As a Chicago native, I have watched my home city unravel under the policies of Mayor Brandon Johnson and the ultra-left city council. Controlled by groups like the teachers’ union, the city has continued to spend lavishly on progressive causes and bloated pension funds while destroying its own economy. The city has a more than $1 billion budget gap, with a roughly $150 million deficit. Roughly, two-fifths of the budget is now going toward debt service and pension costs. The city council is following a familiar death spiral. It is turning to higher taxes against the very industries that it needs to drive the economy. That now includes a roughly 20 percent tourist tax on hotels. These politicians are doing what the Chicago fire failed to achieve: kill a major city.
Johnson has been pushing for irresponsible measures to grab cash now and pay later schemes. Johnson and the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) lost a fight to secure a $200 million loan to avoid having to reduce the budget or staff. Johnson and the union pushed for a corporate “head tax.” Barely able to convince many companies to stay in the state, Chicago would actually make it more costly to hire Chicagoans with an additional $ 21-per-employee tax.
The city council just approved an $830 million borrowing plan to finance infrastructure projects by selling bonds. Notably, the council had to bar Johnson from giving the money to the teachers’ union, given his history of dependency on the union. However, the bond will now make the debt crisis even more acute. The bond agreement allows someone else to pay the massive accrued debt after 20 years.
Chicago now spends 40% of its money on debt servicing.
At the same time, Johnson has pushed for city-run grocery stores, and his government has stopped buying treasury bonds for political reasons.
Now, pursuant to Ordinance 2026-0022544, the city will raise the tax on hotel rooms within that district to 19% from 17.5%, which includes a combined city, county, and state tax, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The increase will apply to any hotels with more than 100 rooms.
Hotel costs are already prohibitively high, and the added tax hits the convention tourism side of the economy.
The editorial board of the Washington Post took note of Chicago’s worsening situation and wrote “it takes a long time to kill a city, and the bigger the city, the longer it takes.”
There is a metastasis cancer killing everything it touches: socialism
You are right that bad ideas can spread like a cancer. I would only add that “socialism” does not get into office by itself. It has to be chosen and sustained by citizens whose formation makes those promises attractive in the first place.
I’d wager you Olly, you never lived in a socialist system. So you and your ilk have no idea what socialism is or why it thrives.
Its fools like who sit here all day long whining about what you obviously know nothing about except from children’s books
You’re and old man, its time you removed yourself from live. Let youth thrive and live as they will and not have to deal with a decrepit and degenerate mentally like yours.
Children’s books? No. It is call history. Socialism, and its cousin communism, has a long track record of failures. Mao’s Great Leap Forward was a failure resulting in the deaths of millions.
As the good professor points out, socialistic policies of Democrat ran states and cities like Chicago are on-going failures.
“You’re and old man, its time you removed yourself from live. Let youth thrive and live as they will and not have to deal with a decrepit and degenerate mentally like yours.”
Once again, your hate and rage for anyone who is a conservative comes through.
Oh, a recent survey found Gen Z has their mommy or daddy write their resumes for them and some even take mommy or daddy with them to job interviews. That is not thriving.
77% of Gen Z job seekers have brought a parent to an interview—they’re even getting them to negotiate pay rises and take their hiring tests
https://fortune.com/2025/08/14/gen-z-job-seekers-have-brought-a-parent-to-interview-research-reveals/
Note this line, “Over three-quarters of recent job seekers are pulling up an extra chair for their Gen X and boomer parents—not just for job interviews, but also to help write resumes, negotiate salaries, and solve workplace conflicts.”
For an idiot you prove with every comment that you are. WTF are you yapping about … mao, gen z… You totally missed the point, and think resorting to the lame fortune magazine to express an opinion you could not otherwise conger up on your own?
Seriously, you old decrepit geriatrics, please recede from life. You had your chance and you all f-ed up big time. You caused the destabilization of the USA with your ignorance and arrogance. So you all whine here about todays youth ands socialism. Your heyday is long over, go away.
You are all a waste of resources, you contribute nothing to society. You are a burden. Take the plunge and pull that trigger.
Grand idea. Get rid of the old. I’m aboard.
What is the matter annony? Your hate and rage impairing your reading comprehension? You cannot figure out the link between Mao’s Great Leap Forward and socialism? You want today’s youth to live and thrive, yet they are the ones who needs mommy and daddy to do their work for them. You cannot comprehend those connections? If anyone is lacking contributions to society or is a burden you might want to go look in the mirror.
Mao’s Great Leap Forward propelled billions of people from 1700s agrarianism to putting up a space station in less than 100 years. Less than 100 years after the founding of the US there was a damaging American civil war, something that China has avoided.
Many of the most wealthy have generational wealth – Trump being a prime example.
“It’s the [numbers], stupid!”
– James Carville
___________________
The number of Chinese people is what propelled China and led to a space station.
$1 from each of 1.4 billion taxpayers is $1.4 billion…and so on.
Mao was a Super Scaler!
____________________________
AI Overview
Historically, China had high birth rates due to cultural, economic, and political factors, particularly under Mao Zedong (1949–1976), who viewed a large population as a source of national strength. Peasants required children to support them in old age, with a strong cultural preference for sons. However, this population boom led to the strict one-child policy in 1980, which has since been replaced by pro-natalist policies to reverse a shrinking workforce and rapid aging.
“Mao’s Great Leap Forward” killed tens of millions, forced citizens into labor camps, and jailed dissenters.
Now your statement is accurate.
Wow, the hate runs deep in this one.
Nope. That be Ano who shows up with nothing but hate 7/24.
Those were totalitarian regimes, not socialist ones.
“a recent survey found Gen Z has their mommy or daddy write their resumes for them and some even take mommy or daddy with them to job interviews”
Bill Gates had his mom tell those at IBM to buy his software.
The head of Amazon got a huge loan from his parents to start a business in their garage.
Musk got his start with mounds of cash from his daddy and mommy.
It’s always fun to listen to the brilliance of liberals while they run their cities into the ground. Turley could have written this same article about NYC, SF, LA, Portland, Baltimore, DC, Boston, Detroit, and Philadelphia. Make sure to tell the last taxpayers that leave these sewers to turn the lights out.
Learn to speak English.
Socialism? Really? That’s the best we’ve got? I had no idea the 1990s Illinois GOP was a secret cell of Marxist revolutionaries when they architected the very fiscal ‘death spiral’ you’re currently hyperventilating about.
I suppose when the Republican-led legislature passed the 1995 School Reform Act to let the city skip its bills, they were just ‘seizing the means of production’? And when Republican Governor Jim Edgar signed off on the ‘Edgar Ramp’—the literal DNA of the current debt—was he humming the Internationale?
If your definition of ‘Socialism’ is ‘Republicans and machine-Democrats pinky-swearing to ignore basic math for thirty years,’ then sure, call it whatever makes you feel better. But let’s be real: this isn’t a ‘leftist takeover,’ it’s just the bipartisan credit card finally hitting its limit. Maybe instead of hunting for ‘socialists’ under the bed, you should go find the GOP leaders who actually signed the checks.
Or we could just blame the politicians that are in office right now, instead of the ones from thirty years ago.
Yeah, because that would be the easy way to avoid accountability and acknowledge the truth.
That is exactly why a serious root‑cause analysis cannot stop with “the politicians that are in office right now” or “the ones from thirty years ago.” Both sets of officials were elected and re‑elected by voters who found their fiscal bargains acceptable. If we are serious about accountability, we have to ask what has happened upstream in our civic formation that keeps producing the same preferences in different eras, under different party labels. Without that step, all the talk about “blame” is just proof of how unserious your insights really are.
Olly,
Now, according to your “root-cause analysis,” it’s not the Republican-controlled legislature that passed the 1995 pension holidays, and it’s not the current administration trying to fix them.
Now, it’s the voters’ “civic formation.” You’ve successfully pivoted from “failed leftist policies” to “the voters are structurally broken.
Here is why your “scientific” pivot is still a flop:
The “Voters as Lab Rats” Fallacy: You’re treating the electorate like a defective product because they didn’t reject the “fiscal bargains” offered by the GOP in the 90s. But voters aren’t “formed” in a vacuum; they respond to the options given to them. If the Illinois GOP ran on a platform of “Contract with Illinois” that promised lower taxes by skipping pension payments, the voters didn’t “fail”—the leadership did.
Accountability vs. Escapism: By pushing the blame “upstream” to “civic formation,” you’re providing a convenient exit ramp for the actual architects of the crisis. It’s a classic move: when the math of GOP-led initiatives (like the 1994 Edgar Ramp) finally collapses, you blame the “culture” instead of the legislators who signed the bills.
You call my insights “unserious,” yet you’re the one using metaphors about colon cancer and petri dishes to avoid talking about Public Act 89-0015. Real accountability is looking at a roll-call vote and seeing that 63 House Republicans voted for the very “bargain” you’re now pathologizing.
You keep rewriting my position so you can knock it down. I have never said it was “not the Republican‑controlled legislature” or “not the current administration.” Of course specific statutes like PA 89‑0015 and the Edgar ramp matter, and of course the people who wrote and voted for them are accountable. My point is that if you stop the analysis at “those guys in that year,” you are doing biography, not root cause.
When I talk about civic formation or citizen capacity, I am not treating “voters as lab rats.” I am asking the adult questions your frame avoids: What kind of electorate repeatedly rewards both parties when they underfund pensions, backload costs, and paper over reality with ramps and holidays? What do those voters know, what do they think, what incentives are they responding to, and who formed them to respond that way? That is not escapism, it is upstream accountability.
You say RCA “cannot” be used to test competing hypotheses about the nature of the problem. In every real system failure I have ever seen, that is exactly what serious people do. One hypothesis is “the crisis is mainly the fault of GOP policy choices in the 1990s.” Another is “the crisis reflects a bipartisan pattern of making promises the electorate is willing to buy and refusing to pay the true cost, for decades.” A root cause mindset does not declare one of those off‑limits; it asks which better fits the record over time.
If your rule is that analysis has to stop at the party label on a particular roll‑call, that is your choice. My rule is that when a pattern persists across parties, governors, and mayors, you look upstream at the culture that keeps hiring and rewarding them.
“ Oh, Olly, the circular logic is truly a work of art.
You’re literally arguing that we shouldn’t blame the arsonists who poured the gasoline (the 1995 GOP legislature) because we should instead blame the ‘civic culture’ for not being better fire inspectors.
It’s the ultimate accountability dodge. You’ve created a ‘hypothesis’ where the people who actually wrote and signed the laws are just passive symptoms of an ‘upstream’ ghost. In your world, the 1994 Edgar Ramp isn’t a specific Republican policy failure—it’s just a ‘reflection’ of a broken electorate.
Here’s the ‘adult’ reality you’re avoiding: Voters don’t ‘form’ themselves in a vacuum. They respond to the incentives and lies fed to them by leadership. When the Illinois GOP spent the 90s telling suburban voters they could have tax freezes and world-class schools by simply ‘restructuring’ pensions (a fancy word for ‘skipping the bill’), that wasn’t a ‘civic formation’ failure. That was predatory political marketing.
By your logic, if a doctor prescribes a patient poison, it’s not the doctor’s fault—it’s the patient’s ‘biological formation’ for ‘preferring’ the medicine that tasted sweet.
You keep calling my focus on the party label and the roll-call ‘unserious,’ but that’s where the actual theft happened. Your ‘root-cause analysis’ is just a high-brow way of saying, ‘Everyone is guilty, so no one is responsible.’
It’s not a ‘competing hypothesis’ to point out that specific GOP laws started the fire. That’s just called evidence. Your hypothesis is just a philosophical smoke screen to protect the ‘Real Republicans’ you still want to believe in.
Maybe the ‘civic medium’ is actually just fine, Olly—it’s just that the voters are finally tired of the ‘bipartisan bargains’ the GOP and machine-Dems cooked up in the 90s, and they’re finally hiring people to pay the bill. Is that ‘upstream’ enough for you, or do we need another medical metaphor?
The pattern here is not subtle. Every time I press for a real process that would actually test competing explanations, you do everything you can to avoid it. You keep trying to redefine root cause analysis so that it can never be applied to your own claims, and you keep dragging the conversation back to jerseys and roll calls instead of asking the upstream questions that might show your whole rhetorical structure is built on a fallacy. At some point the refusal to enter a legitimate process is itself evidence about which side is afraid of what it would show.
Olly, you are working so hard to make this complicated because the simple truth is inconvenient.
You keep calling my focus on ‘jerseys and roll calls’ a fallacy, but in the real world, roll calls are where the money went. You want to go ‘upstream’ to ‘civic formation’ because it’s a philosophical fog where no one has to take the blame. It’s not ‘avoiding a process’ to point out that your ‘process’ is just a high-brow distraction from Public Act 89-0015.
Here’s the ‘logic’ you’re missing:
The Action: In 1995, a GOP-led legislature legalized skipping pension payments to fund other projects without raising taxes.
The Result: A $34 billion debt that exploded over thirty years.
The ‘Root Cause’: The people who wrote, whipped, and signed that specific law.
You want to blame the ‘medium’ or the ‘culture’ for ‘preferring’ that bargain, but that’s like blaming a person for getting scammed instead of the person who ran the scam. The ‘upstream’ problem wasn’t the voters’ ‘formation’—it was a leadership that lied to them about the math to win an election.
I’m not ‘afraid’ of your process, Olly; I’m just pointing out that it’s circular. You’ve decided the ‘petri dish’ is tainted because it produced a result you don’t like, and now you’re trying to ‘test’ that hypothesis by… blaming the petri dish.
The ‘most basic result’ is that Republican signatures started this fire. You can call that ‘jersey-flipping’ all you want, but in a court of law or a budget audit, the person who signed the check is the one who is responsible.
Maybe the reason you’re so desperate to ‘look upstream’ is that you can’t stand the view downstream—where the ‘Real Republicans’ you defend are the ones who actually broke the bank.
Olly,
Good for you. Lead the Revolution! Make millions of people change their minds. Go for it.
Oh, wait, you mean Black people are the problem, right? Racist bigotry writ large.
What happened upstream? Slavery and a huge swath of the country being racist bigots. Blacks are in Chicago because they fled the South to escape their former torturers. Instead of being welcomed, they were reviled for taking the low-wage jobs. And so it goes.
Republicans gutted the cities and left so that only Democrats remained.
It seems perfectly obvious to me that the death spirals of our wonderful old cities have been planned, are being implemented, and have been and continue to be extremely successful. The persons responsible, city officials, governors, and state legislatures should be charged with crimes against the citizens of the United States of America. Why have not others noticed or said anything about the planned destruction of the US?
“Chicago now spends 40% of its money on debt servicing.” This is where the country as a whole is heading. Democrats say that they love “working people”. But it is the rich who benefit from holding debt of the government, and dealing with the financing of the government debt.
I lived in Chicago for a short while in the late 70s. The journey into municipal madness had already begun. The unions had a death grip on the politicians. Bureaucracy was king and it cost a fortune. Minorities carved out their own geographical, governmental and social turf….and demanded money in return for peace. So, who is to blame for the current situation. THE CITIZENS OF CHICAGO! They voted to put ever more radical socialist clowns in office. Over and over and over again, apparently hoping for a different outcome. Now they are so screwed that nothing good will ever come of it. Perhaps letting it fall is the answer. Maybe after a hundred years of apocalyptic collapse the city can become a museum to folly.
Clarke, I agree with you on one key point. Chicago did not get here by accident, and it did not get here because of one mayor or one union contract. Citizens made a long series of choices that rewarded exactly the politicians and fiscal habits you describe. The pattern, though, is no longer unique to Chicago. We see similar combinations of heavy fixed costs, short‑term fixes, and machine politics in other “incubators of democracy” as well. If these incubators keep producing the same failed results, it is reasonable to ask why. At some point the question stops being “Which city is dumbest?” and becomes “What is it about the way we are forming citizens and structuring incentives that keeps leading them to choose the same path to insolvency?
You left about the part of the Daily demigod era and its impact on Chicago politics to now..
Drop the economics’ screed, you obviously not are trained in such thought.
OLLY,
What is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and again, expecting a different result.
Oh oh, seems your buttons got pressed.. and this is your response?
Actually stupid, it the definitions of stupidity and you are the incarnate of stupidity. And you don’t realize it.
Take that gun and use it. Please.
Oh! It seems if anyone’s buttons got pushed it was yours, once again with calls for my demise.
OLLY and my point is voters keep voting for the same people or party expecting a different result. What do they get? The same failed policies of the previous people or the same party.
That is insanity.
Us sane and normal people would say, “We need to vote for someone different or do something different.”
Ano
Take that gun and use it. Please.
__________________________
So typical of the left. Hate & death is all you offer.
Upstate, history does not repeat because we are insane. It repeats because we do not maintain the civic virtues needed to sustain a great republic. If we want to raise the ceiling of government competence, we have to raise the floor of civic capacity.
At this point I have to take “we” as meaning it’s entirely your fault. You failed to maintain civic virtues. You let them slide. You eroded them. We don’t need weak-minded weak-willed people such as you to sound the alarm. We need people of strong character to do the work you failed to manage.
Nothing new here, just another dem blue urban cesspool catering to the parasites in the nation. I find only a slight difference between the threat of an islamist fanatic in iran with his fingers almost on a nuke that could physically destroy this nation, and the threat of blue states and urban cesspools destroying the economic and social wellbeing of this nation. If you were willing to support the elimination of a national threat such as iran, why are we not willing to support the elimination of welfare and its concurrent economic death wish/socialism/nihilism/social chaos that is endemic to the entire notion of welfare. (And don’t forget the financial and social fraud of 20 million illegals being exposed in all of these blue urban cesspools and their states.)
whimsicalmama,
You could start the extermination of the parasites all on your own. Don’t wait for the government to do it, take it upon yourself. Don’t hide behind the curtains; go into the street and do what you think needs to be done.
The proverbial circle where a person wants to run for office. He gets a friend to back him that is within the unions. The unions back him with donations and volunteers. He gets elected. Then when a contract comes up, he chooses who is going to represent the city, town, county or state in the negotiations. The negotiations result in an increase in pay, benefits etc. The taxpayers have to foot the bill with either increased taxes or unfunded liabilities. When he is up for election, it starts all over again if he has been a good union funder.
Not better, Two more top bond-rating firms issue dire warning for NYC over Mamdani budget
“Fitch Ratings and Kroll Bond Rating Agency issued a negative outlook for the Big Apple’s bond rating Friday — following suit with Moody’s. which made the same projection last week.”
https://nypost.com/2026/03/20/us-news/two-more-top-bond-rating-firms-issue-dire-warning-for-nyc-over-mamdani-budget/?utm_source=referral&utm_medium=offthepress&utm_campaign=home
Upstatefarmer, come on man. I know you’re not that
disingenuous.
All major agencies—Fitch, KBRA, Moody’s, and S&P—affirmed NYC’s strong credit ratings (e.g., Fitch at ‘AA’ and S&P at ‘AA’).
They issued a standard warning over potential future changes, not an immediate loss of creditworthiness. They explicitly noted that NYC’s economy remains robust, tax revenues are solid, and bonds are still considered safe and high in demand.
Despite the negative outlook, NYC’s ‘AA’ rating remains far superior to other major cities often cited by critics, such as Chicago, which holds a significantly lower ‘BBB’ rating.
This whole Chicago debt mess goes as far back as 1995 when Illinois had a majority Republican legislature.
This GOP-led legislature approved a 10-year pension holiday for the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund (CTPF), allowing the city to divert property tax revenue away from pensions and into the school district’s operating budget for things like salaries and lakefront improvements.
At the state level, Republican Governor Jim Edgar enacted a 50-year funding plan (the “Edgar Ramp”) that intentionally backloaded payments, essentially putting the state’s pension debt “on a credit card”. You know, because Republicans love to put things on the “credit card” whenever a legally required budget item can’t be met and want to avoid raising taxes.
Now not every pension “holiday” was the work of Republican legislators and governors. Democrats also share the blame for applying this scheme to avoid massive cuts or tax increases to pay for these “pension holidays.”
Turley is disingenuously blaming a Democrat mayor and city council because they are the ones left holding the bag for past Republican and Democrat decisions to avoid constitutional and state law mandated pension payments.
Even more pathetic.
Bahahahaha please Chicago destroying itself is BECAUSE OF THE GOP? YOU HYSTERICAL MINDLESS LEFTIST F..
Talk about ‘disingenuous’. You have the damn gall to come on here and spread this foul goo and imply that this situation is somehow really goes back to “majority Republican”. Either you are NOT from Illinois or you suffer from bad memory/delusion. Jim Edgar was a prototypical RINO. Even for decades prior to Jim Edgar, the only way an Illinois Republican made it to governor is if he was a RINO’s RINO who caved to the Democratic Daily Chicago machine. You know that machine, it was the same machine that dressed up the perv boy, JFK, and put him in power.
Wake up dude! The political incestuous cesspool that is Chicago and Illinois Democratic Party machine has been going on for generations. ANYONE from from Illinois that falls into that group of 8th graders that can actually read IF they graduate from high school knows that. Your attempt to attach the label “Republican” to the Illinois political/financial disaster says more about YOU than anything else. As in unwilling to accept YOUR failures and wanting to drag others in to blame.
Y,
Oh, the classic ‘No True Scotsman’ defense. How convenient! So, when Republican Governor Jim Edgar signed the 1994 pension ramp, he wasn’t really a Republican? When the Republican-controlled House and Senate passed the 1995 law allowing Chicago to skip pension payments, they were all just secret Democrats in trench coats?
It must be a magical world where you get to claim the ‘Republican’ brand for your identity but disown every actual Republican law that created the debt you’re currently crying about.
The ‘foul goo’ you’re slipping on is called recorded history. You can call Edgar a ‘RINO’ all you want, but his signature is still on the legislation that backloaded the state’s debt for 50 years. If your definition of a ‘Real Republican’ is someone who has never held power or signed a bill in Illinois, then you’re not talking about politics—you’re talking about a fantasy league.
Meanwhile, back in reality, the $34 billion bill was run up by both parties ‘kicking the can’ for thirty years. But please, tell me more about how JFK is responsible for a 1995 pension holiday signed by a GOP legislature. I’m sure that’s in the ‘8th grade reading level’ curriculum somewhere.
As stated, you are either NOT from Illinois or, as now seems more likely, you are just spreading manure to cover your tracks.
You can hide behind the labels as you now are attempting to do. But anyone can look up Jim Edgar or any of the other ‘Republican’ governors in Illinois in the past 50 years. The ONLY way you got to be governor in Illinois to with the blessing of the Daily machine. It is as simple as that. You tell me, pal, you can have ANY political label you want attached to your name, but if you do the bidding of the Daily Democratic machine, what difference does that label make? C’mon now, is this a difficult concept for you to grasp? Have you not seen Democrats/Progressives label ANYONE who opposes them as MAGA (no matter what their label) thus giving acknowledgement to Trump’s machine.
Nice try on the the diversion regarding “tell me more about how JFK is responsible for a 1995 pension holiday signed by a GOP legislature.”. But read the comment again stooge. The JFK comment was meant to demonstrate the power of the Chicago machine: Daily’s machine dressed up a perv and successfully “sold” him to the state that looked the other way. And why would the state look the other way? Cuz Daily controlled the state.
Bottom line: Daily Democrats and their union backers created the current situation in Illinois and it ain’t working out because the parasitic population is overwhelming the host. And you don’t have the guts to to take credit? Figures.
Y,
Since you’re so fond of ‘anyone looking things up,’ let’s look at the 1995 House Journal for Public Act 89-0015.
That law—the one that authorized the 10-year pension holiday and diverted $1.5 billion away from teachers’ retirement—wasn’t some ‘Daley Machine’ whim. It was passed by a Republican-controlled House and a Republican-controlled Senate, and signed by Republican Governor Jim Edgar.
In the House, it passed 63-49. Want to guess how many Republicans voted ‘Yes’? All of them. Not a single ‘No’ vote from the GOP.
So, were all 63 House Republicans ‘RINOs’ doing the bidding of the Daley Machine? Was Speaker Lee Daniels a secret Democrat when he bragged that this was the ‘centerpiece’ of the GOP’s legislative agenda?
You can try to ‘manure-spread’ a conspiracy theory about JFK and 1960, but the 1995 roll call doesn’t lie. Your ‘Real Republicans’ are the ones who legalized skipping the bill to keep property taxes low for their own suburban voters.
You’re not mad at ‘Socialism’ or ‘parasites’—you’re mad that the GOP’s thirty-year credit card finally hit its limit, and you’re too ‘stooge-like’ to admit your own party signed the receipts.
The ‘Machine’ didn’t break Chicago’s math; Republican legislation did. And no amount of caps-lock or 1960s fan-fiction is going to change that roll call.
Nothing like a ‘Google’ scholar spreading manure.
How many times does it have to be stated for you? IF you are from Illinois and you are the least bit astute, then you know the Daily Democratic machine controlled Illinois. Apparently, you just don’t get that or are unwilling to admit it. You can keep scouring the labels and making conclusions according to those labels but if you ignore the political context those labels are found in, your efforts are absolutely meaningless. And perhaps that is your problem. Such ignorance exposes you as nothing more than attempting to re-write history from the point of view of a simpleton.
Mad? Hardly. The fact that you would put opposition to your point of view as having a basis in being “mad” exposes you only further since you now add in features such as “Socialism”. Your knowledge is shallow, either by design or practice. And the reality is, I am embarrassed for you.
Y,
You don’t have to be from Illinois to see you haven’t shown I’m wrong.
Sorry, li’l fella, you are off on a tangent again. I said you are either spreading manure or ignorant by not putting facts in context. You have yet to address the powerful context issue. And the now manifest reason is revealed: ignorance. A sharp manipulator would never continue to engage to the point of “you haven’t shown I’m wrong.” because it would only detract from their goal.
And now you want to further simplify your ‘Google” scholarship by boiling the circumstances down to “You don’t have to be from Illinois to see you haven’t shown I’m wrong.” You have shown NOTHING. You have only taken Google facts and spun them into your own story.
Yet AGAIN, you have been repeatedly told that your context is totally lacking. You just don’t want to believe it. So now you turn your situation into a childish “you haven’t shown I’m wrong.” Two can play that silly little kid’s game….and it goes nowhere. Undoubtedly, that is the inconclusive ending you are now shooting for. Won’t work.
Y,
It’s cute that you’ve retreated to the ‘context’ bunker now that the actual roll-call votes have made your argument look like a Swiss cheese of delusion.
You keep shouting ‘CONTEXT!’ like it’s a magic spell that makes Republican signatures disappear from the 1995 pension holidays. But let’s talk about that ‘context’ you’re so desperate to hide: The context is that Republican Speaker Lee Daniels and Senate President James ‘Pate’ Philip weren’t ‘Machine puppets’—they were the leaders of a GOP-controlled legislature that ran on a platform of fiscal reform and then immediately legalized skipping pension payments to fund their own pet projects.
That’s not ‘Google scholarship,’ pal; that’s the legislative record.
You’re dismissively calling research ‘manure’ because you have zero facts to counter it. Your ‘context’ is just a collection of 1960s JFK ghost stories and ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacies used to explain away the last 30 years of your own party’s math. If every Republican who actually governed is a ‘RINO’ or a ‘Machine stooge’ to you, then you’re not living in Illinois—you’re living in a partisan witness protection program.
The only person ‘shooting for an inconclusive ending’ is the guy who thinks conspiracy theories about the 60s are more relevant than a 1995 tax law. I’ve shown you the bills, the dates, and the GOP votes. You’ve shown us… what? A tantrum about ‘parasites’ and some vague hand-waving about a ‘Machine’ that apparently has the power to mind-control every Republican in the state?
You can keep playing your ‘silly little kid’s game’ of ignoring the elephant in the room, but the bill is still due, and the GOP names are still at the bottom of the receipt. Reality is a tough ‘context’ to grasp when you’re this committed to being wrong.
Is Daley in the room with you now? Does he haunt your nightmares? Are you taking your anti-psychotic meds as you should.
Turley is disingenuous.
Turley you rascal you,
As always, the professor leaves out key details when he uses complex issues to rage bait conservatives and the gullible.
Turley frames the pension crisis as a choice made by ‘ultra-left’ politicians, but he omits the critical legal context: Chicago is bound by state law and the Illinois Constitution, which strictly prohibit the reduction of pension benefits. The ‘bloated’ costs he decries are actually legally mandated debts that the city is constitutionally required to fund. Portraying this as a voluntary ‘spending spree’ by Mayor Johnson misrepresents the legal reality that any mayor—left, right, or center—would be forced to pay these same bills.
Also, for decades, the State of Illinois has subsidized the teacher pensions for every single school district in the state except Chicago. Requesting that the state finally achieve parity in how it funds education is not a ‘cash grab’ or a ‘bailout’; it is a request for the end of a discriminatory funding model that has forced Chicago taxpayers to pay twice for the same services. This was not about progressive spending habits from one mayor or city council. That’s just a cheap way to make an excuse.
Pathetic.
The legal constraints you mention were all negotiated for and voted for by the Illinois Democrat Party and the fiscal constraint for a IL balanced budget evaded by a many decades Democrat controlled IL Congress through borrowing. Chicago has not had a Republican Mayor since 1931 and its last Republican IL Representative in 1970. It was a Democrat choice to keep Chicago schools separate from the state as was the constitutional provision against declaring bankruptcy. The result with continued foolish spending is a fiscal death spiral that will make Detroit and Cleveland look like child’s play.
Anonymous, nope.
You blame Democrats for “evading” fiscal constraints, but the specific legal mechanism that allowed Chicago to stop funding its pensions was a Republican-led initiative.
The 1995 Chicago School Reform Amendatory Act was passed by a Republican-controlled General Assembly (led by Speaker Lee Daniels and Senate President James “Pate” Philip) and signed by a Republican Governor, Jim Edgar.
This GOP-authored law gave the mayor control of schools but also allowed the city to divert property tax levies—previously earmarked strictly for pensions—into the general operating budget.
You should look up the “Edgar ramp”
A 50-year funding plan was designed by Republican Governor Jim Edgar to keep state contributions artificially low in the short term to help his re-election bid, while scheduling massive, unsustainable payment spikes for future decades. The “ramp” essentially treated pension obligations like a credit card, a strategy criticized by his Democratic opponent at the time as “charge-and-spend”.
The 1970 Illinois Constitutional Convention tells a different story.
The four principal sponsors of the Pension Protection Clause were all Republicans (Helen Kinney, Anthony Peccarelli, Henry Green, and Donald Zeglis).
Republican delegate Helen Kinney introduced the clause specifically because she believed the legislature—regardless of party—could not be trusted to fund retirement systems on a sound basis.
She was right. Unfortunately it was Republicans who wanted to bypass this constitutional requirement by treating pension obligations like a “credit card.”
You do know how ridiculous you sound, right? You’re seriously blaming republicans for doing this…..thirty years ago? I don’t know, maybe before the city went bankrupt, the current crop of liberal retards from the past decade or so could have stepped in to stop it?
Sounds more like you’re in denial. The facts don’t lie. Clearly you’re not paying attention.
Another dose of absolute BS designed to shower the ignorant NOT from Illinois into some dreamland basis for the current circumstances. It is actually much more simple than you state. Those constitutional changes were passed (and others since) by the combined efforts of the Democratic Party and their unions backers. Keep that in mind when you read the above article, look at the current and historical financial disaster that is Illinois and Chicago AND the recent pro-union Constitutional amendments that have been added to the Illinois Constitution.
The unions and the Democrats have been feasting on Illinois for many decades. Your trite attempt to legitimize that parasitism by blaming it on the Illinois Constitution ignores the efforts and the power of IL Democratic Party and their union backers to control the state at all levels.
Illinois is a failed state. At least have the guts to take credit for your work, whether you are a stooge Democrat of an imbecilic RINO.
Y, still wrong.
The four principal sponsors of the Pension Protection Clause were all Republicans (Helen Kinney, Anthony Peccarelli, Henry Green, and Donald Zeglis).
The 1995 Chicago School Reform Amendatory Act was passed by a Republican-controlled General Assembly (led by Speaker Lee Daniels and Senate President James “Pate” Philip) and signed by a Republican Governor, Jim Edgar.
Y, have the guts to prove me wrong with facts.
Blaming the unions is weak sauce.
Now it is obvious, you are just spreading manure.
As stated previously, the reality is that the Democratic Daily Machine has controlled the state for decades. IF anyone claimed they were a ‘Republican’ the only way they climbed the ladder was to do the Daily Democratic Party Machine’s bidding. And now you really think by name dropping guys that had ‘Republican’ labels yet did the bidding of the Democratic Party machine we are supposed to believe that blame for the current circumstance is bipartisan? Sorry, pal, every Illinois resident that can read knows that is baloney designed for the for the illiterate parasites to make them fell better about themselves.
THE worst think that happened to the Daily Democratic machine was that the guys running it died or retired out. As long as those guys were in control they were able to pass off the situation as acceptable/’bipartisan’. Their replacements were, to say the least, not up to the job. And now you have the situation that is Illinois. The current parasites did not have the brains to keep from overwhelming the host.
Y,
It’s almost impressive how you’ve built a ‘heads I win, tails you’re a RINO’ fortress to hide from your own party’s history.
So, in your world, if a Republican legislature passes a law, they’re actually Democrats. If a Republican Governor signs it, he’s a Daley puppet. If the GOP platform brags about it, it’s a ‘Machine’ trick. It must be so convenient to support a party that apparently has never actually existed in the state of Illinois for 50 years.
You’re literally arguing that 63 House Republicans and a Republican Governor in 1995 weren’t ‘Real Republicans’ because they did exactly what you’re mad at: they traded the city’s future for short-term tax breaks. That isn’t ‘doing the bidding of the Machine’—that’s called Republican fiscal policy in the 90s.
They didn’t ‘climb the ladder’ by caving; they climbed it by promising suburban voters they could have their cake and eat the pension fund, too.
You keep using words like ‘parasite’ and ‘host’ to sound tough, but you’re too ‘stooge-like’ to admit that the Illinois GOP were the ones who handed out the credit cards in the first place.
Republican who actually governed is a ‘secret Democrat’ to you, then you’re not a political analyst—you’re just someone who’s really, really bad at accepting your own party’s failures. The math doesn’t care about your ‘Machine’ conspiracies; it only cares about the Republican signatures on the bottom of the bill.
Yet again, listen up! It ain’t ‘my world’, it is the reality of the Daily Democratic machine controlling Illinois world. You can make every stinking effort you want to try to turn this into a personal attack but it won’t change a thing. It only exposes you as completely ignorant of circumstances and history (other than what you can ‘Google’ to get labels) or a being nothing more than a low level operative without the sense to keep his/her mouth shut.
You think I am trying to sound “tough”? Nothing could be further from the truth. Does this mean you are feeling threatened? Not surprised. Out of your depth and attempting to grasp for anything to cover your inadequacies, eh?
And I love this: “Republican who actually governed is a ‘secret Democrat’ to you, then you’re not a political analyst—you’re just someone who’s really, really bad at accepting your own party’s failures.” Li’l fella, you just don’t get it, do you? I never said I was a Republican (and that says it all), I am saying YOU don’t know what you are talking about. And as far as the power of the Daily Democratic machine in Illinois politics goes, you just don’t get it at all. And because of that, YOU are the reason the Democratic Party is doomed; you knowledge is shallow yet you don’t even have the ability to recognize it. And you attempt to cover that lack of depth by twisting, distortion and diversion? That will never carry the day nor the Democratic Party.
Y,
Since you love the ‘hilarious’ denial narrative, let’s talk about a reality you can’t Google your way out of: the ComEd bribery scheme.
While you’re busy being a ‘low-level operative,’ the actual Illinois machine—led by Mike Madigan for decades—was busy trading ‘do-nothing’ jobs and contracts for legislative favors. Madigan wasn’t just a Republican ‘failure’; he was the architect of the very system that just landed him a racketeering conviction.
That’s the difference between us: you see a party platform, and I see a rap sheet that includes four of the last eleven governors serving prison time. You’re not a political analyst; you’re a fanboy cheering for a machine that’s currently being dismantled by federal prosecutors. Keep laughing, though—it’s the perfect cover for someone who doesn’t realize their ‘team’ is basically a federally-monitored crime scene.
No, no, Chicken Little….we don’t go marching down the path of diversion just because you showed your ignorance leg.
YOU put Mike Madigan in your dream story and come up with your own conclusions. Keep in mind, Mike was one of the direct products of the Daily Democratic Party machine…and EVERYBODY in Illinois knows that but YOU! And the fuel for that machine was corruption. Based on your above comment, you just don’t get it.
Y,
Oh, we’re back to the ‘Machine’ boogeyman again? It’s truly adorable how you think saying ‘Mike Madigan’ is a magic spell that makes Republican roll-call votes disappear.
Here’s the ‘context’ you’re so terrified of: In 1995, Mike Madigan was the House Minority Leader. He didn’t have the gavels. He didn’t have the votes. Republicans had total control of the House, the Senate, and the Governor’s mansion. They didn’t need Madigan’s permission to breathe, let alone pass the School Reform Act.
So, unless you’re suggesting that the entire Illinois GOP was so incompetent they were being mind-controlled by a guy in the minority, you have to admit they chose to pass that pension holiday. Speaker Lee Daniels didn’t call it a ‘Madigan win’; he called it a ‘Republican victory’ for suburban taxpayers.
You keep screaming ‘corruption’ and ‘Machine’ to distract from the fact that your ‘Real Republicans’ were the ones who legalized the theft from the pension funds. They weren’t ‘products’ of the machine; they were the architects of the 10-year holiday that started this fire.
If ‘EVERYBODY in Illinois’ knows your version of history, then Illinois has a serious problem with hallucinations. I’m giving you the 1995 House Journal and the names of the GOP leaders who signed the checks. You’re giving me a JFK/Madigan fan-fiction mashup.
The only ‘dream story’ here is the one where the Illinois GOP isn’t responsible for the very ‘fiscal disaster’ they voted for. But keep shouting about the Machine—I’m sure it’s much easier than admitting your own party bankrupted the state to buy a few suburban votes in the 90s.
Y, the reason X keeps screaming about roll calls and jerseys is that he cannot afford a real root cause analysis. A legitimate process would force him to test his story against alternatives and would show how much of his rhetoric depends on selective clips and partisan framing. So he does everything possible to keep the conversation away from upstream questions about how voters are formed, what they know, and why they keep rewarding the same fiscal tricks under different labels. When someone keeps dodging that level of analysis and insisting we stop at “my villains in this decade,” that is not just a style choice. It is evidence that his entire structure would collapse if it had to live under the same scrutiny he wants to aim at everyone else.
Olly,
You keep telling ‘Y’ that I ‘cannot afford’ a real analysis, but your ‘legitimate process’ is just a philosophical witness protection program for the Illinois GOP. You want to talk about ‘how voters are formed’ and ‘what they know’ as a way to avoid talking about what the politicians actually did.
Here is the ‘root cause’ you’re so terrified to test:
The Policy: The 1995 GOP ‘Contract with Illinois.’
The Logic: It promised suburban voters they could have world-class schools without paying the pension bill.
The Result: A thirty-year debt bomb.
You call my focus on ‘villains in this decade’ a ‘partisan framing,’ but those ‘villains’ are the ones who wrote the statutes. It’s not ‘selective’ to point to the Public Act that legalized the theft; it’s evidentiary.
Your ‘upstream’ analysis is just a circle: You blame the ‘civic formation’ for rewarding the ‘fiscal tricks,’ but you ignore that the GOP was the one performing the tricks. You’re essentially blaming the audience for a rigged magic show instead of the magician with the marked cards.
The only ‘structure collapsing’ here is yours. You’ve tried regime change, petri dishes, colon cancer, and now ‘civic formation’ to explain away a simple math problem: Republican signatures created this debt.
If your ‘root cause analysis’ can’t handle the weight of a House Journal roll call, it’s not an analysis—it’s a fairytale. Maybe the reason you think I’m ‘dodging’ is that I’m standing right here with the receipts, and you’re still up-river looking for a ‘metaphor’ that doesn’t implicate your own party.”
I have a tree limb hanging over my roof, I blame the guy that planted it thirty year ago. One good thing about liberals, you’ll always have a clown available for parties.
But what do you do when the entire Party becomes clowns? Declare a circus?
One good thing about liberals, you’ll always have an unlimited number of Republican clowns available for parties.
“Democratic Daley Machine” controlled the down-state Farmers? Seriously. All those God-fearing, Bible-thumping rednecks were in thrall to Daley?
If so, why are conservatives so spineless and weak?
There are three kinds of politicians when it comes to making a budget. Those who can count and those who can’t….
We used to fight communism and now jihadism through endless little wars, swapping regimes without changing the conditions that produced them.
We’re doing something similar at home: battling governors, mayors and councils in Chicago, New York, Virginia, California as if each were a separate war.
If the same ‘symptoms’ keep breaking out in city after city, are we really looking at a set of isolated problems, or a single, systemic disease in the body politic?
Who is “we”? Words of doom olly, naaa, just typical olyy verbiage. No point, just fill a page with nonsense.
Here’s a thought. Obviously the only fighting going on is in the minds of the dimwitted and lame geriatrics here, not only fighting each other here, but howling at liberals with no tangible effect.
Suggest you worn out and useless old farts, yes you too olly, should offer up the ultimate sacrifice and go after those liberals you all hate and detest, start a bomb squad, strap yourselves up, go to Chicago, LA, Boston etc. and take out those people you so much dispise.
You would be doing us all a great honor with your deaths. Your nation is calling on you. Die with honor. ASAP please.
Idiot
Thank you Olly, or is it your alter ego Lurker?
No one is howling at liberals.
We and the good professor, are merely pointing out leftist failed policies. Just look at governor Hochul, begging for the very people she drove away to come back to pay her taxes for her failed policies.
The only person here who is full of hate and rage is you. Just look at your suggestions of conservatives to go after liberals with suicide bombs. None of us are calling for the deaths of anyone. Just you.
Calling this a ‘leftist failure’ ignores thirty years of actual math. Most of Chicago’s current pension debt was baked in by Republican Governor Jim Edgar’s 1994 ‘Edgar Ramp,’ which backloaded payments so future generations would be stuck with the bill.
When you add the 10-year pension holiday authorized by a Republican-led legislature in 1995, it’s clear this ‘disease’ was a bipartisan invention designed to keep property taxes low in the 90s by sacrificing the city’s future.
Turley is being dishonest with the facts.
Apparently, a city council debating a borrowing plan isn’t just local governance—it’s a ‘systemic disease in the body politic.’ I didn’t realize that Brandon Johnson asking for a pension fix was the equivalent of a regime change in the Middle East. It must be exhausting living in a world where every municipal ordinance feels like a Tom Clancy novel.
The only ‘regime change’ actually happening here is Turley and Olly trying to swap actual fiscal data for scary metaphors. Maybe instead of ‘fighting communism,’ they could try fighting a basic math textbook? It’s not a ‘disease’ when cities have to pay for the bills run up by the very bipartisan ‘machine’ politicians they conveniently omit.
Just to be clear, my “regime change” metaphor was not equating Johnson with the Middle East. It was about our own record of foreign policy failures: long wars that swapped regimes without changing the conditions that kept producing the same conflicts. My concern is that we are repeating that pattern at home, rotating local leaders while leaving untouched the civic and institutional forces that keep generating the same fiscal failures in city after city.
Olly, you said,
“We used to fight communism and now jihadism through endless little wars, swapping regimes without changing the conditions that produced them.
We’re doing something similar at home…”.
That’s not “equating Johnson with the Middle East”?
You are literally equating it to the Middle East. You went ahead and reinforced it right after saying you’re not equating Johnson to the Middle East.
You’re still using the regime change framework. By framing local voters choosing a new mayor as a failed “swapping of regimes.”
You shifted your initial claim from Johnson to the voters while STILL using the poor Middle East metaphor.
Let me try to say it more precisely. I am not equating Johnson or Chicago voters with jihadists or Middle Eastern regimes. I am pointing to a pattern in strategy. For years we tried to solve deep problems abroad by changing who sat in the palace while leaving largely untouched the culture and institutions that kept producing the same kinds of governments. My concern is that we risk doing something similar at home. We focus on swapping out mayors, councils, and parties, but we rarely ask what it is in our civic “medium” that keeps leading large numbers of voters to prefer the same short‑term fiscal bargains. The analogy is about method, not morality.
Oh, I see. It’s not a moral comparison, it’s a methodological one. That clears it right up.
So, in your ‘precise’ view, the act of Chicagoans going to a local polling place to vote is just a ‘domestic version’ of a failed military occupation. You’re not saying the voters are terrorists, you’re just saying their democratic choices are a ‘symptom’ of a ‘tainted medium’ that needs to be ‘fixed’ from the outside.
It’s a lot of words to admit you still view American elections as a failed ‘regime change’ experiment. If the ‘civic medium’ is so broken that millions of people ‘prefer’ these fiscal bargains, maybe it’s because they’re tired of being lectured by people who ignore that the Illinois GOP helped bake those ‘short-term bargains’ into the state constitution back in the 90s.
But please, keep parsing the semantics. It’s fascinating to watch you try to describe democracy as a ‘strategic failure’ without sounding like you’re rooting for an autocracy. Are you suggesting we send in ‘peacekeepers’ to oversee the next city council meeting, or should we just keep ‘checking the petri dish’ until it only grows the candidates you like?”
You and I actually agree that the democratic process is working as designed. Chicago, New York and similar jurisdictions are getting the governments their voters repeatedly choose. My point is that this is precisely the problem. Over generations, families, schools, parties, unions, media and machines have formed large blocs of voters to want and reward the very fiscal bargains that are now failing. The ballot box is not malfunctioning. The formation of the people walking into it is.
You claim we agree that the democratic process is working, but then you immediately describe the voters as a manufactured product of a ‘tainted medium.’ You aren’t defending democracy; you’re calling it a factory of failure because it doesn’t produce the conservative winners you want.
Your ‘precision’ is just a high-brow way of saying that millions of people—their families, their schools, and their very ‘formation’—are wrong.
It’s the ultimate elitist pivot: ‘The system is fine, it’s just that the human beings using it are defective.’
But here’s the actual ‘lethal process’ you’re dodging: Those ‘fiscal bargains’ weren’t just a ‘leftist’ bribe. They were a bipartisan contract. When the GOP-led 1995 School Reform Act allowed Chicago to skip its bills to keep taxes low, it was a bargain offered by Republicans to win over the middle class.
You keep trying to diagnose a ‘systemic disease’ in the voters, but the only elephant in the room is that you can’t handle the fact that the Illinois GOP were the original architects of the ‘petri dish’ you’re currently complaining about.
If the ‘formation of the people’ is the problem, maybe it’s because they remember who actually signed the checks in 1995, while you’re busy comparing their ballot box choices to terminal cancer.
It is interesting that you keep assigning me a team. I have not said “I want conservatives elected.” I have said that over time both parties in Illinois sold voters the same short‑term fiscal bargains, and voters accepted them. That is my whole point. When different jerseys keep offering and winning on the same deal, the problem is deeper than which color wins the next election. It is the way voters have been formed to want that deal in the first place.
Olly, It’s hilarious that you’re finally admitting both sides are the problem only after getting caught in your own partisan loop. You’re not ‘above the fray’—you’re just backpedaling because your original ‘secret Democrat’ line didn’t land.
You’re not explaining the state to me; you’re just trying to find a dignified way to exit an argument you’re clearly losing.
I have not “finally admitted” both sides share blame. I have been saying from the start that the problem is deeper than jerseys and that voters of both parties have accepted the same short‑term fiscal bargains. That is not backpedaling, it is the point. When different parties, over decades, sell the same unsustainable contracts to an electorate that keeps buying them, the serious question is not “which team is worse,” but how we have been forming citizens who prefer those deals in the first place. The fact that you can only hear that as a partisan confession is a pretty good case study in the very formation failure I have been talking about.
“X” must be in overdrive trying to spin out of this. Nothing says failure, like well…failure. Nothing says liberal better than not taking responsibility for failure.
Calling facts ‘spin’ is the ultimate white flag. If you had an actual argument, you’d have used it by now.
Olly sounds like a mean old drunk. He wants hit squads to kill Democratic leaders and replace them with Trumplican appointees and they take the task of running a secret police to disappear anyone who doesn’t vote in line with the Trumplican Utopia of Billionaires and their subservient minions.
In other words, if these “incubators of democracy” keep producing the same failed results, it is reasonable to ask why. In science, when the same experiment fails again and again, researchers eventually stop blaming each individual trial and start checking the petri dish, because sometimes the growth medium itself is tainted and every result that comes out of it will be distorted until that base is fixed.
Olly,
If the ‘petri dish’ of blue cities is so ‘tainted,’ why are they the primary economic engines of the entire country? New York and Chicago produce a massive percentage of the national GDP.
You’re ignoring the successful ‘growth’—innovation, culture, and industry—to focus on the ‘mold’ of pension debt that the GOP helped create. That’s not science; that’s confirmation bias.
My late brother‑in‑law was 6’3″, 240 pounds of muscle and worked out every day. Within a year colon cancer took him from 240 to 140 and he was gone. Surface strength did not mean there was no lethal process already at work. If Chicago, New York, and even California are such economic powerhouses, why are they all exhibiting the same structural warning signs: mounting fixed obligations, repeated downgrades or credit alarms, and persistent structural deficits even in years of growth? And your point that Republicans helped create the pension mess actually underscores this. If both parties have had a hand in it, then this is not a jersey‑flip fix. It is a deeper systemic problem in how our political and civic “medium” is formed.
OLLY,
Also of note, those cities and states are seeing the biggest out flows of people and not just billionaires but the middle class as evidence of the U-Haul data, and IRS data.
People do not flee successful states. They flee failed or failing ones.
Upstate, maybe many of these people are fleeing not only because their old governments failed them, but because they were never really formed for the kind of government they were living under. Or, of greater concern to the citizens of their new state, they may not yet be formed for the kind of self‑government they are moving into. Anecdotally, that is exactly what long‑time residents are complaining about when they talk about newcomers “bringing their politics with them.”
Good for them. I hope where they land the current population is happy to see real estate and other prices rise as there is increased competition for them. To see their schools change to accommodate those expecting higher performance. To get priced out of medical care by those more wealthy moving in. To having a bunch of the new people get onto city councils and vote to tear down the old parts of the towns and cities that the previous people loved. Welcome to traffic jams as farms get turned into cookie-cutter condominiums with 5 families per acre. Ha hahahahahaha.
Wow, Olly. We’ve gone from regime change to petri dishes, and now we’re at terminal cancer? I’m truly impressed by your dedication to finding a metaphor that makes ‘paying a hotel tax’ sound like a funeral.
But here is the ‘lethal process’ you’re actually looking for: The 1994 GOP Edgar Ramp and the 1995 Republican School Reform Act.
You say my point about Republicans ‘underscores’ your systemic argument, but you’re using it to dodge accountability. When Republican Speaker Lee Daniels and Senate President James ‘Pate’ Philip pushed through the law that let Chicago skip its pension payments, they weren’t ‘victims’ of a systemic disease—they were the architects of it. They didn’t ‘catch’ a deficit; they legislated one to keep property taxes artificially low so they could stay in power.
If the ‘civic medium’ is ‘tainted,’ it’s because the GOP spent the 90s telling voters they could have world-class infrastructure and lakefront improvements on a bipartisan credit card that wouldn’t come due for thirty years.
You’re trying to turn a documented history of GOP-led fiscal evasion into a spooky, unfixable ‘systemic cancer’ just so you don’t have to admit that the ‘elephant in the room’ is wearing a red tie. It’s not a ‘jersey-flip’ fix; it’s a ‘stop-lying-about-who-signed-the-bills’ fix.
But please, give us another medical analogy. Maybe next you can compare Brandon Johnson’s budget to a triple-bypass surgery? At least that would be a more ‘precise’ way to describe cleaning up the clogged arteries the Illinois GOP left behind.
Why? Why is the US a smaller percentage of the world economy than it was just after WWII?
Things change. Gold rush towns vanished. Deep coal mining is gone. Long distance communications has made being on the trading floor less a necessity for the stock exchanges. Much of the economics that built large cities have changed or been eliminated.
Crucially, the weak spined Republicans usually bail rather than shifting to other uses. They lack imagination and are too concentrated on excavating wealth that others produce.
I get it – you want to sterilize the Petri dish.
20 Megatons should do the job on Chicago, 50 Megatons for New York City.
Not to worry Olly. Brandon Johnson is confident that a new incoming Democratic administration in Washington will bail out Chicago and pay off these “loans” that the city can’t. Greg
But the Democrats in the blue states Have just one thing on their mind. Impeach Trump and the people who are around him. They don’t care about safety. They don’t care about illegal aliens they don’t care about finances just impeach Trump
Reda a n article about Fetterman, in which he states that dems have no leader, just mass TDS driving them to destroy everyone and anything related to Trump.
Fetterman has brain damage.
WaPoo is correct that “it takes a long time to kill a city, and the bigger the city, the longer it takes.”
However, it’s also true that once a “tipping point” is reached, insolvency happens suddenly. One failed bond auction where investors demand higher interest rates to clear the market, or the city’s planned bond issue is undersubscribed will do it.
Investors panic. Liquidity dries up. The city can’t meet its financial obligations and bankruptcy is the next step. It takes years to get to the tipping point. But once the tipping point is reached, it happens fast.
I was born in Chicago and have seen the fall of this beautiful city over the years. Even though it has gotten a lot worse, there has always been crime and violence, but the level of corruption with our politicians is the bigger threat. It won’t change which is why like many folk before me, I we will be leaving this state soon.
“the level of corruption with our politicians is the bigger threat. ”
You are aware that manifest corruption in Chicago politics is not new or novel, are you not? The real difference is that in the past, the purpose of that corruption was to surreptitiously line politicians pockets with unearned largess, not to give them free reign to impose their personal beliefs and prejudices on the public at large. I detest “business politicians”, but zealots in office pursuing personal causes are far worse.
I was also born and raised in Chicago, but after watching that great City in a death spiral, I left many years ago. All I can say is, “Tampa welcomes you Pedro!”
New York is now spending $81,000 per homeless person in a town where the average take-home pay is $40,600. God help us!
Jonathan Turley’s use of the $81,000 figure is a classic example of statistical cherry-picking. He divides a massive service budget by a specific, small group of 4,500 unsheltered individuals to create a ‘sticker shock’ number, while ignoring the 135,000 other homeless New Yorkers supported by city systems. By comparing the cost of 24-hour medical and social infrastructure to a deflated ‘average’ salary, he is presenting an administrative cost as if it were a luxury stipend, which is fundamentally dishonest.
Turley is rage baiting you. He loves the rage econmy. Keeps readers, the gullible kind, glued to his columns.
Thank you for clearing that up, X. So it isn’t really the $81k per homeless person that’s the problem, it’s that the average wage of only $40,600 make’s it look bad. Liberal logic like that is why NYC is spending $81k per homeless person each year.
Rage sells his books to people who won’t read them.
The main problem is not the spending, it is that leftwing Fascist rulers like Mamdani and Hochul and Johnson use taxpayer money to reward special interest groups. It is a vote-buying scheme that Democrats perfected over decades. They pay off unions. They pay off NGOs. They pay off selected charities. And in return these groups funnel money back into Democrat campaigns, and turn out their voters. It’s a cycle of corruption. If every homeless person in New York City was handed a check for $81,000 each year, there would be far less corruption.
Not a bad comment, but as soon as you let loose with “fascist rulers” blah blah blah (of which they are not), you lost my attention.
Perhaps you’d prefer “Communist rulers” or howsabout “moronic rulers” or maybe “insane rulers.” The only thing they are NOT is “public servants.”
Prefer?. Only that you put a bullet in your head Walt. Thank you.
There is that hate and rage again, desiring for anyone who is a conservative harm.
look up the definition of fascist.
“look up the definition of fascist.”
By English language convention, a “fascist” is anyone who exhibits or practices “fascism”.
“FASCISM (Merriam-Webster dictionary) : a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition”
With a possible quibble over “often race”, which is qualified as an optional correlation, how do the individuals named by the OP fail to practice fascism exactly as defined? Frankly, if “racism” means favoring some selected races over others, even that is applicable to OPs examples, in my considered opinion.
The kickback scheme that you mention is exactly what is happening in these cities, states and even with the largesse of federal money. The billions of dollars of fraud in MN is the tip of the iceberg, this is happening all over the country.
In CA they are building the bridge to nowhere for animals and bugs but it is just another money grab. The million dollar toilets that never get built…money grab. The NGOs that all favor liberal causes…grab. The “non-profits” that make a ton of profit for the beautiful people that run them…money. Even the Obama library asks for 100 NON-PAID volunteers after Valerie Jarret makes hundreds of thousands of dollars “running” it.
The Teacher’s Unions are the biggest and most obvious example of the death spiral phenonemon. They give tons of money to Democrats, the Democrats give them lucrative contracts that are harder and harder for cities and towns to pay, the school boards and city councils keep giving more to the unions and the unions keep giving more to ensure these people are elected. Are the students doing any better? No, but the teachers are, the union execs are and there are more and more admin personnel in every district.
The poor people in places like Chicago don’t stand a chance as the union spends millions to elect a Brandon Johnson who then acts against the people’s best interest. Due to the millions the unions give him helps get him all the ads, all the workers, all the campaign juice he needs to get elected against a n unfunded candidate that isn’t a far left nut job. Then Johnson (and his ilk) give the unions lucrative contracts and the doom loop continues.
You got a point somewhere in that mess of words?
His point you missed is the Democrat to union corruption that is harming the city and the average person. But in your hate and rage, you failed to see it.
Yeah, his point is that Chicago is getting exactly what they deserve.
HullBobby,
Well said and spot on.
I grew up in Chicago in the 50’s under Richard J. Daily when corruption became a cottage industry and has developed into big business.
“Richard J. Daily”
I’m really not picking on you, personally, it’s just that yours was the post that tipped me a bit over the edge. C’mon folks, it isn’t “DAILY”, it’s “DALEY”, as in Richard J. and Richard M. , the Democratic father and son tag team mayors who presided over decades of Chicago political corruption. Yes, it’s “just spelling”, but after a dozen repetitions from numerous sources, it comprises ignorance that easily could be inferred to mean that those posters failed to do any research at all before posting their rants. Is that the case, posters?Try doing a search first and reading at least a half dozen words, it isn’t all that difficult. SHEESH!
Nobody cares. A piece of sheet by any other name is still a piece of sheet.
NY, “spends” $81K on each homeless person . . . How much of that do you think benefits the person living in a refrigerator box vs. benefits some NGO?
Ken,
Only about 8% goes to the persons they are supposed to be helping. The rest goes to the NGO as administrative costs.
My sister has her graduate degree in NGOs.
Bye bye Chicago, I hardly knew you.
Astonishing to watch these blue cities/states. Now VA is going to walk the same path.
And once the dems take the 2028 presidency, watch out America, everything, literally, will be taxed. Mark my words.
VA, MA and their ilk… will be debt financed into eternity… those who will survive …. teachers and bureaucrats.
I wrote about a similar fiscal death spiral today, only on a national level.
Is The U.S. Turning Into One Of The PIIGS?
‘Is the U.S. approaching a fiscal “death spiral”? This article explores the unsettling parallels between current U.S. debt trajectories and the “PIIGS” nations of the Eurozone crisis. With debt nearing $40 trillion and the loss of our AAA credit rating, the bond market is beginning to revolt.’
https://open.substack.com/pub/hallmarkabsservice/p/is-the-us-turning-into-one-of-the?r=nlt9&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true
IT is a sorrow to see. Chicago was quite a city and even though we lived in Indiana it was always a great place to visit. You could spend the weekend in Chicago for a reasonable hotel price and then shop on Michigan Ave and Watertower place and elsewhere and buy kids and adult clothing more cheaply than in Indiana. Great place for meetings, plays and entertainment. Really sorry to see this happen but they have been on this road to perdition for some time.
I’m surprised the Governor of Illinois is not beating down doors trying to save the jewel of his state.
Must have other things on his mind.
GEB you’re always about the good ole days. Get on your time machine and go back finally.
And the helpfulness of your comment? Other than to scratch your leftist itch?
Anonymous the juvenile parasite is at it again. Just a parasite, and a nasty one at that.
“Must have other things on his mind.”
Pritzker? That overstuffed pork chop has a mind? Who knew…
Taxes and debt. Kind of like tariffs and financing wars of choice.
What’s your solution?
Anon was not offering a solution to taxes and debt, but making a simple nominative statement with a political bent. So, what’s your solution? More war?
While I’m at it, the USA should charge a protection tariff ala Al Capone, BUT completely voluntary, on all ships thru the SoH i.e, depending on ship volume, say $500k a ship, to pay for the war. Happened in in the Gulf war, the Europeans paid, right? Then no need for the annoying dems in congress.
“…$500k a ship, to pay for the war.”
Actually not a bad idea at all. We would need to get 100% control of the Strait first, however, and appears to be an elusive goal at the moment.
Yeah, why couldn’t we just wait until Iran festered into a nuclear-armed ayatollah-state and then just dodge their incoming ICBMs?
Oh really? Did the teachers union try to build a nuke and missiles? Going to war sometimes is a necessity, paying off unions, NGOs and non-profits is a grift. Was FDR wrong? Was Lincoln? Was Wilson? Was Washington?
Yes Wilson was wrong about almost everything. FDR was wrong about a lot of things. WWII was a gift from Wilson and Clemenceau and FDR could not have ended the depression without WWII.
And it’s one, two, three, four, what are we fighting for? Don’t ask me I don’t give a damn. Next stop is effing Iran. Rest in peace Country Joe.