Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?:

Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?

At last night's Progressive Caucus community forum in Logan Square, Caucus members and community groups spoke out against Rahm's austerity budget and massive property tax increase. 

Will enough typically spineless Chicago Alders finally find their way out of Rahm's pocket to push back on his draconian budget proposal? Doubtful.

There are 11 members of the City Council progressive caucus who generally don’t side with the mayor on fiscal policy (including Arena); an 18-member aldermanic black caucus that plays nice with Emanuel but doesn’t back the garbage-fee proposal; and a handful of Hispanic aldermen, including Ald. Roberto Maldonado, who think the mayor’s budget proposal, as it stands, well, stinks. -- Mark Konkol, DNAInfo

Rahm's strategy, like his predecessor Daley's, includes selling off or privatizing everything that's not nailed down. Closing schools and getting rid of public space also weakens unions and public decision making.

His idea of privatizing the 311 call center came in his 2016 budget address, saying it would save the city "about a million dollars a year" to replace union workers with outside contractors. It was one of the few pieces of actual news Tuesday, after the mayor's administration had spent the past week dribbling out many of their financial proposals for the coming year. -- John Byrne, Tribune  

His budget proposal includes an unprecedented increase in property taxes and fees Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: Pushing Chicago's poor out of the city. Who will stand up to Rahm Emanuel's death budget?: