“The people have spoken… and they must be punished!”‘

“I used to think that if blood spilled within a family or friend circle, it would get people to question the narrative,” says a business leader in the finance sector. “Instead, it’s made a number in my city peer group, especially women, who have opted to stay, even more steadfast in their commitment to progressive causes, including supporting no-bail for violent offenders, drug decriminalization, anti-racist re-education and extreme affirmative action in the workplace and, of course, gender ideology in schools.”

Back in the 1990’s in Chicago one of the occasional topics of discussion at parties was the agonies of the dying city of Detroit. We all knew it had started back in the late 60’s/early 70’s with the decline of the Big Three American car companies headquartered in the city: General Motors, Ford and Chrysler.

Even in the 1980’s there had been the occasional article, sometimes in business magazines, talking of how the city could come back, but by the early 90’s we all knew it was gone, with abandoned downtown buildings, abandoned houses and then abandoned streets. Truly a dystopian nightmare.

But our party discussions were more focused on the question of whether we might suffer the same fate? The general conclusion was that we would not because the city administration, corrupt as it was, was not as insane as Detroit’s, and we had much more business and industry variety going for us. It would be hard to kill all of that.

Thirty years later, no Chicagoan is quite that confident any longer. In fact, in some parts of the city, the fear is growing that we are well down the path to Detroit II.

So there was a lot of American national interest, and even international, back on February 28 of this year when Chicago held the first stage of its Mayoral election, with multiple candidates in the race, plus the incumbent Mayor, Lori Lightfoot. All Democrat of course since the GOP is non-existent in the city: the last GOP Mayor of Chicago left office in 1931 and the famous Democrat Machine took charge. A good, concise history is found here and here.

My expectation was that she would lose, largely because of the horrendous crime wave that has hit the city on her watch.

And so it proved to be. Having been elected with about 80% of the vote in 2019 she lost by more than that, coming in third place. She became only the second Chicago Mayor to lose after just one term, the previous one being Jane Byrne in 1983. My favourite headline on this was, Is Chicago MAGA Country After All?, which was a nice shot at the Juicy Smolleah nonsense in 2019 (see the bottom of the post for comedian Dave Chappelle’s riff on that incident). It also fits perfectly with Lightfoot’s response, where she blamed her loss on the sexism and racism of the voters. Sure, the same voters who elected her just four years earlier, just like all those Obama voters of 2008 and 2012 who turned all racist and voted for Trump in 2016.

It’s bullshit. She was an awful Mayor, a tone-deaf lightweight from day one who constantly got into fights with her own aldermen and staff (All work and no play makes Lori a dull girl). And she really didn’t handle the one big issue, which the The Atlantic magazine also missed as they also decided it wasn’t her fault, in their case blaming Chicago, which they held to be ungovernable, along with a bunch of other big Democrat cities. Gee, I wonder what, besides being Mayors of big cities, is the common denominator among these Mayors?:

In 2022, Lightfoot’s Chicago recorded 723 murders, a 95 percent increase in vehicle thefts, a 50 percent increase in theft, and ten percent increases from the previous year in burglary and robbery. The crime wave has continued into 2023… In just 22 days, there have been 2,189 cars stolen. That’s nearly 100 car thefts per day. Compared to the first 22 days of 2022, that’s a 165 percent jump. Compared to the first 22 days of 2019, that is a — not a typo — 349 percent increase.

Crime – ‘Sitting Ducks’: Crime Forcing Chicago Women Business Owners to Leave Town
Crime – 70 year old woman robbed at gunpoint.
Crime – Chicago’s holiday weekend death toll higher than July 4 mass shooting and residents wonder why no one cares?
Crime – The Companies Fleeing Crime-Infested Chicago
Crime – Chicago News Is Nothing but Crime
Crime – Chicago area executives shun downtown as violent crime climbs 37 percent year-over-year:

Some of the most well-to-do Northside residents have told Chicago Contrarian they have even armored their cars, bulletproofed their house windows or hired private security as personal drivers. One cyclist even told Contrarian he puts a Derringer pistol in his saddle bag on his road bike when going out for rides.

Now a huge part of the blame for this can be attached to the godforsaken Cook County DA, Kim Foxx, who has the same stupid theories about emptying prisons and dropping charges for poor, oppressed people that her comrade DA’s are using to kill San Francisco, LA, Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Baltimore, and even New York.

But the Illinois State legislature was an accomplice when they passed the almost 800-page, “SAFE-T Act” in the middle of the night, with only 40 minutes of public review. It contained these doozies that mean the Police can’t hold on bail people they’ve arrested for these crimes, not even 2nd-degree murder or kidnapping.

But Lightfoot didn’t help with crap like her Five Pillars plan, which were very much like Foxx’s ideas. The city-wide $5000 Karaoke Contest was all Lori though (click to see her dance moves). And she was very much responsible for this as she brought a long-simmering hatred of the cops to the boil.

But she also didn’t do anything to improve the situations of the schools and the city’s pension funds:

According to the Illinois Policy Institute, a nonpartisan 501(c)(3), the Illinois State Board of Education has released statistics confirming that almost 80 percent of CPS students are unable to read at their grade level, and only 15 percent perform in mathematics as expected. Moreover, this represents deterioration from pre-pandemic levels.
…
The unfunded pension liability for Chicago’s four pensions is almost $34 billion. Assets to fund pensions represent about 25 percent of future liabilities, while the average funding for state and local pensions approximates 70 percent, according to a Bloomberg report.

Those fat, juicy Public Union pensions have been driven further into their graves by the usual Leftist mania for employing more bureaucrats to suck on them – and obviously not cops and teachers either:

Chicago’s pension spending has nearly tripled in the past ten fiscal years, from around $15,700 per full-time employee to more than $45,000. Pension expenditures now total more than $1.5 billion—over 12 percent of the city’s total revenue. For every person Chicago employs, in other words, it is effectively paying $45,000 to a city employee who has already retired. And the problem will worsen in the years to come, with the city’s pension debts exceeding those of 45 states and the recent market downturn intensifying its funding shortfalls. As these costs rise, they limit the revenue available for needed services.

Then there’s the homeless, Homeless Encampments Overtake Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, Workers Say ‘None of Us Feel Safe’

And the really strange thing about all this is the combination of Left and Right ideas, Chicago Offers Textbook Case of Woke Neoliberalism in Action:

On the one hand, we have the woke-led charge against prosecutions and for so-called “decarceration.” On the other hand, the city has privatized parking payments (and violations), privatized the Chicago Skyway, and routinely tickets drivers for minor infractions via red-light cameras and discreetly placed speeding sensors. On top of that, they have institutionalized bizarre traffic courts that are essentially extensions of the Department of Finance.

What we end up with, from the citizen’s perspective, is a system in which dangerous felons are allowed to remain on the prowl, but in which simultaneously, normal city residents are punished again and again for minor infractions—like trying to make a traffic light on their way to work, or for getting back to their parked cars five minutes late. There is no mercy for these “offenses,” even while the same city officials are happy to release repeat felons back into neighborhoods they have just violated.

Ok. So Lightfoot was doomed by all this, and deservedly got the boot. But I had no confidence that her replacements would be any better, and not just because of their policies – but because of the voters. Above I had a link about Chicago business executives increasingly shunning downtown, with more than a few planning to leave the entire city: but there’s a catch:

I used to think that if blood spilled within a family or friend circle, it would get people to question the narrative,” says a business leader in the finance sector. “Instead, it’s made a number in my city peer group, especially women, who have opted to stay, even more steadfast in their commitment to progressive causes, including supporting no-bail for violent offenders, drug decriminalization, anti-racist re-education and extreme affirmative action in the workplace and, of course, gender ideology in schools.”
…
Interestingly, many of the men that remain want out and are planning their exodus, though they are not speaking up, except to their friends in private. It’s their highly educated spouses – both working and stay at home – who have the progressive leash on, one that is often reinforced by their children, often daughters, who have bought hook, line and sinker into the progressive narrative and critical theory being taught in private Chicago schools like Latin and Parker, as well as Select Enrolment high schools.”

Is that not incredible? Fucking AWFL’s, Affluent White Female Liberals, strike again. And you thought the female Jacinda fans were bad.

The inevitable happened on April 5 between the two runoff candidates.

Paul Vallas was almost as Left-Wing as Brandon Johnson, except that he tried sucking up to the Chicago Police Union and was found to have been opposed to abortion a decade ago, even though he played the usual card of saying it was personal, not public. To add to his woes none other than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis had flown into town in February to talk to the CPD Union, causing heart attacks across the board., starting with Lightfoot:

Ron DeSantis has perfected being a bigoted, racist demagogue. But Paul Vallas is fast on his heels

That on top of Texas shipping its illegal aliens to Chicago in late 2022, and the fact that he’s White, had Vallas being dubbed “The MAGA candidate.”

Yes, that’s how insane it gets in a One Party State. Voter turnout was just 35%.

Brandon has big plans for the city – starting with big taxes.

  • $98 million from “making the big airlines pay for polluting the air” in Chicago neighborhoods
  • $400 million from raising the real estate transfer tax on high-end home sales on properties worth more than $1 million over four years
  • $100 million from new “user fees on high-end commercial districts frequented by the wealthy, suburbanites, tourists and business travelers.”
  • Over $20 million from reinstating the $4-a-month-per-employee “head tax” on “large companies” that perform at least half their work in Chicago.
  • $100 million from taxing financial transactions at a rate of $1 or $2 for every “securities trading contract.”
  • $30 million from increasing Chicago’s already nation-leading hotel tax

Yeah! People will be hanging around to get hit with all that. Over 100,000 Blacks have left the city in recent years. It didn’t even add up to the $800 million increase in spending he’s promised, for which the cops might get some extra detectives (this after advocating Defund The Police in 2020-2022, like other Democrats) but mainly aimed at mental health. Johnson is also totally in debt to the Chicago Teachers Union, which has basically become top dog, told the Police Union where to go, and had already beaten up Lightfoot for more money repeatedly (see the crap education stats above).

Also he refused to condemn the 2020 riots in the city, including the looting. He blamed corporations. Because of course.

All this led one right-wing Chicago writer to simply announce, Burn Down the House: My Endorsement of Brandon Johnson for Mayor of Chicago (Let’s get the inevitable over with).

I agree. Enough with questions as to whether the city can survive all this. It can’t. This is the Urban Doom Loop:

In an urban doom loop, a city’s tax base flees, draining revenue and thus stressing already-underperforming core services. As conditions deteriorate, the cycle spins faster, pushing the city further into the fiscal and public safety abyss. Though Johnson backed away on the campaign trail from his most strident defund-the-police rhetoric, the city’s pension problems are already doing the trick.

By any means necessary (also including more history of how the city got here):

First, it represents the triumph of the hard Left not on one of the coasts but in the heart of the Midwest, in a city known for its pragmatic, if machine-Democrat, politics. Second, it displays the raw power of public-sector unions in Illinois and in today’s Democrat Party. Johnson was not just supported by the unions; he is the paid agent of the most powerful and radical of them all—the Chicago Teachers Union. Third, Johnson’s victory will have national reverberations for years to come because his administration will test the Left’s attempt to transform urban policy.

And before he even takes office on May 15, Johnson was faced with an onslaught of riots (videos here), including gangs of youths trashing Michigan Avenue (again), leading to things like a huge pack beating up a Black and White teenage couple:

[Johnson] released a statement that included the sentence, “…it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.”… Instead, Johnson focused on how the perpetrators were allegedly “acting out of desperation” and said that you have to “pay attention to the cries that people have.”

The cherry on top is that the Democrat Party has selected the city for the 2024 National Convention, likely to showcase their nominee, the senile dementia patient, President Biden. This is entirely fitting.

The Illinois suburban cities will be the big winners of this – assuming the chaos doesn’t spread to them and that they don’t elect Democrats.