Billionaires like Elon Musk, who get rich by creating things that benefit all of us, are hated by liberals on Marxist grounds. In contrast, billionaires who obtain their fortunes without doing anything constructive are esteemed — provided they help impose leftism. Sinister Democrat financier George Soros is one example. Hyatt hotel scion and governor of Greater Chicago (a.k.a. Illinois) JB Pritzker is another.

Bellows Pritzker:

“Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption, but I have now. These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.”

It is too soon after the hundreds of liberal establishment-sanctioned Black Lives Matter riots that caused $billions in damages not to understand what “mass protests” by leftists entail.

Currently polling at #10 among uninspiring Democrat presidential aspirants, Pritzker evidently hopes to outdo his rivals for overheated rhetoric. Yet he can’t come up with anything more original than calling Trump Hitler:

In February, Pritzker seemingly implied that the Trump administration was like Nazis in his State of the State Address, saying he was “watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. … Here’s what I’ve learned — the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed — a seed of distrust and hate and blame. The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.”

Beneath the demagoguery lies disturbing radicalism:

Pritzker and his powerful billionaire family, including his transgender cousin, are at the forefront of pushing a radical gender ideology in schools and medical facilities…

A Pritzker goal is to “normalize the idea that human reproductive sex exists on a spectrum.”

Last August, Pritzker signed into law a new public schools sex education bill that promotes gender identity ideology and other related material in grades K-12.

So depraved and extreme is the agenda promoted by Pritzker that it is no surprise he would resort to illegitimate tactics to impose it. This is why encouraging physical intimidation no longer falls outside the mainstream for Democrat pols. Via The Blaze:

Who can forget when far-left U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) encouraged her supporters during a June 2018 speech to harass members of Trump’s administration? …

Indeed, harassment followed, and attacks on conservatives got physical too. Remember, also, that Hillary Clinton piled on, saying “you cannot be civil” with Republicans. Former Attorney General Eric Holder said, “When they go low, we kick them!” and far-left U.S. Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) urged activists in Washington, D.C., to “go to the Hill” and “get up in the face of some congresspeople.”

More recently, Democrat House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said — in reference to the Trump agenda — his party is “going to fight it in the streets.”

It is unlikely that many Illinois residents living south of 138th Street enjoy living under a rich Marxist version of Jabba the Hutt, but the densely populated pustule Chicago has become leaves them with no choice as it pulls the whole state down the Democrat Death Spiral. Liberals want to abolish the Electoral College in hopes of doing something similar to the country as a whole.

On tips from ABC of the ANC and Gringoman.

Healthy societies create museums to memorialize historical triumphs. In upside-down world, progressives create museums to celebrate their most conspicuous failures — like public housing:

Set inside a once-dilapidated 1938 building on Chicago’s near West Side, a one-of-a-kind museum hopes to change the perception of public housing in America.

That perception would be that public housing has served as miserable chicken pens for the dependents bred by the welfare state so as to harvest their votes. Housing projects are windows into a hellish future where government dependency facilitates the degeneration of citizens into mooching savages who are useless to anyone except on election day. Chicago’s Cabrini-Green was the iconic representative, actually inspiring a series of horror movies.

Bureaucrats are attempting an image makeover by spending $17.5 million to transform a former federal housing project into the National Public Housing Museum.

It’s the brainchild of public housing residents who wanted to tell a more complete story about their lives, from the joys of living in tight-knit communities to the effects of racist housing policies.

“Tight-knit” could be a reference to gang membership, which tends to be rife among these fatherless communities. The reference to “racist housing policies” confirms that no attempt to preach the religion of Critical Race Theory will go unexploited by moonbats.

Remnants of a paint-chipped wall, with cracks and graffiti, greets visitors at the entrance.

Maybe they also left discarded crack pipes and shell casings to capture the true ambience.

“It’s a museum that says, ‘There are things that everybody deserves,’” said Sunny Fischer, a consultant for foundations, who grew up in public housing and is the museum board’s chair.

Too bad the things leftists think everyone deserves often belong to someone else.

One thing no one deserves is to be born into the nightmare realm of public housing.

On a tip from Dave F.

Chicago reacted to the failure of Lesbian of Color and Beetlejuice lookalike Lori Lightfoot by electing someone even further to the left, the ultramoonbat Brandon Johnson. This appeared to plunge Chicago into the final stages of the Democrat Death Spiral. Yet there might still be hope of the Windy City escaping the fate of formerly wealthy Detroit. At least residents are not pleased with what they inflicted on themselves:

An overwhelming 79.9 percent of Chicago residents disapprove of Johnson’s leadership, while only 6.6 percent view the Democrat favorably, according to a poll that M3 Strategies released on Saturday. The mayor’s favorability rating is even lower than in October of last year, when Johnson became the most unpopular mayor in Chicago history.

If you can’t sell race-based moonbattery in the city that launched the pernicious careers of Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, and Barack Obama, demand has truly cratered.

Chicagoans are especially unhappy about Johnson displacing them at their own extravagant expense with hordes of illegal aliens:

Johnson has long faced backlash over his handling of Chicago’s migrant crisis, with residents decrying his proposed tax hike to cover a budget deficit as the city spends over half a billion dollars on migrant shelters. The mayor, though, has criticized the Trump administration’s response to the crisis, saying that arresting and deporting illegal immigrants is “attempting to get us to surrender our humanity.”

Some have learned not to cower in submission when leftists who impose poverty sanctimoniously brandish words like “humanity.”

Now for the bad news. The next Mayor of Chicago will be another Democrat.

At least they can’t repeat their last mistake by sinking still deeper in wokery. Other than possibly Keith Olbermann, there is no one to the left of Brandon Johnson.

On a tip from Mr. Freemarket.

Looks like Americans sacrificed 620,000 lives in the Civil War in vain. Chicago Mayor Brendan Johnson says America “is being ran” as if the South had won:

“That White House is being ran in one of the most raggedy forms of government that I’ve ever seen. If anybody is questioning whether or not, what our country would look like had the Confederacy won, there should be no question now.”

Chicago is run as if a failed Third World hellhole had won. A city that would produce a mayor like Johnson can only subsist at the expense of the rest of the country.

Despite Chicago having succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral, even Johnson’s constituents complain about his disastrous sanctuary city policies. He responds as you might expect — by denouncing America and its core population:

“If they want to have a real discussion about [illegal aliens] who are criminals, they should look at the very individuals who enslaved my people and colonized this land.”

We live in the 21st century, not some distant era in the past. It is Johnson and his people (i.e., Marxist Democrats) doing the enslaving, via taxation and the welfare state. Americans work so that Johnson’s supporters don’t have to.

Modern slavery is increasingly race-based. Johnson took the opportunity to call for “reparations.”

The bloated and corrupt federal government is not our only problem. Big cities are as rotten as the DC Swamp. If they can’t clean them themselves up, they need to be left to their own devices so as not to suck the rest of the country down the drain with them.

On a tip from WDS 2.0. Hat tip: ZeroHedge.

If everything is racist, then nothing is racist — and everything is racist. Even traffic cameras:

Via CWBChicago:

Illinois State Rep. La Shawn Ford is again calling for change after new data shows more than 2.5 times as many red-light camera tickets were issued on Chicago’s South Side over a yearlong period than at intersections where cameras are installed on the city’s North Side.

Fumes Ford:

“If I get multiple tickets and I’m placed on a boot list, then my car gets towed and I lose my car. Then I have these tickets and I have to file bankruptcy to eliminate the debt. Government should not be in the business of driving people into poverty. We know that this regressive tax hits people in poverty more and drives people deeper into poverty.”

For a Democrat to grasp that government should not drive people into poverty could signify progress. However, in this case it is the maniacal drivers on Chicago’s racially correct South Side who are doing the driving.

Until traffic cameras can be devised that distribute tickets according to race regardless of how people drive, they must be abolished in the name of equity. Ford wants a moratorium on traffic cameras.

Laws against murder also have a disparate impact on persons of politically preferred pigmentation, who are vastly more likely to commit this crime. By the same logic, these laws too must be abolished.

On a tip from Wiggins.

No wonder Brandon Johnson sides with rioters against law-abiding citizens. He is a looter himself.

From the Wall Street Journal:

On Monday Mr. Johnson replaced the entire Chicago school board with his allies after the previous board resigned en masse last Friday. The previous board opposed the mayor’s plan to take a $300 million high-interest loan to hand raises to the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), which funded his election campaign.

Johnson ran on the Black Lives Matter platform. The scale of his looting puts even BLM to shame:

The Chicago school district is junk rated, so Mr. Johnson’s plan for a $300 million loan would cost CPS more than $700 million. The union wants 9% annual raises, climate initiatives and affordable housing units, among other non-teaching benefits that would cost between $10.2 billion and 13.9 billion, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

The insatiable greed of public sector unions and their allies is driving the entire state into bankruptcy. Against those who don’t approve, Johnson brandishes the slavery card:

“When our people wanted to be liberated and emancipated in this country, the argument was, you can’t free black people because it would be too expensive,” he said. “They said that it would be fiscally irresponsible for this country to liberate black people. And now you have detractors making the same argument of the Confederacy when it comes to public education in this system.”

Meanwhile, as a result of unions running the schools,

Only 25% of Chicago students are proficient in reading and only around 20% are proficient in math, according to data from Wirepoints.

Other than the Brandon Johnson campaign, where does all the money sucked up by the CTU go? No one knows, because it has not produced a public audit of its finances since 2020 — in violation of its bylaws.

Yet again we see that Brandon Johnson personifies the Democrat Death Spiral. A city that would elect him has no future.

On a tip from Varla.

New York isn’t the only major city collapsing into ruin. Chicago entered the terminal stage of the Democrat Death Spiral by electing pro-criminal leftist Brandon Johnson on the Black Lives Matter platform. The resulting spending spree is unsurprisingly cutting into funding for police as crime spirals out of control:

On a tip from WDS 2.0.

You didn’t think it would remain limited to the Denver area, did you? Armed gangs of the illegal aliens the Biden/Harris regime has imported from Venezuela threaten to seize control of apartment buildings in Chicago:

Late last night, an alarming situation unfolded in Chicago as approximately 32 armed individuals, reportedly Venezuelan migrants, seized control of an apartment complex…

According to various sources and a widely circulated 911 call, the group forcefully entered the apartment building, brandishing firearms and causing widespread panic among residents. …

This show of force intimidated residents and signaled a potential takeover of the premises.

Here’s the 911 call:

Marginalized and demoralized police in the increasingly dysfunctional city may not be up to dealing with the unfolding situation. But Venezuelan invaders could encounter resistance from some of the locals:

A switch converts a Glock-style semiautomatic into a mini-machine gun.

Chicago has some of the most repressive gun laws in the country, but gun laws only apply to the law-abiding.

Like Denver, Chicago has voted itself into a hole by electing an ultramoonbat mayor. Good luck climbing out of it.

On tips from Wiggins and Anonymous.

Due largely to rampant shoplifting resulting from the collapse of law & order under liberal rule, grocery stores have been forced to closed in the moonbat dystopia Chicago. Pro-criminal Mayor Brandon Johnson responded by suggesting that the government provide grocery stores. This great leap forward toward communism is advancing:

[A] feasibility study created for the city describes a municipal grocery model as “necessary, feasible, and implementable.”

The study recommends the city pursue some version of a municipally owned store or stores — and finds such stores could even turn a profit.

Walmart can’t turn a profit in parts of Chicago that have succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral. Yet we are asked to believe moonbat bureauweenies can do it — even though making a profit is morally wrong according to their Marxist ideology.

[C]ity policy chief S. Mayumi “Umi” Grigsby said internal and external working groups will now work on finalizing a proposal for a store or stores. The city would then be ready to apply for funding for such a project, including from a new $20 million state grocery initiative.

From such relatively tiny acorns grow massive black holes of government waste. As Chicago runs out of money and government grocery stores spread to other cities, the feds will step in with funding, printing currency as necessary to cover the five-finger discounts.

Like everything else pushed by Democrats, this makes no sense economically but plenty sense in terms of exerting power.

It was through control of food that Stalin was able to subjugate Ukraine during the Holodomor. Communism ran up its 20th century body count of 100 million primarily by imposing starvation.

On a tip from Wiggins.

Having succumbed to the Democratic Death Spiral, Chicago no longer celebrates America’s independence on the 4th of July. It celebrates Assassination Day.

As WLS reported Sunday:

At least 100 people have been shot, 17 fatally, in gun violence across Chicago since Wednesday evening during the extended Fourth of July holiday weekend, police said.

The media explicitly refers to it as “gun” violence to help Democrats exploit the senseless bloodshed to disarm the law-abiding population in the face of chaos.

Resident Erica Pinkerton grew up with a 74-year-old woman who was shot in the leg over the weekend, probably randomly by the thugs who own the streets under single-party Democrat rule. She says of the 4th of July,

“It’s assassination day…”

In case readers don’t draw the politically correct conclusion, another resident is found who can confirm that the problem is not caused by a debased, degenerate, barely civilized population that has elected pro-criminal leftist leadership that in turn has marginalized the police. Our right of self-defense is responsible:

“They got to stop the guns. You know?” Austin [on the west side of Chicago] resident Raul Perez said.

Or maybe we should blame Richard Nixon:

The mission of Democrats is to do to the entire country what they have done to Chicago, where their rule is unchallenged.

On tips from R F, Wiggins, and seaoh.

Unless there is a dramatic reversal, Democrats will continue to demographically transform the USA until every corner of it catches up with major cities. Then will come unremitting rule by leftists like Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth of Puerto Rico, who like Alexander the Great slicing through the Gordian Knot has solved Chicago’s spiraling crime crisis with a single stroke:

In a North Side ward where four people have been shot in the past week, and robberies and sex crimes are at their highest level in over a decade, the local alderman announced on Wednesday that she would no longer post crime alerts on social media or send crime alerts to her constituent email list.

Why?

Something about racism and her belief that “over-reporting of crime leads to an inaccurate public perception about crime rates.”

From our rulers’ viewpoint, crime itself is not a problem; only public perception of crime affects their grip on power.

No doubt the media will get on board once it is made clear that to report crime is racist. Then all alderkooks have to do is shut down HeyJackass so that no one finds out what is happening around them.

Let’s see who else we have running Chicago, besides the rabid moonbat Brandon Johnson. Here’s someone who made national news not long ago:

Rossana Rodriguez is an alderwoman on Chicago’s city council who supports defunding the police and caucuses with the Democratic Socialists. The alderwoman, who explicitly calls for “critical race theory” to be taught to children, is also involved in the council’s Education and Child Development committee. …

According to the councilmember, America is “a garbage society” and “a White supremacist society and system” that “favors White people.”

Hating the core population and hating the police responsible for protecting law-abiding citizens are two sides of the same coin. To quote Ms. Rodriguez:

“[P]olicing and the entire criminal injustice system are themselves essential to maintaining white power and control. Changing the culture of policing would require getting rid of the soil in which it grows. Changing the culture of policing necessitates eradicating white supremacy.”

Even to suggest that a police officer’s life has value is white supremacist:

In addition to decrying law enforcement, the alderwoman believes saying “Blue lives matter” is “racist.”

While Leni Manaa-Hoppenworth believes in solving crime by not reporting it, Rodriguez focuses on what liberals call “root causes”:

As for why people commit crimes, the alderwoman said it was “White supremacy.”

“White supremacy, systemic racism and exclusion are at the root of the issue of violence. If we want it to end we have to commit to dismantling white supremacist structures and fight for equity,” she said.

Chicago has well and truly succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral. As with formerly prosperous Detroit before it, things will not go well for productive citizens who are slow to evacuate.

On tips from Ed McAninch, ABC of the ANC, and Varla.

Where pathological greed meets radical leftism, there you will find teachers unions. In Chicago — launchpad of Barack Obama’s political career — the union has degenerated into a mob of looters:

The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) is negotiating a new contract with the public schools system and is understood to be calling for an extra $50 billion to pay for wage hikes as well as other demands such as fully paid abortions for its members, new migrant services and facilities and a host of LGBT-related requirements and training in schools.

To put the figure into context, the total base tax receipts for the state of Illinois last year were $50.7 billion.

Only 21% of Chicago 8th graders are proficient at reading. But no doubt they are well versed in alternative pronouns and know how to put a condom on.

Uselessness pays well where the woke are in charge:

Union President Stacy Davis Gates’ audacious plan calls for members to bank at least 9% wage increases each year through fiscal year 2028.

The average salary of a teacher in Chicago Public Schools is $93,182, according to research by the Illinois Policy Institute, a conservative nonprofit think tank. Therefore, the average teacher’s pay will increase by half to $144,620 in the 2027-2028 school year, it says.

Not bad for unskilled part-time babysitters who take summers, weekends, and every conceivable holiday off.

That figure would equate to more than double the median household income in Chicago, according to Census Bureau statistics.

Yet the media bleats piteously that teachers are unpaid.

If you think the outrageous demands will be laughed off, consider that the mayor is ultraleftist Brandon Johnson:

Johnson, a former CTU legislative coordinator who was put forward by the union to run for mayor. As of June 30, 2023, CTU had funneled more than $2.6 million into Johnson’s campaign while he received more than $6 million from teachers unions altogether, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.

Chicago already spends $21,000 per year per student, producing so little benefit for the money that Davis herself sends her son to private school — though the preferredly pigmented Davis has proclaimed that school choice is racist.

Meanwhile, Illinois State Comptroller Susana Mendoza reports on what the liberal locust swarm has been doing to the state’s finances:

Illinois is on pace to spend an additional $6.2 billion more than it receives in revenue this fiscal year alone if the state continues its current rate of spending without a budget.

She observes that “the spending is open-ended and our fiscal path is catastrophic.”

Progressives interpret this to mean they had better grab fast before Illinois collapses and there is nothing left to grab. Those in charge in Chicago are the equivalent of a Black Lives Matter mob going through a department store.

On tips from Varla, Jack D, and WDS 2.0.

The racist concept of “disparate impact,” popularized by Obama’s wingman Eric Holder, is an effective wrecking ball for destroying American society. As it succumbs to the Democrat Death Spiral, Chicago is even using it to allow shootings to spiral further out of control by ignoring them:

See no evil, hear no evil. Voilà: the official murder rate goes down, even if the bodies pile up faster than ever.

There is no limiting principle to the moonbattery of applied Critical Race Theory. Because blacks are more likely to commit crime, any attempt to control crime is racist according to liberal doctrine. You can see why BLM moonbats like Brandon Johnson have wanted to abolish local police by defunding them.

On a tip from Lyle.

Elections have consequence. An inevitable consequence of electing a supporter of Black Lives Matter looters is more looting — this time not just enabled by the government, but committed by it. From Chicago:

Mayor Brandon Johnson believes reparations for descendants of slaves will help improve his city’s rising crime rate. …

Johnson’s 2024 budget includes $100 million for violence prevention, but also $500,000 to form a Commission on Restoration and Reparations.

If it costs $500,000 just to form a commission, wait until they start passing out other people’s money based on race.

“Violence prevention” means useless gestures, probably largely consisting of public service announcements to the effect that violence is bad. As a BLM supporter who openly sides with criminals against law enforcement, Johnson ran on a platform of defunding the police.

Chicago has well and truly succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral. Residents are advised to get out while it is still possible to sell their property.

Johnson on Wednesday claimed reparations would also help reduce violent crime, though he was yet to directly explain how.

Free money is not going to reverse the collapse of civilization in diverse hellholes like Chicago. On the contrary, that’s what caused it. The welfare state provided both the mentality and the manpower to fill the streets and now City Hall with mobs of looters.

On tips from Ed McAninch, WDS 2.0, Dr. Kufi Tutite, and ABC of the ANC.