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Editorial
Vallas Endorsements a Set-Up
We were not surprised on March 3 and March 4 to learn that both mouthpieces
of corporate Chicago wanted us to vote for Paul Vallas in the Democratic
primary. The March 3 Chicago Tribune (and the March 4 Crain’s Chicago
Business) told citizens to vote for Paul Vallas in the Democratic Party
primary on March 19.
That alone should tell
real Democrats — especially union members in the large teacher and
public employee unions — to vote for one of Vallas’s two opponents.
Vallas is a union buster, a scab herder, and a teacher basher, just as
are the newspapers that endorsed him in early March.
But “Paul Vallas”
as a media fiction is much more than that. Paul Vallas is as much a creature
and creation of the fictionalization of political reality during the 1990s
as the “Dot.com” stock bubble and Enron’s “revolution.”
Vallas is as much a friend of working people as Kenneth Lay or Jeffrey
Skilling were when they were dumping their stocks while freezing the pensions
of their workers. As we point out elsewhere in this Substance, the Paul
Vallas story has been as phony as the propaganda five years ago of that
union-busting hero of corporate hatchet men and women of the late 1990s
— “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap.
Vallas was also the
creation of his City Hall mentor, Rich Daley, and the storytelling skills
of Daley’s propagandists. The Vallas story was crafted especially
by the union-busting and teacher-bashing Tribune and Crain’s. Through
the 1980s and 1990s, Crain’s and the Tribune routinely attacked Chicago’s
public schools, its teachers, and the unions that represent the people
who work in the schools.
Was it any surprise,
then, that the Tribune and Crain’s endorsed Paul Vallas’ bid
to become governor of Illinois?
Vallas should be running
as a Republican. Thirty years ago, his union busting and teacher bashing
nonsense would have put him in the right wing of the Republican Party.
But in Illinois after the long brainwash of the 1990s, it’s difficult
to distinguish Republicrats from Demopublicans. Had any Democratic mayor
prior to Rich Daley launched such a relentless attack on the unions, he
would have been run out of town. Daley did change his home, relocating
his family from the South Side to the Millionaire’s Row he carved
in “Central Station.” Daley Democrats really should be in DuPage
County with their soul-mates.
The Tribune and Crain’s
prefer to have their dirty work — and their union busting and teacher
bashing — done under the false flag of “Democrats” like
Paul Vallas and Rich Daley.
Some of our friends
complained when we said there wasn’t much difference between the
top Dems and the biggest Repubs. Let’s admit there is. The Supreme
Court showed when it appointed George W. Bush President of the United
States that the elite prefer rich Republicans to double-talking Democrats
in the seats of power.
Thus, the clever endorsement
of Vallas as the Tribune’s “Democratic” candidate for governor.
Fooling the Democratic electorate into voting for Vallas is the only way
Illinois Republicans have a chance of retaining control of the State House
in Springfield after November 5. Clever.
Why clever? How is
it a false flag?
The Tribune created
Paul Vallas. At this point, the Tribune knows more about Paul Vallas than
his own mother. From the beginning, the Tribune archived every lie, every
misstep, every crony contract, every ounce of corruption — political
and personal — that Vallas was guilty of. From his favored architects
to his busing advisors, Vallas has been the crazy sideshow of Illinois
politics, and the Tribune sold the tickets.
Why would the Tribune
want Vallas as the Democratic Party candidate this month and in the months
ahead? The true Vallas story is not public knowledge yet. When it comes
out, Vallas will be the candidate who can best be self-destructed by the
Tribune and other media.
Try the following scenario.
Lulled by the Tribune,
Democrats (even some who should know better) make Paul Vallas the Democratic
candidate for Governor. Republican scandals heat up after the March 19
primary and continue breaking through the summer. The gubernatorial race
is dominated by them. Every poll shows that the George Ryan legacy is
too big an albatross for Republicans to get off their necks. There are
too many odors of corruption, too much cronyism, too many contracts to
too many cruds and thugs. “License for bribes” under Ryan is
just the tip of the Republican iceberg. By September, every voter knows:
Republican = Crook.
Even if Corrine Wood
gets the Republican nomination and has the entire feminist vote behind
her, she still has to haul the George Ryan legacy uphill on her back.
If Jim Ryan is the Republican nominee, the hill is that much steeper.
Republican = Crook.
By November 5, Elmer
Fudd could be the Democratic nominee for governor and take the statehouse
back from the Republicans for the first time since Big Jim Thompson ran
the state (before some of today’s voters were born). There would
be no hope for Republicans controlling the state — unless there were
so many scandals about the Democratic candidate in the weeks before November
5 that voters came to believe that “Democrat” was a synonym
for “Corrupt, Crooked and Crazy…” (while Republicans were
just crooks).
Who better to wind
up with his pants down and unravel for the whole state to see than Paul
Vallas? Vallas lied, cheated, and babbled his way to national fame and
fortune as the union busting, teacher bashing head of Chicago’s schools.
His various fictions have been repeated so often he believes some of them
himself. Vallas can’t even get his personal resumé straight
he’s been fudging the facts there so long. The Tribune has known
everything it needed to knock Paul Vallas from the pedestal it placed
under him for four or five years. But the stories are not in print.
So the best explanation
we have for the recent editorial endorsement is that the Tribune isn’t
interested in the facts today, because the Tribune wants to save the important
Vallas facts for late October and early November — when they will
do the Republicans the most good.
If the Democrats are
addled enough to follow the advice of the Tribune and nominate Paul Vallas,
Vallas’s corruption and goofiness will be page one news beginning
in early October and continuing until the Republicans squeak back into
the statehouse November 5. License for Bribes will be run off the page
one by Crazy Paul stories. By November, stolid citizens will be giggling
every time Vallas’ face is on television. Slowly, Vallas’ corruption
will also come out. Everything from the busing contracts to his kinfolk
to the no-bid deals with Arthur Andersen will be there, day-after-day,
on the evening news shows.
Illinois might even
learn that “Mr. Character Education” (one of the sillier notions
that Vallas foisted on the public schools) was a hypocrite with a white
supremacist odor — slinging contracts towards some very close friends
and sending his own kids to one of the least “diverse” (and
least diversity friendly) private schools in the United State of America.
By then it will be
too late for the Democrats. They’d realize they’d been taken
in — again — by the Tribune and the Paul Vallas Show. And the
Republicans will still be in the Illinois Governor’s Mansion on November
6.
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