Snow In Las Vegas
An Earthquake in Chicago
No golf today. So cold last night I could put my soup on the porch to stay cold instead of in the refrigerator. There has been a locked-in-place weather system hanging over the Pacific due to El Nino for the last several weeks and is supposed to be there for the next couple of weeks. California has been pounded by rain and snow. The mountains in Utah and Colorado have record snows.
People think I moved to Las Vegas from Chicago for the weather. Ha! It was the crime and the taxes. I was glad to see Lori Lightfoot get beat yesterday. I voted for her and she was one of the worst mayors in the history of the city, and it had nothing to do with equity and everything to do with execution. I thought she would be an anti-machine candidate that would fight corruption in the city but I was wrong.
Lightfoot is the first mayor in 40 years that won’t be re-elected. Mayor Byrne lost to the Machine. Mayor Bilandic lost to the Blizzard of 1979.
Voter participation was at a low. This illustrates the hopelessness in Chicago. People are so used to fixed elections they know it doesn’t matter if they vote or not. That is the legacy of both Mayor Daleys. The “pink” guys, as John Kass calls them, created this mess.
I hope for the city’s sake, Paul Vallas (D) is elected. However, I predict the new mayor will be Brandon Johnson (CTU). You can’t underestimate the Chicago Teacher’s Union and SEIU in Chicago. They are the new Democratic Political Machine. They are as corrupt as the old Machine, but they hate success and they hate businesspeople. They exemplify the new Democratic Socialist wing. Think AOC, not the Daley’s.
This is how the city voted. I understand from many comments that came from our current US Vice President that people really like diagrams and not tables or sentences to interpret data.
Chicago is a tribal city. It is not racist. Heck, female and black Toni Preckwinkle is the leader of the Cook County Board and runs the Machine. Kim Foxx is a black female attorney that enforces the New Machine. Tim Evans is black and male, is an old Harold Washington acolyte who runs the judges for the New Machine. The superintendent of police is a black male and Eddie Johnson who was superintendent when Lightfoot was elected was a black male.
I know that the media bought the story that Chicago was “Trump Country”, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Jussie Smollet exemplifies what Chicago is all about today.
Here is a question, who does Congressman Chuy Garcia back? There are more Hispanics than Blacks in Chicago and frankly, Hispanics don’t have a seat where it counts at the table of power in the New Machine. They didn’t in the old Machine either.
Preckwinkle can determine Garcia’s future fate more than Vallas, and she can put more gifts in his Christmas stocking. Remember, a lot of the politics in Chicago isn’t free and fair elections. It’s a Politburo that moves chess pieces around on a chess board. Is Garcia a pawn, or is he something more valuable? She won’t back Vallas. Who do Lightfoot voters back? I think they will split and back both candidates. The ones concerned about “equity” will back Johnson. Those concerned about crime will back Vallas. Willie Wilson voters back Vallas. Vallas gets 52% based on that count. Just enough.
However, at the end of the day with mail-in balloting and ballot harvesting, CTU has a far better ground game than Vallas. Never ever discount the CTU and SEIU. This is worth a watch to understand what they are about. They are about raw power.
I read Fran Spielman’s column in the Chicago Sun-Times this morning.
If you are a Vallas supporter, this ought to put a tingle in your heart. I don’t mean that in a good way.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), who endorsed Vallas, said there was a “show of force” for Johnson — with at least three CTU members or staffers paid by the teachers union — in every precinct he visited Tuesday in Old Town, Streeterville, Lincoln Park, Wicker Park and the Gold Coast.
“They’re everywhere. It’s a saturation ground game — even in precincts where Johnson was not expected to do well. If they have that many people to spare, that’s incredible. It’s something to see. This is the new machine,” Hopkins said, harkening back to the pre-Shakman heyday of the old Democratic machine.
An old friend of mine Bill Conway was elected to become an alderman. I don’t know who he will support. It will be a tough choice for him as a new alderman. His district has been beset by crime. But, fight the CTU and you can become a one-termer along with all the violence that will happen to you in between.
The next five weeks in Chicago will be full of ugly vitriol and hate. I know this. If Johnson is elected and has majority control over city council, businesses and people will flee Chicago like you haven’t seen before based on the policies he articulated in his campaign.
He wants:
a city income tax
a corporate head tax
a commuter tax so if you commute to the city you pay a tax
a financial transaction tax
a higher real estate transfer tax for high-end homes
He will gut the magnet schools and for sure gut charter schools. The city will get destroyed just like it did in 1870. They won’t want “nobody that nobody sent” to probe around. Mind your own business. Those guys weren’t very nice, but at least they mostly left businesspeople alone.
Johnson would be a terrible choice for the city that was once the “City of the Century”. I hope the financial community in Chicago has already drawn up contingency plans. If they haven’t, they need to put them together in the next month. There is a wave coming and it is not one they can surf on top of.
I'm a business owner in Chicago. I'm in the thick of it.
We are on the precipice. And I think for the first time many residents here can see it, and there is a realization that the CTU progressives are not here to fix things, but to destroy them. They are not socialists, but communists, and that is not hyperbole. They do not believe that the business community is the source of good things, and they believe that the City and its institutions are inherently repressive. They take a warlike mentality to civics, and they are nasty about it. There is something wrong with a lot of these teacher's psyches, but that's another discussion for another day.
After Lori was elected and saw the day-to-day reality of the city, she had to move rightward in order to attempt to salvage the economic engine of the City. Her rhetoric during her original campaign was not far off from Brandon Johnson's. The only difference, I believe, is that BJ will have to govern the way he campaigned, because the CTU is his boss, not the constituents. Lori was not elected by the insiders, but by populism.
With BJ, CTU will finally have a chance to enact every policy they can dream of, and I think it will make Portland look like a red city in comparison. Our business community is smart and savvy, having thrived for many years with various pols and ideologies. Many will see that CTU cannot be bargained with, and plans for alternatives will be made. CTU is full of true believers.
All of the horrible things about corruption, combined with the repressive structures of communism will come to Chicago, and if you don't know anyone, you aint gettin' anything. This is a potential landmark change and the future looks very, very dire.
I would say that the opposite is true of Vallas, but I'm not sure. Yes, he understands the structure and the tribal lines, but does he have courage? Can he resign himself to be a one-termer and do the right things? I don't know. Like Lori, he will have lots of enemies on Day 1, and he will have to learn to fight angry and tough and not be a victim. I think CTU and the new machine will use that pressure to get him to do what they want, anyway, and he'll be twisted into a pretzel. Most of the high income white people in Chicago are liberals who would prefer not to see the ugliness of the politics, and DEFINITELY don't want to see tough decision-making that looks "right wing" in nature. They want "equity" but don't understand that only merit is going to get things done. They want businesses to locate there, but want high taxes and regulation, too. It's a very schizophrenic constituency that will not back Vallas when the going gets tough. They will complain and simply look down the road, or move. At no point will they realize that its the ideology that is the problem, and that it presents no realistic solutions to Chicago's ills.
A bleak future indeed.
The problem with all the taxes is they are playing catch up. No sooner are these taxes instituted than they will need even more taxes.
Sometimes a corrupt and ill managed enterprise has to actually go bankrupt to find its new footing.
Chicago is in need of a barbed wire enema.
JLM
www.themusingsofthebigredcar.com