The American City Is Dying
January 30, 2013
By Daniel Gree
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Speaking of the children, Mayor Emanuel and Mayor Bloomberg, Obamas favorite big city mayors who can be reliably counted on to push his agenda, found themselves kneecapped by education unions who arent there for the children, but are there for themselves.
The New York City bus driver strike is underway along with the usual tire slashings and union leaders insisting that theyre only slashing the tires for the children. These tactics usually work, they did in Chicago, as harried parents can be counted on to tell the city to shut up and give the nice teachers what they want so that the behemoth of the educational system can roll on. But what they want is quickly becoming impossible.
Chicago teachers have the highest average salary of any city, $75,000 a year, while administrators make $120,000, even though only 20 percent of their 8th grade students are grade-proficient in math. Chicago schools have an annual budget of $5.11 billion for a student body that is 87% low-income and likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
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The Obama administration has won a triumphant victory in imposing the irrational social and economic values of the city on the rest of the country. But while the liberal tycoons and college students who made it happen are celebrating, its a coup with no future. All that they have done is put the country on the same dead end track as the city.
The American City Is Dying
