Johnny Can't Read. But Abe Could.

I can almost imagine it. Thomas and Nancy Lincoln organize a protest at the Hardin County town square, in their small Kentucky town. Their beef? Simple: their son, Abraham, can't read, he can't write and he can scarecely do his arithmetic. You see, Tom and Nancy are protesting because it's the schools' fault. The city's, too. And if there were a Department of Education in 1818, it would be at fault, as well.

Of course, this isn't the way it actually went down. Nancy died young, and Tom was left to raise young Abe as a single parent (a term that wouldn't slither its way into the English lexicon for another 150 years). By all accounts he was a disengaged parent, and too ill-educated to help his son with his school work.

There were no books in the Lincoln household, and there is no record of the Lincolns having subscribed to any newspapers or magazines. None of their friends is reputed to have belonged to country clubs, or to have attended Harvard. Way back when, there was no teachers union in Hardin County to scream "won't someone think about THE CHILDREN?" as it bargained for its next contract, and there were no standardized tests to measure one child's retention of useless information versus that of another. Oh, and there was no school lunch plan.

And still....almost twelve score years ago, our forefathers were able to bring forth a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the propostion that all men are created equal. And this young nation of boundless natural resources but limited finances, brought forth the likes of Abraham Linoln.

Fast forward to today and ask "what have we wrought?"

This author hosted a dinner party recently, and among the guests was a Chicago Public School teacher. This teacher recounted stories which shocked all in attendance (except perhaps the one guest who was himself a CPS graduate).

On a recent day, as this teacher was finishing her class work, three children (the youngest was 13) were shot to death about a block away in an attack that involved at least one assault rifle.

Her school is also rife with gang activity in which blacks and hispanics war each other like sunni and shiite. Apparently bloods and crips belonged to a more gentle time.

There are four armed policemen in the school at all times. During one recent fire alarm, four enrolled youths (one hesitates to call them "students," or even "kids") actually jumped an armed police officer. No one was killed, thankfully, though one can imagine the recriminations against the CPD if one of those innocent darlings had been harmed.

And recently, an enrolled youth told this same teacher (during class), "shut the fuck up, why are you fucking talking to me?" The teacher "wrote the incident up," but her confidence that nothing would be done was apparently well-placed, because nothing was. The school has bigger problems to worry about, or so goes the popular thinking.

Does it?

A student yells at a teacher, using profanty, disrupting a classroom, and there are bigger problems? Seems to me it all starts with thugs like that.

The annual budget for the Chicago Public Schools is approximately $4.5 billion. It could be $1 trillion, and this writer would sooner home-school a child than send him or her to the Chicago Public School Distict. And therein lies the conundrum: Almost 200 years ago, this nation could turn out a student like Abraham Lincoln. A man who changed the world for the better, and who started out with nothing more than a thirst to learn.

He had no money, no support network, no school counselors getting involved (or not, as the case may often be). But still, he had a thirst to learn.

The problem of our failing schools and the expensive machines of governement that enable them cannot be solved until we stop believing that the answer is to throw ever-increasing amounts of money at these ungrateful degenerates. Of course, I'm talking about the adminstration of the school district and its sick bureaucracy.

The youths just need to feel the hide of a belt.

I Demand a Recount.

Who does Kurt Badenhausen think he is? Katherine Harris? The United States Supreme Court? Badenhausen is the Forbes columnist who takes it upon himself every year to name America's most miserable cities. This year, he had the audacity to name Chicago, Illinois the third most miserable city in the United States.

Third?

I've had enough of victory being snatched from my hands, and I'm not going to take it any more. If there's a competition on G-d's earth that Chicago can win, it's this one. I demand a recount.

Don't even get me started. Badenhausen thinks Detroit is is the nation's most miserable city. Ha! Their crooked mayors go to jail. Pussies. Compared to Detroit, Chicago is Falujah; tribal chieftans (Daley, Madigan, Sroger, Hynes) run the affaires de ville with a heavy hand, and if you don't like it your trash will mysteriously sit on the curb uncollected. Or you'll end up dead, but I ain't sayin' nuthin'.

Chicago (well really, Cook County--but that's a distinction without a difference. It's just a different Daley in charge) charges a sales tax of 10.25% on everything its hostages (they'e called citizens in Detroit) purchase. And what does that buy us? Good schools? Ha! Our schools have failed to meet even George Bush's standards (No Child Left Behind) for five years in a row.

A bit of explanation might be needed here if you're rich and non-minority: Chicago public schools are the schools children have to go to if their parents aren't either rich enough or poor enough for private schools. Oh, and they apparently beat the hell out of their kids, but I digress.

Nor does our leviathan sales tax buy us good roads. Or good buses. Or trains. Or apparently, snow plows on any street that doesn't have at least two lanes in either direction. Da Mare tells us it's too much money to plow the side streets where his tax-paying stooges live.

But keep those checks coming.

Speaking of Da Mare (avert your eyes, please), he wants The Great City of Chicago! to get the 2016 Olympics. It makes perfect sense if you think about it. By 2016 the second generation of Daleys will have plundered everything in Chicago that isn't nailed down or confiscated by the Feds. It will take a whole new generation of government-funded contracts (Olympic Village! Stadiums! Swimmin' Pools! Movie Stars!) to grease the next generation of lords and ladies in waiting. And you thought he was stupid.

Lemme put it to you straight, pal. Chicago is the most miserable city in the United States and possibly in the northern two-thirds of North America. Our elections are rigged, our schools are awful, our city councilpersons care more about campaign donations from developers than about the people who live in their wards, and our potholes are so huge we're beginning to steal tourists from the Grand Canyon.

Heck I look up to Detroit. It's biggest industry is getting bailout money to survive and will eventually--mark my words!--thrive, it's crooked Mayor sits in a jail cell, and its football team has nowhere to go but up.

Yeah, I want a recount. And this time let's make sure you count those votes right, see? There might be a few bucks in it for you. If you know what I mean.

Teach Your Children Well

By now it's clear that most of the touchy-feely songs from the sixties were nothing but sentimental crap.

Leavin' on a Jet Plane? Right. Have fun getting through security. If I Had a Hammer? We know, you'd make Bernie Madoff really pay. Kumbaya? Don't even get me started.

But if there was one song the seemed to ring true, that called us to a higher purpose it was Teach Your Children by Crosby Stills Nash & Young. Heck, cut out a few words and squint, and you'd almost think they stole part of the lyrics from Deuteronomy.

Which brings me to my real point - Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's cynical choice--rubber stamped by his hand-picked Board of Education -- of Ron Huberman as the new Superintendent of the Chicago Public Schools.

Huberman's qualities for the job speak for themselves. Once upon a time, Ron was the Mayor's Chief of Staff, where he excelled at making the Mayor look like less of a brain-dead moron. Obviously this meant he was a perfect candidate to run the crumbling transit system in "The City that Works," because that's exactly the job his pimp, uh, the Mayor had in store for him.

I think during Ron's almost two-year tenure at the head of the CTA I might have been on one or two buses or trains that ran on time, but I couldn't swear to it. I do know that I'm paying almost 50% more for a ticket than I was when Ron took over, and that seems perfectly consistent with the Mayor's mission of soaking the people of the City of Chicago for every cent they have.

So now, that His Excellency Barack Obama has ascended Mount Olympus and taken the now-former CEO of Chicago's Public Schools with him as Secretary of Education (apparently His Highness isn't bothered that the CPS has a higher murder rate than, say, some city with an appallingly high murder rate), the Mayor who'd never make it as a beat cop if his surname were not Daley, decided that Huberman should really be running the Chicago Publis Schools--not the Chicago Transit System.

Clearly anyone with the name Daley and his hands in your pockets can see the natural progression from one job to the other.... Oh, and did I mention the Mayor didn't bother with a national job search? Of course not - someone from outside might not owe his ENTIRE PROFESSIOAL LIFE to the Mayor, and therefore, might actually be independent.

I won't even discuss the sick irony of a Mayor who can't speak an intelligible sentence being ultimately responsible for one of America's largest school systems.

For what it's worth, the CPS is made up of mostly light and dark brown students. And I'm talking the sort of brown that comes from Mexico and Kenya--not from Yemen via Tel Aviv. In any event, most people see Ron as just another white guy sent in by the Mayor to preside over this profoundly minority school district. Just a point.

So here we are, with a guy who knows almost as much about education as I know about brain surgery running our public schools. Come to think of it, I feel like performing some surgery. Pity I'm too late for the Mayor's lobotomy.

How'd he get away with it? BECAUSE HE CAN. He has a docile city council and an electorate too busy trying to survive to hold the Mayor accountable for practically anything.

Welcome to Corruptionville. Enjoy your stay.