I grew up on the far south side of Chicago in Morgan Park. It was a diverse block of people, Jewish, Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro, a few Blacks, and me - Swedish looking. We all got along with each other. The 1968 Democratic Convention was really frightening. Our parents put us on "lockdown" so I could not go on the commute train to my first summer job - typing in the Geography Department at Encyclopedia Britannica. The 1970's were also really bad with all of the protests over the assassinations of ML King, RFK, Sr. Malcolm X, etc. An aunt and uncle rescued me. I ended up at a small private college in the East Bay of San Francisco, staying out there for 30 years. I'm in Evanston, IL now. I'm already really worried about what could happen at the 2024 Democratic Convention. My only hope is Governor J.B Pritzger takes away "home rule" from Chicago permanently and has the National Guard on stand-by. It would be a very bad situation on TV screens around the world. There's never been a competent mayor in Chicago. It was a really bad decision to hold the convention here.
Thanks for your comment Linda. I was still a kid when the convention took place and so did not grasp the gravity of the situation until many years later. I agree that it was very poor judgement to site the Dems 2024 convention in Chicago. I can only imagine the troublemakers who will show up, especially if Trump is nominated at the GOP convention the preceding month. I haven't been to Evanston since that year when we lived in Chicago. I have a niece at Northwestern. Thanks for reading and being a valued subscriber!
"First We Get the Money" is considered DOA here in Chicago, more a fantasy justice exercise from Brandon Johnson's progressive amen corner than a blueprint for practical revenue-raising. Johnson floated most of its ideas during the campaign, but backpedaled fast and hard when so much of the city was aghast. In short, the massive, punitive tax plan isn't going to get even a polite, pro forma hearing from the City Council and business interests, and probably not even from Johnson himself. A big, common mistake the far left makes with shakedown tax schemes like this is failure to perform dynamic analysis; they assume the targets will just stand there like cows in the rain and take it. It's lost on them that, in Terry's phrase, these people have suitcases.
Thanks Tom. Yah, I've always been amazed that, for all their education, the take-their-money progressives know very little about economics and the role incentives play in market economies. They must be in denial because these are not difficult concepts to understand.
It's a standard applause line among "take-their-money progressives" that "it's time for the wealthy to pay their fair share!" They always take pains, though, not to quantify "wealthy" or "fair share," allowing almost everyone to imagine they're not targets. This is intellectually fraudulent; the Scandie social democracies they so admire aren't subsidized by the billionaires running Nokia or IKEA, they're sustained by an average 50% marginal tax rate paid by everyone. In this regard, though, "First We Get the Money" at least supplies a jot of honesty: these guys want to slap a city income tax on households earning $100k and up. Thing is, the average Chicago household income is $100,347 -- so to these proto-socialist activists, the average Chicagoan is wealthy. That's left a lot of people here, um, nonplussed.
Add in the fact that we're very highly taxed in comparison to other same-tier cities, and our annual budget is bigger ($16.4 billion; Philadelphia's is $5.6 billion, L.A.'s is $13 billion, and Houston's is $5.7 billion) and this ain't going anywhere.
I was raised in Beverly Hills, when it was all white but my mother instilled in me the fact that no one was better or worse than anyone else. All should be equal, which is why I later became involved in Civil Rights. Chicago in the 60s had ethnic neighborhoods, and many were “ Blacks keep out”.
Obviously, this led to turbulence, which has continued to today.
Ah, yes, Mr. Cowgill, the 1968 Democratic Convention. I was never more proud of Abe Ribicoff than when I saw him call out Mayor Daley for "Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago..." as Mayor Daley yelled an ethnic slur which was, thankfully, off mic.
Ah yes, I remember it well, but had forgotten that Ribicoff's speech was actually a nominating speech for George McGovern, who would receive the nomination four years later. Video can be found here. If you read Daley's lips, it's pretty ugly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj9TkjL87Rk
I grew up on the far south side of Chicago in Morgan Park. It was a diverse block of people, Jewish, Cubans fleeing Fidel Castro, a few Blacks, and me - Swedish looking. We all got along with each other. The 1968 Democratic Convention was really frightening. Our parents put us on "lockdown" so I could not go on the commute train to my first summer job - typing in the Geography Department at Encyclopedia Britannica. The 1970's were also really bad with all of the protests over the assassinations of ML King, RFK, Sr. Malcolm X, etc. An aunt and uncle rescued me. I ended up at a small private college in the East Bay of San Francisco, staying out there for 30 years. I'm in Evanston, IL now. I'm already really worried about what could happen at the 2024 Democratic Convention. My only hope is Governor J.B Pritzger takes away "home rule" from Chicago permanently and has the National Guard on stand-by. It would be a very bad situation on TV screens around the world. There's never been a competent mayor in Chicago. It was a really bad decision to hold the convention here.
Thanks for your comment Linda. I was still a kid when the convention took place and so did not grasp the gravity of the situation until many years later. I agree that it was very poor judgement to site the Dems 2024 convention in Chicago. I can only imagine the troublemakers who will show up, especially if Trump is nominated at the GOP convention the preceding month. I haven't been to Evanston since that year when we lived in Chicago. I have a niece at Northwestern. Thanks for reading and being a valued subscriber!
"First We Get the Money" is considered DOA here in Chicago, more a fantasy justice exercise from Brandon Johnson's progressive amen corner than a blueprint for practical revenue-raising. Johnson floated most of its ideas during the campaign, but backpedaled fast and hard when so much of the city was aghast. In short, the massive, punitive tax plan isn't going to get even a polite, pro forma hearing from the City Council and business interests, and probably not even from Johnson himself. A big, common mistake the far left makes with shakedown tax schemes like this is failure to perform dynamic analysis; they assume the targets will just stand there like cows in the rain and take it. It's lost on them that, in Terry's phrase, these people have suitcases.
Thanks Tom. Yah, I've always been amazed that, for all their education, the take-their-money progressives know very little about economics and the role incentives play in market economies. They must be in denial because these are not difficult concepts to understand.
It's a standard applause line among "take-their-money progressives" that "it's time for the wealthy to pay their fair share!" They always take pains, though, not to quantify "wealthy" or "fair share," allowing almost everyone to imagine they're not targets. This is intellectually fraudulent; the Scandie social democracies they so admire aren't subsidized by the billionaires running Nokia or IKEA, they're sustained by an average 50% marginal tax rate paid by everyone. In this regard, though, "First We Get the Money" at least supplies a jot of honesty: these guys want to slap a city income tax on households earning $100k and up. Thing is, the average Chicago household income is $100,347 -- so to these proto-socialist activists, the average Chicagoan is wealthy. That's left a lot of people here, um, nonplussed.
Add in the fact that we're very highly taxed in comparison to other same-tier cities, and our annual budget is bigger ($16.4 billion; Philadelphia's is $5.6 billion, L.A.'s is $13 billion, and Houston's is $5.7 billion) and this ain't going anywhere.
I was raised in Beverly Hills, when it was all white but my mother instilled in me the fact that no one was better or worse than anyone else. All should be equal, which is why I later became involved in Civil Rights. Chicago in the 60s had ethnic neighborhoods, and many were “ Blacks keep out”.
Obviously, this led to turbulence, which has continued to today.
Typo, third word from the end...
Ah, yes, Mr. Cowgill, the 1968 Democratic Convention. I was never more proud of Abe Ribicoff than when I saw him call out Mayor Daley for "Gestapo tactics in the streets of Chicago..." as Mayor Daley yelled an ethnic slur which was, thankfully, off mic.
Ah yes, I remember it well, but had forgotten that Ribicoff's speech was actually a nominating speech for George McGovern, who would receive the nomination four years later. Video can be found here. If you read Daley's lips, it's pretty ugly. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj9TkjL87Rk