Posted on 09/23/2024 7:59:36 AM PDT by simpson96
No wonder that Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson continues to suffer those crippling panic attacks of his.
Chicago is falling apart. He’s completely out of his depth. He was unequipped for the job and his campaign was all about slogans, Marxist rhetoric from his allies in the Chicago Teachers Union, and race. Now those who can are in a rush to leave. He’s falling apart. His administration is falling apart. And the city is falling apart rapidly.
Forget the fake news “joy” of the Democratic National Convention that oozed out to promote Kamala Harris. She won’t help the city. And forget the corporate media cheerleaders who’ve tried to paper-over the city’s infected wounds to promote Democrat power. I spent 40 years covering the city’s politics.
Throughout all those years, the joke in Chicago was that any time things looked bad, at least we weren’t Detroit. But now that’s an insult to Detroit which is on the ascent. And the people of both cities know it. The city’s self-inflicted wounds are septic now.
Chicago, the city of my birth, the great city of great restaurants and earthy but realistic politics, is now a city that is unaffordable and unsafe. The public schools prepare Chicago schoolchildren only for prison, not success in life. Public transportation is dangerous and filthy and smells like a urinal. Only the poor use it or those who have no other choice. The city government is a billion dollars in debt. And the public schools are a billion in debt. Where’s the money? Johnson has no clue.
And now things will get worse beginning today. Chicago, already plagued by violent crime, will get worse beginning Sunday. That’s because Johnson let the contract for the revolutionary crime-fighting technology called ShotSpotter to lapse without a replacement. Although it alerted police to gunshots and helped police make arrests, Johnson derided it as “walkie talkie on a stick.”
Johnson campaigned against it, loudly insisting that it led to “over-policing” which is code used by leftist Democrats to refer to arrests of black youths by police. It’s a racial thing with him. And with all those who backed him politically.
Black aldermen, representing black residents who are most often the victims of violent crime, have tried to keep ShotSpotter alive, knowing that it could lead to more arrests of racial minority gang members, but Johnson has promised to veto any plan to save it. And corporate media types tie themselves up in knots trying to explain a simple, but terrible truth:
The mayor of Chicago would rather protect the violent over his citizens. He’d rather embrace repeat gang offenders than the people who need his protection. As the corrupt corporate media becomes anxious and defensive about Johnson’s self-destructive reasoning, like the clownish leftist fools mocked by Matt Walsh in “Am I a Racist?” a great city is dying.
Now Johnson’s approval rating is an abysmal 27 percent makes him the most unpopular mayor of a Democrat Convention city in decades.
He has lost allies in the Chicago City Council by not paying attention to what is important: The people of his city. They want to be safe as possible. But he wants to get rid of the ShotSpotter technology that helps police make quick arrests. Johnson apparently doesn’t like that and his political inexperience and buffoonery allowed the City Council to organize against him.
Johnson from happier days leading CTU strikes
Johnson is like an insect that has been pinned. He’s stuck between his political ideology, trying to serve his masters (or mistresses) of the Chicago Teachers Union, and political survival, hence all those panic attacks.
And obviously the schools don’t educate the children. They can’t even read or do math at grade level, a national disgrace, but now more panic attack news for the mayor: News reports that the schoolteachers were told to give passing grades to illegal migrant children who are squeezing the native born out of classrooms.
Violent crime on the increase—not decreasing as the liars of corporate media keep prattling on about. Crime is up 40 percent over 2019 levels. And we already know that Chicago is the murder capital of America.
Some of you may have noticed something about this column written by a longtime Chicago newspaper man. I’ve put in links to Wirepoints.org and the Illinois Policy Institute, but not the Chicago Sun Times or my old paper the Tribune. Why not? The Trib went woke and broke and neither paper covers crime as they used to.
Fran Spielman and Tim Novak of the Sun Times know what they’re doing. And the Tribune’s Jason Meisner and Ray Long understand political corruption and its corrosive nature. But street crime is as problematic for the papers as ShotSpotter is for Johnson. It is to be avoided politely lest they offend prominent and wealthy Democrats like Gov. Commodius Maximus.
But the website CWB Chicago does cover crime. They cover it very well. For example, CWB has documented another terrible truth: Since 2020, there have been 387 people arrested for murder and attempted murder while they were out on bail for other violent crimes.
And the establishment corporate media? Crickets.
Why do the metropolitan papers avoid street crime? My theory, they’d rather avoid dealing with repeat minority criminal offenders. And they’d rather avoid calling the architects of the chaos to account: Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, Cook County Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans and the Soros prosecutor, outgoing Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx (D-Jussie Smollett).
The papers thunder on about ShotSpotter but leave Toni Preckwinkle alone? The political coverage by the papers is corrupt and embarrassing. But at least the people of Chicago now know where they stand–in the gutter.
Yet CWB Chicago and Wirepoints.org and Illinois Policy address the crime issue thoughtfully. And Blocklub Chicago. But the papers? Who reads the papers anymore? For the columnists? I don’t think so.
We used to read the papers on the el, remember? But who uses the CTA now? A city won’t last long if it doesn’t educate the kids or offer public transportation. Especially if that public transportation isn’t safe. Who takes public transportation? Not reasonably well off-old guys like me. And not the top CTA brass Poor women use it, poor people without options, kids who are trying to get home from school, and lost souls.
CTA boss Dorval Carter lives his protected life. The governor and the Chicago City council want him gone. But Johnson protects him. Johnson leaves Dorval Carter–who doesn’t take CTA–alone. Carter is still here drawing a fat salary, still playing the race card and not using public transportation and getting away with it.
Why?
You could also ask that of official Chicago:
Why?
They knew what had to be done–keep the public safe, keep violent predators behind bars, give the children a reasonable chance at an education, clean the urine and the smell from the CTA and make it safe, protect the downtown from the Black Lives Matter rioters of 2020. And they didn’t do it. Instead, they played race card politics and make speeches about guilt and in their world everyone is a victim.
The real victims? The taxpayers and the law abiding. The people who play by the rules are the victims.
Politicians knew what would happen. Success in the big-city political trade involves understanding and manipulating human nature. And yet they did nothing.
I can imagine the Democrat machine hacks out there, the new political hacks from CTU and SEIU tweeting up a hissy fit about what I’ve written here, but they can’t silence me now. Don’t they understand simple economics? Without graybeards who can pay for a decent meal and entertainment, those old guys going downtown taking their wives out on a weekend, would there still be restaurants or theater?
No.
A few years ago I spoke to some very nice people at a dinner engagement in the Gold Coast. These were people with real money. They loved Chicago and didn’t ever want to leave. Betty and I never wanted to leave, either.
But the others at the dinner were isolated and insulated from street crime in Chicago, and they also bought homes in Naples and Marco Island Florida and other civilized places. In my after-dinner talk dinner, I asked them if they planned on ever moving back to Chicago.
Just raise your hands, I said.
No one raised their hands.
So who’ll stay in Chicago now? Only those who are financially tied to it, and those who can’t afford to leave.
But others? They’ve got options, too.
Think The Killing Fields. Everyone was moved out of their homes and into the open fields. This if the lite version.
Progressive-woke Chicago now exists ONLY on printed, fiat, paper money, and Fed.gov debt.
Its the sort of perverse consequences and extreme political favoritism that results when money is centrally controlled.
Its why I personally believe the US must go back to gold/silver backed currency.
“Now Johnson’s approval rating is an abysmal 27 percent..”
Nonsense.. he’ll win in a landslide next election. Chicago voters are terminal.
p
In Chicago entertainment news, 34 shot and 6 dead in weekend street theater. Adios muchacheos.
does the US have enough gold to cover the money out there that it owes?
BUMP
Elections have consequences.
“…walkie talkie on a stick…”
Sophisticated audio digital signal processing, as described by a communist dumbass moron.
Black democrats in power running sChitcago coupled with the bloated leftist Governor who won’t cut down on calories nor taxes are further driving ILL n Annoy off the cliff.
Not to worry, I hear lots of Venezuelans are willing to move in.
Possibly, but it probably would need to be revalued to about $30k/oz.
Therefore, I don't expect change, and do expect the debasement and debt to continue, expect leftist cities and states like Chicago and Illinois to get regularly bailed out, and expect absurd amounts of govt money to continue to be spent on neo-marxist social-engineering - like waves of illegal immigrants, for example.
They known that offenders are back on the street prowling the neighborhood before an honest citizen can get home from work.
And it’s not as if the Republicans there try very hard to get their vote.
good title for a song.
Maybe they can get Chicago to record it.
THERE ARE NO DEMS CAPABLE OF DEALING WITH THE CHAOS THEY CREATED.
The Democrat Party Crime Families make a fortune stealing from the people in cities.
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