For a bit yesterday, I thought Paul Vallas might eek it out to be mayor of Chicago. As returns started to come in, you knew it was over. Not only over for Vallas, but over for the city of Chicago. This was not a surprise or a shock.
I saw this coming years ago. I was glad not to be sitting anywhere inside the state of Illinois watching returns. If you live in Illinois, you won’t be immune from what’s going on in Chicago. Suburbs won’t be unscathed. My advice, get out now.
A lot of Chicago people will look to northwest Indiana but if you want to stay in the Midwest, America’s best governor might not be in Florida. She might be in Iowa.
I wonder how the “socially liberal fiscally conservative” people feel today? A Marxist, and this isn’t a stretch, was elected Mayor. Forget about fiscal conservatism. But, life will get easier for criminals.
The victory of a Marxist was sowed in fields long ago. How? The Democratic Machine rigged so many elections and was so powerful that people in Chicago lost hope and their self-determination. Showing up to vote to have a “voice” was useless. It remains to be seen what the actual voter turnout was, but it was less than 40%.
The Chicago Democratic Machine didn’t do anything about the gangs. Instead, they partnered with them to get out the vote when they needed them. The Machine was never for the “little guy”. They were for themselves. Just so you know, Obama exported the Chicago Machine way of politics to Washington DC.
Not that taxes matter, but to refresh your memory here are the proposed new taxes for Chicago.
Dissecting the new Marxist’s proposals, he will get the transfer tax, more user fees, higher hotel taxes, and a city income tax. The financial transaction tax will be tougher because I believe it has to run through the state legislature in Springfield. Correct me if I am wrong but frankly, I hope they pass it.
If you are a business in Chicago, you have to move if you want to stay in business. My guess is the opportunity costs are too high to stay. There is always the option of closing.
As I analyze the financial trading sector businesses in Chicago, it benefits them to all decide to move together. Even though they compete, there are network effects from being co-located together. I scanned other cities and if I were a benevolent dictator I’d move to either Charlotte, NC, or Dallas, TX. Not Miami.
Why not Miami? One reason. Hurricanes.
Why Charlotte? Nice banking city which helps the trading community and exchanges. No real big natural disaster problems and an easy flight to NYC or Washington DC. Closer to London. Good airport. Plus, NC is a purplish state so ALL current employees can envision a move there. Should be easy to recruit new employees to come there.
Dallas for the same reasons as Charlotte. Dallas is closer to the oil traders in Houston and closer to the cattlemen and farmers in the Midwest than Charlotte. It has a great network that is already established with NYC and a similar cultural feel. People in Dallas are capitalists and that fits well with the Chicago financial sector despite a lot of the left-wingers that populate it.
Today’s Democratic Party is the party of socialism. If you are a Democrat and aren’t a socialist-you were Democrat because of the “little guy” and classical liberal values, you better re-examine your politics.
For those that heed my words and leave Illinois. Do not vote Democrat in the place you move to. There is a reason you picked it. There is a reason it’s a nice place to live. There is a reason the crime is less there than Chicago. There is a reason why educational choices are better.
For their part, Republicans need to figure out how to answer the siren call of socialism. They aren’t right now and the only answer has been Trump which isn’t a great answer. The answer isn’t to find compromise either, because that’s what Republicans in Illinois did.
Cleveland used to be called “The Mistake on the Lake”. I don’t know what we will call Chicago because this was intentional, and born from the autocratic Democratic Machine which brought us crony capitalism on steroids.
I am glad you mention the "social liberal fiscally conservative" citizen. I was one of them. In retrospect I see how catastrophic that has been for the country. We have had two generations of social liberals taking control of education and media while the Paul Ryan (and I was one) wing ignored the social issues or actually belittled those concerns. That blindness allowed the left to create an electorate that combines smugness with ignorance, a damning combination. Making fun of the religious right in the 80's/90's allowed for the eventual replacement of middle class values like prudence, education, self reliance and hard work with eco craziness and SJW religiosity. Nor supporting and even belittling the Tea Party movement opened the door for legitimized hatred of the deplorables. That led to ignoring East Palestine, supporting child mutilation as tolerance, jailing J6 protestors and social media monitoring for the "correct" opinions.
The biggest mistake conservatives made was decoupling social from economic issues. A democracy needs strong educational policies and an honest media and the focus on exclusively economic issues allowed the progressives to control both academics and journalism over the last 2 generations. Breitbart had it right- politics is downstream from culture. If I remember correctly, the socially liberal/fiscally conservative wing made fun of him too.
Come on down to Indiana, the Florida of the Midwest….