Kass is not wrong. And who do we have to thank for our Mayor and Kim Foxx? None other than Boss Preckwinkle.
Will the new mayor, whoever he or she is be able to right the ship? Not without pension reform. Almost a third of Chicago's and the States budget goes to pay pensions predominantly for folks who no longer work for the City or State.
Ergo, Chicago's municipal gov is essentially bankrupt and the doom loop of raising taxes and chasing business out of the City isn't going to keep the ship above water.
The chances of pension reform? Not great. Either the Dems controlling the State and Municip gov need to trim their own retirement checks or the Il Supreme Court Justices need to empower our leaders to reinterpret a provision in the state constitution. The Justices are also not interested in cutting their own future pension checks.
For you optimists out there...one state did fix its overhang and reform its pensions...the State of Rhode Island.
Chicago’s Desperate Mayor: el Brandito
By John Kass
December 18, 2024
As Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson’s approval ratings continue to drop—he’s now at 14 percent but he still has more room to keep on falling—the nicknames began to trickle out along with the mockery.
It started with Mayor Panic Attacks, because I’m told the man is debilitated by crushing panic attacks that I’ve been writing about for months. This illustrates that governing a big city isn’t only about issuing left-wing slogans to satisfy his white neo-Marxist base and among Chicago’s left-wing media. I mean, how many newsroom votes are out there? Enough to keep him in power?
No.
The red ink of budgets drowning in debt is not soothed by slogans.
My new favorite nickname for Johnson is Black Lenin, on account of his knee-jerk and thoughtless Marxism. He rather resembles Lenin, doesn’t he? With that beard and the mad gleam in the eye.
Common sense Chicago Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th Ward, has a new nickname for the mayor one that just might be as good as Black Lenin:
“el Brandito”
If you had a little yap dog named Brandon, all bark and no bite, and he barked all the time and everyone on your block stopped paying attention to him, what would you call the diminutive, fearful pooch as he does his business in the parkway with that sheepish expression on his face?
el Brandito.
Lopez joined WGN producer Jeff Carlin (@JPCarlin ) and me on our podcast The Chicago Way. It was posted this week and the podcast was distributed free as always to subscribers of johnkassnews.com. I include the link here, and hope you listen.
“We see the headlines, ” Ald. Reyes said. “Its’s mayor blows this deadline, mayor’s budget, this is this one. I don’t even think it’s tap dancing. He’s doing full on ballroom dancing. Because you’re right. It’s, it’s, you know, everyone has always had a small regard for Chicago politicians, myself included. And we’ve done a lot of that stuff. Sometimes we become caricatures of ourselves. But Brandon Johnson is taking it to a new height. And if there’s a pile of dog crap somewhere on the sidewalk, he’s gonna walk into it. Top with both feet. He does that every single day.”
Indeed. And all the headlines cry that he’s jumped into it with both feet, hence his 14 percent approval rating. And it gets worse.
Johnson, a Democrat loyalist who loathes Republican President-elect Donald Trump has spent more than $500 million of Chicago’s money on the Democrat Party’s illegal migrants in Chicago. More than 50,000 of them are in the city now, having been invited by President Joseph Biden to rush the Southern border, seek asylum, get on welfare subsidized by American taxpayers. In Chicago, the migrants crowded out residents in their own neighborhood schools and parks. You must have seen angry Chicagoans berating Johnson. They’re growing angrier by the day. Black Chicagoans, white Chicagoans, Latin Chicagoans. All of them condemning Mayor Johnson at City Council meetings for spending all those millions on the illegals while Chicago taxpayers are short-changed.
The people who voted for him loathe him now. The other mayoral candidate, former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas was slimed by leftist media and Democrats as being too white, and not woke enough. He already gave at the office.
Now the leftists who condemned Vallas are left to eat themselves or the city. And Johnson?
He’s an embarrassment.
“You guys threw us to the wolves,” said a Latin woman from my old Gage Park neighborhood. She was speaking at a recent City Council meeting. “Us taxpayers were left behind.”
Yes you were.
Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar who will actually do his job, says this. “Chicago’s in trouble because your mayor sucks and your governor sucks”
Is this true? Of course it is. Both Mayor Johnson and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, aka “Commodius Maximus” are terrible administrators. Johnson relies on his Marxist slogans and Pritzker, well he inherited billions of dollars and thinks he ended up on third base after hitting a triple. In your dreams fat boy. Have another box of Oreos.
Each has relied on Biden printing and spending inflationary trillions of dollars on COVID 19 to help bail out Illinois and Chicago from the fiscal hole. And now the money runs out, while the voters are left to remember the Democrats who were part of Biden’s “rush the border” politics.
You’d think perhaps Johnson, or his political patronesses Boss Toni Preckwinkle or my Indiana neighbor, Chicago Teacher’s Union Boss Stacy Davis Gates would have remembered the legend of Chicago Mayor Zorro.
Zorro was Barack Obama’s former chief of staff. He was known to Chicago as Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Rahm became Mayor Zorro after he squashed a Chicago police video showing a frightened white Chicago cop shooting and killing a drug addled Laquan McDonald with 16 shots. After it became clear to black voters, even Barack Obama couldn’t help him. He tried to reinvent himself by offering city identification cards to Latino migrants. He became Mayor Zorro.
Zorro, a swashbuckling champion of the oppressed in Hollywood films, cut a dashing figure. Dressed all in black, with supple black leather boots and a black mask and spirited black horse, Zorro uses his sword to defend the poor and oppressed against evil politicians. He was possessed of a haughty mien (i.e. an arrogant face) and was well-played by Tyrone Power, who defeated the haughty mien of Basil Rathbone, with one lunge deep into the belly. It was a theatrical death.
Sometimes Zorro cut a “Z” into the chests of the oppressors and makes wisecracks.
That was when movies were movies. In politics, Rahm came out with his Mayor Zorro City IDs that inflamed the anger of black voters. And now Rahm is back lecturing Democrats on how to find their way in the political wilderness where Obama and Biden l0st them.
If Johnson had paid attention back then as he sat at the feet of Boss Preckwinkle and the CTU’s Stacy Davis Gates, he would have seen black voters angry at Mayor Zorro’s stupid city id plan.
Chicago is a city with a big heart. But one thing. Don’t play them for chumbolones, idiots, fools, bozos. That they won’t forgive. They won’t play the chumbolone for anyone. Not for Johnson, not for Obama.
Ald. Lopez now sees Johnson shrinking. The job is too much for him. Lopez wonders if Johnson will even finish out his term. I think about it too. Ray might take him on. Perhaps others. There are about 800 days to go, long enough for a fool and his Marxist followers to break the city, or what’s left of it, to pieces.
Some white hope Democrats are pushing themselves forward, like the White Shadow, Arne Duncan and Bill Conway an undistinguished Northwest Side alderman who ran for Cook County State’s Attorney and made certain Jussie’s girl Kim Foxx would be re-elected. Because of Conway and his rich daddy, Foxx was given another four years. Duncan or Conway would be ridiculous.
“Johnson keeps stating that he’s gonna be here longer than Richard M Daley,” Lopez said. “I don’t know how the track record is looking right now.”
The thing about Mayor Richard M. Daley and his father, Mayor Richard J. Daley. They worked. They loved their city. They cared for middle class taxpayers. The Democrat Party was built on that. Now, Johnson is planning to build “affordable housing” downtown, at an estimated cost to taxpayers of $700,000. What does that tell you?
It tells me that the city is sinking, thanks to racist fools like Mayor Black Lenin, like Mayor el Brandito.
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