The Barbershop: Dennis Byrne, Proprietor

Do Biden or Pritzker give a flying fig about the children?

Chicago Teachers Union members and supporters gather outside Jungman Elementary School in the Pilsen neighborhood Jan. 18, 2021, for a news conference and march. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)

No.

If they did, they would use their authority and bully pulpit to get the Chicago teachers back in the classroom.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has the power to order Illinoisans to “shelter” in their h0mes, to ruin businesses and to padlock the schools. He’s a Democrat, the same party as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, yet he hangs her out to dry when he could be using a huge influence to pressure the Chicago Teachers Union to end its insane, bogus and anti-scientific claims that its members are risking their lives by returning to the classroom.

It comes down to this: Pritzker is a coward, afraid to do the right thing and anger the public employe unions who’ll jilt him if he looks the wrong way.
Come on, J.B., you’re a billionaire; you’ve got no money worries, If you are not re-elected because you stood up to the unions, then at least you’ll have a clear conscious for doing the reasonable, compassionate and right thing.

You know our president, Joe Biden. What a president. He say schools should open, As if that’s all he got to say and, presto, the schools open, just like that. He says it, then he disappears. He should get on the phone to that guy, Jesse Sharkey and say:

Look, man. Get your teachers back in school. If you don’t you won’t see a penny of the millions I’m fighting to get for the schools. C’mon man, you’re turning voters against us. All those parents who voted for us because they hated Trump. Now they’ll be voting against you. That means they’ll be voting against us. Yeah, I know, you’ll threaten to cut back your campaign contributions. I’ll survive, but you’ll be going down. I guarantee it.

Mild Joe, putty in the hands of organized public employee labor unions and the idiotic left that actually believes that schools are unsafe, would never do such a thing.

Biden and Pritzker. What jokes.

Then comes a bunch of Illinois legislators who jump into the fray on behalf of their friends in the CTU and other government employee unions. They’ve issued a call for Lightfoot to “compromise” with the CTU. That’s not a joke. As if the Chicago Public Schools haven’t compromised way beyond what is reasonable,

Once again, power and self-interest dominate. Screw the kids. The Chicago Way. The Illinois Way.