- The economic system favors the wealthy and powerful
- The wealthy take advantage of workers
- People are poor because the economic system is unfair
- Business executives use their power to keep wages low
Emanuel's record is closely tied to corporate and financial interests in real estate, banking, and other bulwarks of the current financial system. He was highly successful raising money from these sectors, transforming the Democratic Party in the process.
After serving in the Clinton Administration, Emanuel himself became Managing Director of a Chicago investment bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, a banking corporation that specializes in commercial real estate, despite having no previous banking experience. That gig netted him more than $18 million in just two and a half years.
His mayoralty was closely linked to these interests as well. When Emanuel assumed office, he expanded an finalized a pre-existing deal to privatize the city's parking meters. That contract transferred hundreds of millions of dollars in income from the city to private corporations. It also robbed Chicago voters of the ability to control parking lawso much so that the corporations overruled the city and said it could not suspend alternate side of the street parking for a religious holiday.
Rahm claimed the city was "stuck with the contract" when he took office. That wasn't true. His actions locked the deal in place for more than 70 years. He also claimed he "reformed" the parking meter deal -- but, again, it wasn't true. He expanded it, giving the corporate world even more of a chance to earn back billions on its $1.2 billion investment -- funds that would otherwise have gone to the city and its people.
Money in Politics
These trends reflect a key characteristic of Rahm Emanuel's career: his first and foremost claim to fame has been fundraising. He is an expert at extracting large amounts of money from wealthy and powerful interests -- money that has shifted the Democratic Party sharply to the right.
This, too, runs directly against public opinion. As Data for Progress reports,
"...recent studies found that more than 75% of Americans want to limit campaign spending, and a majority of Americans of all political stripes support a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United. That number included 66% of Republican voters."
Climate Change and the Environment
Our polling shows that voters support spending trillions of dollars to address climate change, believe as move to 100 percent clean energy is worth the cost, and support federal aid for communities -- such as poor, Black, and Brown communities -- that have been disproportionately affected by climate change, pollution, and the coronavirus.
Unfortunately, as Curtis Black explains in The Intercept, Emanuel shut down Chicago's Department of the Environment as an austerity measure. He said every department would prioritize the environment, but the results showed he lied. Writes Black:
"Chicago's recycling rate has remained abysmally low. In February, an analysis by the Better Government Association and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University revealed that the city now has half the number of environmental inspectors that it had eight years ago, and the number of annual inspections, not surprisingly, also fell by more than half."
Black quotes researchers BGA and Medill as saying, "Hazardous material inspections fell by more than 90 percent between 2010 and 2018; air quality inspections plunged almost 70 percent; and solid waste inspections dropped by more than 60 percent."
The rate of environmental citations issued during Emanuel's administration fell to less than one-third of what it had been during the previous seven years.
Public Health Care
A recent Reuters poll found that 64% of Americans support Medicare-for-All, with only with only one in four voters (26 percent) opposing. While other polls have resulted in slightly different numbers, voters consistently support an expanded role for government in health care.
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