Posts Tagged ‘illinois politics’

America’s big cities, the GOP’s next frontier

Posted: November 10, 2024 by John Ruberry in election 2024, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Last’s week’s convincing victory by Donald J. Trump over Kamala Harris offers a plan for the future of the Republican Party.

Let’s begin with this development. America is in a new political era. The Sixth Party System, which covers the shift of the Democratic Solid South to the Republican Party, is over. While Georgia is still a swing state, the GOP still owns the South. 

The shift of the working class, regardless of race, to the Republican side is in motion. The Seventh Party System is here. The Democrats are now the party of the wealthy metropolitan elites and people collecting public assistance. Good luck trying to create functional policy out of those odd lots. This, as Trump would say, is yuge. Sure, there are some unfriendly ripples in the Red Wave, women favor the Democrats and the tiny blocs with permanent grievances, such as the trans lobby and the Green Luddites, will always favor the left.

In politics the game is never over. Envision the GOP as a football team with a 27-14 lead over the Dems–and Trump, as quarterback, has the ball, with a skilled backup ready when he’s needed in JD Vance.

QB Trump needs to pass the ball into the cities for the long-term victory.

Because I live just outside of Chicago, I’m going to focus on that city, which hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1931. But the story is similar in other big cities, particularly New York.

Trump collected 12 percent of the vote in Chicago in 2016, he improved to 16 percent four years later. This year he took 22 percent; it was the GOP’s best presidential Chicago performance since 1992. Trump won a Chicago ward, the 41st, and that hasn’t happened since that same year. The now president-elect came close in several other wards, mostly ones where many Chicago police officers and firefighters live, but Trump was also in shouting distance in the 50th Ward, which has many Orthodox Jewish residents. 

Trump made massive gains among Chicago’s Hispanic voters. To be fair, the black vote and the haughty white know-it-all vote on the North Side continued past patterns

Yes, 22 percent in an election is a long way from a majority. But there much room for growth.

Elsewhere, after Election Day some urban leftist pols are now out of a job. They include three woke prosecutors, California’s George Gascón and Pamela Price (who was recalled), and Deborah Gonzalez in Georgia. Two other California leftist mayors are now cleaning out their desks, London Breed lost her reelection race in San Francisco and Oakland’s Sheng Thao was recalled.

Voters nationwide are fed up with leftist public officials and there doesn’t seem to be too many moderate Democrats, particularly in big cities. Chicago’s woke mayor, Brandon Johnson, who was elected in a low turnout election just last year, now has an approval rating of just 14 percent.

The GOP, even in cities like Chicago that have nominally non-partisan elections, needs to start recruiting candidates now for the next few election cycles, not just for municipal races, but for state legislature and congressional contests.

In many cities, such as Chicago, “Republican” is still toxic in many circles. To counter that, conservative candidates can run as an independent. Gascón’s opponent, Nathan Hochman, a Republican, did just that in California.

Never forget, the Democrats are the party many unpopular political positions.

Including:

  • Sanctuary cities and open borders.
  • DEI.
  • Featherbedding government worker payrolls.
  • No-cash bail laws.
  • Lax prosecution of criminals.
  • Defunding the police or cutting the number of law enforcement officers.
  • Transgenderism–including supporting boys playing in girls’ sports.
  • Forcing expensive electric cars on us.
  • Banning natural gas stoves and ovens.
  • Burdensome regulations.
  • Opposing fossil fuels.
  • Red-light and speed cameras.
  • High taxes.
  • Hostility to school choice and private school vouchers.

And so much more.

Yes, party identity is a tough nut to crack, but progress has already been made by the GOP.

Big cities are the rotten apples on the dying Democratic tree.

Conservatives offer a better way. Say it now and say it loud.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Brandon Johnson’s Chicago follies: The board of education disaster

Posted: November 3, 2024 by John Ruberry in education, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

Chicago’s leftist mayor, Brandon Johnson, who is probably a socialist, is on his way to being remembered as one of America’s worst big city mayors.

Among the awful history gives us are New York’s John Lindsay, Cleveland’s Dennis Kucinich, and Detroit’s Coleman Young.

“Branjo” has been mayor for only 18 months. 

In another post at Da Tech Guy, I discussed his propensity to blame any criticism of him on his race–Johnson is black. 

Last month I discussed his Friday Afternoon Massacre. Consider this post a sequel. 

Johnson was a longtime paid organizer for the radical Chicago Teachers Union. And by the way, when someone calls himself an organizer, consider that a code word for left-wing radical.  He was also Cook County Commissioner, a part-time job. Cook County government doesn’t have much power. 

Branjo is an empty suit with an empty head. 

Chicago is broke, thanks to fiscal mismanagement by Richard M. Daley, Chicago is essentially bankrupt. Its municipal pension funds are the worst funded in the nation.

Daley belongs in that worst mayors ever list too.

But the Chicago Teachers Union, Johnson’s former employer and the chief financial backer of his mayoral campaign, wants a big raise for teachers. To pay for that, as well as a looming pension bill for non-teacher CPS employees, Branjo ordered the CEO of CPS, Pedro Martinez, to take out what the media is collectively calling a high interest “payday loan” to pay for both. CPS faces a $500 million dollar deficit while Chicago proper faces a nearly $1 billion deficit. CPS bonds are rated as junk.

Martinez said no to the mayor, and in solidarity with him, the entire school board, all seven of them Johnson appointees, resigned, in short, the Friday Afternoon Massacre.

In Brandon Johnson’s Chicago, things can always get worse.

Johnson quickly replaced the school board with seven new members, who have so far done nothing. Martinez hasn’t been fired and no payday loan has been taken out. In a few weeks, that board will be replaced with a hybrid board, half elected—the election is this week–and half appointed by Johnson. 

Of the soon-to-be former board, two members, including the president of the board, Mitchell Ikenna Johnson (no relation) are an embarrassment. The day after he was sworn in, it was reported that Mitchell was disbarred for life in Ohio for “engaging in conduct involving dishonesty, deceit, fraud, or misrepresentation.” The mayor, who almost certainly lives in a leftist pseudo-intellectual monoculture, should have immediately called for Mitchell Ikenna Johnson’s resignation. He didn’t. Then it was learned that Mitchell was active on social media supporting 9/11 conspiracy theories and promoting anti-Semitic hate. On Friday, Mitchell finally resigned.

Apparently, there is no vetting at Chicago’s City Hall. Competence is absent too.

Another of Branjo’s recent board appointees, Olga Bautista–a socialist–faces accusations of anti-semitism, which led Illinois’ treasurer, Susana Mendoza, a Democrat, to comment on X, “Springfield should intervene. There clearly needs to be Chgo City Council vetting, oversight & consent of these mayoral appointments to the Chgo Public School Board. Antisemites should be automatically disqualified, full stop. As should socialists calling for the fall of the U.S.”

Mendoza, a Democrat, is rumored to be considering a mayoral run in 2027.

Meanwhile, another radical left-winger, Kennedy Bartley, a top Branjo aide who is in charge of lobbying with other public officials, including the City Council, on behalf of the mayor, has called Chicago Police officers “f*cking pigs” and has made anti-Semitic comments on social media. She’s still on the job.

Johnson is rumored to have a police detail of 125-150 officers.

Clearly, being an anti-Semite, or at the very least, anti-Israel, is on the checklist to be included in leftist government employment circles.

And incompetence is on that checklist too.

As I’ve mentioned a few times at DaTechGuy, the warning signs were all there with Brandon Johnson. Chicagoans voted him in anyway.

While Chicago has some able aldermen–Brendan Reilly, Anthony Beale, and Ray Lopez come to mind–there are many leftist losers there too.

But that’s a topic for another time.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

The Great Chicago Train Robbery offers more proof of the city’s decline and fall

Posted: October 13, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

The evidence of Chicago’s decline and fall keeps piling up.

On Friday evening, at least 30 thugs looted Union Pacific rail cars in Chicago’s Austin neighborhood on the West Side.

The city’s leftist mayor, Brandon Johnson, who lives in Austin, was in London in advance of Sunday’s Chicago Bears game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Although he later backed away, slightly, from his statement, in 2020 “Branjo” called defunding the police “a political goal.”

As you’ll see, the looters are so casual in these videos as they unload the U.P. freight cars, it’s as if they calmly enjoying a visit to a suburban pick-your-own pumpkin patch. They’re not hiding their faces; they’re not covering up their licence plates. One enterprising criminal even brought a cargo truck to speed their 100-percent discounts along.

The mass thievery was so vast that commuter rail traffic on those rail lines was suspended for hours.

Society is rotting in Chicago–as well as suburban Cook County, because we have had a pro-criminal George Soros-funded so-called prosecutor, Democrat Kim Foxx, lackadaisically enforcing the law for that last eight years. Thankfully, she’ll be out of office in two months.

Criminals don’t fear getting caught in Chicago–and if they are–only those accused of the most heinous crimes are locked up to await trial. Since last year, courtesy of JB Pritzker’s SAFE-T Act, cash bail is banned in Illinois.

The Chicago establishment media, TV stations are an exception, are shameful. They minimize rampant criminality, calling it “a perception problem.”

On Facebook, an hour after the brazen looting, a Chicagoan on Facebook, a self-described “entrepreneur,” was advertising a back yard full of widescreen televisions for sale. As of this writing, 5:00pm EDT, those TVs are still for sale on the social network. Facebook doesn’t seem concerned. It’s a good thing this “entrepreneur” isn’t claiming that masks don’t work against COVID.

Then again, maybe it’s a coincidence that the “entrepreneur” is selling those televisions. But there are a lot of “coincidences” in America’s third-largest city.

So far only six people have been arrested for allegedly participating in the Great Chicago Train Robbery. Where were the Chicago Police on Friday? It took the cops over an hour to arrive to the West Side rail yard. ABC 7 News’ traffic chopper showed up much more quickly. Where was Union Pacific’s security detail? Just a thought, but U.P. may want to investigate their West Side employees. I suspect that this heist may have been aided by a tip from someone working in that freight yard.

There have been other thefts of U.P. trains in Chicago recently.

Finally, where are the decent Chicagoans?

There are some, right?

John Ruberry regularly blogs just north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Chicago’s leftist mayor cancelling gunshot detection contract because he’s beholden to his ideology

Posted: September 22, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson

By John Ruberry

Chicago, in Brandon Johnson, has a leftist idealogue as its mayor. Not surprisingly, he’s failing. 

Take away his far-left beliefs, “Branjo” is a big empty suit, one tailored by his former employer, the radical Chicago Teachers Union.

As I discussed last week, Johnson was a backer of the Defund the Police movement, until after he made it to the runoff round of last year’s mayoral election.

Johnson’s approval rating is 25 percent. Crime was the biggest issue of the 2023 campaign. While murders are down slightly, the crime numbers remain horrible. People don’t feel safe, despite the minimalizing of lawbreaking by Chicago’s weak-kneed media.

Despite 33 of Chicago’s 50 alderpersons voting to continue the city’s contract with ShotSpotter, a gunfire detection system deployed in high-crime areas, Branjo is putting ShotSpotter on mute. 

While there are critics of ShotSpotter on the left and right, the general belief of people possessing open minds–meaning people aren’t extreme left-wingers–is that ShotSpotter works. A University of Chicago Crime Lab study said that there is a “3-in-4 chance that the technology saves about 85 lives per year.”

Besides those 33 alderpersons, Chicago’s two major daily newspapers, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune–both liberal publications–favor keeping ShotSpotter. As does Johnson’s pick for police superintendant, Larry Snelling.

Branjo has never explained why, other than fulfilling a campaign promise, his reasons for dumping ShotSpotter. Last week, Chicago’s man-child mayor dismissed ShotSpotter as “walkie-talkies on a stick.”

ShotSpotter, until Sunday night that is, is deployed in 12 of Chicago’s 22 police districts. The problem for Johnson and his far-left cop-hating base is that those districts are minority-majority. However, most of the alderpersons representing those areas voted to keep in ShotSpotter in place. The core of the support for cancelling ShotSpotter in the City Council are alderpersons–some of them are openly socialist–from progressive white wards on the North Side who put Johnson over the top in last year’s election.

This afternoon on X, Silvana Tabares, who represents a Southwest Side ward. bashed Johnson’s shortsightedness.

Experts and community member all know ShotSpotter provides a vital tool for first responders to render aid to victims of gun violence.

Beginning tonight, every gunshot victim bleeding in the streets of our city will be a worth sacrifice in the eyes of our mayor for his radical agenda.

Every single one.

Here are some headlines about ShotSpotter from CWB Chicago in just the last three days:

Branjo’s inner circle is comprised of fellow leftists. Earlier this month, on the Fran
Spielman Show podcast, a moderate downtown alderperson, Brian Hopkins, ripped the mayor.

“When you’re a democratic socialist who has some very extreme, left-wing views, that closes off a lot of opportunities to grow relationships with centrists or even moderate Republicans,” Hopkins said. “The city is suffering from that.”

A couple of, well, normal people were part of Johnson’s core staff early in his administration. Rich Guidice, the mayor’s first chief of staff, resigned his spring and he was replaced by a left-wing radical, Cristina Pacione-Zayas. Earlier this month, an office reshuffling ended up with an experienced and respected intergovernmental affairs officer, Sydney Holman resigning. Now in charge of lobbying the City Council and state legislators for Branjo is another extremist, Kennedy Bartley, who called police officers “f*cking pigs” in a 2021 podcast.

Chicagoans are only 16 months into Johnson’s four-year term as mayor.

As Barack Obama once said, “Elections have consequences.”

More murder victims will be one of those.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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