Tag: illinois politics

Attacking Democrats on high gasoline prices is the best way to kick them in the gas this fall

Morton Grove, Illinois, February 27, 2022

By John Ruberry

By dodging a question on this weekend’s edition of Flannery Fired Up of Fox Chicago, US Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) offered up, unintentionally, perhaps the most vulnerable issue, and there are many or them, that Democrats face this fall.

That issue is soaring gasoline prices. 

After explaining to host Mike Flannery how Russia supplies a large amount of natural gas to western Europe, Quigley said, without proof, “That is going to be shut off.”

Then Flannery serves up a fastball query to Quigley. “So, if we end up with four-dollar, five-dollar or more a-gallon gasoline, that’s going to hurt Democrats this fall. What should President Biden do about that? What can he do about it? Because we have American oil producers holding back, they’re saying that your Democrats in Congress and President Biden are hostile to energy.”

“You know I don’t buy that at all,” was Quigley’s flaccid response, then the Democrat retreated to a classic fallback, the appeal to sympathy fallacy, when he discussed how he met with residents of Chicago’s Ukranian Village neighborhood, and then pivoted to another logic fallacy, appeal to ridicule, by attacking former President Trump, stating, in a great exaggeration, how Trump recently praised Vladimir Putin. 

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average price of gasoline in the Chicago area, where Quigley and I live, was $2.47-a-gallon in January 2021, the month when Trump left office and was succeeded by Joe Biden. In January this year it was $3.56-a-gallon, more than a dollar more. I live in Cook County, where gas taxes are higher, I’m seeing $3.91-a-gallon now in Morton Grove, Illinois. Amazingly, again according to the BLS, the national average was only slightly higher than Chicago area prices, probably because the figures are skewed by California’s extortion-level overtaxing of gasoline. 

Apologists for Biden and the Democrats claim a post-lockdown economic turnaround is responsible for the gas price hikes. That’s a lie, the worst of the lockdowns were over in the autumn of 2020, when Trump was still president. Among Biden’s first acts as president was cancelling the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. The Biden administration is halting or delaying new leases to drill on federal land. Less petroleum means less gasoline which means higher prices. 

Now, using the January 2021-2022 gas prices hike numbers, assuming you fill up your 15-gallon gas tank for your automobile once a week, you are now paying $16 -a-week additional for fuel. Spread that expense over a year and you are over $800 poorer now. And I was using the January 2002 price. And gas prices have gone up since then and they are headed higher, even Biden admits that, because of Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Let’s Go Brandon!

Drill here, drill now, pay less, vote Republican!

Stop the Green New Deal!

“Fact-checkers,” the Ministry of Truth wing of the media and the Democratic Party, have produced numerous reports that such energy analyses as mine are “inconclusive” or “missing context.”  These “fact-checkers” are keyboard propagandist tricksters of the three-card Monte variety. Luckily more people are laughing at them, or worse, since leftists crave attention of all kinds, even negative, they’re now ignoring the “fact-checkers.”

So, Quigley, when he avoided Flannery’s question, admitted his party’s biggest political vulnerability, high gasoline prices. If Biden reverses his anti-energy policies, it can be a potent weapon, a non-violent one, against Vladimir Putin and Russia, by driving down petroleum and natural gas prices. Western Europe of course is a major consumer of Russian natural gas, as Quigley explained.

If Biden stays the course on failure–high energy prices will deliver an electoral wipeout for the Dems.

They’ll deserve it.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Democrats exposed as complete frauds on gerrymandering

By John Ruberry

The latest, I think, Democratic Party Chicken Little existential crisis is “voting rights.” In attacking a Georgia voting reform law, President Joe Biden called it “Jim Crow on steroids,” a hateful and thoroughly dishonest claim.

C’mon man!

The end of partisan gerrymandering was one of Biden’s selling points as he stumped for his “voting rights” bills.

“For too long, partisan gerrymandering has allowed politicians to rig the political process and draw districts in their favor.” Biden said on Twitter two days ago,” voters should choose their representatives — not the other way around.” The was president celebrating a court victory for Democrats challenging a Republican-drawn state legislative map in North Carolina.

Biden and other prominent Democrats are silent on egregious gerrymandering by their party. For instance, New York currently has 27 congressional seats, slow population growth brings that number down by one for the next Congress. The current New York congressional delegation has nineteen Democrats and eight Republicans, but the new map, passed by the state Assembly, could bring a new tally, 22 Democrats and just four GOPers. 

The Dems are also quiet on Democratic gerrymandering in Maryland. That state’s Republican governor, Larry Hogan, last year called on Biden to ask attorney general Merrick Garland to sue Maryland over partsian gerrymandering. Garland is probably too focused on using his FBI to harass parents who protest school boards.

Illinois, under the iron-fist rule of Boss Michael Madigan, the longtime state House speaker and Democratic party chairman, perfected Dem gerrymandering with his 2000 and 2010 remaps. Madigan was finally ousted as speaker last year and he quickly resigned his party office, but the chicanery continues.

With the departure of Madigan, Illinois’ governor, J.B. Pritzker, is finally the most powerful Democrat in the Prairie State. In 2018 he repeatedly promised to veto gerrymandered remaps. The grandiloquent rhetoric continued after his election. “As I’ve said since I was a candidate, I will veto any map that is unfair,” Pritzker said in 2019. “It’s the right thing to do. We’re going to have to make sure that here in Illinois we’re not gerrymandering, that we’re drawing maps that are fair and competitive. That’s what’s best for the voters of the state, that they have choices when they go to the ballot.” 

Last year Pritzker signed the gerrymandered legislative and congressional remaps into law.  

Leftists who read this blog post will howl out, “What the gerrymandering in Texas, Tennessee, and Florida?”

Well, what about it?

Okay, yes, that’s wrong too. But the GOP is not cloaking themselves, as Biden and the Democrats are, in the memory of Martin Luther King and John Lewis. The Democrats are the bigger hypocrites here. 

Barack Obama and his first attorney general, Eric Holder, have been frequent critics of Republican gerrymandering, however, and you shouldn’t be surprised by now, they are mum on gerrymandering that favors the Democrats. 

On Twitter last week, Holder also praised the court ruling against the North Carolina state legislature remap.

Holder is the chairman of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which, because of its selective silence, can rightly be called a front group for supporters of Democratic partisan gerrymandering.

Don’t look for the hack mainstream media to blow the whistle on this blatant hypocrisy by the Democrats.

A responsible parent knows how to counter the “but-everyone-else-does-it” defense from a naughty child.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from gerrymandered Illinois at Marathon Pundit.

Review: Ozark, Season 4 Part 1

By John Ruberry

After a nearly two-year gap, the Netflix series Ozark is back with Season Four. Actually, this is Part One of Season Four, which consists of seven episodes. Part Two of this season, also consisting of seven episodes, will be released later this year and then Ozark will conclude.

The series, if you haven’t heard of it, is centered on the Byrde family from the Chicago suburb of Naperville. Marty Byrde (Jason Bateman) is a financial planner whose firm launders money for a Mexican drug cartel. As I mentioned in my first Ozark review, this is not a wise idea. As he is about to be murdered after the cartel discovers money is being skimmed, Bryde convinces his assassins that the Lake of the Ozarks area of Missouri is an ideal place to launder even more money for the drug fiends. Byrde quickly departs for the Ozarks with his family, which is comprised of his wife Wendy (Laura Linney), their teen daughter Charlotte (Sofia Hublitz), and their younger son Jonah (Skylar Gaertner). 

The Lake of the Ozarks area is hardly crime free paradise, and they quickly encounter two other criminal families, the Snells and the trailer dwelling Langmores. 

Skipping way ahead to season four, the interactions, alliances, and betrayals among these three families continues. The FBI, here shown as an underhanded and conflicted agency, you know, kind of like the real FBI of the 21st century, is trying to break the cartel–through the Byrdes. Oh, the Kansas City mob has a presence here too. As does a big pharmaceutical firm.

By the time viewers reach the current season, the plots and subplots of Ozark are quite complicated. So if you want to enjoy Ozark–and I believe you will–you must start with the first season. However, Ozark hasn’t had a new episode in two years and memories, mine for sure, tend to fade. So I found myself, while watching the new episodes, having thoughts like this one: “Hey, whatever happened to that guy, wasn’t he murdered a couple of seasons ago? Who killed him again? And why?” Clearly, Ozark now needs Game of Thrones style recaps.

Bateman, Linney, Hublitz, and Gaertner all deliver captivating performances. However, topping them all is Julia Garner as Ruth Langmore. She’s already received two Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series Emmys and I cannot imagine her not getting another nomination at the very least. Also quite good is Lisa Emery as Darlene Snell. Her character is involved in a complex relationship with Ruth’s cousin, Wyatt Langmore (Charlie Tahan). 

There’s even a rift in the drug cartel between its head, Omar Navarro (Felix Solis), and his nephew, Javier “Javi” Elzondro (Alfonso Herrera).

While it is set in the Ozarks, most of Ozark is filmed in Georgia. In the latest batch of episodes unlike Season One, the Chicago scenes were filmed in Atlanta. So I found it amusing to see a streetcar in what is supposed to Chicago’s Loop. Chicago hasn’t had streetcar service in decades. A new character, a street-smart Chicago private detective, Mel Sattem (Adam Rothenberg) travels to the Ozarks to investigate a disappearance. He also has a New York accent, not a Chicago one. I mean, hey, if Heath Ledger, an Australian, can do a Chi-CAW-go AXE-cent as the Joker—the Dark Knight was filmed in Chicago–so can others. Here’s a tip: talk through your nose. In an unintentional bit of humor, while discussing a potential move back to Chicago, Marty tells Charlotte that Chicago will be “safe.” Clearly, they haven’t been following the dramatic rise in crime in the city since their move to Missouri, including in Lincoln Park, a neighborhood they are considering. 

Wendy was a Democratic Party operative in Illinois. She’s conspiring, as she did in season three, with Republicans to buy respectability for the Byrdes. During that alliance-building the Republicans look really bad. But I have to point out Illinois, which is essentially a one-party state, a Democrat one, is one of the most corrupt states in the country. And let’s not forget Wendy is the matriarch of a money-laundering family. But the Republicans are the villains here. In Season Four, “Republican” is used in the dialogue twice. “Democrat” not once. 

Coincidence?

All four seasons of Ozark are streaming on Netflix. It is rated TV-MA for graphic violence, drug use, obscene language, and nudity.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

A dystopian and real 48 hours to commit crimes in Chicago

By John Ruberry

“You got him for 48 hours,” a prison official says to Jack Cates (Nick Nolte) in the movie 48 Hours.

And “him” was Reggie Hammond (Eddie Murphy), a prison inmate who is given an unauthorized furlough to assist Cates in solving some murders. 

In Chicago and suburban Cook County we have a different kind of 48 Hours. 

“When someone goes missing with home-monitoring–when they leave the house unauthorized,” state Sen. John Curran (R-Downers Grove) said on this weekend’s Flannery Fired Up on Fox Chicago, “they have to be gone for 48 hours before they can be charged now.”

“We’ve had stories, several stories,” Curran told the host Mike Flannery, “about people on home-monitoring committing additional acts of violent crime when they go missing.”

“And any violation [of electronic-monitoring] should bring an immediate charge–not a 48-hour window,” Curran added.

What type of people are on home-monitoring in Cook County? 

“Seventy-five to 80 percent of my people on home monitoring are charged with a violent offense,” Cook County sheriff Tom Dart revealed in an online discussion last week. “I have about 100 people on home-monitoring who are charged with murder.”

The essential CWB Chicago site earlier this month reported on a Halloween carjacking where the accused was on electronic-monitoring for two armed robberies and a gun charge couldn’t be charged for violating his home confinement because he didn’t break the 48-hour threshold. 

Last week some of Dart’s officers shot a Chicago man who fired at them first. The suspect is accused of a slew of sexual assault charges after he violated that 48-hour electronic-monitoring window. 

There have been many other crimes committed by accused criminals under electronic-monitoring that don’t involve that two-day threshold. Some of them just simply remove the EM ankle bracelet.

Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, claims that 15 people were accused of murder while on Cook County home-monitoring in 2021. While the real number may be around 10, even that is a frightening number. Lightfoot is calling for changes in Cook County’s EM system, but her political position is weak because of her unpopularity; she is not politically close to Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County who is one of those woke George Soros-funded prosecutors who apparently sees law enforcement as some elaborate psychological experiment rigged to enable criminals to be undercharged or to walk free. Equally culpable for this parlor-game-from-hell insanity is Cook County’s chief judge, Timothy C. Evans. 

Chicago endured over 800 murders in 2021, the highest total since the crack epidemic gang wars of the mid-1990s. There were over 1,800 carjackings in Chicago last year, three times the total of 2019. And lately the Chicago area has been plagued by flash mobs of shoplifters. 

Leftist apologists of course will blame the COVID-19 pandemic for the crime epidemic. Puh-leaze. While there are still mask mandates in the Chicago area, the lockdowns have been over for more than a year. 

And a 48 hours free-pass in-all-but-name is only a tip of the crime iceberg in Chicago and is suburbs. As is overuse of electronic-monitoring.

And in Illinois, which saw over 100,000 people leave in 2021, there are always darker days on the horizon. Next year the state’s no-cash bail law goes into effect.

John Ruberry regularly blogs from suburban Cook County at Marathon Pundit.

Lightfoot’s blame-the-victim response about flash mob thieves reminiscent of pre-woke SNL sketch

By John Ruberry

If you give a press conference and the result looks like a Saturday Night Live sketch, a pre-woke version of the show that is, then you have a big problem.

So it was last week with Chicago’s inept leftist mayor, Lori Lightfoot, when she blamed retail crime victims for the rise of flash mob thieves plaguing Chicago’s Magnificent Mile shopping area.

“We still have retailers that won’t institute plans like having security officers in their stores, making sure that they’ve got cameras that are actually operational, locking up their merchandise at night, chaining high-end bags,” the first-term Democrat said. “These purses can be something that is attracting a lot of organized retail theft units.”

So it’s the victims’ fault.

Just like it was in this SNL skit from 1991, featuring Chicago native Joe Mantegna, where he blames New York City crime victims for their problems.

“Yeah, I was flying to Florida, and we had a stopover in New York,” a caller to a talk radio show told Mantegna. “Well, while we were sitting on the ground a group of ‘wilding’ teenagers boarded the plane and beat with me on the head with a pipe.”

“And which airport was this,” Mantegna asked,

“LaGuardia,” was the reply.

“Well, there you go,” Mantegna scolded the caller.

Chicago Police brass were said to have a plan in place to combat smash-and-grab thieves and avoid scenes such as what happened when a Burberry’s on North Michigan Avenue was emptied of purses–each handbag was worth more than a thousand dollars. 

If there was a plan by the CPD, then it clearly didn’t work. Since Lightfoot’s delusional presser a North Face store on the Mag Mile was struck twice. But proving that the Burberry’s looting was just a tame opening act, yesterday a luxury car dealer just off of the Magnificent Mile was robbed of an estimated $2 million worth of high-end watches–which, are you paying attention Mayor Lightfoot?– were locked up inside a locked glass display case. Yep, $2 million.

The dealership is now seeing customers on an appointment basis only–its doors are locked during store hours. Welcome to the new Chicago.

On Friday night’s Flannery Fired Up show on Fox 32 Chicago, host Mike Flannery estimated that 20 percent of the storefronts on North Michigan Avenue are empty. Regular readers of my posts know that the Mag Mile was devastated by two rounds of looting–oops, I mean “mostly peaceful protests”–in 2020. 

The luxury dealership, which sells Rolls-Royces, Bentleys, and Lamborghinis, is owned by Joe Perillo, who is rethinking operating in Chicago.

“It is wrong for someone to break into a place – if they get caught, they get let out!” Perillo explained to ABC 7. “If they get arrested, they get let go. So, how do you intend to ever solve that problem?” He added, “If they don’t do anything about this, they’re going to lose a lot of businesses. They lost Macy’s. They’re losing Neiman Marcus. They may lose this store.”

While Neiman Marcus still has a store on the North Michigan Avenue, the Gap and Disney have also left in the last year. And remember what Flannery said about Mag Mile vacancies. 

It’s not just Lightfoot’s fault.

Kim Foxx is one of those woke so-called prosecutors whose campaign was funded by radical leftist George Soros. She’s received plenty of well-deserved scorn for her mishandling of the Jussie Smollett case. But the greater sin of the Cook County state’s attorney is her catch-and-release policy involving criminals accused of serious offenses. Even some alleged murderers are out of jail on electronic surveillance.

How ’bout if a non-woke SNL updated that skit with a Chicago twist?

“Hello, my store was emptied of merchandise by flash mob looters,” a caller to that SNL-radio show might say.

“What do you sell,” Lori Lightfoot would reply.

“Purses worth more than $1,000.”

Lightfoot’s retort would be, “Well, there you go.”

Retail groups have been complaining that shoppers are now afraid to visit North Michigan Avenue. Who can blame them?

Chicago is dying. The cause of death? Woke politicians.

Well, there you go.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Illinoisans need to organize and fight back against impending no-cash bail law

By John Ruberry

There have been over 1,000 murders this year in Cook County, Illinois–where I live–and the county where Chicago dominates hasn’t seen that many killings since 1994. As for Chicago it has, as of three days ago, endured 777 murders in 2021. 

Liberals like to talk about root causes of crime. Indeed, the current situation is horrible. Apologists for the dramatic increase in crime over the last two years like to blame the COVID-19 outbreak. But the worst outbreaks are concentrated in deep-blue metropolitan areas with so-called prosecutors, many of whom that accepted campaign contributions from funds tied to radical leftist George Soros. 

People like Kim Foxx, the state’s attorney of Cook County. 

Here is one of those roots from one of Foxx’s poison seeds. Before the COVID outbreak Foxx, shortly after her first election in 2016, announced that her office would not pursue felony charges against accused shoplifters unless the value of the goods stolen exceeded $1,000. State law puts that threshold at $300.

And what happened? Retail threats soared. Here’s a story about that from 2019.

Five years later criminals, many of them wearing face masks, are emboldened. They don’t fear getting caught and if they are, because of the low-bail or no-bail policies of Foxx and Cook County judges–they are elected too–they are out on the street almost immediately.  Chicago and its suburbs are being plagued by gangs of flash mob thieves.

Crime will get worse in thirteen months–and the problem will be statewide as a no-cash bail law that Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, goes into effect. 

Small time criminals move on bigger crimes. Rudy Giuliani’s broken-windows theory of policing should be known as broken-windows fact.

And Chicago, with about 100,000 street gang members, has plenty of big-time crooks. 

Carjackings are out of control in Chicago and its suburbs. In the city there have been 1,444 carjackings so far this year–nearly double the annual total of just two years ago. Last month Chicago police arrested an 11-year-old “prolific carjacker.”

 As I mentioned last week John Kass, a columnist formerly with the Chicago Tribune, was demoted after back-stabbing liberal co-workers at the Trib complained that his column on Soros and the leftist “prosecutors” he funds was anti-Semitic. They lied and they know it.

Kass’ new columns and his podcasts can be found at JohnKassNews.com.

In his latest podcast Kass interviewed former local and federal prosecutor Robert Milan. It was a wide-ranging conversation, but I want to focus on his comments on the no-cash bail law, which is absurdly known as the SAFE-T Act.

“The new bill is going to make it easier to get out [of jail], Milan said, “in 2023 this already dire situation is going to get worse.”

He continued, “People have to organize victims of crimes and stand up and say, ‘This isn’t going to happen.”

Milan added, “Dangerous people should not be on the streets, period.”

So far in 2021, again as I mentioned last week, 56 people, as reported by CWB Chicago, have been accused of “killing, trying to kill, or shooting someone in Chicago this year while awaiting trial for a felony.”

A knee-jerk response of course is to vote-the-bums-out. That’s not so easy in Illinois, which, after a third-straight decennial redistricting, is burdened by gerrymandered districts designed to benefit the Democrats. Still, now is the time for Illinois’ feckless Republican Party to find an issue to rally on–and present itself as the party of personal safety. 

I believe the fight against no-cash bail will be up to rank-and-file Illinoisans, especially crime victims. The no-cash bail law, which fortunately still allows the most-heinous accused criminals to be locked up without bail, was largely a project of African-American legislators. But it is minorities, particularly blacks, who are usually the victims of violent crimes, particularly murder. 

Let’s get going, Illinois. Let’s get organized. Let’s make it not happen.

We’ve tried fighting crime the leftist way. It doesn’t work.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Chicago already has a Waukesha problem

By John Ruberry

Last Sunday a career criminal, Darrell Brooks Jr, allegedly drove his SUV into a parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin, killing six people and injuring dozens of others. He was out on $1,000 bail, an amount deemed “inappropriately low” the next day by the Milwaukee County district attorney, John T. Chisholm. Earlier this month Brooks allegedly ran over the mother of one his children in that same SUV. 

Chisholm is one of many woke prosecutors elected in major metropolitan areas who believe in “affordable” or even no bail for individuals accused of violent crimes. Others include Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, who faces a recall election next year, George Gascón in Los Angeles County, Larry Krasner in Philadelphia, and Kim Foxx in Cook County, Illinois, where Chicago is the county seat. Many of their campaigns accepted contribution from sources tied to radical leftist George Soros. 

Foxx, whose title is Cook County state’s attorney, made a national name for herself after dropping charges involving the hate crime hoax engineered by former Empire star Jussie Smollett. He was charged again after a special prosecutor was appointed after the uproar in response to Foxx dropped those charges. Smollett’s trial begins tomorrow.

But what is far worse than that is Foxx’s weak bail policy involving accused felons.

As I’ve mentioned before at Da Tech Guy, if you want to get the true story of how violent crime is devastating Chicago and its inner suburbs, you need to regularly visit CWB Chicago. Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Chicago Tribune–more on them in a bit–the Chicago Sun-Times, and the broadcast TV station websites document many violent crimes, particularly the murders. But CWB provides the indispensable back story. 

Since New Year’s Day CWB Chicago has been documenting individuals “accused of killing, trying to kill, or shooting someone in Chicago this year while awaiting trial for a felony.” With a little more than a month left in 2021 CWB Chicago has discovered 55 such people. Of those, 26 of them are accused of murder–and two others are charged with reckless homicide involving a vehicle. That brings us to a total of 28 fatalities. 

Here is a list of some of those deadly 26:

#8: “Highly active” gang member charged with killing rival over haircut — while on affordable bail (March 4, 2021)
#9: On bail for five burglaries, man set fire to home, killing girlfriend and 10-year-old girl, prosecutors say (March 12, 2021)
#16: Man chased down and killed victim while on electronic monitoring for gun case, prosecutors say (April 18, 2021)
#18: Man charged murder of 7-year-old at McDonald’s drive-thru has 2 pending felony cases, prosecutors say (April 25, 2021)
#19: Second man charged with killing 7-year-old at McDonald’s was on 4 felony bonds, including robbery and gun cases (May 1, 2021)
#27: Teen charged with killing 73-year-old carjacking victim was AWOL in felony stolen car case, prosecutors say (July 17, 2021)
#32: Teen with pending felony gun case shot man dead over shoulder bump, prosecutors say (July 28, 2021)
#35: Man murdered another in cold blood while on bond for gun case, prosecutors say (August 12, 2021)
#42: Man killed 1, injured 3 in expressway shooting while on bond for attempted murder, prosecutor say (September 11, 2021)
#48: Five-time felon killed his own cousin while on electronic monitoring for pending narcotics case, prosecutors say (November 3, 2021)
#55: Man killed 2, shot 3 more while awaiting trial for carjacking, prosecutors say (November 28, 2021)

The complete CWB Chicago list, as of November 28, is here.

What else is there to be found in that back story?

Last summer John Kass, then a Chicago Tribune columnist, wrote a column about the rise in crime in big cities that have woke prosecutors whose campaigns were funded by Soros. Kass was attacked and essentially demoted when co-workers of his, by way of their union, the Chicago Tribune Guild, claimed that the Soros column was anti-Semitic. Soros, a Holocaust survivor, is by most accounts a secular Jew. Kass never mentioned the religion or ethnicity of Soros in that column. So why was Kass attacked? Because he was on to something, the truth that is, about Soros and those catch-and-release prosecutors.

By the way when I first heard of Soros I figured he was a Greek-American As for Kass, who is a Greek-American, well he’s also a big fan of CWB Chicago. A few months ago he accepted a buyout from the new owners of the Trib. He has his own site that I regularly visit. A site, as he mentioned in one of his Chicago Way podcasts, where he is allowed to use the word “riot,” which he wasn’t able to do when he was with the Tribune.

Clearly Chicago and Cook County–I live in suburban Cook–has an ongoing Waukesha problem. So far my family and friends have not been affected by the increase in violent crime here. Although on Thanksgiving I had to explain to my daughter and her cousins what to do if they hear gunfire.

And as bad as Kim Foxx is–she doesn’t deserve all of the blame. Although a hardened leftist as well, Chicago’s mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has chilly relations with Foxx, a member of a rival political camp. But Lightfoot endorsed Foxx when she faced a tough Democratic primary last year. Lightfoot’s feckless police commissioner, David Brown, does Lightfoot’s bidding. The mayor pledged to reduce crime as a candidate–but crime has instead soared. Chicago already has endured more murders in 2021 than in any year since 1996.

Illinois’ governor, JB Pritzker, was seemingly talking tough last month when he said that Chicago is “nearly at a state of emergency in our need to address crime.” Then Pritzker got silent on the subject–presumably after he remembered that like Lightfoot and Foxx, he is a Democrat. Oops.

In 2023 Illinois becomes the first state to without cash bail. Pritzker signed that bill into law earlier this year. Judges will be able to jail those accused of serious crimes.

Oh, what about Cook County judges? Circuit court judges are elected here–and once on the bench they face a retention vote every six years. Typically nearly all judges are retained. It’s time that voters take a close look at the role that judges play in the catch-and-release atmosphere in Cook County.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.