Ken Previti, like Mike Klonsky and many other Chicagoans, is outraged by Kristin McQueary, the editorial writer at the Chicago Tribune who expressed her longing for a vicious hurricane like Katrina to level the city of Chicago so there could be a “do-over.”
Ken thinks McCleary should be fired. He would no doubt be happy to see the Chicago Tribune go out of business.
Just the other day, Chicago Tribune Editorial Board Member Kristin McQueary wrote. “I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago — an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops. That’s what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak.”
Pleas for destruction while claiming salvation.
The bodies of 1,833 innocent dead human beings in New Orleans – black and white, young and old – floated in polluted salt water during intense heat as carrion birds hovered overhead. This is Kristin’s idea for her city, Chicago. What a profitable opportunity! Think of all the education taxes that could privately profit the rich boys – if only the “in” people could eliminate the little people and public schools and anything not profitable for the rich boys who pay Kristin. This was savage talk that was meant to make her bosses like her.
Now, let’s see. What to do?
Demand that Tribune Editor Kristin McQueary be fired. Why? She used her position as an editor of a major news service to voice her desire to see your parents and children die in the streets and be pecked over by carrion birds. No matter how her fellow editors try to spin it, this is savagery.
There is indeed something indescribably sick about people who wish for death and destruction to land on the heads of others (not themselves).
Should McQueary be fired? That’s not up to me. I would, however, like to see her have some serious therapy or sensitivity training or empathy training, including perhaps viewing the bloated bodies of men, women, and children in New Orleans after Katrina.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Or just let her see her family floating in the muck and stink. That’s why people can say things like this: no one they love will be adversely aka lethally affected. It’s like with Trump’s mass deportation policy, “What do I care, I don’t know any Mesicans”…. until your kid gets shot trying to save his Latina girlfriend from being loaded onto one of Trump’s deportation trucks. This would make a good movie if it weren’t true.
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Well, you can always run across a nut dumb enough to write something like that AND these days a paper that is dumb and corrupt enough to print it. But rarely do we see a secretary of education saying it, and I think that was more of a reveal than a lapse.
These folks want to destroy lives and families while claiming to be saving them. Under the guise of saving all kids, they want to toss them all in the deep end regardless of age or familiarity with water to identify the strong swimmers and ones with innate talent for floating. You can see what they really want by observing what they do to teachers and schools. It’s a certain brand of callous stupidity or simplicity. The reduction and focus on data and data analysis is another huge reveal. If you don’t truly understand what that data is and isn’t and what it can and cannot tell, the analysis is worthless to you. And if you do understand that the data is bastardized to the point of nonsense, then you know the analysis is worthless period. It’s only use will be for fraud in propaganda.
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And enormously biased studies and hyper-reductive research.
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These faux reformers don’t really believe in data. If they did, they would be incredibly curious as to whether there is any connection between high suspension rates, high attrition rates, and high test scores in the schools that do well – especially the ones with a large majority of at-risk students.
And yet, not a peep of curiosity, despite even a few voices in the wilderness pro-charter folks mentioning it just might be a factor (and of course, they are promptly ignored so their research disappears). It’s hard to take seriously any “reformer” who pretends schools can be reformed if they have to be dishonest about the huge price the kids who don’t “fit” pay in that reform. Especially when the kids who don’t fit are far more likely to be ELL, living in poverty, with special needs.
My favorite is some guy in Atlanta who keeps using as his “data set” only the scores of the students who STAY as if the many who leave don’t need to be included. Can you imagine a science journal studying the effects of a new cancer drug in a trial in which 50% of the patients mysteriously leave the trial, but the rest do well? And then showing no interest whatsoever as to whether the patients who left might have had more advanced cancers than the patients who stayed? But that is what counts as “data” in the school reform world.
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Amen.
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Please, a media distraction, stick with education.
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I agree, this shouldn’t be about McQueary, but would she have ever dared say anything like that had Arne never said what he said?
Education Secretary Arne Duncan called Hurricane Katrina “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans”
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Kristin McQueary’s cow put its hoof in the levee and flooded Chicago? Sounds like her elevator doesn’t go to the top floor of the Willis Tower.
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Her editorial is NOT just a “media distraction.” It is a sickening blame-the-victims-of-poverty mindset published for all to see.
It is the unintentional revelation of what the education “reformers” believe.
A young, immature frat boy in Oklahoma nearly had his life ruined over the use of an offensive word, but this woman gets to skate even though she is an adult and is being paid to say such horrible things?
No. She needs to be fired. Let the cleansing she wants begin with her.
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Fine, but the story must not wind up that she spoke the ugly truth about what happened in New Orleans and got fired to appease the anti-deformers and political correctness.
The story is that New Orleans got hit twice, first by the natural disaster, then by the manufactured one. And she is part of that manufactured disaster as it continues to play out in Chicago and everywhere else.
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Good point. She should be fired because she openly wished for death and destruction to hit her city just so the school system could be remade according to her specifications. Who does that?
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McQueary is a member of the Trib’s editorial board. She desires to see destruction and death in order to have profitable, corporate charter schools replace public schools for all. The deaths she speaks of are deaths of those men, women and children who presently live in Chicago. Once destroyed, the city government would create gentrified areas with the right kinds of children and parents. McQueary-like people.
This is precisely the land grab that is happening in Chicago today. McQueary would prefer to speed up the process with horrific deaths and mass destruction. It’s all about money, race and power.
Today is the fourth day of a hunger strike waged to have public schools in the Bronzeville section of Chicago. The people involved are suffering and willing to risk death in order to have decent public education for their children.
In this, the wealthiest nation in the world, there should be no need for a hunger strike by those who suffer to have their children receive a decent public education. The plutocrats and their political stooges who force issues to this extreme do not care about those children or adults. Mayor Rahm Emanuel (D) and Gov. Bruce Rauner (R) don’t care; they don’t even give lip service pretending that they care. Kristin McQueary doesn’t care.
I care. I sincerely hope that enough people care and force some justice to occur for this sad, sad situation.
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The Trib firing McQueary would be like Obama firing Duncan. Fine thanks for doing the dirty work. As appalled as I am that she wrote it, I’m far more appalled that the Trib published it. And they published it because they agree with it.
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Hers is the sick kind of thinking that the greedy ed reformers promote for their own gain – not for improvement of education for anyone. Money the root of all evil wields its ugly head with her and her ilk.
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McQueary has written several slobbering pieces praising Governor Ruiner. She is a sock puppet for plutocrats and sociopaths, and devoid of any compassion or empathy.
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Has she seen the salvation in Louisiana? The amazing rebuilding of a city once leveled so recently? NO she hasn’t and nor has anyone else because it is a long and painful process. How rude to toss about words as though they don’t hurt those who are still suffering. Chicago could use some house cleaning but if I were in charge I’d start at the editorial board of the Trib…why did they allow this to be published?
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McQueary’s dumb essay represents the whole Chicago Trib’s avoidance of investigating the roots of Chicago’s corruption and waste. They’ll point fingers at union swine and greedy teachers but won’t touch the political racketeers: http://windycityteachers.blogspot.com/2015/08/useless-reporter-kristen-mcqueary.html
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In all seriousness she may not have to wait all that long. With climate change shaping the weather etc in all sorts of ways it might happen. This has been the hottest year on record already and the last decade has followed that pattern. Worse, just like what is happening in education the moneyed interests are focusing their interests on short term monetary profits and to the nether regions for the rest of us and to our children.
I do not fault her for her writings. She has a right to her opinions and from my point of view, if I view what she is saying as a correct assessment of what causes her point of view, it may take, hopefully not, but an horrific event to change things.
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There are many among the 130 families, who control this nation, that wish to and, act to, harm the United States. They only take from the country, showing contempt for national sacrifice.
George Bush and his wife, profiting from speaking at a charity events, for disabled soldiers, is one example.
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It is sad that a paper with such a positive reputation could contemplate this scenario. Hate is powerful thing. Sad.
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