Chicago Tribune: Sanders slams Emanuel as he tries to overtake Clinton in Illinois

[femmedem]

Good coverage this morning in the Chicago Tribune

"...Hillary Clinton proudly lists Mayor Rahm Emanuel as one of her leading mayoral endorsers," Sanders said at a downtown news conference. "Based on his disastrous record as mayor of the city of Chicago, I do not want Mayor Emanuel's endorsement if I win the Democratic nomination. That is not the kind of support I want. We want the endorsement of the people who are fighting for social and racial justice. We do not want the support of people who are indebted to Wall Street and the big money interests."

Sanders took particular aim at Emanuel's handling of Chicago Public Schools, criticizing the mayor's decision to close nearly 50 schools in predominantly minority communities in 2013. The Democratic senator said the school district wouldn't have found itself in such a financial bind had Emanuel refused to pay Wall Street banks $500 million in "risky financial schemes" or so-called toxic interest-rate swaps. Sanders noted other cities such as Houston, San Francisco, Philadelphia and Detroit took legal action, or threatened to, and received some money back from the banks, and criticized Emanuel for "standing with Wall Street" instead of with the city's schoolchildren.

Sanders said both Emanuel and Clinton have received heavy campaign contributions from the financial sector. Joining Sanders was Blaine Elementary Principal Troy LaRaviere, who referred to a Chicago Tribune investigation last year that showed at least 60 percent of Emanuel's top campaign donors received benefits from City Hall.

"The mayor has no problem putting pressure on teachers when he wants concessions from them. He has no problem arm-twisting the parents on the South Side or the West Side when he wants to close their schools. He is really tough, isn't he? Taking on the children and the parents," Sanders said, mockingly. "But he ain't so tough taking on the big money interests on Wall Street."

More at link.

[raging moderate]

1. There Bernie goes, telling inconvenient truths again.

As Harry Truman said, "I don't really give 'em hell. I just tell the truth, and it feels that way to them."

Give 'em truth, Bernie!

[Kittycat]

2. Excellent!

I watched the pressed yesterday. It was definitely hard hitting. So glad to see the trib taking it on. That will be felt throughout the burbs, too.

[Teamster Jeff]

3. Chicago has had a close up view of how the Raum/Hillary wing of the party operates.

That bodes well for Bernie

[BernieforPres2016]

4. The only thing missing from Bernie's attack on Emanuel

was that he doesn't just take contributions from Wall Street, he actually worked on Wall Street. He made $16.2 million in 2 1/2 years as a Managing Director for Wasserstein Perella even though he joined them with no formal business education or prior experience in banking.

[femmedem]

5. Excellent point! n/t

[PyaarRevolution]

6. Wish Bernie would mention the police shootings as well.

Especially how Rahm handled it and tried to sweep the incidents under the rug essentially.

[BernieforPres2016]

7. I think Bernie showed good restraint on that

Everybody in his audience knew the story on that and it could come off bad for a national politician to come into a city and pretend he's educating the local population on a local issue. Only 17% of the people in Chicago believe Emanuel's claim that he had never seen the body cam recording of the shooting which was only finally released to the public after 14 months because of a court order.

I'm guessing there were many local people who didn't know about Wall Street screwing the city of Chicago with interest rate swaps and/or that other cities in similar situations had sued or threatened to sue and recovered significant money. Emanuel didn't even make the effort.

Among the many crimes of Wall Street, I had forgotten all about the interest rate swaps that they used to rape many municipalities across America. The banksters preyed on the financially unsophisticated and sold products that were wildly overpriced with huge profit margins built in for their firms and which yielded huge bonuses for the banksters that sold them. I would bet that thorough investigations would find bribery of local officials was involved in many of them.

Jefferson County in Alabama (which includes Birmingham, Alabama's largest city) was forced into bankruptcy in part by one of these Wall Street interest rate swaps that went bad.