Really not the best practice to mince words anymore. I agree with Rance Priebus. Hopefully, nationwide the 2024 election will be about giving a big middle finger to proponents of boys in girls sports, big government, and big government corruption.
Today, Chicago Alderman Ed Burke was convicted on 13 out of 14 counts of racketeering. I hope he dies in prison. His wife Anne Burke is just as corrupt as he is. She used to sit on the Illinois Supreme Court and killed several efforts to try and right the ship in Illinois. She resigned when her hubby got lit up with indictments. Virtually every dollar they have earned for themselves, and it is millions of them, has come at taxpayer expense.
It might seem like small potatoes since it’s just another Chicago corruption trial, but it isn’t. The same things are happening nationally.
Burke was an alderman for 54 years. John Kass called him one of the “pink men”.
Do you think we need term limits for all politicians elected to every single political office, or not? That’s a band-aid for what ails us though. It’s deeper. Let me explain.
In Chicago, the Democratic Machine ran the city and broader Cook County since 1930. The Democrats have run the state since the late 1970s. They were “Machine” Democrats. It worked so well in Chicago, other state Democratic Parties adopted the same tactics. Businessmen looked the other way. They tolerated them and played the game. They would build “corruption expense” into their budgets and figure out how to operate their businesses to continue to make money.
RINOs wanted to be all nice and use the Queensberry Rules to fight. When you are dealing with Machines like the Democrats, those rules guarantee a loss. Tea Party Republicans, Trump Republicans, and others decided not to play by those rules. Ron DeSantis doesn’t play by those rules in Florida, and Governor Abbott doesn’t play by them in Texas. Which way wins? How does the media view those that decide to fight back using the same or similar tactics to the Democrats?
We have hard evidence and data (for all the data dogs out there) that with the continuing flight of businesses, and people, out of blue states into red states, costs have become too high. The elasticities of supply and demand have broken. People can vote with their feet and flee to another state. I voted with my feet and left Illinois. But you can’t vote with your feet to another country because another country like the US doesn’t exist and won’t.
Hence, you have to draw the line and fight.
Name a large American city not run by Democrats. At least, big cities might have been run by Machine Democrats before, but have been replaced by Communist Democrats.
What is a Machine Democrat? Let me define it for you.
A Machine Democrat lets businesses operate, provided they get their cut. Either the business hires their people or somehow they get a kickback. It is never money out of their pocket. It is always money out of taxpayer pockets. They understand the elasticities of the market very well and will take enough surplus out of it to line their pocket and throw some crumbs to constituents and cronies, but not so much the business dies. Kind of like a well-functioning tapeworm. If you live in a Machine Democrat-run place and hear the words “private public partnership” you know it’s costing you big money somewhere. If you hear “infrastructure spending” then you know it is costing you somewhere.
Sometimes, it looks like what the old head of the Cook County Board of Commissioners George Dunne used to do. Amazingly, he was one of the top insurance salesmen in the world.
Other times it was someone like former Ways and Means Chairman Daniel Rostenkowski. He’d bring home government bacon for the local Democratic Machine to distribute.
Rahm Emanuel was a huge beneficiary. He became an amazingly successful investment banker after leaving the Clinton Administration with no prior investment banking experience. I knew Rahm. He was on the CME Board with me and the least respected person on that board. He was only there for the photo op.
Michael Madigan goes on trial for corruption next. He was the longest-serving Speaker of the House in Illinois in history. He is as corrupt as the day is long.
If a businessperson or individual bucks the Machine, things happen. City inspectors show up and find things wrong. The police might pay extra attention to you. Your property taxes might go up. Your garbage might not get collected. Just like how Chicagoan Merrick Garland runs today’s DOJ, the full force of government will be thrust upon your back until you kneel and beg for forgiveness.
In Chicago, a Machine Democrat leaves office
Either by getting convicted for corruption and spending some time in the pokey where they become rehabilitated. If they don’t squawk, the get a second bite at the Machine apple, just not a very public one.
A voluntary step down, which means they are not useful, or are going for a better office. Perhaps they are going into “business” and will lean on their friends to work the system. Like old mobsters, they never really go away.
Dying
Heaven forbid the politician loses at the ballot box, the replacement is a communist.
It’s just moving pieces around a chessboard. The willing media plays along.
Rahm Emanuel begat communist Brandon Johnson. Lori Lightfoot was no fan of capitalism. Tony Preckwinkle is not either. Chuy Garcia is a communist. He replaced a Machine Democrat who is now happy in private life working the system.
Lightfoot made the mistake of taking on the Chicago Teacher’s Union. CTU is a virulent communist organization led by a person named Potter Stewart. He’s an evil guy in line with other communist depots and operatives that litter human history.
That’s what is happening nationwide. Machine Democrats are being replaced by communists.
Republicans have no chance in situations like this. If you are Republican in Chicago or any Democratic stronghold, you can’t get anywhere. People prefer communists, simply because they are Democrats in name only. The candidate has a D before their name on the ballot and chumbalones blindly vote for them.
Plus, they will lie and cheat and do anything to win. They need the power of all the political offices to hand out taxpayer money to their cronies.
I don’t have any sympathy for the citizens in these strongholds. They aren’t victims. Nationwide, we are seeing the same thing over and over again. Machine Democrat Cuomo gets replaced by a what? Hochul isn’t a machine Democrat and she sure isn’t a capitalist. The mayor of NYC before Adams was a communist.
In California and every other state in the union, open communists hold offices as “Democrats”. Bernie Sanders tries to make it look good as an “Independent”. What a joke.
If you vote Democratic, you support the left-ward lurch to communism that the Democrats have fully embraced. You support all the bullshit they support.
When you talk to them about the stuff that is going on, they will say “It’s really bad.” They don’t have a clue or realization that it’s the Democratic Party that is engineering all the “really bad”. If they do, they think they can elect new Democrats who will fix it. What’s Albert Einstein’s definition of failure?
As I said earlier, the new Democrats are really communists. See San Francisco. The people will laugh about the situation and move on to the next topic since this one starts to make them more uncomfortable than voting Republican.
Except, we shouldn’t be laughing.
Time for a little confession: I have two grand uncles who were aldermen back in the 40's. One ran for mayor and lost (in the final, not the first selection).
I was born and raised into the ways of the Machine and the stories of it. I was born near Midway airport, and the south side was where the Machine's nerve center was.
Everything you say, Mr. Carter is absolutely correct. I've been both the beneficiary of it and on the other side of it.
It all disgusts me, and I no longer have any civic pride in Chicago. The City is alien to me, and the politicians are idiots who have taken a great metropolis and are turning it into a 3rd rate city that hates its own small businesses. The elite liberals look around and have no idea why things are so bad. They figure another Progressive will fix it, and the cycle goes on and on.
I am extricating out of it, but there always seems to be some economic calamity going on, so I have to pick my time to liquidate it all.
Soon.
Chicagoan Merrick Garland... well, that explains a few things. I didn't know that.