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top of the heap to third world status in one generation
- Thread starter Gry
- Start date
The Pentagon Has Been Recolonizing University Campuses—Why Aren’t More Students Protesting?
Protest against military influence at the University of Michigan during the 1960s. [Source: umich.edu] Once upon a time getting a college degree meant reading classic literature and philosophy, lea…
covertactionmagazine.com
Three Berries
Active member
Here's Chicago's new mayors plan.
The “Better Chicago Agenda”
Johnson predicts his “Better Chicago Agenda” will generate $800 million in new revenue for the city by taxing “the suburbs, airlines and ultra-rich.” In reality, this spate of new tax hikes would hit small businesses and working-class Chicagoans when they can least afford it.
- $98 million from “making the big airlines pay for polluting the air” in Chicago neighborhoods
- $400 million over four years from raising the real estate transfer tax on properties worth more than $1 million, which in addition to high-end homes will likely impact rents and prices as it hits apartment buildings and commercial properties.
- $100 million from new “user fees on high-end commercial districts frequented by the wealthy, suburbanites, tourists and business travelers.”
- Over $20 million from reinstating the $4-a-month-per-employee “head tax” on “large companies” that perform at least half their work in Chicago.
- $100 million from taxing financial transactions at a rate of $1 or $2 for every “securities trading contract.”
- $30 million from increasing Chicago’s already near nation-leading hotel tax
A joint statement released by business leaders in Chicago’s manufacturing, retail, housing and hotel industries warned this “extreme tax increase plan would devastate Chicago and cost countless jobs.”
Johnson’s ability to pass components of his $800 million tax plan is also hampered by existing state laws and the Illinois Constitution.
The mayor and City Council have the authority to reinstate the business employee head-tax, hike the hotel tax and impose a broad range of user fees thanks to Chicago’s home rule status. A “home rule” municipality can exercise any power and perform any function not specifically prohibited by state law.
Johnson still won’t be able to institute his financial transaction tax or his mansion tax without the support of a three-fifths majority of the Illinois General Assembly, or a voter referendum.
The Illinois Constitution would allow Johnson to raise Chicago’s jet fuel tax but prevent him from spending the revenue on anything except transportation.
Ties to the Chicago Teachers Union
Before announcing his run for Chicago mayor, Johnson served four years as a Cook County Commissioner under Board President Toni Preckwinkle and as a lobbyist for the Chicago Teachers Union from 2011 until November 2023.
In that time, Johnson helped to organize three citywide teacher strikes in 2012, 2019 and an illegal walkout in 2022.
During one candidate forum Johnson was asked to name an issue he disagrees with CTU leadership on. He did not answer the question. He recently named CTU’s chief of staff as a deputy mayor.
For at least the past five years, Johnson has been on the union payroll and taken in over $390,000 as a “legislative coordinator,” according to documents CTU filed with the U.S. Department of Labor.
Campaign finance disclosures also show nearly 91% of Johnson’s election contributions came from 27 labor unions, with the CTU alone spending nearly $2.3 million to put him in the mayor’s office.
Members of the Chicago Teachers Union filed an unfair labor practice complaint against union leadership in late March after plaintiffs allege members’ dues were misused to fund Johnson’s campaign.
Now, Johnson will be responsible for negotiating new labor contracts with his former union employers on the taxpayers’ behalf.
Johnson defeated Lightfoot and later challenger Paul Vallas in the April 4 runoff election. He won with about 51% of the total vote.
Johnson inherits from Lightfoot a city with the following challenges and the potential for his tax hikes to make the issues worse.
- Johnson’s first budget for 2024 will face an estimated budget shortfall of $85 million, followed by a $125 million gap in 2025 and $145 million gap in 2026.
- Chicago’s property tax levy has nearly doubled in the past decade, currently at $1.73 billion compared to $860 million in 2014. More than 80% goes to fund its pension systems.
- Chicago’s core pension systems plus the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund have a combined pension debt of nearly $48 billion. That is currently more pension debt than 44 U.S. states have.
What to know before Brandon Johnson becomes mayor of Chicago
Former Cook County Commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union lobbyist Brandon Johnson will be sworn in as the 57th mayor of Chicago May 15. Here’s what Chicagoans should know about his political ties, policy proposals and prospects.
The better lesson of George Washington's cherry tree
There's more to the fable than the message that people of character don't lie
www.upstateamerican.com
Long before it became politically fashionable to dispute the myths of impeccable virtue that had grown around our nation’s founders, we figured out that George Washington probably did not, in fact, chop down a cherry tree when he was six years old and then promptly admit guilt to his annoyed father.
The story was first told by Mason Locke Weems, an itinerant preacher and bookseller, who quickly produced a profitable biography shortly after Washington’s 1799 death. “I can’t tell a lie, Pa; you know I can’t tell a lie. I did cut it with my hatchet,” Weems quotes the little boy blurting out.
But the cherry tree tale did not appear until the fifth edition of the book, in 1806, and Weems credited an unnamed elderly woman who said she knew the family.
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If Parson Weems were a 21st-century journalist, of course, his editor would bark that a single anonymous source isn’t enough to make a story credible. Still, the tale of the chopped cherry tree, true or not, has endured for more than two centuries as the best-known anecdote about the Father of our Country, one even now faithfully related to children as a lesson in morality: Little George could not tell a lie, and neither should you.
Quaint idea, truth-telling, don’t you think? It’s a mark of how far we’ve fallen in our expectations of public servants that the leading contender for the presidential nomination of one of our two major political parties is an inveterate liar — or is he a congenital liar, or a sociopathic liar? — and he has a very good chance right now of being our president again come 2025. Certainly Donald Trump is in a class all his own, as we are reminded by his firehose of falsehoods that drenched a live CNN broadcast this week.
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But before we start comparing liars in politics — note, please, this week’s indictment of George Santos, no slouch as a prevaricator — we might want to reframe what sort of integrity, exactly, we ought to expect from those in public life.
Is it that they must speak the truth, with all the earnestness we imagined in young GW? Or do we simply need politicians to take responsibility for their actions? There’s a difference: Our democratic institutions can tolerate moderate fibbing, but when our leaders shirk responsibility for what they’ve done or need to do, our system is at risk.
In fact, most of the crises on our horizon could be solved if those who we’ve elected would shoulder their responsibilities. Let me offer three examples that just now threaten to upend whatever tranquility may remain for ourselves and our posterity, as our founders might have phrased it.
Take the looming crisis over the federal debt limit. For a member of Congress to vote against raising the debt ceiling in the coming weeks, no matter what excuse might be offered, would be like me declining to pay my credit card bill: “Yeah, I wanted to buy that stuff, but you mean I have to pay for it, too? Hah, sucker!”
One-fourth of today’s total federal debt was added during the Trump administration, some of it for Covid relief and a big chunk because of the drain on the Treasury from Trump’s tax cut, which mainly benefited higher-income taxpayers and corporations.
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Now the Republicans who control the U.S. House don’t want to pay those bills, though they’re happy to take credit for what the debt has bought, and though they joined Democrats in voting three times during the Trump years to raise the debt limit.
How can you vote to increase the debt, but then refuse to support the legislation that would allow the government to pay that debt? Only by blithely refusing to take responsibility for your actions. Maybe things would be better now if members of Congress (average age: 58) had taken a different message from the story of George Washington’s cherry tree caper in their childhood. “I can’t fail to do what’s right, Pa,” little George might have said. “You know I have to take responsibility for my own actions.”
The crisis on America’s southern border, likewise, is a direct result of lawmakers failing to take responsibility for an issue that has been confronting the nation for decades. Ten years ago, a bipartisan group of eight senators pulled together a comprehensive immigration package that cleared the Senate. It was a memorable moment, as key members of both parties — including Chuck Schumer among Democrats and Republicans Marco Rubio and Lindsay Graham — took seriously the responsibility of a rich nation to temper the expectations and hopes of citizens of poorer countries in its hemisphere.
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But demagoguery quickly took over. Conservative Republicans, empowered by the tea party movement of the time, saw more benefit in using immigration as a political cudgel than in solving the problem, and forced the House speaker, John Boehner, to pull the bill from the calendar. Even the bill’s authors retreated to the safer ground of appeasing primary voters who responded to exaggerated fears fueled by Fox News. Now it would be even harder to implement the solutions that in past years might have prevented the surge that is overwhelming our southern border. Blame should properly be assigned to those who refused to take responsibility for the matter when a solution was at hand.
And what about the nation’s epidemic of gun violence? You may blame the easy accessibility of firearms: With about 120 guns for every 100 citizens, the United States is the only country with more civilian-owned firearms than people, which can’t be coincidental with this being the only nation with so many gun crimes.
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Potential solutions were stymied after the Supreme Court in 2008 radically reinterpreted the 2nd Amendment, ruling 5-4 in the Heller case that individual citizens have a constitutional right to carry arms in self-defense, a view that had been rejected in hundreds of prior cases.
Supreme Court decisions don’t arise in a vacuum. Heller happened because nobody took responsibility for stopping the race-inspired four-decade arming of America. Only in the 1960s did gun rights begin to emerge as a potent issue -- after the Black Panthers advanced the notion of an individual’s right to be armed, which prompted the National Rifle Association to take the same stance. As the NRA accumulated political power, it reshaped the view of guns in America, notes Timothy Walbeck, director of Temple University’s Center for Anti-Racism: “That fear became baked into the propaganda for gun ownership that we still hear in a coded way today: ‘You need a gun because what happens if a scary Black person comes at you and you can’t defend yourself?’ ”
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Where were the public officials who might have calmed Americans’ fears and turned down the heated rhetoric that made guns today the nation’s leading public health threat? Too many of them were eager to capitalize on racism and fear in their own drive to win and hold power.
And what about today’s lawmakers? Because Supreme Court justices have lifetime appointments, senators who stacked the court with a right-wing majority during the Trump administration have likely blocked the path for rethinking the murderous Heller ruling for a generation to come. An appropriate shouldering of responsibility for that offense might be a multi-pronged anti-violence initiative – including funds for public education and reinvestment in communities wracked by poverty, which often breeds violence. That, too, would require politicians to adopt a solutions-oriented approach, rather than responding to mass shootings with a shrug and a prayer.
In each of those issues — gun violence, immigration, the federal debt — it may seem naïve to expect our leaders to take responsibility for today’s challenges, since people seem to get re-elected even as they avoid the hard task of solutions. But a key impediment may be politicians’ own sense that it wouldn’t matter — that change won’t happen, anyway.
Social scientists have found that to be true in individuals: People are more likely to take responsibility for change based on how strongly they believe that change is possible, according to researchers at Stanford University.
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Tragically, today’s political dysfunction seems to be feeding on itself, causing politicians to lose initiative because they think they can’t be effective, anyway. Yet it has always been easier to blame somebody else for a problem than to take on the responsibility for your own role in the problem’s creation, or your opportunity to help shape its solution.
That’s not a phenomenon of just this era. “One of the most common tendencies of human nature,” Martin Luther King Jr. said, in a sermon he wrote in 1953, “is that of placing responsibility on some external agency for sins we have committed or mistakes we have made. We are forever attempting to find some scapegoat on which we cast responsibility for our actions.”
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Maybe we wouldn’t be so inclined to do that if we had absorbed the more useful lesson from young George Washington’s misdeed with his hatchet — not only that it’s wrong to lie, but that it’s admirable to take responsibility for our own actions and for the tasks at hand.
Though, certainly, you could look back much further than colonial America if you want antecedent for today’s irresponsibility.
In the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden, Adam blames Eve for giving him the forbidden fruit. Eve, for her part, blames the serpent who enticed her. Apparently disgusted with the perfidy of his creation, God tells Adam, “You are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
Indeed. In the meantime, we have a chance to take responsibility for making things better. Or, of course, we could simply shrug off our failures, or blame others. Taking the latter course invites appropriately harsh judgment.
Slow learners, these humans.
Thank you for reading THE UPSTATE AMERICAN. This post is public so feel free to share it.
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There Is a Man Running for President Whose Father and Uncle Were Murdered By The CIA
Dr Joseph Sansone
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has sparked quite a bit of interest and excitement. Shockingly at first glance, RFK Jr. has openly stated that his uncle John F. Kennedy (former president) was assassinated by the CIA and has inferred CIA involvement in his father’s death. Robert F. Kennedy was the U.S. District attorney, then a U.S. Senator, and was assassinated the night he won the California Democratic primary for president in 1968. I say shockingly at first glance, because RFK Jr. may be openly saying this as a bit of an insurance policy. Even the mind numb might question the mathematical probability of another lone gunman or plane crash. (JFK Jr.)
There may be another reason why RFK Jr. is likely safe. The system is rigged. Over a period of 20 years starting with the JFK assassination and ending with the attempted assassination of president Reagan, there were quite a few political assassinations and attempted assassinations. JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X, were all assassinated. George Wallace and Ronald Reagan survived attempted assassinations. This is quite a few political assassinations and attempted assassinations over a 20 or so year period.
What changed?
It may be that a softer less volatile approach was used. Simply stated, the system became increasingly rigged and the need to take out political opposition or anybody that rocked the boat was no longer necessary. This happened in the 1990s for certain. There was never a need to assassinate Patrick J. Buchanan, because after an orchestrated mass media campaign to assassinate his character, he was censored and marginalized increasingly through the nineties until total cancellation in the 2000 campaign. You remember, that was when Bush and Gore did that dog and pony show with the butterfly ballots, which gave us slot machine, I mean, computerized voting.
In the 1996 campaign where Buchanan almost ran away with he GOP nomination, many activists at the time felt that cheating occurred in the Arizona primary, where Buchanan went from first place to third in a flash on election night. The Dole campaign thought they lost and actually asked Buchanan’s campaign if they would take over the lease of their jet.
Then, in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, Ron Paul was largely censored and marginalized. By this time they no longer hid it, and even had candidates sit at the far end of the stage during debates, and were denied equal speaking time. There was also the orchestrated mass media character assassination. You remember the ‘crazy uncle Ron’ comments.
Hmmm….I am thinking that as an OBGYN, doctor Paul would never of suggested his pregnant patients get the C19 bioweapon shots. Not so crazy…The CDC gave millions to OBGYN groups to push the shots on innocent pregnant women, knowing the Pfizer data revealed the shots were deadly for fetuses. I know off topic…
Somehow Trump broke the algorithm in the 2016 election, and the reaction to that was fake elections to a much higher degree than in the past. It wasn’t enough to control the system to ensure your preapproved candidate got elected. In 2020 it was a blatant steal where the votes stopped counting on election night in several states, and then they started counting the next day until they finally created enough votes.
True, there is a bit of speculation above regarding the 20 or so years of violent assassinations and why it seemed to have stopped. Still, it seems like the MK Ultra program was redirected toward school shootings and creating riots and such, instead of targeting high profile political figures that rock the boat with disaffected lone gunmen.
Essentially, the political divide that really mattered over the last 40 years has been the divide between globalism and patriotism. It is a basic divide between those that seek a global totalitarianism, a top down technocratic system, verses those that seek basic self government. The deep state has increasingly been controlling the system, this includes media, corporations, politicians, academia, money, and government. The deep state is a domestic and international operation.
Back to RFK Jr. The interesting thing about RFK Jr. is that he is calling out WHO, the WEF, Klaus Schwab, and so on, for attempting to create a totalitarian global system of government. He has even offered up free market capitalism as a way to deal with pollution and has positioned himself as a rational environmentalist by asserting that the globalists are using climate change to push totalitarianism. Polling around 20% in the Democratic primary, according to RFK Jr., his internal poll numbers are higher among independents, and he is doing well with Republicans. If accurate, this would mean he would be very strong against Trump if he won the Democratic nomination. Then again, we know the system is rigged, which means they will shut him out and cheat on the computerized voting. Trump will be shut out too, but it may be impossible to cheat him out of the GOP nomination.
Settle down, I am not on the RFK Jr. bandwagon. Too far to the left for me. Although in the interview linked in the paragraph above, Mike Adams, has a healthy view of supporting Trump for the GOP nomination, and RFK Jr. for the DNC nomination. Both candidates are running on anti globalism platforms.
Leaving the rigged system aside for a moment. RFK Jr.’s campaign is sure to wake up many Democrats that have had people they know and love die from the bioweapon shots. His campaign may break the spell for many that have been brainwashed to believe all the lies the government, media, and corporations have said. His campaign may actually cause many people to realize they have been doing the Goose Step for the past three plus years. RFK Jr., as far as I know, has not admitted the C19 shots are biological weapons. Still, he is the only candidate running for president, in either party, that says these shots are causing harm and should be off the market.
RFK Jr. even mentions the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and speaks against the totalitarian system being created right before our eyes. He defends the first amendment. Will he defend the second amendment? Others on the left have moved on this issue. Naomi Wolf comes to mind. RFK Jr. also has addressed election integrity and the need for paper ballots, at least as a back up, to verify election results. This is something DeSantis is against.
He may be too right wing for the Democratic party…. Or maybe he will wake up some within the Democratic party to realize just how fascist they have become.
One thing is for certain. There is a man running for president that has openly called out the CIA for murdering his uncle, and likely murdering his father. That alone is a victory of sorts.
josephsansone.substack.com
Dr Joseph Sansone
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has sparked quite a bit of interest and excitement. Shockingly at first glance, RFK Jr. has openly stated that his uncle John F. Kennedy (former president) was assassinated by the CIA and has inferred CIA involvement in his father’s death. Robert F. Kennedy was the U.S. District attorney, then a U.S. Senator, and was assassinated the night he won the California Democratic primary for president in 1968. I say shockingly at first glance, because RFK Jr. may be openly saying this as a bit of an insurance policy. Even the mind numb might question the mathematical probability of another lone gunman or plane crash. (JFK Jr.)
There may be another reason why RFK Jr. is likely safe. The system is rigged. Over a period of 20 years starting with the JFK assassination and ending with the attempted assassination of president Reagan, there were quite a few political assassinations and attempted assassinations. JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcom X, were all assassinated. George Wallace and Ronald Reagan survived attempted assassinations. This is quite a few political assassinations and attempted assassinations over a 20 or so year period.
What changed?
It may be that a softer less volatile approach was used. Simply stated, the system became increasingly rigged and the need to take out political opposition or anybody that rocked the boat was no longer necessary. This happened in the 1990s for certain. There was never a need to assassinate Patrick J. Buchanan, because after an orchestrated mass media campaign to assassinate his character, he was censored and marginalized increasingly through the nineties until total cancellation in the 2000 campaign. You remember, that was when Bush and Gore did that dog and pony show with the butterfly ballots, which gave us slot machine, I mean, computerized voting.
In the 1996 campaign where Buchanan almost ran away with he GOP nomination, many activists at the time felt that cheating occurred in the Arizona primary, where Buchanan went from first place to third in a flash on election night. The Dole campaign thought they lost and actually asked Buchanan’s campaign if they would take over the lease of their jet.
Then, in the 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns, Ron Paul was largely censored and marginalized. By this time they no longer hid it, and even had candidates sit at the far end of the stage during debates, and were denied equal speaking time. There was also the orchestrated mass media character assassination. You remember the ‘crazy uncle Ron’ comments.
Hmmm….I am thinking that as an OBGYN, doctor Paul would never of suggested his pregnant patients get the C19 bioweapon shots. Not so crazy…The CDC gave millions to OBGYN groups to push the shots on innocent pregnant women, knowing the Pfizer data revealed the shots were deadly for fetuses. I know off topic…
Somehow Trump broke the algorithm in the 2016 election, and the reaction to that was fake elections to a much higher degree than in the past. It wasn’t enough to control the system to ensure your preapproved candidate got elected. In 2020 it was a blatant steal where the votes stopped counting on election night in several states, and then they started counting the next day until they finally created enough votes.
True, there is a bit of speculation above regarding the 20 or so years of violent assassinations and why it seemed to have stopped. Still, it seems like the MK Ultra program was redirected toward school shootings and creating riots and such, instead of targeting high profile political figures that rock the boat with disaffected lone gunmen.
Essentially, the political divide that really mattered over the last 40 years has been the divide between globalism and patriotism. It is a basic divide between those that seek a global totalitarianism, a top down technocratic system, verses those that seek basic self government. The deep state has increasingly been controlling the system, this includes media, corporations, politicians, academia, money, and government. The deep state is a domestic and international operation.
Back to RFK Jr. The interesting thing about RFK Jr. is that he is calling out WHO, the WEF, Klaus Schwab, and so on, for attempting to create a totalitarian global system of government. He has even offered up free market capitalism as a way to deal with pollution and has positioned himself as a rational environmentalist by asserting that the globalists are using climate change to push totalitarianism. Polling around 20% in the Democratic primary, according to RFK Jr., his internal poll numbers are higher among independents, and he is doing well with Republicans. If accurate, this would mean he would be very strong against Trump if he won the Democratic nomination. Then again, we know the system is rigged, which means they will shut him out and cheat on the computerized voting. Trump will be shut out too, but it may be impossible to cheat him out of the GOP nomination.
Settle down, I am not on the RFK Jr. bandwagon. Too far to the left for me. Although in the interview linked in the paragraph above, Mike Adams, has a healthy view of supporting Trump for the GOP nomination, and RFK Jr. for the DNC nomination. Both candidates are running on anti globalism platforms.
Leaving the rigged system aside for a moment. RFK Jr.’s campaign is sure to wake up many Democrats that have had people they know and love die from the bioweapon shots. His campaign may break the spell for many that have been brainwashed to believe all the lies the government, media, and corporations have said. His campaign may actually cause many people to realize they have been doing the Goose Step for the past three plus years. RFK Jr., as far as I know, has not admitted the C19 shots are biological weapons. Still, he is the only candidate running for president, in either party, that says these shots are causing harm and should be off the market.
RFK Jr. even mentions the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and speaks against the totalitarian system being created right before our eyes. He defends the first amendment. Will he defend the second amendment? Others on the left have moved on this issue. Naomi Wolf comes to mind. RFK Jr. also has addressed election integrity and the need for paper ballots, at least as a back up, to verify election results. This is something DeSantis is against.
He may be too right wing for the Democratic party…. Or maybe he will wake up some within the Democratic party to realize just how fascist they have become.
One thing is for certain. There is a man running for president that has openly called out the CIA for murdering his uncle, and likely murdering his father. That alone is a victory of sorts.
Note: a reader rightly pointed out that I forgot to mention the Ford assassination attempt, which if carried to fruition would have made Rockefeller president.
There Is a Man Running for President Whose Father and Uncle Were Murdered By The CIA
Robert Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign has sparked quite a bit of interest and excitement. Shockingly at first glance, RFK Jr. has openly stated that his uncle John F. Kennedy (former president) was assassinated by the CIA and has inferred CIA involvement
josephsansone.substack.com
Three Berries
Active member
Three Berries
Active member
Santos LOL Judas Goat and Fraud from day one! About as believable as Jucci.
Here are some of the Chicago residents who were promised help by the Progressive Democrat lead government. Quite angry with the city housing illegals in the building that were promised to help alleviate US citizens issues.
It may be White Supremacy or even Fascism if you have Cognitive Dissonance.
A community of Biden voters in Chicago complains about the consequences of their actions.
Here are some of the Chicago residents who were promised help by the Progressive Democrat lead government. Quite angry with the city housing illegals in the building that were promised to help alleviate US citizens issues.
It may be White Supremacy or even Fascism if you have Cognitive Dissonance.
A community of Biden voters in Chicago complains about the consequences of their actions.
I'm very interested to hear what you believe 'cognitive dissonance' means.
Three Berries
Active member
I bet. Then you can insult me with those thoughts of yours.
Chicago has been Dem run for a century and now mostly democratically elected Black run. Look in the mirror for a good example of CD.
7 generations of welfare produces this.
Chicago was the home of the most vile and murderous attacks against labor that this country has known.
Dallas was the third choice of sites to murder JFK, Miami was second, while Chicago was the first choice.
Crediting the dems for the effect of generations of organized crime is neither original, nor appropriate.
As any fan of the Chicago Blues knows, it has always been "large business interests" that run the city.
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Here's Chicago's new mayors plan.
The “Better Chicago Agenda”
Johnson predicts his “Better Chicago Agenda” will generate $800 million in new revenue for the city by taxing “the suburbs, airlines and ultra-rich.” In reality, this spate of new tax hikes would hit small businesses and working-class Chicagoans when they can least afford it.
While Johnson said he doesn’t believe raising these taxes will drive businesses and residents from Chicago, a recent survey found 34% of Chicagoans would leave the city if given the opportunity, citing taxes and affordability as their No. 2 concern behind crime. That ignores six major companies that already left in the past year.
- $98 million from “making the big airlines pay for polluting the air” in Chicago neighborhoods
- $400 million over four years from raising the real estate transfer tax on properties worth more than $1 million, which in addition to high-end homes will likely impact rents and prices as it hits apartment buildings and commercial properties.
- $100 million from new “user fees on high-end commercial districts frequented by the wealthy, suburbanites, tourists and business travelers.”
- Over $20 million from reinstating the $4-a-month-per-employee “head tax” on “large companies” that perform at least half their work in Chicago.
- $100 million from taxing financial transactions at a rate of $1 or $2 for every “securities trading contract.”
- $30 million from increasing Chicago’s already near nation-leading hotel tax
A joint statement released by business leaders in Chicago’s manufacturing, retail, housing and hotel industries warned this “extreme tax increase plan would devastate Chicago and cost countless jobs.”
Johnson’s ability to pass components of his $800 million tax plan is also hampered by existing state laws and the Illinois Constitution.
The mayor and City Council have the authority to reinstate the business employee head-tax, hike the hotel tax and impose a broad range of user fees thanks to Chicago’s home rule status. A “home rule” municipality can exercise any power and perform any function not specifically prohibited by state law.
Johnson still won’t be able to institute his financial transaction tax or his mansion tax without the support of a three-fifths majority of the Illinois General Assembly, or a voter referendum.
The Illinois Constitution would allow Johnson to raise Chicago’s jet fuel tax but prevent him from spending the revenue on anything except transportation.
Ties to the Chicago Teachers Union
Before announcing his run for Chicago mayor, Johnson served four years as a Cook County Commissioner under Board President Toni Preckwinkle and as a lobbyist for the Chicago Teachers Union from 2011 until November 2023.
In that time, Johnson helped to organize three citywide teacher strikes in 2012, 2019 and an illegal walkout in 2022.
During one candidate forum Johnson was asked to name an issue he disagrees with CTU leadership on. He did not answer the question. He recently named CTU’s chief of staff as a deputy mayor.
For at least the past five years, Johnson has been on the union payroll and taken in over $390,000 as a “legislative coordinator,” according to documents CTU filed with the U.S. Department of Labor.
Campaign finance disclosures also show nearly 91% of Johnson’s election contributions came from 27 labor unions, with the CTU alone spending nearly $2.3 million to put him in the mayor’s office.
Members of the Chicago Teachers Union filed an unfair labor practice complaint against union leadership in late March after plaintiffs allege members’ dues were misused to fund Johnson’s campaign.
Now, Johnson will be responsible for negotiating new labor contracts with his former union employers on the taxpayers’ behalf.
Johnson defeated Lightfoot and later challenger Paul Vallas in the April 4 runoff election. He won with about 51% of the total vote.
Johnson inherits from Lightfoot a city with the following challenges and the potential for his tax hikes to make the issues worse.
- Johnson’s first budget for 2024 will face an estimated budget shortfall of $85 million, followed by a $125 million gap in 2025 and $145 million gap in 2026.
- Chicago’s property tax levy has nearly doubled in the past decade, currently at $1.73 billion compared to $860 million in 2014. More than 80% goes to fund its pension systems.
- Chicago’s core pension systems plus the Chicago Teachers Pension Fund have a combined pension debt of nearly $48 billion. That is currently more pension debt than 44 U.S. states have.
What to know before Brandon Johnson becomes mayor of Chicago
Former Cook County Commissioner and Chicago Teachers Union lobbyist Brandon Johnson will be sworn in as the 57th mayor of Chicago May 15. Here’s what Chicagoans should know about his political ties, policy proposals and prospects.www.illinoispolicy.org
Where's yours?
Chicago has a police force that has long been infamous for the extent of it's corruption.
That you ignore that history, as you credit the democrats for any fault, is entirely too rich,
and just what I would expect from a waterboy for the forces of fascism.
That you ignore that history, as you credit the democrats for any fault, is entirely too rich,
and just what I would expect from a waterboy for the forces of fascism.
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Just as I thought. You do not know and are applying the expression inaccurately.
Three Berries
Active member
They have dictionaries you know.
Three Berries
Active member
The history of organized crime in Chicago was extensive enough, it was the first of choice cities in which to murder JFK. I can well understand why you choose to ignore that, and blame others for your woes.
Three Berries
Active member
University courses are taught on the subject, I have posted them here repeatedly.
What you have provided us with is yet another demonstration that you lack enough care for
our history to have taken one.
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