Moses Has Words

Pharaoh has spears.

Dathan, "The Ten Commandments"

You cannot really understand what goes on at the top of a municipal gummint like Chicago if you don't get that it doesn't matter if it's 1971, 1991 or 2011. Doesn't matter if Da Mare's name is Daley or Emmanuel. It is life under the rule of a Pharaoh, which is why local artist Tony Fitzpatrick's poem "The Dead Still Walk" (from "Bum Town") ends:

...
Who built the pyramids?
Mayor Daley built the pyramids.
(Everybody knows dat.)

Because some things are eternal.

See if you can spot an Eternal Truth in this "Sun Times" story:

City official suggests the homeless take cabs

BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter/fspielman@suntimes.com October 31, 2011 3:00PM

The head of the city’s Department of Family and Support Services had a Marie Antoinette moment on Monday — when she suggested that homeless Chicagoans who need overnight transport this winter “take a cab” to emergency shelters.

After testifying at City Council budget hearings, Commissioner Evelyn Diaz was discussing the $2.4 million, mid-year cut in state funding that forced Mayor Rahm Emanuel to lay off 24 city employees who worked the overnight shift picking up homeless residents and transporting them to shelters.

Diaz was asked what would happen this winter without the overnight shift. How were homeless Chicagoans — many of them suffering from alcohol, substance abuse and mental health problems — supposed to get to emergency shelters overnight? Were they supposed to just hang tough until 8 a.m?

“If they can’t find another alternative,” she said.

Asked to identify an alternative, Diaz said, “Public transportation, cabs.”

When a reporter reminded the commissioner that homeless people can’t afford cab fare, an apparently embarrassed Diaz ignored the question.

Hours later, department spokeswoman Anne Sheahan attempted to explain away the commissioner’s statement. Sheahan said Diaz was referring to an expanded contract with the American Red Cross that, in the absence of overnight homeless services, provides families who lose their homes in a fire with a cab voucher to transport them to shelters.

When reporters were questioning Diaz, there was never any mention of fire victims.

The cab remark sounded a bit like Marie Antoinette’s notorious, “Let ‘em eat cake.”

But, Julie Dworkin, director of policy for the Chicago Coalition of the Homeless, said, “I’m not offended by it. I don’t know that she believes it’s realistic for homeless people to take a cab. She was probably just trying to show how difficult the situation is — that we’re left with choices that really don’t make sense.”
...

Some stuff you should know.

First, the Department of Family and Support Services is a mess: a polyglot empire stitched together out of bleeding chunks of other departments because Mare Daley wanted it that way. There might have been some talk of saving a few bucks by sharing HR and accounting department and suchlike, but mostly for Hizzoner's convenience. First he wanted everything to do with "kids" under one roof. Then "families". Then, apparently all carbon-based like forms that could not be attended to by the Park District and Animal Control.

And so you end up with everything from Head Start to homeless services to ex-offender programs to incumbent worker dog groomer retraining bolted together into a behemoth that rivaled the size and Byzantinity of Streets and Sanitation, and then handed it off to the principal of one of the schools one of the Daley children just happened to attend:

The Chicago Sun-Times reported this summer that Daley was pushing Mary Ellen Caron, founder and former principal of his daughter's Catholic elementary school, for chief education officer, but Huberman resisted, saying the job needed to go to a minority. The post was never filled. Caron remains the $147,060-a-year commissioner of the city's new mega-Department of Family and Support Services.

Huberman has been under fire from newly elected Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewis for making cost-cutting decisions that impact the classroom from a business perspective, without any input from educators.

And such a behemoth can lurch along for a good long time on inertia and Mayoral pixie dust.

Until the money runs out.

At which point all the clever dogs cash in their clout cards and make their way to their reserved seats on the very few, very well-appointed lifeboats --

Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman to step down

SUN-TIMES EXCLUSIVE | Huberman to leave in middle of school year

Chicago Public Schools CEO Ron Huberman has told Mayor Daley he has no intention of serving another mayor and intends to leave his $230,000-a-year job long before the mayor leaves office in mid-May.

Huberman's departure could mean Daley would have to turn over the nation's third-largest school system in the middle of the school year to a caretaker schools chief who would be replaced by yet another schools chief after a new mayor is seated.

All this threatens to occur over a critical set of months when CPS traditionally devises its budget, prepares for state tests and decides which schools to close. It must tackle these tasks with an administrative staff decimated by budget cuts, teachers left disgruntled by cost-saving layoffs, and the specter of even worse budget woes next school year.

-- leaving it to others

Mayor-elect Emanuel Announces Department of Family and Support Services Leadership Team
Previously posted on April 28, 2011

Today, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel announced the next leaders of the Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS). Evelyn Diaz will serve as Commissioner of DFSS and John Pfeiffer will support her as First Deputy Commissioner.

"Evelyn and John understand that at the end of the day, this is not about programs, but about people. It's not about the number of dollars we spend, but about the number of lives we affect," said Mayor-elect Emanuel.
...

to try to make the shuddering, clanking mess that municipal gummint has become operate without the only lubricant that is capable of keeping all of its groaning inefficiencies and wildly mismatched parts from seizing up and bursting into flames.

But is any of that qualify as an Eternal Truth?

Nah.

The Eternal Truth is found in what the Commissioner did not say.

She did not tell the simple truth that her boss' decision to cut $2.4M from homeless services means that -- however hard front-line staff works to take up the slack -- services to the most vulnerable and least politically important group of citizens in Chicago are going to take a huge hit. Which, in turn, means that more homeless Chicagoans are almost certainly going to start showing up in the ER and in the morgue.

Because the brutal reality is that, at the federal, state and local levels, deep budget cuts usually translates into more disaster dropped onto the heads of the already poor and powerless. Onto the back of people who are already just barely hanging on by their nails.

Because while Moses has words, Pharaoh has spears, and you do not stay a general in Pharaoh's Army saying shit like that out of school.

Everybody knows dat.