobs during the off season.

K&R.

[Kurovski]

6. K&R.

Unions? Qu'est-ce que c'est? Is it some kind of delicious cake?

[Overseas]

7. K&R. I want my taxes to pay good wages for unionized teachers.

[hobbit709]

8. Rahmbo is making $200K+ as mayor so he should STFU about excessive pay.