It Could Happen Here - Bad Mayor Monday: Vallas X Lightfoot, a Chicago Double Feature

Episode Date: April 3, 2023

Mia walks Gare and James through past bad mayor Lori Lightfoot's tumultuous term before turning to the school destroying career of potential future mayor Paul VallasSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Shitty Mayor Mondays, a name we're not actually allowed to use as the title of our podcast because it breaks a bunch of cert shit in the background. I'm your host, Mio Wong, coming to you live from a crumbling basement in contested Chicago that may or may not be hit by a tornado in the next hour. This is It Could Happen Here. So true. It could all happen within this next recording session. It could happen in Mia's basement. Yeah, with me, I have Garrison and James. Hello.

Welcome to hell. Hi. I'm in tornado-free San Diego. Did have a tornado warning yesterday. Luckily, I'm in the ever-stable Pacific Northwest where nothing bad can happen. Yeah, it's contractually obligated. It says no bad things. No earthquakes here that are overdue.

No forest fires or record temperatures. It's great out there. So true. So today we're doing a sort of special episode of Shitty Mayor mondays which is that uh we are we are doing the chicago double feature because our previous shitty mayor laurie lightfoot i managed to become the first i think i think the the first chicago mayoral candidate in 40 years who was an incumbent and lost re-election and not only did she lose re-election she went out so okay the way the way the the the the Chicago mayor elections have like a trillion candidates like I think there were like

nine this time and if no one can get above 50 it goes to a runoff and she got knocked out before the runoff which is unbelievably funny um so we're going to talk about her first as the sort of this is what life what is is sort of the shitty Chicago mayor past and then we're gonna talk about the maybe future shitty Chicago mayor Paul Vallis who sucks so much that he was the reason I specifically wanted to do this series but first what do you talk about fucking Lori Lightfoot, a person who I don't, I don't know. I feel like people outside of Chicago don't know much about her. Yeah, I mean, I know that she's like, like, has generally failed to do all the things that she was supposed to do. And in the kind of general sort of Democrat mayor model uh has sucked but i'm excited to hear

the specifics yeah she's a i know she's well okay a the funniest thing about her is just just google pictures of her hats she has just like an incredible hat game it's just always appearing and just an incredible like she has so many hats it's it's wild just every single picture she's in it's just like a random different wild hat it's amazing but she's also kind of in some sense like a kind of uniquely incompetent politician so okay so lightfoot was elected mayor in like an absolute landslide in 2019 and she ran this very weird campaign which was based on sort of three main things it was one was not being a machine candidate and this is actually very important is that lightfoot is not actually part of the chicago political machine that controls like most politics why there's there's

the kind of that kind of separate parts of the machine this is a complicated thing we're not going to fully get into here but she's like not a machine candidate she like kind of is an outsider in some sense. And that was a big part of why people voted for her. There's another thing, which is this sort of like identity tokenism thing, which is like, I'm going to be the first black lesbian mayor of Chicago, which she is.

And then the third thing she was running on was building a shit ton of police academies. Now, in 2019, I was in Chicago for this election and I was like, do not fucking vote for her. She's going to build these cop academies. Everyone was like, no, it's going to be great.

She's not the machine. She's like. So she gets elected in 2019. And this means that when she gets into office, like almost immediately, 2020 happens. And OK, so no mayor has like a good response to 2020. Lightfoot is like catastrophic so i've talked about this a bit at the show but but what 2020 in chicago is this really really kind of wild and weird thing it doesn't map on to a lot of the other sort of 2020s but like the first thing that happens basically is chicago has a thing called i think it's i think

it's the magnificent mile it's something mild i can't remember what it's magnificent or miracle because it's a fucking bullshit tourist thing but it's like it's like this chicago's like it's like a mile of like really rich shopping districts and the cops just lost control of it like people just took it it was like fully looted it was just this it was just this there was this sort of incredible moment of like chicago's working class that had been getting shit on for 200 fucking years like finally stormed their way into the it's just the fucking bougie part of chicago and destroyed it and it fucking ruled but after that happened lightfoot was like oh shit we can never let

protesters get back there again so she started raising the fucking draw bridges that lead, that lead across the fucking river. So like, she was like, she basically turned the entirety of like, like that, that of that part of Chicago into a fucking fortress that you could not get onto. Amazing.

I just, she did this, like she raised the bridges multiple fucking times. I like, we're going to get to another story of her raising the bridges where it's like, it's like, like she does this so many times that like even times where she claims she didn't do it on purpose people are like i i think she raised the bridges this is you know and so this

is her basically she when she raises the bridges she just like declares war basically on like half of chicago and okay so this is like not a great thing to do if you are trying to be a popular politician is to just like physically declare war and like do fucking medieval fortress shit to like half half your fucking city and so her popularity starts tanking immediately this is in like the this is i'm guessing as a consequence of like the black lives matter protest right yeah yeah okay yeah yeah so her approval rating is like fucking absolutely dog shit i think oh i'm trying to find i i should have looked this up earlier i meant to and i forgot i think her approval rating was like 30 when she left office it might even be lower than that yeah so but you know but she she does this kind

of unique thing where she basically goes around and alienates like every single voting block in the city i guess before we get to this we should get we should get to how she pissed off the cops because one of her big things when she came into office was she was trying to sort of like do this alliance with the police but instead of her sort of actually like forming this you know she was trying to form a sort of center right wing base right she's trying to both sort of play this kind of like identity tokenism thing and then also build a base with the cops but a the cops are racist and b okay do you two know the story about the chicago columbus statue i don't think wait is that one of the ones that got taken down?

Sort of. I think this is one of the ones that... So in 2020, I wrote a story about how to tear down statues and then became the guy that everybody sent pictures of statues getting torn down to for a while. So I'm sure I've seen it. Amazing. Yeah, it was great.

Ben Shapiro had a whole fucking seizure about it. We got in lots of trouble with various federal agencies. But yeah, it was a very amazing story. Don't affiliate link to the ingredients to things which may or may not be illegal if you combine those ingredients in your story. So true. Yeah. Many popular mechanics editors have tried this.

It was great. I was in Russia today, not with my knowledge. But yeah, tell us about this other statue, Mia. Okay, so there is a giant statue thing sitting on this big column that was made in 1933, and it's this giant statue of Christopher Columbus. Also on this statue so there there's like a series of of like important italian people like on the column one of these things one of the people who has been picked it on this column like very much seems

to be benito mussolini holding a bunch of fascis that's cool Why? Now, the sculptor's son denies this, but this was made in 1933. It really looks like Benito Mussolini, and he is definitely holding fascists. So, all right. Amazing. This statue, this is like in the middle of the fucking city, right? In this park in the middle of the city. And this became the... Okay, so in 2020 in Chicago, the way the protests work is you have like the first initial like phase where the cops like lose control of the city.

And then the cops kind of like retake it over the next few days. And those are kind of lulled. But then it starts another like sort of wave of it starts back up again, like around specifically around this statue. And there's this whole thing that cops are trying to keep it up. specifically around this statue. And there's this whole thing that cops are trying to keep it up. And there's this whole thing where like, there's like,

like rings of activists, like surrounding a group of cops standing around the statue, like throwing shit at them. And it fucking ruled. And eventually the city is like, okay, we're going to, we're just going to take down the fucking statue. And this was a light foot thing,

but, but this pissed off the cops. And specifically, so we've talked about this before on the show, but like, this is one of the sort of unique things about Chicago is is that chicago has like yeah i guess the technical term is like white ethnic like groups that like do shit and one of those things is like there's like an italian american cop association that is very powerful and the italian american cop association

is like we like we will keep the statue at all costs. This is like our fucking guy. Like, I, we're, yeah. And Lightfoot is like, you guys, if you guys don't take this statue down, people are gonna fucking, like, burn the Miracle Mile again. And she gets into this giant fight with them, and these emails eventually get, I think, I can't remember if they, I think they get released as part of a court case or something,

but these emails come out that it, like, Lightfoot is yelling that she has the biggest balls of anyone on the table. She's gonna put her balls on the table. She's trying to, like, Lightfoot is yelling that she has the biggest balls of anyone on the table. She's going to put her balls on the table because she's trying to, like, keep the cops alive. So she gets in this giant fight and just pisses off all of the cops in the city. So she has pissed off, like, from the initial wave of protests, the drawbridge stuff. She has pissed off, like, anyone who's even sort of vaguely center-left and anti-racist and like a huge proportion of the city's black population and then she like systematically she's now pissed off like the sort of like

white ethnic cop groups who are also very powerful and then she does something like like really genuinely unforgivable and horrific which is in 2021 chicago police shot 13 year old adam toledo here's from a chicago paper called the tribe at a press conference after the shooting mayor louis lightfoot vowed to find the people responsible for quote putting a gun in the hands of toledo who chicago police and prosecutors insisted was armed so okay they shoot this kid who is fucking 13 years old his name is adam toledo and immediately the cops the prosecutors and the mayor said that he's armed they're going to find the person who put the gun in his hand so two and a half weeks later the uh video comes out and it turns out that not only was adam toledo not armed the cops shot him while he was while his hands were up while complying with their instructions

i think i've seen this body cam yeah this is yeah it's fucking awful and then like two years two days later they killed another guy and like there were there was there was there was another round of like huge protests and they weren't as big as 2020 ones but like there was another round of like huge protests and they weren't as big as 2020 ones but like there was another round of like really big protests in this and lightfoot was you know like actively involved in a conspiracy to lie about this fucking 13 year old kid who was killed in cold blood and so this pisses off like this this this like basically means that her her support among like the latino population drops to basically zero because she fucking accused a 13 year old kid of being a gang an armed gang member and then he got fucking after he got shot by the cops so oh the other fun thing about this is so

our like prosecutor kim fox is like there's like this whole thing about how she's like a progressive prosecutor and like the right trying to unseat her uh none of the fucking officers involved in this or the other shooting two days later were ever charged with anything after they again it shot like killed in cold blood a 13 year old kid with his hands up now the the sort of regular chicago right hates her because she's both black and a lesbian and there's some like we'll talk about this a bit when we get to phallus but there's just genuinely unhinged horrifying sort of like racism and like homophobia and like she's getting basically like splash damage transphobia from it because of how racist these people are and so but that means that like

you know she has like no support right she she managed to get to like she manages to get into a fight with chicago's like normally pretty conservative like black caucus and the black caucus gets so pissed at her that they forced through a police reform bill that has this tap, it's just like oversight committees. Just like... I win. And so, you know, on February 28th, there's an election, and all of the sort of like, everyone in the city of Chicago is like, she's fucked. Like, she's a

uniquely unpopular candidate. Everyone fucking hates her. She has systematically pissed off every single possible voting bloc in the entire city of Chicago. And she loses and you know there's this whole sort of media junket that happens where everyone's like this is like a referendum on crime in chicago it's like no no it's not like everyone just hates lightfoot because she sucks and she sucks in like a unique combination of ways that pisses off

everyone who can possibly vote in the city and so she gets 16 of the vote which i think 16 of the vote is like the actual sort of like top limit cap of the number of people in chicago who genuinely like her like i think it's exactly 15 like 60 at the city and there's fucking no one else she so she comes in third uh it's also very funny she spends the entire like a bunch of her money running campaign ads, like, against a guy who comes in fourth. Instead of the other two people. It's amazing. Completely misses a mark.

Yeah. And so the man who came in second, who is on, by the time this episode comes out, the election will be fucking tomorrow. The person who came in second in that vote is Brandon Johnson, who's a progressive candidate. He's backed by, like, the teachers's like fine he's like as good as you're going to get for a mayor although i will remind people that like john johnson is a much better candidate the other fucking guy we're going to talk about but i we need to talk about a little bit about the limits of electoral politics and like you know i'm just going to point out here that like Nepal, for example, routinely elects Maoist governments.

And like, do you know how, do you know how much Maoism those guys do? Like fucking none. There was no Maoism happening, right? There were some cool socialist mayors in Spain who led the population of the city to expropriate

the landowners around the city in the 1930s. Yeah, but that was the 1930s. This is now 20. Those are all, those people's fucking grandchildren are like maybe around. But yeah, like you're not going to get, you know, like we're not going to get a socialist city off of this.

On the other hand, the person who comes in first, who Brandon Johnson will be facing tomorrow when you listen to this, is a demon in human form. He is neoliberalism's bag man. He is the fucking reactionary Republican dog of the Chicago political machine. And that man's name is Paul Vallis. And as as as Vallis would fucking want, we are going to talk about him after we go to ads. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal tales from the shadows as part of my cultura podcast network available on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast on thanksgiving day 1999 a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean.

He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well.

Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone

calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's the one with the green guy on it. All right, we're back from ads we're here to talk about paul valis just the worst guy okay so paul valis sucks ass um the thing he's most famous for sucking ass for is for being the school privatization guy so we're going to start with the beginning of his sort of political career is in 2000 in 1995 he gets appointed as the ceo of chicago public schools and he holds that position from 1995 to 2001 now okay so there's a few things that that he like really likes one is insulating schools entirely and insulating any mechanism and any sort of like part of how a school works from any kind of community democratic control chicago used to have these sort of like democratic

councils that could like do stuff within the school and valence is like fuck that we're getting rid of all that shit. Like, absolutely not. The other thing he loves is charter schools. So, we should explain what a charter school is. Yeah. So, okay. The way a charter school works is that

instead of, like, the state or, like, the city or town or, like, a local government running a school, which is the way that schools normally work you instead give out a charter to either like technically an NGO or just a for-profit company and then that company takes a bunch of tax money like takes tax

money that would have gone to a public school and then uses it to run their own fucking school so like it is privatization that they've relabeled like charter quote unquote because if they actually called is privatization that they've relabeled like charter quote-unquote because if they actually called it privatization to schools people would fucking hate it and valis loves this shit this is this is what he spends most of his time across like on multiple

continents doing schools bullshit like attempting to push for um the other specific thing that he really likes this and this this is like this is sort of the the paul valis signature like classic thing is military academies they used to like basically not be military academies in chicago and valis is like we're gonna open so many fucking military academies so he does and these are these are like regular and the thing is okay like there are sort of like disciplinary quote-unquote military academies which is like you get sent there instead of prison. These are just like normal schools that are like quote-unquote military academies. But these schools, they're barely schools.

There are a lot of people who went to these schools in multiple cities. We'll get into more of this sort of later when we get to Philly. But people will go to these schools and their textbooks have pages torn out of them. Which pages, man? Here's the thing right you you would think this is like a like a kind of like republican style like uh we're taking out the pages that talk about like columbus being bad like no no no just random fucking like just pages torn out of it because they these schools don't have any fucking money like they don't have actual curriculars like they just they just like don't have sports they just don't have like anything to fucking do um and then this is another thing with charter schools so all right if you want to like be a regular teacher you have

to have like teaching teaching certificates uh if you work at a charter school yeah so i i think the standards depend on the state some of them i think I think Illinois is like two thirds of the teachers have to have teaching certificates, but that means that a lot of kids are being taught by teachers with no teaching certificates, which is like, you know, I,

that teaching, it turns out is not in fact easy enough that you can just put a random person there who doesn't know how to do it. And, you know, like have kids be taught correctly. I thought these military academies these military academies they have teachers who just like don't fucking teach right like they're

they're they're just a complete shit show but he opens a bunch of these and but okay and the other big thing the valis is supposed and this is the thing all the people who like valis would do this thing where they're like he's like a budget wizard and he's like the guy he's like the technocrat like smart policy want guy who you bring in to like like bail out a school district that's underwater financially and oh boy oh boy is that not true he okay so there's there's a very good report called passing the buck which is written by the action center on race in the Economy, or ACRE, which I recommend people, genuinely, people should go read this. It's like 12 pages long. It's very short.

And like, it's not even 12, like three of those pages are citations. And they wrote a report on Valis's time in various school districts. And here's some of the shit that he did to make it look like he had his balance his budget balanced so all right let's let's talk about his pension scheme i feel like i actually should explain how pensions work because like nobody fucking has them anymore so a pension is a thing where like you the worker or in this case like chicago teachers you take some of your current pay and instead of taking the money now it gets taken out of your paycheck and put into a towards a pension fund to fund your retirement and then this fund is invested in the stock market to get returns to pay out pensions that like support you when you retire right yeah so in 1999 valis was like oh hey the chicago pension system is funded

so we're gonna take the teacher's money and use it to pay other budget shortfalls great so this is good um anyways uh after he does this for for 13 consecutive years chicago stops paying into its pension system altogether and the result of this is a 9.6 billion dollar hole in the pension system that chicago has to like pay off and this is a huge part of like where the sort of modern like budget deficits in chicago come from like things that are used to like justify shutting schools down is that like they just didn't pay into this they just stopped paying into the pensions and instead took the money that they're supposed to go to teachers and use it to like make their budgets look clean so if he had just done this it would have been bad enough but but valis is like is a very very specific kind of like neoliberal technocrat dipshit and that kind of neoliberal

technocrat dipshit is the the the extremely interested in financial instruments guy who was like a kind of person that i think i think we see less of these days because most not the modern version of this are like crypto people right but back in like the 90s and 2000s there were a bunch of guys whose things were like really really convoluted financial instruments and everyone thought they were fucking geniuses um now now if if you if you were alive in 2008 you know where this is going butis, the second thing he does to sort of like, like quote unquote balance his budget sheet is he takes out the government equivalent of a payday loan.

So here's, here's a passing the buck quote. Valis literally borrowed against Chicago school children's futures when he took out a $666 million in capital appreciation bonds. Also, when I said he was like a demon, he took out $666 million. With a satanic loan. Yeah, we're doing the satanic panic for

this guy who fucking sucks. So yeah, he took out the loans and capital appreciation bonds. A form of debt in which the borrower pays nothing for several years but then has to pay very large sums to make up for skipped payments. A capital appreciation bond, CAB, is a long-term bond with compounding interest

on which the borrower is not permitted to make any principal or interest payments for many years. But the interest still accrues. It still accrurues but you're not allowed to pay why would we why would you take that why would you why would you do that that seems like a really bad decision oh it's a terrible it's a terrible decision i'm not a big money guy but valis's assumption was that like okay we don't have any money now but property values will continue to go up and just keep going up forever so we can pay this bond back when we have money from property taxes? Yeah.

So, okay, I'm going to finish this thing on these just dogshit bonds. In this way, it is similar to a negative amortization mortgage in which the outstanding principal actually grows over time because the unpaid interest gets tacked on to the amount owed in compounds yeah very amusingly uh california was doing something similar to this with uh with restitution payments recently or some some place in california where at least in one case that i looked into for story i wrote it was it was ruled illegal under the eighth amendment oh my god a cruel and unusual interest payment but it's good

to see that chicago is doing it oh we did this for a fucking but yeah there's actually a funny story about this like one of the side stories of this is that the guy who's running the school system in uh california like gets this same offer from like bond salesman people and he's like no what the fuck this is the dumbest thing i've ever seen. But Valis does this. Valis is going to do this in multiple cities. So I'm going to finish reading this thing. Because of this structure, borrowers often end up paying extraordinarily high interest rates over the lifetime of the bonds. Former California State Treasurer Bill Lockney called CABs the school district equivalent of a payday loan. So the result of this is that out of the 666.2 million dollars right that valis takes

out they pay 1.5 billion dollars in interest the interest rate over the lifetime of this bond is 223 percent good lord this is the guy who's supposed to be like the really smart technocrat reformer guy who understands financial stuff. You bring it to like solve school districts. And he took out a loan with 223% fucking interest. This is the kind of interest rate that in the words of David Graeber were once reserved for organized crime. And now is normally normally this kind of loan is like a thing. It's like this is like a very predatory sort of like yeah this is like a predatory banking thing valis did this to

himself on purpose because he's dumb and i mean also like he's trying i mean and part of part of the other sort of undercurrent of this it's not just that he's really stupid it's that he's trying to pay off his buddies in the in in the finance sector yeah and you know this is the other part of the story right it's like all of, all these school districts just get fucking looted to pay off these like fucking stupid ass hedge funds. And then he just bounces somewhere else and leaves them to deal with it.

Yeah. And, you know, so I talked a bit earlier about how like Valis' assumption on these bonds was like, well, it'll be fine because we'll, the housing markets will keep going up forever.

But then 2008 happens and this has a bunch of effects. One of the big ones is that VALIS was taking out bonds with variable interest rates. Oh no. Now, okay, we have talked about

this on this show before, right? There are entire, like, entire, like, multinational political movements that don't exist there are entire countries who fucking don't have manufacturing sectors anymore like there are there are places where the life expectancy fell by 20 years because their their their fucking leaders took out these kind of of like variable interest rate loans and got destroyed when the interest rate spikes

and guess what happened in chicago interest rate rate spikes. And okay, so, Valis' successor is, look at this, and are like, this is the stupidest fucking, you know, okay, Valis' successor, by the way, is Arnie Duncan, who's the guy that Obama puts in charge of the Department of Education. And Arnie Duncan

is like, okay, do you know how we're gonna solve the problem of these, the risk from these adjustable rate interest rates? default swabs oh god so all right i'm not going to explain how a credit default swap works because it's fucking annoying as hell but credit default swaps are one of the thing like one of the like very specific financial instruments that are um that are like specifically responsible for the 2008 collapse yes and now these technically aren't credit default swaps right these are technically what are called interest default swap or like interest swaps and they're but they're exactly

the same thing as a credit as a credit default swap but instead of credit it's interest so the the underlying asset right is like a bond and not like a loan or whatever but otherwise it's exactly the same thing and this this man you know and these these swaps have this thing where like if you can't pay you get these like unbelievably high like fees that start happening so uh but when these bonds blow up i they managed to cost they managed to cost chic another $31 million because their credit default spots just blew up. So, alright, so this guy's in 2002. In 2002, he ran for governor against Rob

fucking Blagojevich. Who is Rob Blagojevich? Who is Rob Blagojevich? You just do the first syllable and then let your lips take the rest. And Valor sucked so much Blagojevich. You just do the first syllable and then let your lips take the rest. Uninitiated. And Valis sucked so much that Rob Blagojevich is able to

outflank him on the left by running against him saying hey look at all these schools he privatized. And so he gets clobbered in the primaries by Rob fucking Blagojevich. The man who okay so we will cover this one day fully on the show because it's really funny but rob blagojevich is the man most famous for

getting arrested for trying to sell obama senate seat like he tried to sell a senate seat oh he's oh he's amazing he's now just on tucker talking about political persecution oh yeah yeah great extremely funny oh yeah he was on yesterday wasn't he yeah yeah yeah yeah how he was persecuted first and now trump is being persecuted yeah it's great really really the canary in the coal mine of grifters. Hey! Grifting politicians. Look, Garrison, look, if they can go after Rob Blagojevich for trying to sell Obama's

Senate seat, they could go after you for trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat. That's true. You know who else is trying to sell Barack Obama's Senate seat? Products and services that support this very podcast? No, they're illegally not allowed to do that. None of them would ever commit a crime under any circumstances. I still think...

I think a fair number of these corporations probably engage in some sort of political lobbying. That's true. They're trying to buy him a Senate seat, Garrison. That's totally different. That's different. Not the same. Not the of them specifically... They're trying to buy him a Senate seat, Garrison. That's totally different. That's different. Not the same.

Not the same. Totally fine. Thanks, Ronald Reagan. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonoro. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzales wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family

separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. All right, we're back and we're now we're now we're now sending valis to our i don't i don't

actually know if chicago and philadelphia are sister cities but like i think they should be i don't know i'm i am very in favor of the chicago philadelphia alliance same vibe yeah so she they both stood in for gotam city in the Christopher Nolan trilogy. So it's true. You go, you're doing a bag man reference again. There's, there's a whole,

there are like so many different specific. David, David Gilbert writes about this. Like there, there are so many different, like parts of places where they filmed like the dark night where people tried to protest and got arrested for blocking the road. this happened in multiple cities oh yeah no one wants a city to turn into la so you have to stand up against that shit immediately yeah do not let it happen in your

hood yeah it could it could happen here okay so after valis gets clobbered in in in the mayoral race uh he gets brought in by philadelphia to try to like fix their school system and he uh excuse me his plan to do this is by uh doing a bunch of military academies again and then doing also doing charter schools and so i i should i should explain like his other sort of so the big sort of rationale thing behind charter schools is school choice which is this oh yeah thing that was specifically invented as a way to let racist parents avoid integration yeah this is like goes along with so they mentioned the homeschooling movement we've talked about this in other episodes but he's like a huge like Valis to this day is a giant,

like school choice guy. Um, and then, you know, but the other thing, the other thing about Valis, I don't think people realize that much. He,

he, even though he's a Republican, a lot of the time, like he kind of flips back and forth between being a Democrat, being Republican, but he's, he's like, if after he loses to Rob or even,

even sort of before that, like he, he is an actual sort of chicago machine guy and because he's a chicago machine guy when he gets into philly the stuff that he starts doing this stuff where he like he'll just like in like he takes over the school district and like fires much people and like installs his cronies and all these departments and all these people are getting like he's like buying off people with budget allocations and he starts selling off buildings to raise money so he sells off like the district headquarters in order to buy like a more expensive district headquarters

and here's a quote from the book not paid for us which is a really really great book about sort of the history of racism in education philadelphia and this this is a quote from a longtime activist leroyeroy Simmons, before I start reading this. The district headquarters was called 21st and Parkway. There was doors in 21st and Parkway worth $1 million. Them big brass doors in the front, those doors were worth $1 million with all the carving on them.

People don't know how much they got for it to this day. I can't get an answer about how much did you sell that building for? Where the money went? The school district sold 21st and Parkway in a package with Kennedy Center. There were brand new trucks parked at Kennedy Center. They had forgot were there. There was a printing press in the Kennedy Center that could print all new magazines, and they never used. There were books and calculators, and every time I went through there, there were boxes of unused stuff in the Kennedy Center, and nobody knew. And they sold that, and the contents in the package

were 21st and Parkway. Nobody knew how much that was. There was some art that was priceless on the walls at 21st and Parkway. No one can find the art. There were priceless pieces of art hanging in schools across the city, and all that was sold in a package,

and nobody saw where it went. Totally normal. Yeah like all this is this is again this is like this is classic Chicago corruption shit right like we're not gonna say how much we sold this building for we're not gonna say who who we sold it to like we're gonna build a more expensive building and you know if you look

into who the contractors are it's like always someone's uncle or like brother or some shit there's just you know like there's just printing someone's uncle or like brother or some shit. There's just, you know, like there's printing presses that are gone, like priceless works of art just vanish. It's like, this is, this is like, you know, it's sort of incredible sort of Chicago political machine stuff. And this goes into a thing about, I think the Chicago political machine that, that is

really interesting, which is that these people are like on the one hand they're unbelievably corrupt on the other hand a lot of them are sort of real like hardline like doctrinaire neoliberals and this is i mean this is sort of the thing with arnie duncan right like like obama actually comes out of this machine too when he's a lot more sort of like doctrinaire about this stuff than the sort of modern people are and you know and val valis is like one of the the sort of like big guys here and you know so he he's really really in favor of charter schools and so they get enormous amounts of money um he also does this thing he yeah this is um also from not pay for us he funnels money into just like a shit ton of ngos in order to like do education programming

or whatever and so there's a sort of constellation that forms of these like you have these corporations doing like education stuff or like running schools and you have these like non-profits running like the like the education material and it's it's this sort of like this this is sort of arch neoliberal thing where instead of the state administering a service, what you have is this like basically a bunch of like contracting grifters who come in and suck up all of the money and then provide absolutely dog shit services. Now, I'm going to read another quote from this book because the people they are paying these contracts to are fucking wild. The SRC is like one of the bodies that's in charge of one of the state bodies that's in charge of the Philadelphia School District.

One of the SRC's most problematic contracts was with K-12 Inc. for $3 million to quote, provide academic and curriculum support, access to K-12's online curriculum and assessments, academic enrichment via summer and extended day programs,

professional development, teacher planning and training materials, and community involvement activities. Conservative radio talk show host William Bennett was the founder of K-12 Inc. He had been an advisor to former presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. During a show in 2005, he said the following, and this is a direct quote, If you want to reduce crime, you could, if that was your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossibly ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down.

So they paid this guy $3 million fucking dollars. To bolster Valis' pro-choice uh credentials i assume i this is this gen this is the most pro-choice thing i've ever seen from him is is the genocide guy because it's because it's genocide the eugenics guy yeah yeah well you see they all have a uh they all have a weakness that is i has anyone looked at the curriculum that they're providing? Seriously, it's unclear to me that they ever actually really provided

much of anything. It does sound like if you were going to make up a company to grift out of the education system, K-12 Inc. would be a great name. Yeah, and that's the thing about all these charter schools too, right? Okay, so there are some for are some corporations who do charter school stuff and they stick in the charter school business

because they decide that's how they want to make their money. A lot of these things come in, take a state contract, the school immediately implodes and then leave, and then they just walk out with a million dollars. And this is a recurring pattern over and over again with charter schools. He also brings in Teach for america who is this like just genuinely evil organization that tries to break teachers unions by recruiting these like incredibly idealistic and naive young college grads and like throwing them into like into failing schools as

this thing to like ah you're gonna like go serve the community and like uh uh you know you'll learn on the job and you'll you'll become an educator and you're like helping these disadvantaged kids and it's a disaster these these people the people who do this have no fucking idea how to teach because they you know they don't teach certificates right they're just like college grads and any of you have been around college grads like you you think those people are responsible enough to fucking teach kids like jesus christ yeah i remember that was like a big thing like i don't know if it still happens or not but i can remember writing oh it still does yeah reference

letters for students like 10 15 years ago for that yeah like i i mean i i know i had to like talk out classmates of mine like out of doing it because we were like you are doing you are doing union busting and also this will destroy your life and the life of the children you have to teach yeah it's a very strange system that yeah take someone by virtue of having any degree is it's automatically an educator but to be fair that is how universities work as well yeah you get get your master's degree and then they're like well fuck it get in there give it your best shot they'll just give you grad students with no degrees right like that's that's a thing too yeah yeah yeah and you know to to to to to get it to get another sense of like the other thing that's happening here is is he has this really valis has this really really racist kind

of like we need to like enforce discipline in schools thing and so they have all these and this happens in chicago too they have these like zero tolerance policies that have done, I mean, irreparable damage to like tens of thousands of kids. I'm going to read, I'm going to read a thing from tribe about Philadelphia quote, test results were posted on data walls in the school buildings to show which classes were making the most progress.

Whoa. It was humiliating. Said grill is a teacher. A lot of our kids were left behind, were behind. And a lot gorilla teacher a lot of our kids were left behind were behind and a lot a lot of our kids suffered trauma and trauma affects the way you learn so they were behind they weren't on grade level and it made them feel like failures i hated giving those tests wow yeah yeah people like to be wrong about georgia well but that that's some more welly and shit right there it's just like and like these are like fucking yeah like these are like these are literally children

like you are you are publicly shaming people who are like 12 there's just it's just horrible yeah that like we've known for a very long time that that doesn't work when you're educating kids like i have done pedagogy training and again no one with any intent to actually help kids is shaming kids in the classroom or young people or anyone of any age for that matter i just checked out what k12 inc are doing it's great uh they're now offering online high school oh great yeah yeah you can go to the faith prep academy and develop christian character and find yeah yeah this is great uh this is this is what i this is what our youth need yeah it sucks so um the other thing again we i mean we keep circling around this because happens a bunch of times like again valis' whole thing is supposed to be about like

balancing budgets, right? In 2007, by the time he's like near the end of his like time in Philly, he's fucked everything up so badly that for like just one year of the budget Philly schools were $73 million in the hole

now, the thing about this this is where most stories about valis's time in in philadelphia end but wait there's fucking more so that 73 million dollar shortfall was was the one year shortfall right remember back in chicago where valis's like variable interest rate bonds like blew up in the school's faces um this time valis is the guy directly who did the credit default swaps, and uh, these, these, the interest rates on these things are locked in literally for decades,

and just, like, like, some of these aren't expiring until, like, 2031, right? And just so far, they've cost 161 million dollars. Great. Yeah, and test, test scores fucking go down under him. It's a shit show. Yeah. And so 2007, they kick him out

because they're like, what the fuck are you doing? Unfortunately, the place they kick him out to is, and you're not going to like this, post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans. Oh, for fuck's sake. Yeah. Yeah, why?

Why do we have to inflict the fail sons of neoliberalism on the people of New Orleans? It's going to get worse, by the way. Okay, great. So this is really bad, right? New Orleans now, okay, so I think there's some kind of controversy about how exactly you calculate this. At the very least, 63 out of the 66

like new orleans like big like sorry let me let me rephrase it at the very least 63 out of the 66 like schools that they run like at the very least like that that are directly run by the state are charter schools um there's three more that are also charter schools but are kind of administrated by the district so there is a huge debate as to whether there are technically any public schools left in in in fucking new orleans jesus yeah they fired like and this this was this was before valis came into office but in new orleans they fired the entire every teacher in the fucking city they fired all the union literally all the union teachers replaced them with non-union people um valis comes in and uh starts implementing some shit

that is just like i like prison camp shit oh god uh here's from here's from tribe again according to by guard a lot of kids were arrested for quote disruption of a school process if they showed up late to class and refused to be kicked out for tardiness. And again, they are being arrested. For wanting to stay in school. Yeah. Black girls were arrested for having, quote, rat tail combs,

which have long, sharp handles for braiding hair. Yeah. In one instance, Bygard said a six-year-old student was expelled and charged with possession and distribution of a controlled substance because he brought tums to school and gave them to his classmates thinking they were candy what the fuck they charged a six-year-old yeah god yeah the levels of fucking cruelty That have to exist

Like a cop Has to see a six year old And not be like Oh lol Those are Tums Like kids probably Shouldn't eat too many of those Let me go tell them

They didn't know They were candy Because he's six Six Jesus Christ Yeah Fucking hell Just like

Just Just Genuinely Like Abhorrently evil shit yeah see this is like maybe now is a good time to point out that like uh in the wake of

yet another terrible school shooting people will want to put more cops in schools this is what happens when we put cops in schools right they brutalize our fucking children yeah and like it's not yeah like the state doing violence to children is not a way to protect children yeah

the more your school represents the levels of law enforcement that are in a prison camp the more the actual experience of the children will become like prison camps yes but also just literally god

I love to go to the panopticon high school Garrison what are you love to go to the panopticon high school garrison what are you talking about i just the panopticon high school where if you don't if you don't get kicked out of your fucking class for being late they arrest you who coma went again yeah just so speaking speaking of disciplining and punishing so these charter schools they do think that charter schools always do right which is sometimes if you know if you look at people who talk about educational reform, they'll be like, charter schools have really great test numbers. And A, that's just not true, right? That they're only looking at the really good charter schools. But here's the thing.

If you give a public school the amount of money that a really good charter school has, it will also be a really good school. But there's a second thing that charter schools can do that other schools can't which is that charter schools could just fucking kick students out and this is one of the ways that they maintain their test numbers is they just kick out kids over and over again you don't do who aren't initially doing well on tests they don't have to teach them and like bother to improve their test scores and in new orleans they get in trouble because the kids they were kicking out were kids with disabilities who they were illegally yeah who they were illegally not like giving individual education plans to and also they were okay this giving individual education plans to. And also,

these charter schools are all run by different private corporations. And so there's no system of tracking when a kid gets kicked out, whether they can actually go to another school. So they're just leaving these disabled kids in the fucking wind with no school to go to. And

this was so illegal that after a lawsuit, in the fucking wind with no school to go to. And this, this, this was so illegal that after a lawsuit, like, I think it might still be going to this day. It was going like 2014. Like the school, the Philadelphia school system was like under receivership by the federal government because they committed so many crimes against disabled students.

Jesus Christ. That is brutal. Yeah. It's awful. Fuck. No, sorry. This stuff makes me sick. I've worked in education for a lot of my adult life Sorry this stuff makes me sick I've worked in education

For a lot of my adult life and this shit makes me furious Yeah I just wanted to ask what you two did guess Where do you think they sent Paul Vallis next after he got kicked out of Trying to run Of New Orleans Did they send him to set up

A finishing school for girls In Kabul no but similar similar vibes oh for fuck's sake it's not it's outside the continental u.s yes it's not iraq no porto rito is it haiti earthquake it's haiti after the earthquake? It's Haiti after the earthquake. Yep. So now we've talked about this before on the show. In 2010, there was a just unbelievably heart-wrenchingly catastrophic earthquake. It killed 220,000 people and also destroyed like almost every building in Haiti.

And this kicks off phase two of the UN occupation of the country. We talked about this in our episodes on Lula and Bolsonaro. This is when the UN guys from Nepal bring in cholera on a bunch of the population, right? Yeah. So right after this happens, so the US just like sends Marines in, right? And no one in

Haiti asked for it. We just fucking invade. And they bring in Paul Vallis and specifically Paul Vallis and also Arne Duncan who's again Obama's fucking education secretary gets to bring in to rebuild the Haitian school system on the New Orleans model now okay weirdly if they had actually

implemented the New Orleans model it would have been an improvement because the way the Haitian school system worked was it was 90% private and the tuition was 40% of someone's annual budget. Like a family's annual budget. Yeah, I got lots of friends in Haiti who couldn't afford to pay for school. Or went broke trying. It's fucking horrible.

Vallis is supposed to change this, right? He gets brought in, they bring in the Clinton Foundation. Instead, what happens is the Clinton Foundation buys a bunch of trailers to use as schools from specifically the same people who got in trouble for selling formaldehyde-ridden trailers to FEMA during Katrina. And then...

Good stuff. You know, okay. I never think that I... I can't emphasize enough. What are they called? That grift trailer ink or something? Yeah, they fucking suck. Also, even if the trailers were good, right, there's a real issue with trying

to use trailers to teach kids in a place that is hot. Which is that it is a hundred fucking degrees inside these trailers. These trailers are made of metal, so if you touch the side of the thing, you get burned. Kids, people who, like, teachers who were taught there routinely talk about how, like, every kid

in their fucking class was having heat stroke and they were just like giving them painkillers for heat stroke because that's all they could do and yeah it is punishingly hot if you haven't worked in that part of the world a lot and it is it's hard enough without being in a tin can yeah and valis is fucking education reform they don't fucking work they don't do shit right hate education system is still fucked uh despite all the money the clinton foundation and like all these experts got paid like it's still really bad i valis like specifically like very specifically defended the use of trailers as like a thing you teach people in um yeah and you know this stuff all continues to the the present day the

u.s has been trying to find another excuse to just trying to find a way to do another intervention in haiti so he's still on the new orleans job i think while he's doing this haiti job and then he takes another job in chile yeah why i i don't know the people people get well because because the the uh the inter american development bank gives him half a million dollars to run 2 000 schools there so again he's now he's now splitting his time between new orleans haiti and chile and it's it's almost impossible to find i spent a lot of time looking it's like it's really hard to find like anything about what actually he was doing in chile what we do know is when he got there he was met by the enormous 2011 chilean student

protests which then later turned into the 2013 chilean student protests which turned into the 2015 chilean student protests which turned into the 2019 chilean student protests so you know i mean i just i just like you you it is possible to run paul valis out of your country a couple of different places or at least your school district or also your country a couple of places have done it and then after that they sent him to bridgeport connecticut for some reason where he gets run out after doing like he gets he he flees connecticut like trying to escape a lawsuit about all the illegal anti-union stuff that he did i really love the image of someone trying to desperately flee from connecticut yeah it's so small how how hard is it to leave connecticut

it seems pretty easy jump over the line i mean the line. The video I actually want to see is him getting out of Philly. See, getting out of Philly sounds actually hard. Getting out of just Connecticut is like, come on. Come on. Yeah, the video I want to see is him getting sent back to Haiti by himself. Oh, God. Yeah.

That's called a call to violence. He runs again in 2014. Blagojevich gets arrested for you know selling the senate seat and he tries to run for lieutenant governor on on a slate on like a ticket with pat quinn who had been the governor because he'd been the lieutenant governor under blagojevich and they like actually managed to lose in illinois to a republican which is like a thing that should not happen unless the democrats like really fuck up which i mean it happens right but like yeah so he loses can make can make electoral mistakes are you sure to be fair to be fair to be fair this one wasn't this wasn't even an electoral

thing this was just the guy tried to sell a fucking Senate seat and people were so mad at him that the next election, they're like, we will vote for Bruce Rauner, who is just like a fucking absolute dipshit. But okay, so he, so he, he has now lost two consecutive runs for governor, right? Governor and Lieutenant governor. Now this year he actually, he had another bid which he was maybe gonna run and then he stopped and now now he is one of the candidates for the mayor of chicago now while he's been doing his campaigning for this some other fun stuff has been happening um

so he has an absolutely unlistenable podcast. No, he has a podcast! No, Mia, please, no. Okay, so here's the thing. I considered pulling clips from this, and then I was like, I can't inflict this on you. Absolutely not. It sucks too much. I would simply leave this Zoom call. I'm not

I'm just gonna I'm just gonna talk about just gonna I'm just gonna like I'm just gonna talk about one of the things that he said a couple of things that he well okay one that he said on this

and one that he said on a different show one of the things was he starts ranting about this thing called culturally responsive teaching which is this kind of

liberal like anti-racist the other CRT yeah this is a big thing like if if anyone ever starts talking about culturally responsive

teaching and starts yelling about it like they're a racist like that those are the only people who like actually like consistently i mean like it's not like there aren't criticisms of it but like almost everyone who talks about this on like a school board level is like a really weird racist guy so she starts raving about how this means that everyone's going to get handed a copy of Mao's Little Red Book and then says, quote, What is this, the cultural revolution? Now, we have covered the cultural revolution over the course of the show of the Atlanta episodes, and I'm just going to simply say no and move on to read this unbelievably racist thing that he said. I'm just going to read this. It's it's real bad. But for that matter, if you are a black child, you go home and listen to your parent when your parent has failed to be successful in addressing the ways he's historically racist obstacles that have denied them a chance to equal opportunity.

He's the guy he's talking to. Paul, I wonder if you're a black kid, why don't you become a criminal? If you're hearing this stuff in school, everyone with the white skin is an oppressor. If you're black skin, you're the oppressed. That makes it pretty easy to justify any pretty bad conduct, in my opinion. You're absolutely right, says Valos comes back. But what you're also doing, you're giving people an excuse for bad behavior. You're almost justifying his rant, smoking fucks you're right you're absolutely right where is the accountability

you're the victim what's happening is it becomes a justification for everything and i think that's a very dangerous thing so valis is arguing that talking about racism is actually a thing that encourages black people to do crime which is like that sounds that sounds kind of racist mia just a little bit just off the bat he may be a white supremacist gives off racist vibes yeah um so speaking of racist vibes uh his son is a cop in santa fe and he was one of three cops who shot a black guy in the back after calling him boy um the cops including vellus yeah they start screaming boy at him and they shoot him in the back and the cops including vellus's son claimed to have found a gun next to his body um in in a completely unrelated story u.s special forces units in

afghanistan routinely carried ak-47s in the combat zone so they could drop them next to the body of people they killed in order to declare them insurgents. This has no relation to the previous story at all. I am simply relaying facts. Too interesting and unrelated stories. Yeah. Didn't Valus also, he's the guy who claimed his Twitter was hacked, right? Oh yeah, yeah. So way back at the beginning of this episode,

I talked a bit about the racism against Lori Lightfoot. And like one of the tweets that he liked is a tweet like calling Lori a man. Like Lori Lightfoot a man. Like it's just unbelievably racist like homophobic transphobic shit. And he claims that his account was hacked

and people were liking tweets without his permission. Yeah right that's all they did. They just liked some racist tweets. Yeah there's like a bunch of other like and the other thing is like okay Paul Vance doesn't like actually live Yeah, right. That's all they did. They just liked some racist tweets. Yeah, there's like a bunch of other, like, and the other thing is like, okay, Paul Vance doesn't like actually live in Chicago. You mentioned this. He lives in, like, he claims to live in

Palos Heights, which is also not Chicago, but it's unclear whether he even lives there or if he's in like some kind of like even more insane outlying suburb that's even less chicago than this stuff is and he like he likes he likes he kept one of the he kept liking tweets calling it like shit cago and stuff and it's like well yeah it's because he doesn't live in the city

like he's not actually like these are like a bunch of his support a bunch of the money he's getting are from like deranged suburban like reactionaries and okay so i want to tell one last story about him that pisses me off a lot which is the story of awake illinois so awake illinois is like illinois's version of protect texas kids it's a group that does nazi protests at drag events um they managed to destroy a bakery called uprising for trying to hold a drag bunt brunch so the the awake did all this thing of like, ah, they're grooming kids. And then the Proud Boys showed up and attacked it.

And then someone like vandalized it and they nearly had to close the entire bakery until a GoFundMe raised $30,000 for them to survive. They are, like these people are unbelievably homophobic. They rant about groomers constantly. They're like really transphobic. Anyways, Paul valis spoke at one of their fundraisers oh god so after this came out valis distanced himself from the group

saying he didn't know what they represented and just wanted to support school choice awake responded by going hey what the fuck you absolutely know who we are and they released another video of valis at another awake event where he said that awakes president shannon adcock should run for governor so if elected would i probably be the most openly homophobic democratic like mayor in the country which is a pretty wild like which is a pretty wild claim but like i i can't think of anyone else who actually like showed up at an event where people were just screaming about groomers. Yeah, not for the Democrats.

He is just a Republican. He's like a pretty right-wing Republican who runs as a Democrat because the Chicago political machine is also just so far right. I thought this was because Lori Lightfoot defunded the police from here. I thought that's what happened

and people want the police back. That's what I was told. The thing that's actually very funny about the elections is like, so there are elections for these police district councils which are supposed to be these civilian oversight boards and the reform there was an alliance of

reform, defund, and abolitionist candidates and they did fucking amazing. And the pro-police candidates got fucking clobbered. And meanwhile, every single national story about the election was like, Chicago crime! I was like, you guys don't understand how much everyone here hates the police. Like, they murdered a 13-year-old, like, fucking two years ago. Yeah, good parachute journalism yeah i i'm gonna i'm gonna hedge my thing here by saying there's so much other paul vales shit i couldn't

fit like i really wanted to talk about keith thornton who is chicago's george santos who like his thing is that he stole 9-11 dispatcher valor and is like showing up in pictures with Valis. Just, just Google Keith Thornton and you will have a good time. Like there are so many other Valis things that he did that are awful. There are probably things that he's done that we'll never know about because he did them in like, I don't know,

like, like what the fuck he was doing in Chile. We probably won't ever know all the things he did in Haiti. Yeah. Don't let this guy become the fucking mayor of Chicago he will leave this city utterly destroyed let's go Brandon

I I'm so annoyed that people are unironically let's go Brandon in Chicago now for Brandon Johnson it's great we're taking it back we're reclaiming it reclaim a Brandon I'm so're bringing it back we're taking it back we're reclaiming it reclaim a brandon yeah i'm so bad like bringing brandon back okay i got in trouble with my boss in 2015 for saying fuck hillary like you fucking little bitches you could just you could just say

that you you could just say fuck joe biden like all of you are cowards yes it was it is deeply cowardly. They're afraid of saying fuck, but at the same time they think they're going to stage an armed overthrow of the government. Oh, there's actually, okay, this is the thing I actually should mention. There are a bunch of ties between

there are a bunch of ties between Valus and guys who are at J6. And a lot of J6 people support him he's like he's like he is the MAGA candidate that's like there's like there's a whole thing there that I didn't get into because I don't know there's so much you could do like seven episodes just about

Paul Valis and how much he sucks but yeah stop him if he fucking gets elected we're doing that we're doing that we're doing the fucking chelan student protests because yeah hate him hope he has a bad day it could happen here is a production of cool zone media for more podcasts from cool zone media visit our website coolzonemedia.com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcastjo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturno on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever

you get your podcasts. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking musica, los premios, el chisme, and all things trending in my cultura. I'm bringing you all the latest happening in our entertainment world and some fun and impactful interviews with your favorite Latin artists, comedians, actors, and influencers. Each week, we get deep and raw life stories, combos on the issues that matter to us, and it's all packed with gems, fun, straight-up comedia, and that's a song that only nuestra gente can sprinkle. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season wherever you get your podcasts. and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.