Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed some decaying half-empty Chicago schools.
Those closures prompted a CTU visit to Venezuela in praise of its socialist leader Nicolás Maduro whose corrupt and dictatorial regime has sparked rebuke from some 50 nations around the world.
Surprised?
The Chicago Tribune comments Surprised by CTU’s Venezuela Visit? Then You Haven’t Been Paying Attention.
Four representatives of the Chicago Teachers Union, including a member of its executive board, visited Venezuela in July and returned with high praise for the socialist polices of President Nicolás Maduro.
This should not surprise anyone paying attention to the increasingly left-leaning political views of the leadership at the union, which represents some 25,000 teachers across Chicago.
Reading their social media accounts of the trip, you’d think they visited Mayberry.
In Praise of Maduro
CTU executive board member Sarah Chambers
- “Through major economic hardships, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro never closed a single public school or a single health clinic. This stands in stark contrast to our experience in Chicago, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed 50 public schools and several mental health clinics in a single year.”
- Chambers also posted on social media her astonishment that, during her trip, she “didn’t see a single homeless person.” She and others praised literacy rates in the country and the commune-style culture.
Venezuela Poverty Facts
Please consider the Top Ten Facts About Venezuela Poverty
- Poverty in Venezuela is an epidemic. Nearly 90 percent of Venezuelans live in poverty. According to estimates by the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, this is a dramatic increase from 2014 when 48 percent of Venezuelans lived in poverty. Maria Ponce is an investigator with the local universities researching the food shortage, and she stated that “this disparity between the rise in prices and the population’s salaries is so generalized that there is practically not a single Venezuelan who is not poor.”
- Venezuela is experiencing ‘hyperinflation.’ Venezuela is experiencing one of the worst inflation rates in history. According to Robert Renhack, deputy director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department, Venezuela “is one of the most severe hyperinflation situations that we’ve known about since the beginning of the 20th century.” And the nation shows no sign of stopping. Currently, Venezuela’s inflation rate sits at 27,364 percent, dooming those without savings or foreign aid to poverty.
- Food crisis leads to “Maduro diet.” Malnutrition is spreading. According to a recent survey, over two-thirds of Venezuelans report losing an average of 25 pounds in the last year and 61.2 percent of Venezuelans report going to bed hungry. Doctor Marianella Herrera states that “people are developing strategies to survive but not to feed themselves.” Iron-rich foods, such as maize and vegetables, have been nearly eliminated from the Venezuelan diet while government food programs fail to end the hunger.
- Medicine is running out. Due to the poor economy, Venezuela is experiencing a severe medicine shortage and hospitals are struggling to stay open. The Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela estimates the country is experiencing an 85 percent shortage of medicine
- Venezuelans are fleeing the country. In the past two years, nearly one million Venezuelans have fled the struggling nation, one of the biggest migration crises in Latin American history after the mass exodus following Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution. Many Venezuelans report they no longer feel safe in their home country and have lost hope in government officials.
I picked out what I thought were the top five points.
Parents, Please Pay Attention
Chicago parents, please pay attention to what your teachers are doing.
And in case it did not occur to you, what they are doing is brainwashing your kids.
It’s one thing to be against Trump’s sanctions on Venezuela (I am too), but it is beyond idiotic to travel to Venezuela singing the praises of Maduro.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
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Three in ten adults in Chicago are functionally illiterate. Only 17.4% of black kids in Chicago scored “proficient” in reading as measured by the PAARC test.
Blame it on the white patriarchy and systemic racism.
Right.
There are always plenty of places to point fingers with regard to educational failure. How about the fact that, after LBJ had the biggest educational study done of all time, Project Follow Through, the educational system completely disregarded the results, which were that focus on things like self esteem reduced learning, while focusing on the actual material increased it. The only external thing that had a positive impact at all, and it was small, was focus on parental involvement. So, what do do we have today? Lot’s more of the types of curriculums that failed, and the one that worked, Direct Instruction, has vanished.
Or, we can wonder what role Teacher’s Unions play? By making it more difficult to get rid of underperforming teachers, does that improve the quality of education? What about the victim mentality? We have gotten away from the concept that “Everyone can succeed if they put in the effort”, and moved towards “It’s government’s job to make me successful, and if I’m not, it’s their fault”.
I firmly believe that if you start by motivating students with the importance of learning and you focus on the actual material, all students can learn, regardless of location. America once had schools that were the envy of the world. Now they perform increasingly poorly compared to schools from around the world, and our economy is getting weaker as a result.
It is hard to tell about this situation from the distance. Maybe they should use educational powerpoint presentations like https://edubirdie.com/buy-powerpoint-presentation for home study? Not for a long period, of course.
Q: Do they still have labor unions in Venezuela?
So, do those morons know they are commies, or are they just (as Lenin said) “useful idiots”? I really feel sorry for Chicago school kids. My granddad went from 1-12 there a long time ago and his education was polar opposite; he got a real education.
That’s a good move! Schools shouldn’t be closed. I understand it but sometimes I feel so lazy when I need to do assignments for my school. I often read essaypro reviews and want to order a writing task because they are so difficult and require too much time. I think once I will do it.
Ironically, I read this story while dining at the Golden Corral restaurant. No food shortage there, and only had to work about half an hour to earn enough to stuff my gullet full of steak, vegetables and 2 deserts!
Speaking as a former member of the Chicago Teachers Union I believe these people are ‘useful idiots’ in the hands of the Maduro regime. Visitors to a ruined country can be controlled and shown a Potemkin village just to gain a positive image abroad. Witness the visit of Michael Moore to Cuba. He saw nothing negative while there. The illusion can be maintained for a sort while. With time the reality intrudes.
It’s a failed nation after the US has tried to overthrow it multiple times and Sanctioned it to the point it can’t even bring in medicine. ANY GOVERNMENT WOULD FAIL AFTER ITS BEEN CUT OFF FOR 10 years plus!! That’s like me burning your house down and blaming you for being homeless. Let his government compete with fair access to markets and if it fails after than it was because the veneZuelan people didn’t want him-not the US. This interventionist blame communism bullshit has to stop. Let communism fail on its own. We are not the worlds police even though this is not a humanitarian intervention- ITS ABOUT OIL AGAIN!!!!!
Venezuela has hundreds of other countries to trade with. Reality is that the socialist nits are too inept to get the oil out of the ground. Further they are more than willing to starve their people in the name their thirst for power and blind belief in their idiotic politics.
The sanctions on Iran have been more extreme and have been in place for far longer than those placed on Venezuela. Iran has fared far better. They are having serious hardship. The difference between them; one is hard line theocracy and the other hard line socialism. The only conclusion from this comparison is that socialism destroys countries.
I’m guessing this was orchestrated by John Bolton himself. Effective in executing innumerable objectives.
Wow…I come from Ecuador, south of Venezuela. Way back when I was growing up there, Venezuela was almost a 1st world country, the envy of Latin America.
When even the poor people in Ecuador are saddened over what happened there, you know it’s pretty bad. And most will blame the problem on socialism.
” And most will blame the problem on socialism.”
And then, in true Latin tradition, turn around and support some other totalitarian strongman making promises about all the wealth his government will hand out to “his people,” obtained by taxing “those guys”. Only this time labeling himself some other, more currently fashionable -ist……… And then, when that fails, back to socialism again…..
Had many family members who turned away from socialism after the debacle in Venezuela.
Turned to what? Anything less than either hard libertarianism or anarchism is, in practice, just more of the big-totalitarian-government-by-another-name same. As the US experience amply demonstrated; even Jefferson’s $7mill/year, no standing army, armed citizenry, constitutionally limited government, turned out to, in practice, have been too big…..
Those folks aren’t stupid,they see what’s comin,Trump should meet with el presidente and get some real world survival tips for staying in power when your country collapses because before his term is over DT is gonna be in the exact same position,will he seize power like Maduro or will he be forced out by a DNC led coup?
The DNC led coup failed.
Seizing power may be the only chance he has. Texas is now in the tossup category for 2020.
“And in case it did not occur to you, what they are doing is brainwashing your kids.”
After a previous election, i heard a radio ad in which the California Teachers Association said they were going to promote social justice. Yes they are brainwashing the children.
If things were so dandy with the economy and upward mobility then they wouldn’t have to resort to such tactics. The bottom line here is just as Trump got elected for economic justice for a declining middle class in middle America there is a similar decline in California and elsewhere socioeconomically.
The Humanist Manifesto was written in 1933, laying out a goal of brainwashing children. It began a very long time ago.
Sarah Chambers: “Through major economic hardships, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro never closed a single public school or a single health clinic.”
Fact:” The Pharmaceutical Federation of Venezuela estimates the country is experiencing an 85 percent shortage of medicine.”
It doesn’t matter that all the health clinics are open, if they can’t service the patients.
The CTU is willfully blind to the suffering in Venezuela.
YES…. courtesy of the US government ….
This is a very nice article, thanks for adding it to my knowledge.
In reality the above post is not that important in the grand scheme of global economics. Today Trump is eyeing another tax cut. The deficit will spike higher again.
Forget facts about Venezuela. That’s not the real issue here. The function of the Teachers Union leadership is to advocate for Chicago teachers with regard to wages and working conditions. Period. That is the sole purpose for which they were elected to their positions.
They have no business engaging in political advocacy for either side of the political spectrum. They should be spending their time lobbying for teachers causes. Period. Lobbying for leftist political causes is outside their mandate.
Each person will have their own five points.
Let’s not forget that even five years ago, they were shooting the students. Students shot, schools open.
Umm…. in case you are wondering, I mean in Venezuela.
Whether or not this is a good idea or not for the teachers union to show up it seems to me to be just another long list of hoaxes to gain sympathy [and more money of course] for the union and their teachers.
Just like the HOAXES our government DHS FEMA when they run drills such as a staged mass shooting event. Our news media runs with them as if they are real so that sales people will go to the schools selling, CCTV Networks, metal detectors, bullet proof windows, scanners [great radiate our children] and an assorted security services. These companies get the thrill of increase revenue/profits and we the taxpayer get the bill. They get the THRILL and we the people get the BILL!
The scams just never stop!
More here:
Venezuelans are not a “failed nation”. They arguably have a failed state, but that is something else. They were the first to kick out the Spanish, and have/had more development and progress than many other spots around Latin America.
During the Chavez years they succeeded in drastically improving literacy rates, access to education, health care, and lowering the percentage of people in poverty. The economy is doing terribly the past 5 years, but not only due to mismanagement and other issues: heavy crude is simply not very profitable. Even in Canada the viability of heavy oil is a problem that periodically reasserts itself.
Were Bolton to get his way with “regime” change, expect conditions in Venezuela to deteriorate for >90% of the population — think Honduras, Guatamala, Haiti, and other beneficiaries of US-led regime change and export of democracy.
Someone doesn’t suckle at the MSM teat.
The shortages of medicine are mostly caused by sanctions.
I remember pictures of Venezuelan people standing in long lines, just to be able to get what little food was available.
I don’t think Russia, China or Cuba care about the sanctions. Why aren’t they sending medicines? Because Maduro can’t pay for it, maybe?
They can’t pay for it because the US & its global network has cockblocked Venezuela from selling oil on the open market. Whether or not you support socialism Venezuela’s current problems have mostly been exacerbated by this very act of war. If the USA actually cared and not merely paid lip service while sticking knives in countless backs, we would be doing our best to help the starving people. But, like Palestine, Yemen, pretty much the whole planet, if you don’t do as John Bolton says, you should simply die. And he wouldn’t bat an eyelash over it.
There’s not a sanction policy anywhere on the planet nearly half as thoroughly enforced as the ban on cocaine flowing into the US. Yet, because Americans still have some seedcorn left to burn, those sanctions simply aren’t all that effective. Venezuelans only differ in that they beat Americans to the goal line of having burned every seedcorn there is, in their attempt to aggrandize their particular morons-in-charge. So noone bothers going around even what poorly enforced sanctions may be in place, since the saps are too destitute to make it worth anyone’s while anyway.
So, did you all know that in the depths of the depression, Chicago schools kept going despite the fact that salaries were not being paid? Back then teaching was considered what was known as a “calling”. Of course they’re not the same individuals, but, still worth noting this for the record.
Chicago teachers wouldn’t do that today. They would all be out on strike if salaries were not being paid. I remember the SEIU protesters saying “raise our taxes.” They don’t care how much the tax payers suffer for thier benefit.
Look for the union label (for extracurricular activities).
Do those four individuals all have perfect skin, or does the whitewashing of socialism rely on photoshopping too?
The last thing I read about Venezuela school teacher is that they were also working as prostitutes. Will this become the new normal for Chicago?
Of course. Not just for Chicago. Nor school teachers. All women who aren’t party members on direct Fed payroll, will have to do whatever it takes, in order to pay ever rising rent, and pony up for ever more mandates, so that the connected leeches can live large off of the work of others. Just look at Fidel’s little women’s-lib-by-economic-necessity paradise. Or Los Angeles. Or any US bordertown. Or increasingly any other city in the West.
New Soviet Woman (aka baby factory):
https://blogs.bu.edu/guidedhistory/russia-and-its-empires/chelsea-adler/
It’s high time that you start exposing these liberal utopias. All leading Democratic presidential contenders have high praises for Maduro and his socialist policies just like these ‘teachers’.
So you FINALLY mention the U.S. embargo on Venezuela. Well, baby steps. Baby steps…that’s some progress.
Maybe next time you can connect a few dots…like medicine shortage/U.S. embargo, inflation/U.S. and allies stealing Venezuelan gold and bank accounts, oil infrastructure falling apart/U.S. embargo…etc.
I mean, at the rate you’re going you’ll liable to end up blaming healthcare problems on socialism while ignoring the U.S. embargo….oh wait…YOU DID ALREADY.
But to get the heart of the matter:
Why do hypocrite Americans throw stones in their glass houses and prattle about foreign dictatorships and faults…meanwhile the U.S. government assassinates it’s own American children, murders tens of millions of brown skinned Muslims because profits, abolishes Habeas Corpus, bombs more nations than Hitler…shall I go on?
As if American’s think the world actually respects them, or something. Sheeeesh.
And speaking of Rahm…well the closed “dilapidated” schools funds got diverted….those tax dollars from close schools went to a famously profitable private sports stadium…but gee that’s not corrupt so please strike that….but did it ever occur to you ask….
Why those schools got to be dilapidated in the first place?
Oh yes…to fund private sports stadiums owned by Rahm’s Ultra rich friends, and to pay for Rahm torture chambers run by his goons in the Chicago Police Dept….but that’s not corrupt or dictatorial, no sir, you ain’t heard that from…no, you ain’t heard than from me….
Venezuela’s economic woes are are at least as much a consequence of US sanctions as they are a product of Maduro’s socialist policies.
Surely you understand that the US has been interfering in the affairs of sovereign Central and Latin American nations for the last 75 years!
Please be serious.
Extreme and corrupt Socialists are the primary problem in Venezuela. But yes, the US has not helped.
More than 75 years, imunro. How and when do you think the Panama Canal got built? Go back to history class.
Then, it is up to the Venezuelans to make their politics meddle proof. Which, as all beneficial political acts, starts and ends with reducing the size and scope of THEIR OWN government to the point where no matter who the outside meddlers put in place, it makes not a lick of difference whatsoever.
Do that, and the US could still meddle. But only by way of an overt, hot war.
Once you have a population already enslaved to some yahoo, how the heck can they ever hope to control who said yahoo listens to? Instead, just route around the yahoo. Render him irrelevant, regardless of who he talks to and is bribed by.
Chavez nationalized oil and his cronies were too inept to get it out of the ground. Millions are starving above 1000000000000 barrels of oil. Yes, the number of zeroes is correct. Socialism always leads to famine, mass murder or both.
Singing the praises of ever more government meddling and redistribution, is what those benefiting from the redistribution will always do. Makes zero difference whether one is a Chicago unionista, a New York hedge fund manager, or Donald Trump. Thinly veiled excuses for why it is somehow OK for the government to rob my neighbor to pay me, is all any government apologist will ever be about. Without any exception whatsoever.