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Scal, I think we can fairly say -- after nearly four years of the make-believe mayor's antics -- that facts usually get in the way of his claims about nearly everything to do with the city.

The real problem, the underlying defect with his candidacy as he has willingly expressed it on this website, is that he thinks there's a problem with those facts -- not his claims.

So, to use this topic as an example, we have seen repeatedly that he will not admit the WTU engaged in two years of work-to-rule, pickets, and sick-outs before agreeing to an objectively worse contract. [Although the union got the salary increases they wanted, the school committee can now exceed the prior limit of 20 layoffs per school year caused by consolidation, to use one example.]

As a result, he will deny anything that shows less achievement by students -- including factual information that disproves his claim of longer honor roll lists from last year [prior to the contract agreement] and this year.

He's repeatedly tried to make that point -- that, because of the new contract [which he mistakenly thinks was a victory for the union], teachers are now improving student achievement from where it was before. Thus, even if he were arguing that more students were on the 4th quarter honor roll over the 3rd quarter, that would be an misleading comparison because it fails to take into account the one thing that he has continually said resulted in more student achievement: the new contract.

So, he has made objectively false statements about the contract agreement resulting in higher numbers of students on the honor roll, and is now trying to ignore the new contract while still saying that student achievement has improved.

What he could have done, if he really wanted to be seen as a serious, informed candidate, is thank the WTU for making concessions that finally settled the issue -- but, as you rightly point out, that would get in the way of the fictional narrative that he has created.