Never trust a bagman–or a New Democrat. And as we’ll see, it’s often really hard to tell the difference.

Chicago mayor, former Clinton and Obama apparatchik, and New Democrat has always had a strained relationship with Chicago’s public schools. When he’s not helping his campaign contributors loot them for private gain (although all Good Democrats are now supposed to believe politicians are immune to campaign contributions), he has underfunded schools to the point where they endanger students’ health:

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has come under fire for, among other things, embracing education reform and privatization of school services. Unfortunately, when it comes to the basic health of students, not so much embracing (probably a good thing if they’re sick; boldface mine):

On Saturday, a handful of parents of pre-kindergarten students packed yellow rubber gloves and spray bottles of vinegar and baking soda solution and headed to Suder Montessori Elementary Magnet School, 2022 W. Washington Blvd., on the Near West Side, where they spent the morning cleaning their children’s washrooms.

The parents felt they didn’t have a choice: Upon entering the bathrooms, they found pools of day-old urine on the floor, feces smeared on the walls and clogged, stinking toilet bowls. In the past few weeks, the school had an E. coli outbreak, and more than half of the kindergarten students missed school because of various illnesses, including a stomach bug, diarrhea or vomiting, said Michelle Burgess, head of the school’s parent-teacher association.

“These are preschoolers. They go to the bathroom and miss. The boys play in the urinals. And sometimes can’t get to the toilet fast enough. It’s understandable,” said Angela Morales, the parent of two children who attend the school. “But they need to clean. We can’t have our kids be in this filth.”

Parents claim the unsanitary bathroom conditions, overflowing garbage cans and soiled napping cots are the result of inadequate custodial care following the Chicago Board of Education’s decision last spring to award multimillion-dollar custodial management contracts to two firms, Aramark and SodexoMAGIC….

“This is where our kids come to learn, where they spend their day,” she said. “It’s all horrible. Just horrible.”

Keep in mind, this is a magnet school. This is supposed to be a cut above a regular public school. Instead, they are suffering from the same kind of diseases that regularly affect poor children in developing countries.

I’m guessing Rahm’s kids went to schools where the floors weren’t covered with piss and shit.

Well, things might get worse for Chicago’s students (boldface mine):

Chicago Public Schools told some principals Tuesday to expect total school budget cuts of between 20 percent and 30 percent as the district plans for “the worst.”

The broke district, which has been begging Springfield all year for financial help, plans to chop its own per-pupil contribution by nearly 40 percent, according to proposed budgets given to 15 elementary and high schools.

The district says principals have to “plan for the worst — higher class sizes, loss of enrichment activities, and layoffs of teachers and support staff” while waiting for the General Assembly to take action on proposed pension help or revising the state’s funding formula, spokeswoman Emily Bittner said.

On average, schools will feel a budget cut of 26 percent once they receive their state and federal funding, she said. The base per-pupil rate will drop from $4,088 to $2,495 if the proposed budget becomes final. It includes an equivalent cut for charters, too, she said.

Leaders from 15 “example schools” were invited to a meeting with CEO Forrest Claypool, chief education officer Janice Jackson and others, Bittner said.

Some cried when they saw the numbers today, according to one attendee.

“This cannot be real. It can’t be real,” said D’Andre Weaver, who learned that his South Side school of about 900 kids, Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy, is going to lose about $520,000. That’s a little more than $1 out of $4 previously allocated to the test-in school at 250 E. 111th St. and equals at least five or six staff positions.

“You can’t do a lot” to mitigate that, he told the Chicago Sun-Times. “You’re going to have to cut people, and it’s going to impact the classroom. There’s no way around that.”

Weaver ticked off some of the cuts CPS schools already underwent during the past school year, which started with a $480 million budget gap: Summer and then midyear layoffs; schools instructed to hoard their cash; three unpaid furlough days.

After policing and emergency response (fire and EMT), one of the primary functions of local government is K-12 education*. For this to occur in a prosperous city like Chicago is a failure of fundamental proportions. At best, it speaks to a horrible incompetence, and, at worst, it is vile cynicism in service to privatization. Which one is it? Who knows:

Put another way, Emanuel is the mayor of the gentry. His ‘reforms’, educational and otherwise, don’t really harm that social class. In fact, between potential cost savings (which may or may not exist), along with the psychological benefits of moralizing (“You’re gonna respect me!”), Emanuel has done right by that class. The rest of Chicago, maybe not so much.

As we like to say here, people have to like this crap. Including the hoi polloi.

Either way, Emanuel does exemplify the fraud underlying the New Democrats:

The neo-liberal, technowonk, corporate Democratic wing of the Democratic Party has successfully perpetrated two frauds. One, as we often note, is that they are competent. Sure, maybe the other guy seems better, but we’re the ones who get it done (STOP LAUGHING! STOP LAUGHING NOW!). The second fraud is that they’re not corrupt: sure, the other guy says the right things, but he’s a crook–we’re honest.

The tragedy is that blacks, who are being disproportionately hard hit by these cuts, rallied to support Emanuel over challenger Garcia. Whether or not that has any bearing on current events I leave to the reader as an exercise.

By the way, guess who said this after Emanuel’s re-election? (boldface mine):

Mayor Emanuel has made critical investments in the city’s infrastructure and public transportation, implemented universal full-day kindergarten, and helped foster a growing economy that is creating jobs. With today’s election result, it is clear that the people of Chicago support his focus on middle class economics and the direction he is taking the city. I look forward to seeing Mayor Emanuel’s and the city of Chicago’s continued success in the years ahead.

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz. Couldn’t make up that if I tried.

*Whether one of the primary functions of local government, as opposed to state or federal governments, should be K-12 education is a separate question.