AND THE LIBERAL HYPOCRISY FLOWS – AT 9:47 A.M. ET:   It's hard to believe that Chicago politics can get any rougher or more bizarre.  But leave it to a local liberal icon, who shakes her fist at the rich and well-born, to be exposed as a total phony.  From the Chicago Sun-Times: 

Karen Lewis, the Chicago Teachers Union president now considering whether to run for mayor, has frequently railed against the influence of the wealthy.

“Why do people of wealth and privilege try to convince the world they have neither?” she said on Twitter last year. “Be honest that you don’t have a clue about poverty.”

She has ripped Mayor Rahm Emanuel as a tool of corporate Chicago, labeled him “Mayor 1%” and described herself as “not egotistical or rich.”

Lewis isn’t as wealthy as Emanuel, a multimillionaire who made his fortune during a short stint as an investment banker. But she makes more than $200,000 a year and has an ownership interest in three homes, records show.

That includes vacation homes in Hawaii and in the upscale “Harbor Country” area of southwestern Michigan, where Emanuel has a second home, property records show.

Lewis, 61, has said she has launched an informal exploratory committee in anticipation of a possible mayoral run in February’s election, when Emanuel will be seeking a second term. Last week, Lewis put the odds at “50-50” she will run.

A recent poll done for Early & Often, the Chicago Sun-Times politics portal, gave Lewis a 9-percentage-point lead over Emanuel in a hypothetical mayoral matchup.

In the wake of the 2012 teachers’ strike and a record number of school closings last year, a Lewis campaign for mayor appears poised to key on growing income disparity in Chicago. The teachers union leader already has called for raising taxes on the richest to fund education.

The mayor makes $216,200 a year.

That’s about $15,000 more than Lewis made from her two union salaries, according to the most recent union tax filings.

COMMENT:  I love it.  She makes two hundred grand a year, has interests in three houses, and rails against the one percent. 

And her constituents will buy it.  They always do.

August 13,  2014