Trying To Read The Tea Leaves

Jeffrey Carter Substack ^ | 27 Mar 2023 | Jeffrey Carter

[Rummyfan]

Even though I don’t live in Chicago anymore, I still watch it. The slo-mo destruction of a once great city is hard not to watch.

The demise of Chicago is a metaphor for the rest of the United States. Chicago isn’t NYC. It’s a uniquely American city. There are lessons to be learned from Chicago, the state of Illinois, and what happens in this election for the rest of the country.

If you look at the denigration of the city, it started with the establishment of the Democratic Machine in the 1930s. The Democratic Machine replaced a Republican Machine. Don’t for a second think a machine was never working in Chicago. There always was, it just switched parties as the make-up of the city changed. Read “City of the Century” and you will understand. Business and government have always been joined at the hip.

Chicagoans were the first to understand how to use both to their advantage.

But, as time progressed, the Democratic Machine needed to fix things. So, they deliberately stole elections to get their people into the offices they needed them in. As time progressed, it became every office they could get their hands on, all the way up to the governor. They filled the drone jobs in these offices with patronage workers. They fattened those patronage workers with nice pensions and in recent years a corrupt Illinois Supreme Court codified them into law. You never made a ton working for the city but you always got paid and your pension was nice. Of course, with the rise of public sector unions, you can make a decent buck working for the city and get a fantastic pension too.

Voters looked the other way...

[Rummyfan]

Sad. And frightening.

[Red Badger]

Every city and national government on Earth will eventually become so corrupt that they cannot function to the point that people will leave but have nowhere to go....... ...........

[Catholic and Conservative]

I don’t think that DuPage county had the patronage jobs, extensive political apparatus and bribery characteristic of 19th and 20th century machine politics.

Both my parents grew up and worked in Chicago; I grew up in DuPage County. In DuPage County, I never witnessed or heard any mention of corruption like what they had seen in Cook County.

http://www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/pages/774.html
https://www.americanbar.org/products/inv/book/210948598/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-machine