Re: From Scandal To McCarthyite Overreaction

["George N. Schmidt" <Csubstance@AOL.COM>]

In a message dated 2/3/00 12:03:01 PM, LeoCasey@AOL.COM writes:

<< The difficulty
is that the NYC Board of Education did not do a credible job of 'policing'
itself, and the state legislature overreacted to that reality. In one set of
scandals prior to his appointment, this one focusing on kick-backs and
massive theft in materials in the Division of School Buildings, an individual
was murdered and cremated in the furnace of a Board of Education warehouse in
Long Island City, with the bones buried somewhere upstate. I bet even Chicago
couldn't beat that one, George! This creates a climate in which legislatures
are prepared to overreact, and give a Stancik full latitude for his
McCarthyite type investigations. >>

Chicago has an "inspector general" who is completely integrated into the
current bureaucracy.

In her annual report for 1999, for example, she takes credit for a major
investigation which exposed the use of inadequate conduit in one school's
rehabilitation job. Two photographs of the too-narrow condiut appear in her
annual report.

Meanwhile, during the same time period, one of the mayor's buddies ran a
charter school (supposedly for kids with drug problems) at which kids
reportedly smoked dope in the washrooms, and another mayoral buddy has been
surrounding every school with expensive wrought iron fencing at premium
pricing. (The school down the street from here has one 10 foot by 30 foot
plot of grass enclosed in a six foot high wrought iron fence, for example).
Our "inspector general" is a lapdog for the politicians.

But, no, no bodies in the basement that we know of.

As most people know here, the biggest lawsuit ever filed by the Chicago
school board was not against crooked contractors or charter school owners who
siphoned off money and then left, but against myself and Substance (for $1.3
million). That's how Chicago works. The witch hunts are going on every day,
but they usually don't grab headlines with them unless they are really angry,
as they were when they sued us for publishing CASE in January 1999.

George Schmidt

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