Chicago Trembles at the Curses of Mayor Johnson
By John Kass
October 9, 2024
The people of Chicago know about Mayor Brandon Johnson’s panic attacks.
He just can’t handle the job.
And now the people of his city, including the property taxpayers, are about to have a series of panic attacks all their own. He’s unleashed two curses to hound them and haunt them.
They’re already suffering from violent crime and he’s also killing the public schools that is turning out yet another generation of young people without future, without hope.
The Chicago Public Schools can’t educate 300,000 students, most of whom are black and brown, all of whom are poor. They can’t read or do math at grade level. And even reaching the low standard of “grade level” won’t prepare them for future jobs. They won’t be hired. So what’s in store for them?
They’re being groomed by Johnson, and his former employers at the Chicago Teachers Union who run the Chicago Public Schools for a bleak future. It is the bleak future of government dependency and violent crime. It is Chicago as a lawless dystopian hell. It will devour what taxpayers remain.
The people of Chicago voted for this, and the newspapers that went woke and went along with Johnson’s idiocy, and so despite the current chorus of piteous cries, Chicago is getting what it wanted and what it deserves.
“More than 80 percent minority kids graduate from CPS, but only about 15 percent can read at grade level,” said Ted Dabrowski of https://wirepoints.org/ on this week’s Chicago Way podcast.
“So, they’ve moved through the system never able to really read, yet they’ll graduate them anyway,” Dabrowski said during the podcast, “and that’s the lie of the system, that’s the hypocrisy of the system, and that’s the racism of the system. Just move ‘em on, move ‘em up, get ‘em out.”
It is supremely racist but it is a system controlled for years by black Chicago Democrats, and the left–through the corrupt media–defines the terms. Johnson rushed out to do some damage control on Monday after his public-school board resigned because they did not want to borrow another $300 million at high interest to benefit CTU, leaving taxpayers further in debt.
Johnson was busy spinning, spinning, frantically playing the race card, and blaming everyone but the man responsible—himself.
Neutral correspondents who were having a beer or two at St. Joseph’s Society for Young Men on Franklin in Michigan City watched Johnson’s desperate and panicked media antics on Chicago WGN news. It dragged on and on and on. It was endless. Reporters now as always are so terrified by being called a racist by the Marxist bully in office that they kissed his behind or simply remained mum.
The consensus?
“All propaganda,” reported the neutral correspondents. “It was, in a word, ridiculous.
Unless you pay taxes in Illinois.
I doubt if Chicago’s media stars would call out Johnson for propaganda, no matter that it smelled of Gorgonzola cheese gone bad. On top of Johnson’s self-inflicted public-school disaster was another of his own making
Just a few weeks ago, Johsnon shocked crime-plagued Chicago by killing a proven law-enforcement tool, ShotSpotter.
He condemned ShotSpotter as “over policing.”
It led to arrests of street gang members, the type of thugs who terrorize taxpayers, neighborhoods and kill a city. Johnson’s race-inspired decision was selfish, yes, and exactly the kind of ugly racial politics that he used to win his mayoral election.
What bothered Johnson is that ShotSpotter led to arrests of too many minority gang members who were illegally shooting guns in the city. So, he killed it.
Now the editors at CWB Chicago—the crime reporting web site that covers crime because the woke Chicago newspapers prefer to avoid the subject—have produced an important new feature:
“On this page, CWB Chicago tracks incidents of people being found shot in areas previously served by ShotSpotter where the technology, had it not been dismantled, could have played a critical, helpful role. The most common scenarios are likely to be people being found shot without corresponding 911 calls of shots fired and people being found shot in areas where 911 callers provided inaccurate or overly broad locations of gunfire.”
The editors of CWB tally the dead. I think they should all be put in the lap of Mayor Panic Attacks.
The complete failure of Chicago’s mayor is clear to everyone but the morons who refuse to see and his ministers of propaganda.
Among them are Chicago’s Defund the Police Marxists, the ShotSpotter haters, Johnson’s true boss Stacy Davis Gates, president of the Chicago Teachers Union and his old boss Toni Preckwinkle, chairman of the Cook County Democrat Party and President of the Cook County Board of Commissioners.
It was Preckwinkle, who, along with the left-leaning Chicago media that foisted the do-nothing Soros prosecutor Kim Foxx on the people of Cook County (bless her heart) twice and tore up the city with violent crime.
Oh, yeah, and let’s not forget the angry Fat Boy himself, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Pritzker is a Democrat of gargantuan appetite who inherited billions and preens as he stands on third base, convinced that he hit a triple all by himself.
In taxpayer nightmares, you can imagine J.B completely naked, sprawled out face-down at the mouth of a cave on the edge of ruined Illinois, mouth wide open like some epic gigantic troll, eating everything and everyone trying to escape from his troll cave. And working his tongue around to dislodge mashed taxpayer bones.
On Monday, Mayor Johnson debuted his new Chicago Board of Education, offering rant after racist rant to cover his power grab after the old board resigned.
“… The people who are upset with me right now, as we shepherd and transition into this transformational moment … are the same people that watch black women cry when their jobs were being taken away from them, and then blame those black women for the conditions in which black children were being raised in abject poverty — [and] many of them are tied to administrations that not only closed schools and privatized assets, but shut down public housing, took the dedicated string for pensions and gave it to greedy corporate interests, spent all the money, left me with the bill, and now they’re mad that I’m actually doing what I promised I would do on behalf of parents, even though they have left a trail of harm.”
A trail of harm? Watch black women cry?
That’s simply pathetic, even if it comes from this Marxist fool who can’t sleep because of his panic attacks. How about black mothers crying because Mayor Panic Attacks runs a school system to imprison black children in misery. The KKK couldn’t have designed a more hateful system of “systemic racism” than Chicago Public Schools.
Bottom line? All the cynical race talk means nothing to the dead piling up after Johnson killed ShotSpotter. It means nothing to the children who won’t get an education and think they’re getting an education.
What has Chicago seen?
“All-out theft masquerading as some kind of benevolence for the kids they aren’t serving with an education,” said former Schools CEO Paul Vallas, the proven crisis manager rejected by Democrats and the Chicago media because he’s the wrong political color–white.
“Nobody is harming black children as much as Johnson and CTU leadership right now,” said Vallas. “They are cynically expanding the CTU’s monopoly and political power and not improving the education needed to improve black children’s lives.”
Wirepoints.org reports that at CPS in 2023 only 8 percent of black children were at grade level in math, and only just 17 percent were at grade level in reading. Among Hispanics, only 14 percent can do math at grade level, only 21 percent in reading. That’s not good enough.
The bare minimum won’t be enough for them to win a spot in the tech-heavy economy America is building.
Those 300,000 Chicago children are being prepared not for a successful productive career, but for prison. And if not prison, then a life languishing on what remains of welfare that you pay for.
And they become what they’ve been for generations now, a millstone around the neck of Chicago. I’ve written about it for years, and the Democrats played race. And the leftists tried drowning me out. They didn’t want to hear it.
“As for the mayor, he’s made a Faustian bargain with CTU leadership,” said Vallas. “And it means disaster not just for the schools but for the city as a whole.”
Vallas knew municipal finances. He understood crisis management. He cared deeply about the students. He buried many and tried to soothe their parents.
But Vallas wasn’t a great candidate. His flaw? He was too white for Chicago Democrats and the downtown media that is always drifting ever leftward. Just too damn white.
And Johnson was exactly who the Democrats of Chicago voted for, if they bothered to vote. He was the future that they wanted. And they got what they wanted.
Now Chicago can feel the chill and tremble, thinking on what is to come.
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About the author: John Kass spent decades as a political writer and news columnist in Chicago working at a major metropolitan newspaper. He is co-host of The Chicago Way podcast. And he just loves his “No Chumbolone” hat, because johnkassnews.com is a “No Chumbolone” Zone where you can always get a cup of common sense.
Comments 29
You stated it clear as day – the Chicago voters got what they “paid for”, got what they wanted, got what they deserved. The real culprit as far as I’m concerned is Toni Preckwinkle. Nobody else. SHE is the one who is destroying what was once a great city and wonderful place to grow up and live. SHE is the woke leftie getting criminals released if prosecuted at all. SHE is the one destroying the CTA and Metra. SHE is the true culprit behind the crusade to dismantle the RTA. She is the one pushing candidates like Foxx and Johnson. If you want pure evil, there it is, right in front of your face !
And please John, no more visuals of the Michelin Man laying naked anywhere…in a cave (without toilets, of course) on a street corner or in his bath tub. Unlike Qnol, it’s hard on the stomach !
You’ll see the same thing nationally soon. Blame and panic and wriggling. Preckwinkle is one. Kim Foxx is another. Pritzker too. My old newspaper that I loved, the Chicago Tribune will pretend it didn’t go woke to silence my voice. The Marxist union, the Tribune Guild will pretend it had not protected Johnson and Preckwinkle. And the usual lefty commentariat, some of whom you know. It will all be a lie. No memory, no fingerprints, just a violent dystopian wasteland. It was a great city once.
The utter stupidity and ignorance of a certain block of minority voters is stunning. Vilas could have a least made some kind of a dent in slowing the destruction of the city. Instead, based on only race, they elect a toy and tool of the teachers union (no less), and now they want us to bail their dipsh it decision out. Let them all rot. Seal the place and let it die.
So true and so sad Ken…..Toni the boss is ruining our once wonderful city step by step!
Chicago owes its demise to the low IQ voters, groomed by the local media.
God help us if this is a national trend. I fear it is, with the Harris/Walz Idiocracy heading our way.
John have you heard of the website Hayjackasschicago? It’s tracks crime in Chicago. Heartbreaking. But I’m sure Brandon will say there’s nothing to see there.
I have lived in this city my entire life. Some of us voters did not get we wanted. Some of us did not get we voted for. It’s very easy for the suburbanite that is a “pseudo” Chicagoan to wag their finger and say “see I told you so”.
Chicago always has been and will always be a race based city. Daley controlled race with power, Emanuel sold himself as a savior and once his show was over he knew it was time to pack.
White mayors were the norm for a while until the “I want mine” mentality became prevalent and the vote got sold as “now it’s our turn”. And the black city residents are right. It’s their turn. And they can see what they got when they stepped up to bat. If anyone thought the Sox had a deplorable team, take at look at the home team now.
Unfortunately this isn’t a game. It’s real life here. Many times real death. There is no easy fix. Paul Vallas was the obvious choice, but the voter that can’t read cannot know. All they can know is to pick the second name down and vote for “dat one”
Johnson should be a one term mayor. Should being the operative word here. People need to hit rock bottom before they realize there is nowhere to go but up. Voting for mayors in Chicago is very much like voting for Presidents in the United States. You vote for the lesser of two evils or you vote for the one that is the same color as your skin.
Should be. Even if he is the CTU will find another mouthpiece to carry the water. Maybe Johnson will move on to a job as a representative of the people in Washington DC. Moving pieces on the chessboard.
By the time BJ leaves, they’ll be no city left. Thanks mostly to the south and lake shore fools that put the likes of him there.
Great column. I love the faux outrage of the alderman who signed the petition. One, Bill Conway is more concerned with getting peaceful anti-abortion protesters off the street than he is with criminals in his district.
I predict the alderman that signed the petition will either kneel and prostate themselves in front of CTU royalty, or they will be primaried and lose their jobs in the next election.
The rich people of Chicago who have kids worry about random violence. But, they will do all they can to insulate themselves and their families from it. Private school. Private security. Secure buildings.
When the CTU and the rest of the Marxists go after big businesses and private property in Chicago it will be over. That’s coming sooner than one thinks because Marxists do not believe in private property rights, or the sanctity of capitalistic enterprises.
Don’t forget Conway campaigning against Trump instead of against Foxx. He ignores the fact that probably around 50% of African American voters in Cook County are favorably disposed to Trump, even if they cannot vote for him, because of miserable crooks thugs the Democrat party.
To an extent Vallas suffered the same fate. Many people like Trump but cannot vote for him because of corruption here. But they certainly aren’t going to vote for the guy who disses the Police Union because they are the one union which has show support for Trump.
Just a suicidal electoral strategy.
THAT is well said.
My whole life (I’m 74 yrs old), from growing up in Bridgeport to moving to the southwest suburbs, all I ever heard was that the key to breaking the poverty/welfare cycle was education. An education that could prepare young people to succeed in life and become good citizens.
After all these years the education in these government schools has continually declined no matter how much more and more money has been thrown at the problem. People who are wealthy and don’t live in the inner city have a choice of where they send their kids to school and overwhelmingly choose private schools. That goes for almost every Democrat politician in the state. Yet virtually all of the Democrat leaders in Illinois from J.B. Pritzker down vehemently oppose school choice for the very people who need it most, inner city poor people. Why is that?? Fealty to the CTU and it’s political clout. These schools are run for the benefit of the union, not the children These poor kids must go to the failure factories that the Democrat politicians and the CTU have created. Competition in schools with choice for all citizens would improve education immensely, but I’m sure that’s a racist thing.
If limiting poor people’s school choice and condemning them to a life of failure and crime isn’t racist, what is?
Unfortunately, the people who suffer most, are the ones who put these politicians in place. That and north shore libs like Pritzker.
WGN Televison gave BJ an hour and change of free air time during its regular news hour. I asked the Programming people at WGN This: ” Who ordered this combative and lengthy coverage? This seemed little more than propaganda. Did the advertisers approve of this use of their paid air-time during a news broadcast?”
Here was WGN’s non-answer ” At a time when Chicago’s public schools are of high interest to the city’s voters and taxpayers, WGN News felt it was important to broadcast the mayor’s news conference live and in full. It was a newsworthy event and covered by all of Chicago’s local news organizations.”
1. Who ordered it? No answer
2. Did the advertisers approve? No answer
World’s Goofiest Nit-wits
I watched that crap too, switching channels to no avail trying to get away from it. Alas, all the local news stations and their “reporters” were lying prostate while the “progressive” dictator (my liberal wife called him that, LOL) beat them with a stick. If they weren’t soooo beholden to the “progressive” nightmare they helped create, they’d have walked out in unison. Instead they showed viewers just how little they care about the citizens, themselves and their once-proud profession.
The marxist politicians whine incessantly about the income and class divide. They want the chumbalones to think that they (the marxists and the unions) have the answer. Unfortunately, all they do is promote the continuing divide by refusing to integrate all economic classes into a school system which serves all levels. Instead, they guarantee abysmal warehouses of low-income children while those who can afford it put their kids into schools which actually have standards and are true to their purpose.
The marxist political forces have nobody but themselves to blame.
Even the head of the CTU sends her kids to private schools. What does THAT tell you?
As an idealistic but naive 8th grade teacher in 1967 I argued with my principal about graduating a handful of students who were reading not at grade level but at SECOND grade level. That is “See Spot Run” level. He told me “Send them on”. No doubt they never made it beyond freshman year in high school. Things have not changed much I see. What a disaster.
Christopher:
You’re welcome to write that story for johnkassnews.com Write me at john@johnkassnews.com
Just as Kim Foxx did, BJ will be reelected—if he runs again. I share the sickening feeling in the gut many on this site feel. Still remember fondly living in peak Chicago. I fled so I’m not trying to lecture anyone who stayed to fight. But it’s over. Has been for a while.
I believe the Third World caliber of public education delivered by the Marxist teacher’s unions are a feature- not a defect.
Intelligence and mental acuity in a student body are anathema to those hoping to remain overlords to generations of serfs and subjects.
Γιάννη,
Doesn’t look like anything will change in our lifetimes. The city is done for, and unless the city and state administrations change, Chicago is doomed to become SanFran of the midwest. As Forest Gump so eloquently put it – stupid is as stupid does! (Last one out the door please turn off the lights!)
Mr. Manta, I admire your optimism expressed in your final statement – you are obviously very optimistic….you are assuming there will still be a “door” that hasn’t been stolen and that there will still BE electric power to be turned off and light fixtures not “appropriated”. Should be interesting, to say the least….
I graduated in 79’ from Prosser Vocational HS. We had some great teachers & some crappy teachers. Blacks have been complaining for decades, yet they vote the same idiots in office. Many vote based on color. Most of Chicagos top jobs in government are run by blacks. Blacks also have a larger ratio of the public sector jobs. Look at the Social Security Office, IDES, CTA, etc. Chicago is going to make Detroit look like Beverly Hills in the near future. Eventually Illinois will have to file for bankruptcy, but not until they can bleed residents dry. I’m headed to Chicago from NC & also looking at property near Carmel,Indiana & Kasso’s neck of the woods. As for how blacks vote, I’m doing the same. I’m voting for the white guy with orange hair.
“A vote is like a rifle; its usefulness depends upon the character of the user.”
– Theodore Roosevelt
“The KKK couldn’t have designed a more hateful system of “systemic racism” than Chicago Public Schools.:
Great line. Thanks John.
34% of eligible voters voted and BLM Panic attack got 19% of all eligible votes. Joe Trippe was sent by Preckwinkle to destroy Vallas from inside his campaign. Trippe sent the letter condemning CPD officers 10 days before the election (FFS). The proud 19th Ward sat on their hands and didn’t vote at all. NAH! FEEZO! 19Ward! I have been saying since he got elected that the KKK couldn’t have dreamed up a more dangerous candidate for POC. Lopez seems to suddenly be a “moderate” and talks about aggressive policing….. I assume we will find out in the next off year election in February that no one will vote in.
The City of Chicago committed suicide, April 4th, 2023. It will not rest in peace.