As we wrote in March, the city of Chicago unveiled plans two months ago to close over 50 schools, mostly in the poorest areas.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan has sparked fierce protests, with thousands of protesters hitting the streets last weekend to oppose the school closures –arguing that they would put children at risk by having to travel further to overcrowded schools.

But while the city insists it must close these schools to close budget gaps, it has just announced that it will be dedicated as much as $100 million in public funds for the construction of a new basketball arena at DePaul University — which is about a third of the cost of the project.

Emanuel justified such a large public investment by saying that building the arena and surrounding event center will bring “huge opportunity” to the city of Chicago in the way that it would attract business and tourists.

This statement came at around the same time the Board of Education — despite desperate pleas from city residents as, Progress Illinois documents here — voted in favor of the mayor’s plan to shutter 50 schools. The Board, it should be noted, is not elected like it is in some municipalities. It was appointed by Mayor Emanuel.

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(Photo credit: Flickr user Serenitbee.)

Corporate lobbyists have a terrible idea they’re pushing during the budget debates. They want to lower the corporate tax rate while also cutting benefits for Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries. Most Republicans and an unfortunately significant number of Democrats have endorsed this bad idea.

But what if instead we asked corporations that are dodging taxes to actually simply pay the statutory rates asked of them?

In the spring of 2011,Ai??National Peopleai??i??s Action and the Public Accountability Initiative put out a report looking at tax dodging by the nation’s biggest banks. It found, shockingly, that if these big banks simply paid the rates that were asked of them — much as many Americans pay their tax rates withoutAi??exploitingAi??excessive deductions and loopholes — we could re-hire all 132,000 teachers laid off during the recession for another year of teaching — twice:

Six banks ai??i?? Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan StanleyAi??together paid income tax at an approximate rate of 11% of their pre-tax US earnings in 2009 and 2010.Ai??Had they paid at 35%, what they are legally mandated to pay, the federal government would have received an additional $13 billion in tax revenue.Ai??This would cover more than two years of salaries for the 132,000 teacher jobs lost since the economic crisis began in 2008.

Some of these very same banks who have dodged their tax responsibilities are now trying to attack social spending that Americans worked hard for. Remember that Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein recently advocated for cutting Social Security. This is a bank that received a $10 billion taxpayer bailout.

Seniors on Medicare and Social Security did not cause the Great Recession, Wall Street did. And Wall Street and the richest Americans should be asked to …

(Photo credit: Flickr user Bonnie Brown)

The nation’s eyes are focused on Chicago as 29,000 teachers and support staff remain on strike in a protest against substandard schools and reneged pay raises.

As the Chicago Teachers Union soldiers on, it’s important to remember the plight of teachers nationwide. The New York Time’s Catherine Rampell has put together a few charts showing that American teachers work longer for less pay than teachers in most other developed countries.

Rampell notes that the “average primary-school teacher in the United States earns about 67 percent of the salary of a average college-educated worker in the United States. The comparable figure is 82 percent across the overall O.E.C.D. [Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development].”

Here’s a chart showing the ratio of salary between middle school teachers compared to full-time, full-year college-educated workers. American teachers fair better than those in Estonia, but are worse off than the average of rich countries in the OECD:

Next, let’s take a look at teaching hours. As you can see, Chile and Argentina are the only countries where teachers work longer hours:

If Chicago’s teachers succeed, they may inspire other educators to follow suit. By the looks of these numbers, they certainly have something to protest over.