Rod Blagojevich
speaker
701 appearances
4 recordings
4 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 26 Mar
Rod Blagojevich’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
It is such an outrageous accusation by people that project because they're racist. Some of these Democrat policies, they're dressed up as being pro-black, are fundamentally anti-black. Look at the education issue. Schools suck. I went to public school in Chicago. I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire.
and they just pump all kinds of money into it and they need money, but they don't deny a mother, a single mother with a young child in the black community a chance to have some choice where she might want to send her child to school. So they're locked into that special interest politics and control of the teachers unions that have that kind of influence.
You can't do it for $39 trillion. You know why?
Because there's all kinds of entrenched obstacles that won't let you do the necessary reforms to make the teachers teach the kids better. Of course. So money is a part of it, sure. But it is less of a part than actually... having some sort of system of accountability so that there's actually results.
Unfortunately, in the education system, at least in places like Chicago, for example, the public school system of which I come from, the priority of that union, the teacher's union, is less the children. It's all about their members and the teachers. And so they resist any kinds of changes that would maybe make for the classroom environment to be more conducive to teach a child.
Things like merit pay, which is controversial, but they resist even out of hand the chance that maybe you provide bonuses to teachers who are successful in raising a child's test scores. And then test scores alone aren't the best evidence of whether or not a child is learning. So these are complicated things.
You have to have the money necessary to do it, but it doesn't have to be an astronomical sum. They've got to change the way they are teaching our children. And I think you can learn from other countries and see what other countries are doing successfully and try to bring that here. The problem you get is the politics in America and the Democratic Party.
is controlled by many different interest groups in the teachers' unions, the education association. Those unions have an unbelievable amount of sway, and Democratic candidates are afraid of them, plus they need them to win.
So the complications are more administrative than they are money, and the concern of taxpayers that you keep throwing money, good money after money that's not working, is a legitimate one. And look, I could have done more on this issue when I was governor, when I had that power. We put a lot of money to the schools, but it was hard for me to be able to get accountability in the politics of it.
The teachers union would be the first place. But they see the way the special interest group in government, the special interest groups work in government is. They build coalitions. So the teachers' union is a powerful group. By themselves, they would have a hard time stopping that, but they would enlist the support of other groups that they have supported in some of their issues.
And suddenly, you've got not just the teachers' unions, but you've got the... The AFL-CIO, you got, you know, the United Auto Workers. You got all these different unions lining up. And then couple that with some of the, you know, some of the more progressive interest groups. The LGBTQ, perhaps. The women, you know, what's...
The pro-choice group that's Planned Parenthood, those are organizations that have those alliances with the unions, even though their interests, their issues are far apart. The concerns they have are very different, and they don't match up, but they've got these coalitions.
So you have to get over all of that in order to be successful, not to mention the fact that you've got natural resistance to significant change. But if you're looking for a place that's crying out for major reform, All you got to do is look at the performance of kids that come out of public schools in poor neighborhoods and say there's something really wrong here.
And it's black kids who are disproportionately getting screwed.
How much? Put some of that money towards more police. And that's the other irony. But you need that. Gangbangers in Chicago outnumber police officers 75 to 1. And where's most of the crime? It's in those poor black neighborhoods. 75 to 1. You know, motherfucking cops and police. So stupid. But not in their neighborhoods is where the crime's taking place. It's in those poor neighborhoods.
They're the victims of the crimes. It's so upside down. It's so wrong. But you know what's happened? Because of the politics of things and their relationships... They ignored or actually butchered common sense. And one of the things about the Trump administration that offers hope is that there'll be a restoration of common sense in terms of its approach to things.
And one of the good things about this last election and with podcasts like yours and these other alternative places where people get information is that. you can think outside the box and start to do new things that are different as opposed to the same old things that give the same old results.
And I would suggest that if you want to stop crime and end the mass incarceration in America, educate the kids when they're young and give them a chance to have the skills they need so they can do something other than sell drugs.
On education or on something else?
Right. I think I'm an expert on the crime part of it, you know, because I've seen it from both sides. I've lived at both places. I think, you know, look, I'm happy to volunteer my services and to share my experience. But I think on the issue of weaponized prosecutors and the corruption of the DOJ, I don't think anybody knows that subject better than me.
Showing 641–660 of 701 · page 33 of 36
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