Posts Tagged ‘gretchen whitmer’

An updated list of reasons to oppose J.B. Pritzker for president

Posted: June 30, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, education, election 2024, elections, Israel, Israel vs Hamas, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Now that people who only get their news from MSNBC, CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times have learned that Joe Biden is suffering from severe cognitive decline, there is an understandable panic among Democrats, as well as calls to replace him on the fall ballot. 

Had Biden chosen a running mate in 2020 based on the ability to serve as president, instead of identitarianism, the answer would be easy regarding a replacement at the top of the ticket, the sitting vice president. But Kamala Harris is the veep. This dopey DEI hire, until last week perhaps, polled even worse than Biden. She’s the poster child of a symptom of public sector incompetence: failing upwards.

Harris checked three boxes–Black, Asian, and female. Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan’s governor, who was said to be a finalist to be Biden’s running mate, checked only one.

Harris may still end up on top of the ticket if Biden bails, partly because the money raised so far by the Biden-Harris campaign can only be transferred to one other candidate–the president’s running mate. Also, the Dems may want to avoid a rancorous battle to replace Biden–and stick with Sleepy Joe–then hope for the best in 2028, because Donald J. Trump can only serve one term. 

Whitmer is part of the whispering campaign to replace Biden, as are three other governors, California’s Gavin Newsom, Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro, and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker. 

Since I live in the Prairie State, I’m going to discuss Pritzker. Two years ago, when he was running for reelection, I covered Pritzker’s shortcomings in this DTG post, Reasons to oppose Pritzker for governor and president. That blog entry is in need of an update. Of course, the problems I listed in 2022 haven’t gone away.

Crime and the SAFE-T Act: Lawlessness was a problem in Illinois two years ago, particularly in Chicago and its inner suburbs. I live in one of those suburbs.

While the murder rate has gone a little bit in Chicago, assaults and thefts, particularly automobile thefts, have gone up. I haven’t been able to locate state statistics on crime, I’m confident they’re also bad.

Over three years ago, Pritzker signed into law the pro-criminal SAFE-T Act, making Illinois the first state to abolish cash bail. Criminality in Illinois was already encouraged by the catch-and-release prosecution policy of Cook County’s George Soros-funded state’s attorney, Kim Foxx. 

Pritzker and the Democrats must have had qualms about the SAFE-T Act, because it was set to take effect nearly two years after the governor signed it into law. A court challenge delayed that until last fall–just as violent crime makes it annual seasonal decline.

We are now a month into the first summer of the SAFE-T Act. In June, there were two egregious murders where the accused were free on pre-trial release. Jai’mani Amir Rivera, who was seven years-old, was shot to death on Chicago’s West Side was shot to death by a teen on electronic monitoring. Also on the West Side, a retired Chicago police officer, Larry Neuman, was fatally gunned down by two teens, both of them were on pre-trial release–one of the pair was on electronic monitoring.

To be fair, even without the SAFE-T Act, with Foxx as the so-called prosecutor, these thugs may have walked free. But Chicago’s failures are being replicated statewide.

Pritzker is active on X, he discusses a wide range of topics. 

I can’t remember the last time he mentioned the SAFE-T Act.

Obviously, he knows it’s a problem for him. It’s a more deadly problem for Illinois’ 12 million residents.

Health: I’m going to hurt some readers feelings with this segment. 

Shortly after his inauguration, Jimmy Carter released his federal tax returns to the public. And since then, Donald Trump being a notable exception, most presidential candidates have followed suit. 

Health records are probably next.

Now that the president’s cognitive decline is an established fact for everyone except for the Biden bitter-clingers, look for future presidential candidates to release specific details on their health, perhaps even making their personal physicians available to the media for unrestricted questioning.

Pritzker is morbidly obese. According to the Mayo Clinic, that condition is “associated with many diseases responsible for a high prevalence of morbidity and mortality, such as insulin-resistant diabetes mellitus, hypertension, coronary artery disease, hyperlipidemia [high cholesterol], and sleep apnea.”

Standards and expectations are understandably much higher for president than for a governor. Pritzker’s health will be an issue if he makes a White House run.

How heavy is Pritzker? I don’t know. But he’s weighty enough to likely cause a femur stress fracture by just standing. J.B. doesn’t even know how that bone broke. I had a stress fracture once–it was one of my fibulas. I know how I got mine–it was from running 32 marathons in 20 years.

Not reaching across the aisle: Harris is a predictable result of a bad candidate winning office in a state dominated by one party. Her goofiness–both in demeanor and in political views–is not enough of an impediment for her to lose to a Republican in California. Gavin Newsom is much more seasoned and serious, but he’s another example. In 2004, when he was governor of San Francisco, he announced a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness. There are more homeless people in San Francisco now than there has ever been twenty years later.

Harris, who was a US senator and the attorney general from California, didn’t have to, metaphorically speaking, reach across the aisle to win statewide. There are not enough Republicans in the Golden State to stop a Harris–or a Newsom.

Pritzker, while enormously popular in the Chicago area and university towns, is generally hated downstate. The Democrats enjoy supermajorities in the General Assembly. Which means Pritzker doesn’t need Republicans to rule. 

In the 2022 race, in many downstate counties, Pritzker’s Republican opponent, Darren Bailey, won more than 80 percent of the vote. In rural Edwards County, in southeastern Illinois, Bailey romped with 88 percent of the ballots, while in heavily Democratic Cook County, where Chicago lies, Pritzker collected a more modest 73 percent. About 1.4 million votes were cast in Cook so you can see how Pritzker comfortably won reelection, since the statewide vote total was four million in 2022.

Illinois’ listless media, dominated by leftists, rarely challenges Pritzker.

The governor’s speaking style is condescending. As I’ve remarked before, when he talks, he reminds me of a closer at a timeshare presentation. Yuck.

To win the presidency, no candidate can rely on one party’s votes. To govern effectively, a president needs to work with both parties.

Gerrymandering: With so many Republicans outside of Chicago, why do the Democrats have supermajorities in the General Assembly? It’s because of gerrymandering. As a candidate during his first run for governor, Pritzker vowed to veto gerrymandered legislative maps. He lied. Nationally, the Dems blame gerrymandering for not having a majority in the House of Representatives. While presidents have no power over state remaps, Pritzker’s gerrymandering flip flop certainly betrays a lack of character.

Depopulation: Like California, Illinois is losing residents. High taxes, a high crime rate, and high regulations are the catalyst. And as I mentioned earlier, with little or no political opposition, Illinois government is an echo chamber of liberal failure.

Pritzker has been governor for over five years. If Illinois is so great, why has state’s population gone down every year for the last decade?

Gaza: For the most part, I’ve supported Pritzker’s pro-Israel stance in its war with the Hamas terrorists in Gaza. Although the governor has not condemned the loud anti-Semitic voices within the Democratic Party, such as Rashida Tlaib and Jamaal Bowman. His silence on the Jew-haters in his party is disturbing.

Pritzker is Jewish. But since the Democrats are increasingly the anti-Semitic party–anti-Israel Dems like Bernie Sanders are given a pass from the pro-Hamas activists–his faith could be a problem for him. Sad, but true, in my opinion. Pennsylvania’s Shapiro, who is also Jewish, is pro-Israel too.

But the voters most likely to agree, generally that is, with Pritzker and Shapiro on Gaza are Republicans.

Pensions: Illinois’ public pensions are among the worst funded among the 50 states. The pension crisis–created by both parties–has not been adequately addressed by Pritzker. Great leaders solve difficult problems. Despite new taxes, Pritzker’s latest budget shorts Illinois’ pension plans. Such malfeasance is how Illinois ended up in this mess.

Education: Pritzker did nothing to stop Illinois legislators from letting Illinois’ school choice program expire. Thirty states have some sort of school choice program, Illinois is the first to end one. Just 27 percent of Illinois students perform at grade level in math, and only 35 percent of students read at grade level.

Obviously, Democrats, including Pritzker, are more interested in kowtowing to the teacher unions than educating Illinois’ kids. Who would Pritzker nominate to be Education secretary? A radical along the lines of Chicago Teachers Union president Stacy Davis Gates?

I covered additional negatives in my first post about a potential Pritzker presidential run. Those demerits include his tax scam to lower property taxes on his Chicago mansion by removing toilets from the mansion adjacent to his–which he also owned, as well as his ties, not deep, but ties they are, with Boss Michael Madigan, who faces trial later this year for corruption, as well as a connection with one of Illinois’ ex-con governors, Rod Blagojevich.

Pritzker is in the second tier of possible Biden replacements. His negatives are apparent, but the billionaire governor has contributed millions of his own funds to finance his gubernatorial campaigns, and he’s been a generous donor to other Democrats’ campaigns, so he can call in a lot of favors, which is what he did to bring the Democratic National Convention to Chicago this summer.

Because of his fat wallet, Pritzker can hit the ground running–not literally, of course–if he needs to start a presidential campaign tomorrow. But for now, like Newsom and Whitmer, Pritzker is firmly in Biden’s corner.

Conservatives, we need to keep a wary eye on Pritzker. If not in 2024, then in 2028. We laughed off Biden five years ago.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Detroit’s stillborn revival

Posted: February 7, 2021 by John Ruberry in business, culture, economy, News/opinion, politics, Sports
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By John Ruberry

I hit the road last week–to a regular stop for me–Detroit–my fourth visit there. Coincidentally last Monday, when I arrived, was the first day that Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s lifting of Michigan’s ban on indoor dining, replaced by low-capacity dining, took effect.

Yet central Detroit was still nearly void of people last week.

During my first visit, in 2015, while I noticed a fair amount of bustle on the streets and sidewalks downtown, I also walked past empty skyscrapers. On my next trip, two years later, most of those same buildings were occupied or being rehabbed. And the city’s light rail line, the QLine, an expensive and impressive showpiece, had just opened. As I noted at the time on my own blog, these trolley cars ironically echo Detroit’s monorail, the People Mover, the 1980s Stalinist boondoggle championed by Coleman Young, the five-term mayor of Detroit who may have been a closet communist. Both the QLine and the People Mover serve only the downtown area. They look stunning though.

Also in 2017 Little Caesars Arena opened in the adjacent Midown part of the city. It brought the Detroit’s NBA team, the Pistons, back to the city for the first time in nearly four decades. The NHL team, the Red Wings, made the short jump from downtown’s Joe Louis Arena to Little Caesars too. Since the early 2000s the NFL entry, the Lions, and its MLB team, the Tigers, have been playing downtown. Which made the many gamedays in central Detroit a magnet for hungry and thirsty people with fat wallets. Now the teams play in front of no fans.

Quicken Loans has been based in Detroit since 2009 and is now America’s largest mortgage lender. While Detroit is still the Motor City it is the Mortgage City now too.

But meanwhile in the neighborhoods the decline of Detroit continued. For urban explorers like myself, that is, people who photograph or shoot videos of abandoned homes, factories, offices, churches—am I leaving anything out?–oh yeah, schools, there is no shortage of material to work with.

Things looked even better for Detroit when I spent a day there in 2019.

Then COVID-19 hit. Whitmer’s statewide lockdowns have been among the nation’s most restrictive. As I witnessed in Chicago last year, the streets were also eerily empty in Detroit in 2020 according to media reports, such as this one from AP in October:

Downtown Detroit was returning to its roots as a vibrant city center, motoring away from its past as the model of urban ruin. 

Then the pandemic showed up, emptying once-bustling streets and forcing many office workers to flee to their suburban homes.

And if you work for Quicken and its Rocket Mortgage wing, many of your job responsibilities, perhaps all of them, can be done from a suburban home, as Quicken performs most of its transactions online.

But lets say you need to come downtown for your annual review. What else is there to do? On Day 1 of the partial-lifting of the indoor dining lockdown, it looked to me that about half of the restaurants there were still closed. Most retail outlets were shuttered. And all of the shops and eateries were closed at the Little Caesars Arena, where I hoped to buy a hockey souvenir for Mrs. Marathon Pundit. But of course there is always Amazon to fall back on for that. Oh, Kid Rock’s Made In Detroit restaurant at Little Caesars closed last spring, although that departure had nothing to do with COVID.

So in downtown Detroit last week you still had to struggle to find a place to eat. Yes, there were a few of those ludicrous tents outside some eateries–by the way temperatures were in the 30s all last week during our visit.

Story continues below photograph.

Diners last Monday in downtown Detroit

Part of the allure of big-city centers has been the array of shopping and cultural choices offfered. That’s mostly gone now in Detroit. Sure, New York, Chicago and other large cities are facing similar challenges under COVID lockdowns, but many of their eateries and shops have been operating for decades. And yes, such businesses usually have narrow profit margins but being a going concern for many years means there will be an established customer base that might remember you a few years later. What if you are a Detroit boutique that has been open only for a couple of years?

The QLine and the People Mover haven’t run since last spring. There aren’t a lot of people in downtown Detroit to well, move. Buses are still running, however.

Back to those cultural choices: The Detroit Institute of Arts is one of America’s premier art museums. I wanted to attend Wednesday but the DIA was sold out that day. I was able to purchase tickets, online of course, for myself and my traveling companion the following day for one of the available time slots. And do you know what? Outside of employees there couldn’t have been more than 50 people inside the sprawling museum when we were there. I’m confident that Wednesday’s “sold out” day wasn’t much different. On the positive side I was able to stand and stare in front of the DIA’s four Vincent van Gogh paintings as long as I wished–there was no one to push me aside and tell me, “You’re done, now it’s my turn.” Yes, we were forced to wear masks and we had our temperature taken at the museum’s entrance. Precautions were taken.

My companion visited Dearborn’s Henry Ford museum on Tuesday–a fabulous place that I experiended in 2015–and it was nearly empty too, I was told. 

The Motown Musuem in New Center remains closed, it re-opens February 18. Man, oh man, we really wanted to see that place.

Will COVID-19 and Michigan’s lockdowns kill Detroit’s revival?

Many people have their life savings and their mortages invested in small businesses that have been closed for months in Detroit and other large cities.

The dominos will start falling.  Which is something most Detroiters know a lot about.

Meanwhile in Florida, life and business continues, with masks, but without the lockdowns. The Florida COVID death rate is lower than that of Michigan.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Bloodletting the American economy

Posted: April 12, 2020 by John Ruberry in business, culture, economy, News/opinion, politics, Uncomfortable Truths
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By John Ruberry

I am living in the third week of Illinois’ shelter-in-place order in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. The streets are quiet, the parking lots in many retail spots are either empty, if it’s a mall, or less crowded if that shopping area has a grocery store.

At home there are three of us. I’m the only one with a job. I’m a commission sales person but income is down. Mrs. Marathon Pundit, after getting laid off a month ago, drove Uber until the shelter-in-place order was put in place on March 21. She filed for unemployment for her first time the following week. Little Marathon Pundit’s employer shut down when the shelter-in-place order went into effect. She was paid until she was informed by a letter yesterday that she was furloughed–then she promptly filed a jobless claim. Hundreds of thousands of Illinoisans have done the same recently.

We are holding up okay. We are healthy and not suffering from anxiety. I’ll have more on mental health later.

As of Easter morning there have been nearly 20,000 confirmed novel coronavirus in the Land of Lincoln with 677 deaths. Each person was loved and will be missed. Each death is a tragedy.

Yet most of the COVID-19 fatalities already had illnesses such as cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. Or they suffered from unhealthy underlying factors such as high blood pressure and obesity. Or they smoked. Let me repeat, each death is a tragedy.

Two weeks ago in this space I wrote about what I still believe is an overreach in Chicago in response to coronavirus. Mayor Lori Lightfoot, among other things, has closed Chicago’s sprawling lakefront to even solitary walkers, runners, and cyclists. Barbershops and hair salons, along with many other businesses, have been viewed as non-essential by Governor JB Pritzker, although that didn’t stop Lightfoot from getting her  hair done.

But Lightfoot’s reaction is mild compared to what is going on in a nearby state, Michigan. Governor Gretchen Whitmer is a Democrat like Lightfoot and Pritzker. While she hasn’t run out of things to ban or shutter, Whitmer, who is supposedly on Joe Biden’s shortlist of running mates, might reach that millstone.

Travel between homes–even walking across the street–is banned in the Great Lakes State, unless it involves checking on someone’s health. Stores deemed essential are open, but in a bizarre overreach, garden center sections in those open retail outlets are cordoned off, including seed displays. Gardening, generally a solitary pursuit, is a fabulous mental health salve.

Yes, Michigan has one of the highest coronavirus rates in the nation. Cases are concentrated in the Detroit area, which by all accounts has disproportionately more residents suffering from the underlying health issues I mentioned earlier.

There is speculation over a second wave of COVID-19 coming later this year. If that’s the case in between there will be a mental health crisis. Joblessness and money troubles are a reliable predictor of suicides. 

Not every family is a happy one. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres has already decried the “horrifying global surge in domestic violence” now that much of the planet is enduring a lockdown. Alcohol sales are up since the shelter-in-place orders began. Will this lead to a higher rate of alcoholism? Will problem drinkers who kicked the habit suffer a relapse? Will there be a hike in narcotics abuse?

Liquor stores are open in everywhere where they were before the pandemic–I’m not calling for their closure. In Michigan you can buy booze and visit a marijuana dispensary. But stay away from that seed aisle at the local big box store! Governor Gretchen Whitless is watching!

https://twitter.com/LeeChatfield/status/1248976304155869190
Lee Chatfield, a Republican, is the speaker of the Michigan House.

Flint, which is no stranger to economic turmoil, issued a 9am-6pm curfew as long as Whitmer’s shelter-in-place order is effect. Violators face up to $2,000 in fines and six months in jail. Even the ACLU is rolling its eyes over the Flint curfew. I’ve been to Flint. Take my word for it, most residents of the Vehicle City don’t have $2,000 lying around. 

Two hundred years ago  bloodletting was viewed by most physicians as a valid and effective medical treatment for a variety of illnesses. George Washington, a believer in bloodletting, was arguably killed by his doctor who bled him as he was suffering from a throat infection. That cure for Washington and countless others was worse than the disease. 

Now I fear we are bloodletting the American economy. I fear the wide-ranging shelter-in-place orders could trigger an economic depression with the horrible health repercussions I described above. And more. 

President Donald Trump is right. We need to re-open the American economy as soon as possible. 

Our collective health depends on it. 

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.