The mayor should really sport a red nose at these press conferences
If nothing else, there’s no shortage of free entertainment in the city of Chicago — assuming you have a very cynical sense of humor. For example, I refer you to the mayor’s press conferences, which could easily be packaged into a low-budget reality show titled "Brandon the Clown" to replace "The Late Show." Now that might be a “progressive revenue” idea.
In the latest episode, our very own Bozo stumbled once again into a self-created mess — this time over the inconvenient truth accidentally revealed by his own chief financial officer, Jill Jaworski. She let slip what every property owner has long suspected: A property tax hike is “likely” thanks to Chicago’s looming $1 billion deficit. The revelation landed with a thud. And in response, Mayor Brandon Johnson has been backpedaling faster than a Bears' cornerback trying to cover Tyreek Hill.
Johnson’s pivot? “Progressive revenue solutions.” It’s a phrase that sounds great in campaign literature and even better when shouted into a megaphone at a Democratic Socialists of America rally — but as actual fiscal policy, it’s thin gruel. He rolled it out at a hastily convened press conference, where, curiously, a reporter just happened to ask a perfectly teed-up question about what these “progressive revenue solutions” might be. Brandon was unusually well-prepared with statistics and talking points, which strongly suggests the question was planted. The tone was obsequious, the setup was perfect, and the mayor had the numbers at his fingertips. A coincidence? Hardly.
Note how Brandon has cleverly linked increasing taxes on the rich — an ever-popular progressive idea — with public safety. In his remarks, he said we must continue to make the investments necessary to bring crime down, and he had stats to support the claim. I don’t necessarily believe them. There’s a growing suspicion among many residents that crime is being systematically downgraded or ignored altogether to improve the numbers. People have stopped calling the cops.
Take the Walgreens at the intersection of Clark and Division — an open-air drug market at this point — which gets robbed on an hourly basis. They don’t call the police. In fact, if you call the police when you see someone stealing, they might charge you with trespassing. That’s how upside-down things are in the city that twerks. But Johnson is playing rhetorical jujitsu: if you’re worried about crime, then you need to pay more taxes. He probably thinks the millionaire and billionaire crowd will be cowed by that kind of shakedown —they don’t want to get mugged, after all. So what we’re really dealing with is a protection racket, mob-style. The mayor is basically saying: ‘Nice city you’ve got there —shame if something happened to it.’
With a showman’s flair, Johnson declared that Chicago is the fourth-largest city in America and the 10th-wealthiest city in the world. He also claimed — miraculously, without notes — that there are 127,000 millionaires and at least 34 billionaires living in the city. (He didn’t say where those figures came from, and no one bothered to ask— while the city has a problem with keeping a gang database, apparently it has no such scruples about a database of the rich.) But the implication was clear: the money’s here, and he intends to take it.
In that moment, he might as well have dusted off the title of his original tax-the-rich manifesto: “First We Get the Money.” That’s not a governing philosophy. That’s a stickup.
Now, Brandon Johnson doesn’t call himself a democratic socialist, but he walks like one, talks like one, and governs like one. And for those unfamiliar, democratic socialism is just the friendly-sounding cousin of communism — slightly less gulag, same economic brain fog. His policies could have been lifted straight from the lyrics of the 1971 "Ten Years After" anthem: “Tax the rich, feed the poor, till there are no rich no more.”
That’s the problem, folks. If you keep punishing success, success will simply leave, and there won’t be any rich left for Chicago to tax.
Case in point: Ken Griffin. Griffin, founder of Citadel (one of the world’s biggest investment firms) and formerly Chicago’s richest man, eventually grew tired of being the city’s tax piñata. He donated generously to local institutions, helped fund civic improvements like the lakefront bike path, paid an untold fortune in property and sales taxes — and was rewarded with nonstop harassment and demonization. So he packed up his billions and left. One less billionaire. One less employer. One less investor in the city’s future.
This is not a theoretical problem. You can’t balance a budget on the backs of less than five percent of the population — especially when they can afford to lay down that crushing burden and leave. And they do. Often. And fast. Some just move their primary residence to the suburbs, where property taxes and crime are lower. Others, like Griffin, head for friendlier territory entirely — Florida, Texas, Tennessee — anywhere that doesn’t treat their economic productivity simultaneously like an immoral policy failure and a bottomless piggy bank.
The mayor seems blissfully unaware that the wealthy already pay more than their fair share under the current tax structure: State income tax, steep local property taxes, regressive sales taxes, and so on. He should thank his lucky stars that federal tax rates remain competitive — otherwise, these high-earners wouldn’t just leave Chicago. They’d leave the country.
Meanwhile, Johnson seems uninterested in the obvious solution: Cut spending. But of course, that would require standing up to his political owners at the Chicago Teachers Union. Instead of trimming the bloated CPS bureaucracy, which has been expanding as student enrollment shrinks, he continues to shovel money into a system that produces less with more.
The city is in desperate need of austerity, efficiency, and reform. Instead, it gets lectures about “economic justice” from a guy who thinks wealth is some sort of original sin. The result? A death spiral. Higher taxes drive away businesses and residents, shrinking the tax base, creating larger deficits, and forcing even higher taxes on the shrinking few who remain. Wash, rinse, repeat.
We’ve seen this movie before — Detroit, Baltimore, San Francisco. And we know how it ends.
The real tragedy of Brandon the Clown isn’t just the slapstick governance or the made-for-TV buffoonery. It’s that behind the scenes, real people are getting hurt. Working families are being squeezed. Neighborhoods are being hollowed out. Businesses are boarding up. And still, the mayor smiles for the cameras, chuckles at his own jokes, and assures us that everything will be fine — just as soon as the rich cough up a little more.
Chicago doesn’t need more clown shows. It needs a mayor. The voters ought to cancel this clown show as fast as you can say Steven Colbert. Pull the curtain on this circus — before there’s nothing left but an empty tent and a pile of unpaid bills.
Let’s bring on a serious public servant who knows how to run a city without running it into the ground. Someone who will run it, not ruin it.
