Posts Tagged ‘illinois’

Soros-funded Chicago prosecutor will finally get tough on lawbreaking protesters–but only for the Democratic National Convention

Posted: April 28, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, election 2024, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County, is the chief prosecutor in Chicago and its inner suburbs. 

The George Soros-funded catch-and-release Democrat has been a disaster for Cook County residents, except for the many criminals living here.

Nationally, the leftist ideologue is best known for botching the Jussie Smollett case. Yeah, I keep bringing that up, largely because Foxx supposedly throws a fit whenever her name is attached to the hate-crime hoaxer. 

Feel her rage.

By throwing his considerable weight around, both literally and symbolically, Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, who hopes to run for president in 2028, brought the 2024 Democratic National Convention to Chicago. This may prove to be Pritzker’s undoing. Chicago was hit hard by riots after the George Floyd murder, and the crime rate in Chicago and its core suburbs has soared since Foxx took office in 2016.

Fortunately, Foxx chose not to run for a third term. 

The campaign to succeed her was essentially a referendum on her time as state’s attorney. The winner by a hair was Eileen O’Neill Burke, who said at the end of a debate, “If you like the way things are going right now, you have a candidate in this election. It isn’t me.”

Last week, the Chicago Tribune reported that Foxx will get a little tougher in prosecuting crime. “You may not be aware, but for the last four years the public policy of the Cook County state’s attorney’s office has been not to prosecute criminal violations tied to protests and demonstrations,” the Trib’s left-of-center editorial board wrote, “if the office deems those actions ‘peaceful.'” 

“That means the office as a matter of policy won’t prosecute protesters arrested for disorderly conduct,” the op-ed continued, “unlawful gathering or criminal trespass to state-supported land, among other laws.”

As people with common sense–that is, non-leftists–know, small-time violators of the law sometimes become felons. Peaceful protests, or what liberal journalists laughingly call “mostly peaceful protests” sometimes become quite violent ones. 

Foxx’s end-of-term conversion does not mean she’s been suddenly blessed with wisdom. Crime is a very serious problem in Chicago. Nationally, liberal apologists for criminality regularly tell us that the crime rate in major cities is going down, but not only do they use the COVID year of 2020 as a comparison point, they ignore Chicago. While murder the murder rate is down slightly in Chicago, other crimes are becoming more numerous. Foxx is largely to blame, but Chicago’s mayor during the pandemic, Lori Lightfoot, as well as her neo-Marxist successor, Brandon Johnson, should hold their heads in shame too.

Instead, Foxx has cynically, in regard to DNC protesters, decided to do her job. 

Leftists are obsessed with history repeating itself. Looking past the calm 1996 Democratic Convention, they fear a repeat of the riot at Grant Park during the 1968 DNC, when Mayor Richard J. Daley’s angry cops beat up hippie protesters as millions of voters watched on television. Liberals blame that chaos for Richard Nixon’s victory that fall. 

At a protest earlier this month Joe Iosbaker, a left-wing gadfly, offered an ominous warning with a couple of questions. “Have you heard that the Democratic National Convention is coming to Chicago? Are we going to let ’em come here without a protest? This is Chicago, goddamn it — we’ve got to give them a 1968 kind of welcome.”

Foxx doesn’t want to be blamed for Donald Trump defeating Joe Biden in November. She cares more about her political party than fulfilling the duties of her job.

Pro-Hamas and anti-Israel protests are regular disturbances in downtown Chicago. Protesting, both peaceful and “mostly peaceful,” has become a habit in the city. Throw into the mix Chicago’s violent crime epidemic, and the result will be a vile stew that is set to turn toxic in late August, when the DNC convenes at the United Center.

Foxx’s “conversion,” in my opinion, will prove to be too little–too late.

Let the bad times roll. History will repeat itself in Chicago.

After the DNC leaves, Foxx can return to not prosecuting protesters who break laws until Eileen O’Neill Burke is sworn in.

John Ruberry regularly blogs in Cook County at Marathon Pundit.

Media malpractice on the Dexter Reed police shooting

Posted: April 14, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, culture, media, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Dexter Reed Chicago Police mugshot. Source: Chicago City Wire.

By John Ruberry

On his Prime Time show last Thursday, Jesse Watters, nailed it when he excoriated the mainstream media over headlines used to describe the deadly shooting of Dexter Reed by a Chicago Police tactical squad last month.  Reed was pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt, which in Illinois, is a legitimate reason for police to pull a driver over. 

A Chicago police officer asked Reed to roll down his front windows, which initially he did, but then he rolled them up, he ignored demands to get out of his SUV, then he fired his gun eleven times, wounding one cop.

Headlines like these, Watters reported, were used about the Reed shooting:

“Black man dead on Chicago street after cops fired nearly 100 bullets.” 

“Police fired 96 shots in 41 seconds killing Black man during traffic stop.”

“Deadly Chicago traffic stop where police fired 96 shots raises serious questions about use of force.”

Watters points out that deep in the story the “journalists” mention that Reed shot as the cops first. 

But the media knows that often users only look at headlines of stories as they appear on their smartphones. They don’t bother to read the stores that accompany these headlines, or they are blocked by paywalls. 

The mainstream media doesn’t want to report the news–it wants to advance a left-wing agenda. Foremost on their agenda is to re-elect Joe Biden so the man who sends mean Tweets, Donald Trump, doesn’t return to the White House. The uproar over the police killing of George Floyd pushed the frail Joe Biden past the finish line in 2020. The media is hoping, with Reed, that history repeats and a new backlash can drag an ever-frailer Biden to victory.

The media, both local and national, is borrowing a page from the Trayvon Martin shooting, by using old photographs of him, of when he was younger and well, cuter. The Chicago media, in their stories, used high school photos of Reed, who was 26 when he was killed.

Chicago’s most-read newspapers, the Tribune and the Sun-Times, have a general policy, instituted in 2021 against using mugshots in stories. Of course, they both made an exception in the case of Donald Trump. The Chicago City Wire, derided as a “fake” newspaper by Chicago’s self-appointed media elite, has no such rule, so it published Reed’s mug shot.

That’s not all. The City Wire reports that was Reed arrested twice in 2023. The first bust was for retail theft, the second was for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon.

The City Wire also revealed that Reed, who once worked as a security guard, received a Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loan of $20,832 for his business that consisted of “all other support activities for transportation.”

Thousands of very suspicious PPP loans were issued to Chicagoans during the COVID pandemic, particularly in impoverished areas not known as hubs for business activity, including West Garfield Park, where Reed lived.

Sam Charles of the Trib managed to do some insightful reporting today when he revealed that Reed was shot in 2021.

“I’m physically disabled and mentally unstable with PTSD, short-term memory loss, slurred speech, drop foot in one of my legs, blindness in one eye, shoulder/arm hard to move, weakness and/or sensitivity,” Reed, who was 26 when he was killed last month, wrote in an August 2023 court filing. “With all these medical conditions it has been hard for me to work and/or do certain things.”

Well, if Reed was truthful in that filing, then I have a question: Why did Reed–and as we know, he was arrested for aggravated unlawful use of a weapon last year–have a gun? And where did he get the firearm?

Chicago has among the toughest gun laws in America.

And of course, Reed, despite his troubles, should have known want what to do when police officers pulled him over.

On Thursday’s Chicago’s Morning Answer show with Dan Proft and Amy Jacobson on WIND-AM, John Garrido, a former CPD lieutenant, told the hosts, “This incident, like so many other ones, could have easily been avoided,” Garrido explained, “all [Reed] had to do was comply. All he had to do was roll the window down, open the door, get out of the car, and he would live another day to tell stories about how the police somehow violated his rights.”

Garrido had more to say about Reed. “He was in court–or supposed to be in court–two weeks prior to this incident.” The former cop theorized that Reed possibly was afraid if he was caught by the CPD tactical squad with a weapon, one that he was not supposed to have, that he could have been sent to jail.

Clearly, there is more to learn–and report–about the Reed death. But it appears that the mainstream media cares more about one thing–advancing their left-wing narrative.

As for the Tribune and the Sun-Times–as well as national outlets–why not reach out to someone like Garrido when reporting on Reed and similar police stories?

Note: Proft says he is a principal of Local Government Information Services, which publishes the Chicago City Wire and other local publications.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson asks, “Who expected me to defeat white supremacy in one year?”

Posted: April 7, 2024 by John Ruberry in business, crime, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,

Brandon Johnson

By John Ruberry

Chicago has a nasty mess on its hands with Brandon Johnson as mayor.

Crime rates remain high compared to the pre-pandemic year of 2019.

It’s common for big city mayors to claim that crime is declining, but they usually look back only a year for comparison numbers and then declare, “You see!” However, in March, the murder total in Chicago exceeded the killings in March of last year–by 28 percent. 

Johnson suffered a major political loss last month. His Bring Chicago Home referendum, which would have raised the real estate on high-end property transactions, was defeated. Funds from that tax hike would have been used to battle homelessness, although Johnson and other key supporters of BCH provided no details on how that money would be spent.  Supporters of BCH, utilizing a class warfare tactics, dubbed it a “mansion tax.”

When commenting on the defeat of Bring Chicago Home, Johnson all but blamed supporters of former president Donald Trump. But in the 2020 presidential election, Joe Biden won all 50 Chicago wards, with Trump collecting a meager 15 percent of the vote in Chicago. Sorry, Jussie Smollett, but Chicago is not MAGA Country.

Last week, to mark the anniversary of his narrow victory over moderate Democrat Paul Vallas, Johnson, a progressive Democrat who is a former Chicago Teachers Union organizer, granted two exclusive interviews, both with leftist news sources, Block Club Chicago and the Triibe. 

As for the former, Johnson queried reporter Quinn Myers, “Name one thing that I said I was gonna do that I haven’t done. You won’t be able to.”

Well, here is one item: Johnson made a campaign promise to hire 200 police detectives. The current municipal budget calls for adding only 100. 

Johnson sees himself as a “movement politician,” and this political species tends to be fond of using hyperbole. Not surprisingly, the mayor used a troubling verb, “assassinate,” when he discussed his movement in the Block Club interview.

“That’s why they worked hard to disrupt it and destroy it, and have gone as far to assassinate it,” Johnson told Myers. “And so whether it’s literally or figuratively, the work to assassinate character or to assassinate our movement, we’re not going to allow that type of fear to disrupt what ultimately the people of Chicago wanted. And that’s why they voted for me.” 

That’s not correct. There are many opinions on why Johnson won. For certain, his former employer and his chief financial backer, the far-left Chicago Teachers Union, outhustled the old-school campaign of Vallas. In my opinion, Chicagoans just wanted a less acidic version of his unpopular predecessor, Lori Lightfoot. So, voters chose the Lightfoot-esque candidate–but without the venomous fangs.

Let’s move on to the second interview, with the Triibe, which was conducted by Tonia Hill.

Wikipedia describes the Triibe as “an African-American online news and digital media company based in Chicago, Illinois.” Until last week I hadn’t heard of it.

Johnson let loose a missile with Hill. “Who expected me to defeat white supremacy in one year?” the mayor said. “There were individuals who did not know the full value of what I brought to the mayor’s office, and there were forces working to disrupt that.”

Whooah.

Johnson wasn’t elected to defeat white supremacy. Voters chose him to run America’s third-largest city, and his primary duty as mayor is to protect its residents–not to peddle far-left talking points.

This is not the first time Johnson has used the racism canard as mayor. He has not handled the migrant crisis well. In response to well-earned criticism of his response to the arrival of arrivals in Chicago, Johnson counter attacked. “Everyone knows that the right-wing extremism in this country has targeted democratically-run cities,” the mayor said. “It is abysmal, and it is an affront for everything that is good about this country for the extremism in this country to use people as political tools to settle political scores for something that happened over 400 years ago.”

Johnson concluded that Republicans are “still mad that a black man is free in this country.”

No, they are not.

The media in Chicago leans left as it does just about every place else in America. But Johnson expects hero worship from reporters, not objective criticism. Consequently, Johnson’s relationship with Chicago’s mainstream media has been rocky, because newspaper and television reporters have been mildly critical of him.

They need to be tougher. A good place for journalists to start is to ask Johnson what he meant when he said, “Who expected me to defeat white supremacy in one year?” In short journos–do your job.

Business leaders, and by the way, not all of them are white, dislike “us versus them” rhetoric. Because they are the “them,” the perceived enemy. But these “enemies” are the job providers. Corporate Chicago largely opposed Bring Home Chicago. After its defeat, Johnson called the opponents of the referendum “wicked.”

Chicago needs as many businesses as it can get. Downtown Chicago’s office vacancy rate is a record 25.1 percent. The downtown retail vacancy rate is 30 percent. Both are records. Downtown is the financial engine that powers Chicago. Kill it, and the city dies. The Detroit dystopia is not a farfetched future for Chicago.

While they had obvious weaknesses in their combined 30 years as mayor, Lightfoot’s predecessors, Richard M. Daley and Rahm Emanuel, were tremendous salespeople for Chicago. Lightfoot, and even more so Johnson, not so much.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Republicans who voted Eileen O’Neill Burke to victory in Cook County, Illinois offer a lesson to blue state conservatives

Posted: March 31, 2024 by John Ruberry in crime, election 2024, elections, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

By John Ruberry

Yes, there are Cook County Republicans. 

Besides me. Really.

Cook County, Illinois is America’s second-most populous county. Chicago is its largest city. It’s deep blue, Cook hasn’t backed a Republican presidential candidate since Richard M. Nixon’s wipeout of George McGovern in 1972. In 2020, Joe Biden bested Donald Trump in Cook when he collected nearly 75 percent of the vote. However, in sheer numbers, over 500,000 people in Cook County voted for Trump.

Nearly two weeks ago, there was a primary election in Illinois. The most watched match up, which I wrote about twice here at Da Tech Guy, was the race for Cook County state’s attorney, the county’s top prosecutor. Two Democrats, Clayton Harris III, a former chief-of-staff for Rod Blagojevich and current university lecturer, and Eileen O’Neill Burke, a retired Illinois appellate judge, faced off. 

For the last eight years, Kim Foxx, a George Soros-funded leftist, has misruled as state’s attorney. Crimes of all types, including murder, have soared since she took office. Catch-and-release is not an effective law enforcement strategy. Harris was vague in his campaign, but he did give Foxx an “A” for her tenure as state’s attorney. Even worse, the far-left wing of the Chicago area Democratic Party backed him, led by the radical Chicago Teachers Union. Cook County board president Toni Preckwinkle, who is also chair of the Cook County Regular Democratic Organization, also endorsed Harris. Preckwinkle and the CTU were supporters of Brandon Johnson, now Chicago’s progressive mayor, in his first political race, a seat on the Cook County Board.

As for O’Neill Burke, it’s fair to call her a centrist Democrat, although the favors the odious no-cash bail SAFE-T Act. But she’s not an ideologue along the lines of Foxx, Preckwinkle, and Johnson. So, in the very likely event she prevails in the general election, I have hope that she can moderate further in the direction of protecting law-abiding citizens from the criminal class. 

One of the center points of O’Neill Burke’s campaign was to–get this!–enforce state law, specifically, return to prosecuting retail thefts as felonies when more than $300 is stolen. Foxx, in one of her first moves as state’s attorney, raised that felony threshold to $1,000. Although, if an accused thief has ten prior felony convictions, Foxx finally, or so she says, will prosecute those under-$1,000 offenders with a felony.

Yes, for now, there is a ten-strikes-and-you’re-out theft policy in Crook County. Jean Valjean was born in the wrong century.

Criminals are emboldened here. And small time crooks often move on to commit more serious crimes.

After a painful and troubling vote tally, late Friday, after provisional votes were counted, AP declared O’Neill Burke the winner in the state’s attorney race. Harris conceded that night. As of now, the retired judge leads Harris by around 1,500 votes–out of over 500,000 cast. 

Republicans, you put O’Neill Burke over the top.

Evidence is anecdotal, but it’s believed that many Republicans–certainly far more than 1,500–crossed over and took a Democrat ballot in the March primary election in Cook. I was one of them. Remember, in 2020, coincidentally, Trump received over 500,000 votes in Cook County. 

There was no reason for Cook County GOPers to vote in the Republican primary. Because of decades of rampant Democratic gerrymandering, there were no competitive Republican contests in the county. Statewide, the gerrymandering sin almost ensures, for both parties, few if any competitive intraparty races. 

There’s a lesson here for Republicans living in blue states. Take a Democratic ballot in primary elections, and vote for the least-leftist candidate. It’s a twist of Rush Limbaugh’s Operation Chaos strategy to drag out the 2008 Democrat presidential primaries. 

Have I given up on the Illinois Republican Party? Yes. While there a few good Republican politicians in the Land of Lincoln, none of them are within leadership roles. The state GOP apparatus is reminiscent of the two approved “opposition” parties in communist Poland, the United People’s Party and the Alliance of Democrats. The Illinois GOP knows its place, like those paid “Republican” contributors on CNN and MSNBC. 

Such a philosophy for a conservative is not nearly dramatic as William F. Buckley’s vision. He pictured himself as someone who, “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”

As I noted last week, crime in the Chicago area is a life and death issue, and by voting for O’Neill Burke last week, one of the lives I might have saved is mine. If there isn’t a better reason to vote a certain way than for personal safety–and for that of our loved ones–please let me know in the comments section.

Oh, while voting Democratic in a primary, don’t be afraid to cause some mischief while you’re trolling the neighborhood. For president, my choice in the Illinois Primary was Marianne Williamson.

Let the chaos roll!

I earnestly wanted Williamson to win.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Older Entries
Newer Entries