The other day, I saw Crain’s Chicago Business writer Greg Hinz tweet his article. He used the false equivalence of Cook County Board chair and Democratic Socialist Political boss Toni Preckwinkle’s idea about a soda tax to the new Mayor and Socialist Brandon Johnson’s idea about a city income tax.
For over a decade, Crain’s and all the other mainstream Chicago media outlets in print, television, and radio have done all they could to stamp down, objectify, and discredit anyone who didn’t want to run down the progressive path to socialism in the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois.
They used every trick in the book, including false equivalences. They refused to honor the math, and instead tried to hide behind social issues, or to divert attention.
In 2006 or 2007, the then focused on actual business and economics instead of virtue signaling Chicago Economic Club hosted a lunch with two well-respected local Fortune 1000 CEOs. These two CEOs elegantly and patiently showed the math, along with the policies that needed to be in place to avoid financial disaster for the crowd. Their warning was dire.
The first questions they faced from the crowd weren’t about anything except the “Constitutionality” of changing public pensions. Of course, a lawsuit was defeated in the state of Illinois at the Supreme Court with Democratic Machine Justice Anne Burke in charge.
Since then to me it was abundantly clear where Chicago was going to go. The George Floyd riots and Covid only made it happen sooner. Today, media idiots will try and say there is no crime in Chicago or it’s worse in red states or that education in Chicago is awesome. Only old people leave, and it is for the weather.
They keep deflecting, and there are enough sheep that believe them.
The local media didn’t fete Mayor Lightfoot because she had great ideas. She was celebrated because she was female, black, and gay. Criticize her and you were a racist. You were a right-wing Nazi and shut out of any conversation or discourse. You were shunned. She was the worst mayor in the last century by a longshot.
The same happened if you criticized the prior mayor, Rahm Emanuel. You were an anti-Semite blah blah blah. Rahm wasn’t a great mayor either.
The mayor before that was Daley. Criticize him and you were just part of the Republican Machine that somehow was in danger of taking power in a city, county, and state run by Democrats for 90, 80, and 40 years. Yes, despite Republican governors being elected, they weren’t conservatives. The state was run by Michael Madigan.
The media eagerly carried the water for the Democrats. Do not let them off the hook. They continue to carry their water and they only write stories that seem “controversial” so they can get clicks. They are intellectually and morally barren.
Look at the stories about the new city council. It’s not about what they want to do, which is horrible if you believe in a free society that engages in active competitive capitalism to raise standards of living. It’s all about how it’s the gayest city council in the country. Who cares?
If 40 Richard Grenell clones were elected to the Chicago city council or better yet if Richard Grenell himself were elected mayor, would the local media be crowing about it then?
For what it is worth, I think the articles predicting the exodus of major longstanding companies in Chicago are overblown. The “elasticity” of moving is actually pretty inelastic. It is very expensive to move a major corporation. It’s not clear all the employees will move. Hiring and training new employees is very expensive.
It’s not the taxes that will cause big corporations to move out of Chicago, and out of state. They can absorb a lot of them even if they don’t like it. They can pass a lot of them on to their customers.
By the way, it’s hard to move small startup companies too. There is a risk in moving them because employees might not leave. There are also ancillary risks as the rhythm of the company gets disrupted by the move. The same goes for bigger companies although bigger companies might be able to stage it so they have more buffers.
Here is what will cause companies to move. Crime. When your employees do not feel safe coming and leaving work, the CEO has to do something. When you cannot recruit new talent to come and work for you because of safety concerns, the CEO has to do something. You can’t have employees feeling vulnerable. The compact between government and citizens enabling the maintenance of a functioning civil society in Chicago is broken and CEOs know it. They will give the new mayor a chance but virtually all of them are making contingency plans.
One company that is mentioned is McDonald’s. Their CEO spoke out during the Lightfoot regime. When McDonald’s moved their corporate headquarters from suburban Oak Brook to the West Loop I thought they made a gigantic strategic error. Why? It’s because McDonald’s generates most of its sales from suburban, not urban locations. Having employees that have empathy for those kinds of locations by actually working day to day in one is a good idea. McDonald’s is no right-wing corporation. Some of the worst socialist ideologues I know worked at McDonald’s, and held positions of power there.
Many articles have cited CME. I know a little about CME but frankly, I don’t know the top brass anymore and I don’t know the inside numbers. I know the CEO/Chairman pretty well and know many of the board members but I haven’t spoken to any of them so I am reading tea leaves like anyone else. Terry Duffy has done a masterful job over the last 9 years to make the CME as “light” as possible. They sold off real estate. Their anchor in Chicago is the human capital they employ combined with all the trading firms that litter many of the commercial real estate offices in the city. Not only that, but they receive positive externalities in the form of network effects from being co-located steps from the Options Clearing Corp, the CBOE, and other financial institutions. In my view, Terry basically gently let the new mayor know that he can move if he wants to, but I don’t think they really desire a new location. But my guess is that if forced to decide to move or not, they all move together.
My old club employs an armed guard in the lobby. You can get an armed escort to your car in a nearby parking garage if you want one. Does this sound like a world-class city?
My liberal friends in Chicago just write off all the crime. “Oh, all big cities have crime” is what they say. They act as if there is no alternative to Chicago. But they only talk about all of the physical things that they would miss if they left Chicago. What they don’t get is there is a change in your mindset that happens when you move from an oppressive place to one that is free. It is a wonderful feeling. I did not expect to feel such a thing when I moved to NC, but it just washes over you.
One of the best things I like about living in an area where there are a bunch of fellow transplants is that my neighbors all have a sense of adventure about themselves, as they all left wherever they were living when they no longer liked the situation they were in. It is hard to move, especially when you’re older, but the people willing to do it are much more fun to be around than the people who adamantly won’t leave a city like Chicago that is falling apart before their eyes.
I used to be a paid subscriber to Crain's and Greg Hinz is one of the worst and biased columnists I have ever read. I saw the tweet from yesterday and talk about the pot calling the kettle black!