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"Poll after poll has shown Chicagoans to be in a “sour” mood: A mere 9 percent believe that the city is headed in the right direction. Underwater on her approval rating, (Mayor Lori) Lightfoot is not expected to win reelection next month....The overwhelmingly liberal denizens of the country’s cities are disaffected and are holding their local leaders accountable for problems far beyond any one officeholder’s capacity to repair. That’s a trend that might get worse in the coming years."
Summary and audio linked here.
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
The state’s existing buyout program for its own pensions is the precedent for Chicago, which should be a warning: Look out for similar exaggerated claims and shoddy analysis.
Full interview and summary linked here.
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Unpopular mayors tend to be incompetent or corrupt, or both.
There is nothing on the horizon in Chicago to make one think it’s trajectory can change.
An article that tells us that Democratic mayors, who have been responding to the sorts of problems that you’d expect a mayor to have to deal with, using the sorts of solutions you’d expect from Woke Dem’s, are now unpopular because things have gotten worse rather than better. And the Atlantic, no less, tells us that it’s the Dem’s who elected the mayors who are upset. Which is, actually, kind of surprising given the fact that what the unpopular mayors have done is pretty much what they promised they were going to do if they were elected – because that’s… Read more »
“Real socialism has never been tried” is the best way to describe the left’s fury at Lori Lightfoot. To the normal person, Lori is as much as communist as Lenin or Mao. But to the progressive voter, she is a fraud who lied about her progressive credentials and is too scared to make real reforms. Here’s an article from the Nation in 2019 complaining that she’s not progressive enough. https://www.chicagomag.com/news/november-2019/lightfoot-was-never-a-progressive/ Lightfoot Was Never a Progressive The mayor’s battle with the CTU shouldn’t surprise Chicago’s left. Lori Lightfoot was never the left’s candidate. In fact, in Lightfoot’s landslide victory in April,… Read more »
Because local candidates often run on platforms out of their control. School board members complain about the state school funding levels which they don’t control. Town trustee hopefuls will run on abortion rights. I can’t tell you how many local candidates in my hometown had a platform more suited to Congress.
Because that’s what wins elections these days because people want to elect politicians that share their values and apply national values to local issues. All politics have gone national. My local park district candidates ramble on about DIE and climate change and want to spend $$$ on green boondoggles, my local school boards want to right moral wrongs from centuries ago (before my town was even incorporated, and has no history of racism or redlining) by forcing DIE on everyone. The mayors of the chicago suburbs have been taking worthless votes in city councils to ‘ban guns’. But that’s what… Read more »
People are unhappy because housing is expensive? That’s Annie Lowery’s argument in her article? And the solution is to build more affordable housing? Can anyone, anywhere, give me one example where building more ‘affordable housing’ has made any city a better place to live? These morons are committed to ideology and not practical solutions. She rambles on about crimes and murders (and then declaring, without evidence, that murders have crested) but then says the real problem is expensive housing. These people are delusional. If they want to make current housing stock more affordable, instead of building low income housing: How… Read more »
Well, it *is* The Atlantic, so I don’t expect any better, lol…
Everyone wants good wages but no one wants to pay them. We want affordable housing but the labor and materials (and the labor tied to extracting those materials) are expensive. If contractors are breaking even, they don’t have money to invest in and cover the risk of the next project, so no next project. Housing isn’t affordable if the property taxes are high, and giving tax breaks or exemptions for affordable housing increases the tax burden on everyone else. The problem is the poor have been led to believe the rich can pay for everything. There aren’t enough makers to… Read more »
Very true. New York, for all of it’s problems, at least “gets it” Mayor Adams tells progressives who bash the rich to ‘leave’ NYC Mayor Adams had a message for New York City’s tax-the-rich-promoting progressives Wednesday: Get outta town! “It blows my mind when I hear, ‘So what if they leave?’ No, you leave!” Adams said of people on the political left questioning why the city needs ultra-wealthy residents. “I want my high-income earners right here.” Adams was speaking at a breakfast event on Wall Street hosted by the Association for a Better New York, and drew applause from the… Read more »