WAKE UP JB !!

 

Illinois Democrats: Repeal Your “Safe-T Act” Now. Protect the People Before Serving Yourselves

By John Kass

September 30, 2022

With the November elections just weeks away, Illinois Democratic Party officials are panicking. Why?

Democrat bosses know why. Their SAFE-T ACT. That’s why.

As violent crime increases across the country, the American people grow increasingly angry with the clique of soft-on-crime prosecutors elected by Democrats with the help of billionaire George Soros in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles and elsewhere. And in all those blue areas that are becoming hotbeds of anarchy, as the people worry about becoming a victim, a voter backlash is coming.

Even in blue Illinois, where many voters have already been conditioned to authority and broken like Pavlov’s Dog.  But not all of them. Many are rightfully concerned and angry about the SAFE-T ACT, the Democrats’ idiotic and dangerous new soft-on-crime law that will do away with cash bail. Because according to Democrat and Republican prosecutors, the law will open the doors of the jails and allow violent offenders to prey on the people.

The Democrats own this one. They should be worried.  And today I want to give you what worries them: the official Illinois government roll call of this dangerous and stupid law, so all voters can decide before casting their ballots. And, to make it more difficult for politicians to blow smoke at the voters just click on the official state government link, and see how they voted. Take a printout with you when you vote. And know this–they will use their media mouthpieces and all their honeyed words to confuse you.

 Here is the Illinois Senate roll call vote. And here is the Illinois House roll call vote.

Gov. J.B. Pritzker proudly signed the SAFE-T ACT and thought it would help him campaign for president.  Attorney General Kwame Raoul–the state’s top law enforcement officer–monitored its progress and did nothing to stop it. And Illinois House Speaker Chris Welch got it passed in the wee hours of the morning hours without much debate, a rush job given that few Democrats who voted for it actually read the thing. And the clowns in the state senate did the same.

And now Pritzker is desperate and plays the race card against critics of his no-bail bill. And the others are spinning, furiously, invoking starving children and grown-ups compelled to steal loaves of bread to keep them alive, as if Illinois was the France of Les Misérables.

Who would try such a Les Misérables spin? Politicians who love baguettes? No. Politicians who think voters are stupid. Politicians who think you’re idiots, hapless fools, a bunch of chumbolones, that’s who. They laugh at you. But since you’re reading this here at johnkassnews.com you are not a chumbolone. You’re in the no  chumbolone zone, my friends.

Yet there is one way Illinois Democrats can protect themselves from angry voters to show they’re on the side of the people. All they’ve to do is just one simple, direct thing:

Repeal the SAFE-T ACT, before the November elections, and demand that Pritzker agree, and he’ll agree.

Just humble themselves and eat a few platters of steaming hot crow. Now. No wiggling. No spinning. Decide before the November 8 elections first, so the people can decide about you. They don’t need more smoke blown at them. Repeal it, then get back to work, write another bill, hash it all out deliberately in public in the light of day, not secretly in the wee hours after midnight in January, so the people can see the agendas.

And skip the rush-job with an 800-page bill lawmakers didn’t read. And don’t tell us you don’t have the time. All it would take is an emergency meeting, a quick emergency vote and you’re done. Think of it as a campaign stunt that would actually work. Who’d be upset? The criminals?

Will they eat some crow and protect the people, serve the people before serving themselves? Or will they ignore the people and stick their heads in the sand, expecting voters to eat what the political class has been giving them year after year? I don’t think crow tastes like chicken.

And you know what happens to creatures who bury their heads in the sand so deep that their back end sticks up, vulnerably available for kicking, like the politician in the suit in the photo at the top of this column.

Now they’re trying to convince you that they’ve already made changes to the law. But that’s not quite true. That’s an intention. They’ve talked about making changes, but really, all they’ve done is dance and preen. They’re masters of the preening arts.

“In the House we’ve already passed three trailer bills for the SAFE-T Act, three. That’s what democracy looks like” preened House Speaker Chris Welch at the City Club.

No Mr. Welch. That isn’t democracy. That’s playing find-the-pea with voters as if they’re the rubes you’re about to fleece at the state fair. Passing a few “trailer” bills doesn’t end the SAFE-T ACT. All they do is give you cover, if media wants to play along. And in Illinois, legacy corporate media plays along.

 “Sometimes people make a mistake. And they do it out of desperation,” Welch said at the City Club. “They steal a loaf of bread, they steal some food to feed their kids. Sitting in a county jail because they can’t afford bail. What’s fair about that? What’s just about that? While a murderer who can afford bail walks free…”

Mr. Speaker, please stick a loaf of good crusty Jean Valjean bread under your arm when you run off to eat that steaming crow. Or eat it without the carbs. Just eat it.

But democracy doesn’t look like that Mr. Speaker. Here’s what it really looks like in Illinois: Welch makes his wife a Cook County judge, and passes the SAFE-T ACT pleasing Cook County Board President Boss Toni Preckwinkle, a well known judge-picker and her protegee Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and SAFE-T ACT supporter. Oh, and Welch’s wife was ruled not-qualified by a state bar group according to a WBEZ story by Dan Mihalopoulos.

Nice one Mr. Speaker.

Pritzker says he wants to move slowly.  “We have to figure out what works and what we can get through the legislature,” he said.

His Republican opponent, conservative farmer State Sen. Darren Bailey called him out.

“JB Pritzker has the supermajority,” an exasperated Bailey told NBC Chicago. “Why hasn’t he called the legislature into action? Literally a text or a phone call, we could be demanded to meet in Springfield within a few hours. Why aren’t we meeting tomorrow at 9 o’clock hammering this thing out?”

Why hasn’t he called the legislature? Because he doesn’t want to eat crow before the election. And he’d rather put the people at risk than humble himself to protect them.

I’m not against bail. And I don’t want the poor denied bail while the wealthy murderers walk free. Every American charged with a crime has the right to bail. But repeat violent offenders don’t have a right to “electronic monitoring” or some other hug from  Cook County Chief Judge Timothy C. Evans, as the offenders walk free and commit violent crime.

And repeat violent offenders don’t have the right to benefit from the hard-left’s liberation theology while the people, the voters are put into danger by these severe social justice ideologues.

If Illinois Democrats don’t repeal the SAFE-T ACT within the next few days, before the Nov. 8 elections, it’s proof they’d rather put their own heads in the sand while putting their own voters at risk.

-30-

(Copyright 2022 John Kass)

Baltimore Musicales

 

 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Are You Looking Hard Enough for America's Hidden Talent?

Civic-minded businesses such as Sweet Beginnings are demonstrating that people from underserved communities have a lot to offer startups that are looking for people with entrepreneurial mindsets.  

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

There's an old line attributed to various authors (science fiction writer William Gibson gets my vote) that "the future is already here - it's just not evenly distributed." To a very large extent, notwithstanding bold and impressive efforts by organizations like Comcast creating its Lift Zones and other such efforts, you could say the same thing about ubiquitous connectivity in general. We think the web is everywhere, but that's just because most of us live in a bubble where the web exists.  

I'm not talking about the three billion people globally who will be added to the Internet by 2030 according to the United Nations - that's an exciting prospect and one that will enrich the lives of millions throughout Asia, Africa and Latin America as well as creating extensive new markets and exponential demand for U.S. developed-and-delivered digital products and services. What I'm talking about -- and far more troubled by -- are the tens of millions of people in our own backyards who lack ready and consistent access to the web and to the education, connection, community, and employment opportunities such access can provide.

This isn't purely an unselfish concern. These underserved populations (which are massively minority) are untapped markets of young, diverse, and hungry talent that our country and our companies will need over the next several decades just to keep up with the world. A world in which, in case anyone has missed it, isn't sitting still or waiting for us to lead any longer. Government statistics just prior to the pandemic made it clear that the pace of creating new startups had slowed significantly while they continue to fail at about the same rate. There were plenty of new business formed during the pandemic, technically, but we're going to have to wait to see whether those entities are around in another year or two or whether they were just a lot of unemployed or unemployable people kidding themselves.

This is not net good news for our nation. We've got a solid business and a substantial moral obligation to bring far more people with us into the promises of the digital future. And, here again, this is not really a choice - it's essential and inevitable. In fact, it would be hard to imagine the adverse consequences and the political implications of a continued failure to serve and provide fairly and adequately for all our citizens - especially when, as the MAGA morons fear, the U.S. is likely to be majority minority by 2045.

But the good news is that, if you're willing to invest the time and trouble to look, you will find that it makes a great sense for startups and rapidly growing businesses to look for new and untested talent in diverse and different areas. Because, lo and behold, there's a wealth of unrecognized, unlabeled, and underappreciated entrepreneurial talent right under our noses.

Talent is universal, but opportunity is not.

Don't feel bad about missing the boat. It hasn't sailed just yet, and many of these folks themselves don't know what they know and what amazing skills and talents they have. If only those abilities were identified, encouraged, and appreciated. You can teach someone any kind of technology, and even all the skills needed to build a business; but you can't teach them to have the passion, perseverance, and desire required of a successful entrepreneur. And, of course, you need to give them the chance, the access, and the opportunity to show the world what they can do. Just like the future, entrepreneurial talent is everywhere if you know where to look.

I realize that we hear this same kind of conversation regularly and that it all sounds swell, but it's much rarer to see businesses putting their money where their mouths are and really trying to prove the basic proposition. One organization in Chicago is doing just that and providing an interesting model for social and civic entrepreneurs across America. Led by Brenda Palms, Sweet Beginnings runs the beelove café and uses the production of honey-based products to provide job training to community residents who, due to former incarceration or other circumstances, have found it difficult to procure gainful employment. By providing training and transitional, stable jobs for its clients, SB prepares them to eventually move into more mainstream employment. They're equipped with the tools, abilities, and attitudes which they'll need to be successful.

And they and the program have been quite successful to date. Some 75% of Sweet Beginnings workers transition to regular employment after three months in the program and more than 75% remain in their new positions for more than 180 days. Interestingly enough, whether it's the reality of the new gig world or the low rate of unemployment or the great resignation or quiet quitting, these SB employee retention numbers are actually far more favorable than those presently being experienced by traditional businesses in general.

In addition, in the last seven years, fewer than 6% of the workers have returned to prison in a state where the overall recidivism rate is about 52%. Without overstating the case, in today's erratic employment economy, where large segments of the workforce are beyond fluid and transient, having new employees who are loyal, reliable and, above all, grateful for the second chance to work hard and make something of their lives is a tremendously attractive source of talent for young businesses. Probably more than most, these folks appreciate both the risks of starting something new and untraditional and also the possible rewards available in a results-oriented culture where your ultimate success depends on your own commitment and efforts rather than on your past.  

But the most remarkable thing that you learn in listening to their stories is that, whether they knew it or not, they've had to be entrepreneurial in their own journeys, employing many of the same attitudes, skills, and talents that the best entrepreneurs rely upon every day as well. They were never afraid of hard work or unwilling to take risks in order to get ahead; they learned to pick themselves up and keep going even after the hardest of knocks, and they never gave up on their dreams.

They were, however, in their heart of hearts lacking one thing. In their most honest moments, they'd admit that they didn't really believe in themselves or think that they were good and worthwhile people. Not such a giant step from the impostor syndrome that every entrepreneur occasionally faces. What ultimately turned them around is when they discovered through the Bee Love program that others - caring strangers - actually could and did believe in them and in their prospects for a safe, stable and secure future.  They had a second chance if they were as willing to invest in themselves as others were willing to help them along the way.

Brenda Palms tells a story about a former drug dealer entering the SB program who confessed that he didn't know how to do much of anything and that he worried that he lacked the skills needed to succeed. She explained to him that, in fact, his prior "work," while not legal, involved many of the organizational, leadership, and planning skills required of any good business. And that he was actually pretty adept at those things. He had what it took to do the jobs if he had the desire and the will to put himself out there and try. The transition wouldn't be smooth or easy, but he'd have peers who'd been in the same places and made the same journey by his side.

SOOO TRUE

 

PAMELA PAUL

Do Not Bring Your ‘Whole Self’ to Work

Sept. 25, 2022, 6:00 a.m. ET

Top of Form

Bottom of Form

 

By Pamela Paul

Opinion Columnist

For those lucky enough to have worked from home over the past two-and-a-half years or seven years or whatever it was, it’s back to the office time. We are finally R.T.O. and I.R.L., at least until the next wave hits. And some people can’t wait.

But for those less excited, reluctant to face the creepy supervisor they’ve been avoiding, the department suck-up they’ve been Slacking about, the portion of the job they’ve been faking, here’s a nifty tip for easing the transition: Do not “bring your whole self” to work.

That’s right! Defy the latest catchphrase of human resources and leave a good portion of you back home. Maybe it’s the part of you that’s grown overly attached to athleisure. The side that needs to talk about candy (guilty). It could be the getting-married part of you still agonizing over whether a destination wedding is morally defensible in These Times.

Leave those things behind and I promise: No one in your workplace will miss them. And remember, it works both ways. Anyone worth sharing a flex desk with is not someone you want to see every last ounce of either. They, too, can reserve their aches, grievances, flimsy excuses and noisy opinions for the roommate, the pandemic puppy and the houseplants.

You may be unaware of the prevailing “whole self” fashion. Perhaps you managed to skip that H.R. module or you work at a small outfit, one unencumbered by systems, strategies and sweeping philosophies.

So what exactly does it even mean? According to TED talker and corporate consultant Mike Robbins, author of a book called — that’s right — “Bring Your Whole Self to Work,” it means being able “to fully show up” and “allow ourselves to be truly seen” in the workplace. Per Robbins, it’s “essential” to create a work environment “where people feel safe enough to bring all of who they are to work.” Bringing the whole self is a certified buzzphrase at Google and encouraged at Experian. An entire issue of the Harvard Business Review has been devoted to the subject. In this new workplace, you don’t have to keep your head down and do your job. Instead, you “bring your whole self to work” — personality flaws, vulnerabilities, idiosyncratic mantras and all.

Perhaps you’ve heard of whole self’s cousin, the “authentic self,” also urged to head into the office. According to BetterUp, which bills itself as the first Whole Person™ platform, “That means acknowledging your personality, including the quirky bits, and bringing your interests, hopes, dreams, and even fears with you, even if they don’t seem relevant to your work.”

In other words, for the world outside the H.R. department, the phrase “bringing your whole self to work” is almost guaranteed to induce a vomit emoji. Rarely has a phrase of corporate jargon raised so much ire and rolled as many eyeballs with everyone I’ve talked to about the subject.

And yet. In recent years, the “whole self” movement has gained momentum in part because it dovetails with fortified corporate diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) programs. Both purport to make employees feel comfortable expressing aspects of their identity in the workplace, even when irrelevant to the work at hand.

Comfort sure sounds nice.

The problem is for many people, it’s no more comfortable dragging the whole kit and caboodle into the workplace than it is showing up every day on a relentless basis. Nor is it necessarily productive. Not everyone wants their romantic life, their politics, their values or their identity viewed by their colleagues as pertinent to their performance. For some people, a private life is actually best when it’s private.

So here’s an alternative: Let’s everyone bring only — or at least primarily — the worky parts. You remember those fragments: the part that angsted over every résumé punctuation mark and put a suit on for the first interview, the part whose mom urged her to put her best face forward in the workplace? It’s that old-fashioned thing we used to call “being professional.” Heck, it’s the you you were for your entire corporate history, until the prevailing H.R. doctrine abandoned buttoning things up.

But “bringing your whole self to work” is a cheap benefit — easier for employers to provide than, say, a raise — and one vague enough to be largely meaningless. Nor is it available to the majority of the American work force. Nobody is asking a line worker or customer service representative to add more personal vulnerability to the enterprise. For most gainfully employed people, it’s not work’s job to provide self-fulfillment or self-actualization. It’s to put food on the table.

After all, the office isn’t the only place you exist — why should they get to have all of you? If you only bring the best parts of you or at the very least, the part of you that does the actual work, you’re more likely to get rewarded for it. One friend and former manager of Boomer vintage told me she credited her own success to religiously bringing her best self to work — and making sure the crabbiest, most critical part of her personality stayed home. Why deprive people of the ability to complain about work to their husband or roommate the moment they walk through the door? That’s where it generally belongs, despite the current misguided effort.

Nor is it fair to ask the workplace to deal with all your hopes, dreams and problems. “A lot of staff that work for me, they expect the organization to be all the things: a movement, OK, get out the vote, OK, healing, OK, take care of you when you’re sick, OK. It’s all the things,” an executive director for an advocacy organization recently told The Intercept. “Can you get your love and healing at home, please?”

Look, it’s understandable that things have gotten blurred. During the pandemic, many of us inadvertently shared a lot more of ourselves than we might have otherwise — partners yammering in the background, the occasional toddler, that weird wallpaper in the kitchen. Why are all your plants dead?

But not everyone is comfortable having their co-workers know so much about them. As the co-author of a recent paper out of Wharton (“OMG! My Boss Just Friended Me: How Evaluations of Colleagues’ Disclosure, Gender, and Rank Shape Personal/Professional Boundary Blurring Online”) noted, “There’s a tension that people have between this exhortation to bring your whole self to work, to connect, to be a part of things, but also to keep a separation between your personal and your professional life.”

Think of this as your chance to redraw those lines. Bring back a little healthy compartmentalization. You need not go all-out “Severance” and slash your brain in two halves just to get a little separation between work self and not-work-self. It’s not about being fake or hiding who you are. It’s just about keeping some things to yourself.

“I do think it’s OK to talk about what you’re going to do on the weekend or more generically,” a 33-year-old business analyst named Emily told The Times in a recent focus group on millennials in the workplace. “But if there’s something personal going on, or a problem that my family is having or something, health reasons or health concerns, I don’t talk about any of that.”

Let this be a reprieve for workers as they re-up their subway pass and pack leftovers lunches. It’s tiring being all-you, all the time, with all people. People are exhausted! And they’re scarcely even commuting yet.

Think, too, of this additional benefit: Now you have an excuse to get your work self out of the house. Some people there may actually be sick of that person.

 

A Sincere, Smart and Solid Plan from Paul Vallas to Combat Chicago's Crime Crisis

 

Paul Vallas: Reversing Chicago’s Worsening Violent Crime Epidemic Requires Proactive Policing and Circumventing Kim Foxx

By Paul Vallas

September 23, 2022

Mayor Lightfoot and Police Superintendent Brown are trying desperately to create the perception that they are making progress on crime. They cite the latest data that shows murders and shootings down from last year.

But the people don’t feel safe. And despite the slight drop this year, murders and shootings are up 33% and 35% respectively since 2019 when the mayor took office. Overall, violent crime is up 37% this year. Wirepoints.org reports that the number of school-age youth who have been murdered since COVID appeared is now at least 196.

The actual number of violent crimes is likely greatly underreported as over half of all “High Priority” 911 calls do not have a police car available. Last June, Wirepoints reported Chicago Police Department (CPD) data showed no police cars available for half of the high-priority police dispatcher calls last year. That’s 406,829 calls including 14,955 calls for assaults and 17,828 batteries in progress.

With the unprecedented number of high-priority 911 calls not being responded to and a 70% reduction in arrests since 2019.

It is clear to the people of Chicago—especially those who are desperate and dial 911 and are ignored — that the Chicago Police Department is simply not equipped to deal with the crisis. This is a management failure. And the only way to reverse the worsening crime pandemic is to provide the CPD with the leadership and support it needs to be proactive.

Lightfoot disparages critics who question CPD’s capacity to address the crime pandemic and dare to advocate for providing CPD with leadership, strategy and capacity to be proactive about getting and keeping dangerous criminals off the street. She smears her critics by claiming they want a return to “Burge-style” police abuse practices.
This cheap verbal trick is a gross and offensive generalization that could only come from someone who has never done the job and has no respect for those who do and have done so honorably and with distinction. She has little respect for Chicago Police, and they have little respect for her. The people of Chicago should ask themselves why.

What would a proactive policing approach look like?

• The replacement of the incompetent and reactive Brown and his First Deputy with new CPD leadership who understand that to have effective policing you must have beat integrity and familiarity and a rank and file who feel supported when they make arrests.

• Promoting proven leaders into the exempt ranks with the experience, training and record that have the confidence and respect of the rank and file, while bringing a permanent end to promotions and special privileges for those who have not earned them.

• Restoration of community policing in which priority is given to maintaining Beat Integrity in which every local police beat is covered and has officers who are familiar with and known to the community.

• A humane and predictable work schedule that does not arbitrarily cancel days off for weeks on end and extends work days without warning assures that officers can rest and recover from the rigors of the job.

• Inviting Officers to return to CPD with no less seniority and the removal of barriers preventing highly qualified and experienced Officers from transferring from other police departments.

• Recruiting retired police officers with investigatory experience to help detectives close cases and to staff a legitimate program that will protect witnesses and victims.

• A real public transit police unit that dispenses with the $100 million private unarmed security and has CPD officers walking all platforms and undercover officers riding trains. The amount of money paid to private firms would finance almost well over 600 CPD officers.

• A mayor standing up for Police Officers by denouncing cop-haters and supporting officers to constitutionally effectuate arrests for lesser crimes like theft, burglary, assault, and criminal property damage that too often are the gateway to much more serious crimes.

Nothing in this proactive policing approach is disallowed under the Consent Decree. A Decree that the Mayor and Brown have failed to comply with on some of the most essential items that benefit officers. These items include officer training, supervision (ratio of sergeants to officers), and officer health and wellness. Supporting the rank and file to protect the public proactively and constitutionally is what is needed. It all starts with real leadership — at 35th and Michigan and on the Fifth Floor of City Hall.

Meanwhile, the city can be equally proactive in taking steps to bypass Kim Foxx’s well-established failure to prosecute cases to the fullest extent of the law and the pretrial release program that she and the judges endorse has resulted in impunity for criminals and placed victims at risk. The city should take steps to fill the void left by Foxx’s dereliction of duty to protect our citizens and streets” while intensifying public pressure on both her and the judges.

This could be done by doing the following:

1.) Working with the US Attorney to encourage and support their efforts to bring cases under the much tougher Federal jurisdiction is a no-brainer, providing whatever cooperation, when needed. The mayor, as an ex-fed prosecutor, knows full well these cases result in much tougher charges and longer sentences and should have been in dialogue with the US Attorney since taking office. Her inclination to overlook them as an avenue of alternative means of prosecution seems deliberate and makes her occasional criticism of negligence and judges ring hollow

2.) Make active use of the CPD “override” authority and go straight to the judges to secure initial felony charges when Kim Foxx fails to act. The resulting case still must be prosecuted by Foxx’s office, which will likely dismiss the override charges at the first court date, as we have seen a few times in the news recently. However, the ensuing publicity will cast missing sunshine exactly where it belongs and would only improve transparency into Foxx’s reluctance to prosecute even the most outrageous cases.

3.) The City can enact its own ordinances regulating public safety that provide for prison time, which under general Home Rule principles can be as long as 364 days and may include fines and terms of probation. Home Rule means the State Code and State’s Attorney are NOT the only sources of authority for protecting public safety. City Public Safety Ordinance violations can be prosecuted by the City’s Department of Law under the authority of the Corporation Counsel — if a Mayor and Corporation Counsel make it a priority. The City of Chicago can enact ordinance violations for threatening police, intimidating witnesses, weapons violations, possession of a stolen vehicle, robbery, burglary, and retail theft for which Foxx will not charge anyone unless the items stolen were over $1,000 value.

4.) Enact a City Nuisance Ordinance, empowering police to make arrests, impound vehicles, confiscate personal property and impose heavy fines on individuals and organizations found guilty of violating the public way, damaging public and private property, and harassing and threatening city residents. Allowing rioters, looters, flash mobs and others inciting civil unrest rarely get arrested and, even when rarely charged, that they don’t spend even a night in jail is no deterrent. It emboldens them. So, if Foxx will not hold them criminally accountable, then City Hall can at least hold them financially accountable.

5.) Creating a Case Review Unit (CRU) within the Chicago Police Department to review County prosecutors and judges’ declinations and dismissals of weapons, violent crime and conspiracy cases is imperative for full transparency and accountability.  It is critical that all these entities be held accountable when it comes to the treatment of violent criminals. There can be no real accountability without transparency.

What is required is a comprehensive review of the City’s legislative authority on matters of public safety, to craft a series of ordinances that would, without preempting state law, give CPD and City residents the benefit of tools to take habitual violent criminals off the streets.
The current State’ Attorney is failing in her oath not to pursue to the fullest extent allowed by existing statutes. Clearly, Foxx’s political agenda is more important to her than the victims of the violent criminals she refuses to prosecute or insists on treating with kid gloves.

I am not running for prosecutor. But I am campaigning for Mayor of Chicago. The city I love is hurting and bleeding. We can no longer ignore bad management.

We must address crime, the criminal courts, murky prosecution decisions, mismanagement of the Chicago Police Department and overall mismanagement from the 5th Floor of City Hall. The primary responsibility of our government is to protect its people, their life, liberty and property. For the past 3 1/2 years, those basic human rights have been denied by sheer incompetence. That can change, and with your help, we can change it together.

Paul Vallas, born in Roseland and candidate for mayor of Chicago, is the former city budget director and CEO of the Chicago Public Schools.

The Tipping Point of Stupid

 

The Tipping Point of Stupid

In most states, you can’t pass yourself off as an election-denying January 6 truther and still be taken seriously by a majority of voters.

By Mark Leibovich

 

SEPTEMBER 22, 2022, 7 AM ET

 

About the author: Mark Leibovich is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Thank You for Your Servitude and This Town.

 

Donald trump has a knack for making his most committed apologists look like complete imbeciles—even if they are not complete imbeciles, though many of them are. This has been true for several years. But in recent weeks, Trump’s trickle-down idiocy has become a significant midterm-election issue for Republicans, and a drag on some of the party’s most vulnerable Senate candidates.

If you’re a candidate seeking a GOP nomination, Trump’s blessing can be a political wonder drug. But it comes with debilitating side effects. These go beyond the standard debasements that Trump inflicts on his dependents (for instance, Trump boasting at a Youngstown, Ohio, rally on Saturday that J. D. Vance, who is running for Senate there, was “in love” with him and “kissing my ass, he wants my support so much”). Assuming an acceptable Trumpian posture requires a determined self-lobotomy. In most states, it’s nearly impossible to pass yourself off as an election-denying January 6 truther and still be taken seriously by a majority of voters. Yet many candidates who clearly know better are doing exactly this.

You might be a media-slick, Ivy-bred brainiac like Vance or Dr. Mehmet Oz, and even admit backstage that you don’t really believe the asininity you’re spouting. As a general rule, though, discerning swing voters tend not to differentiate between fools and those who just play them on TV.

Not every Trump knockoff is faking it, of course. The former president has mainstreamed an authentic collection of cranks, bozos, and racists. The preponderance of safe, gerrymandered seats probably ensures continued employment in the House for the loony tunes likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

The trickier proposition for Republicans involves statewide elections in toss-up states—which is why someone like Greene would almost certainly never win, say, a Senate race in her home state of Georgia. (The actual Republican nominee, Herschel Walker, is himself bananas, but also something of a special case given that he was a University of Georgia football legend.) While the primary successes of Trump’s protégés have saddled Republicans with, as Mitch McConnell put it, low “candidate quality”—people like Walker, Oz, and Blake Masters in Arizona—the former president has imposed a mental headwind against even the most seasoned GOP incumbents. It is to their great disadvantage, at least with most college-educated voters, that remaining Trump-accredited requires shaving dozens of IQ points off an otherwise sound candidate’s brain.

Iwas contemplating this phenomenon the other day as I watched Senator Marco Rubio of Florida beclown himself in service to the man he used to openly loathe. As Trump’s opponent in 2016, Rubio was one of those ostentatiously saddened and troubled candidates who kept lamenting that Trump was turning that campaign into “a freak show.” Before Rubio became a cast member in the freak show himself, he talked a lot about how dangerous Trump was, how he would not trust Trump with nuclear secrets if, God forbid, he were ever to become president. Perhaps he was worried about something like Trump stashing deeply classified documents in his Mar-a-Lago closets.

David A. Graham: Trump can’t hide from the Mar-a-Lago photo

During a recent interview, a Florida TV host asked Rubio, who is facing a reelection challenge from Democratic Representative Val Demings, about the Department of Justice’s efforts to retrieve those classified documents. Rubio dismissed the matter as a “storage issue.” DOJ, he argued, doesn’t “deny he should have access to those documents. What they deny is that they were not properly stored.” ​​Rubio’s self-correction to Made MAGA Man apparently compelled him to downplay Trump’s frightful conduct, even though it was something he obviously would have screamed bloody murder about if Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton had done the same. This was not a mere “storage issue,” at least not primarily. It was a “Why is the former president refusing to relinquish scores of classified and highly sensitive documents that don’t belong to him?” issue.

As the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Rubio is clearly aware of this. But he’s been playing this game for a while, and he knew what was required of him. He spoke in his usual rat-a-tat of righteously rehearsed lines, and he did not appear to be having much fun. In fact, Rubio sounded miserable, as he often does when called upon to defend Trump’s indefensibles. He seemed to fully anticipate scorn and ridicule raining down.

It did, but mostly from people who don’t like Rubio anyway. In Florida, a state the former president carried twice, Rubio is probably right that it’s more important to avoid angering Trump or his supporters. But the overriding hassle was that Rubio had to be talking about this topic at all two months before his election. I might have felt a twinge of sympathy, except no one was forcing Rubio to do this.

From the get-go, Republican officials have had to contort themselves in ridiculous ways to navigate Trump’s reality-distortion field. Sean Spicer became the paradigmatic example when the ill-fated White House press secretary spent his second day on the job vomiting his credibility into thin air by insisting—on orders from the new boss—that Trump had drawn a bigger inauguration crowd than Barack Obama had, despite clear visual evidence to the contrary.

We’ve gotten so used to the Trickle-Down-Idiocy Effect that it no longer engenders surprise, let alone outrage. It goes well beyond candidates having to perpetrate lies or offer preposterous explanations such as “storage issue,” “alternative facts,” “normal tourist visit,” and whatnot. Trump’s reckless claims and behaviors have led his dependents into a minefield of topics that, in previous campaign cycles, would likely never have come up, let alone be so fraught.

Absent Trump, Republican candidates in 2022 would be able to focus on subjects that would be more favorable to them and their party, such as inflation, crime, and Biden’s unpopularity. Trump continuously muddles their efforts and requires them to dwell in the bizarre realm of his narcissistic delusions. From Trump’s perspective—and therefore, much of the GOP’s perspective—that world never advanced beyond November 2020. He has done his best to ensure that the stolen-election myth has remained the most important issue in America.

Candidates are well accustomed to playing to the base for the primary and then pivoting to the center for the midterms. Savvy voters understand and tolerate this to a degree. But Trump has made finessing the gap far more complicated.

Dr. Oz, for instance, was recently asked whether he would have voted to certify Biden’s election if he had been in the Senate on January 6. He was never a full-on “it was rigged” guy, but he was always careful to be vague about it. “We cannot leave 2020 behind,” he said more than once during his primary campaign. He was much more definitive this month, however, in response to the question about Biden’s certification. “I would not have objected to it,” Oz said. “By the time the delegates and those reports were sent to the U.S. Senate, our job was to approve it, which is what I would have done.”

By opting for the sky-is-blue answer, Oz took the risk of antagonizing Trump and his election-denying supporters. Was he smart to answer this way, or reckless? Did Trump—being Trump—place Oz in a no-win position where he would come off as either a kook or a traitor?

Oz received this question during a press conference in which he was endorsed by the Republican senator he was vying to replace, Pat Toomey. Again, in any rational political world, the backing of the retiring incumbent would be a straightforward plus. But Toomey’s name has become pure sewage in Trump World over his vote to convict the former president in his second impeachment trial. Trump was reportedly not pleased by Oz’s certification blasphemy or by his willingness to appear with Treasonous Toomey. But props to Oz for doing the bare minimum.

J.d. vance was no Trump fan at first; the Yale Law grad and Silicon Valley venture capitalist once likened the future president to “cultural heroin.” But since converting to MAGAism, Vance has proved a righteous acolyte. On the holy-grail issue of 2020, he has maintained that the election was stolen, sparing himself, at the very least, the embarrassment of whiplash.

David A. Graham: The art of the dealer

Vance can be cavalier at times, taking stupid much too far. Back in February, he appeared on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast and declared, “I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or the other.” I have no idea whether Vance really felt this way or was just engaging in performative indifference and isolationism in an effort to mimic the couch-potato parochialism of his patron (Trump) or the “flood the zone with shit” nihilism of his host (Bannon).

But Vance paid a price. His “I don’t care about Ukraine” grenade detonated in his own face when Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked invasion a few days later. People in both parties rallied behind Ukraine, most notably in northeastern Ohio, home to one of the largest concentrations of Ukrainian Americans in the country. Vance later issued a cleanup statement in which described the Russian invasion as “unquestionably a tragedy.”

Like Rubio in Florida, Vance is vying to represent a GOP-trending state that Trump won twice, so he probably has a bigger cushion to absorb whatever pain his election lies cause him. He remains a slight favorite in his race against Democratic Representative Tim Ryan.

In a less Trump-hospitable state, Vance would have a much harder time. New Hampshire’s Don Bolduc became the latest toadying Trump endorsee to see his apparent faith rewarded, having won the state’s Republican nomination for Senate this month. He spent more than a year as a loud and unrelenting election denier, but just 36 hours after winning the primary, he made a screeching 180. Bolduc, a retired Army general, said he had “come to the conclusion” that the vote “was not stolen” after all. “I’ve done a lot of research on this,” he claimed. (They always do a lot of research!)

Presumably, Bolduc was trying to make himself look like a reasonable general-election candidate, and not a total idiot.

Mark Leibovich is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He is the author of Thank You for Your Servitude and This Town.

 

 Trump is never, ever playing three-dimensional chess; he’s always just sticking pieces up his nose to see how they’ll taste. 

NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN BY HOWARD TULLMAN

 

 

Let's Reset the Bar for Gifting

Before you start thoughtlessly ordering swag bags for clients and employees--both deserving and undeserving--give some consideration to how you might do holiday gifts better.  

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

As businesses roll into the early planning phases of the holiday gift-giving season and the challenges of "who gets what and why" -- which I call the year-end swag and bonus sweepstakes -- they're also struggling mightily with largely futile attempts to beg, bribe, or bully their employees to return full time to the office. Whether it's employee care packages that demonstrate your concern, or costly client Christmas presents, where you're going through the annual motions of sending impersonal products that are much more about show than sentiment, the basic concerns are largely just two different sides of the same dilemma. Namely: credibility, integrity, authenticity, and purpose.

Frankly, no one's fooled these days, and most companies aren't even coming close to getting much of anything right when it comes to swag. We all know in our hearts that we're about to go for another expensive, wasteful, and utterly inauthentic carousel ride and waste millions giving or sending "stuff" that, if truth be known, no one needs or cares about but may have come to expect through the constant stream of commercial manipulation and media that we're subjected to.

Begging or bribing your employees to return is a fool's effort. They need to have a sense of purpose, a belief that the company stands for something worthwhile and important, and that their efforts can make a difference to more than themselves. Life's greatest gift is the opportunity to work hard at work worth doing. Wine or whiskey, breakfast buffets, and beer blasts are all fine, but not a solid reason to come back to the office. Companies - even in their "welcome back" gestures - need to be sending the correct message. Swag and sweets and sweatshirts aren't gonna get it done.

It's the same exact situation with family and customer matters. In case it's not abundantly clear, assembly line gifts that you grabbed at the last moment still can't replace time you didn't spend with your kids, the calls and visits you didn't make to distant family or friends, or occasions, deadlines, and commitments you missed. Never has worked, never will. Rings and jewels aren't gifts, but apologies for gifts. 

You can't even call any of these one-sided transactions - they're actually no-sided - because other than the slight reassurance that comes from not being left out or forgotten or the relief that flows once the painful and picayune selection process is done, they don't make anyone actually feel good, help others who might have real needs, or represent anything more than the latest examples of either wretched excess. We're sending you this expensive bottle of something or buying you tickets to a great show because we can. Or they're evidence of severely impoverished and stunted emotions, in which people think that giving someone a "gift" confers and creates some useful rights, connections or obligations on the recipients.

But there's actually a simple and straightforward way to do the right thing in the right way - honestly, sincerely and authentically - for your team, your customers and yourself. You do the right thing for your business by doing right by others. That's the real message that everyone needs to be communicating today and that's where real connection, interest and empathy is created. This kind of considered and ethical action is especially essential in these terribly troubled economic times, where sending around egotistical geegaws, fancy foods, or expensive whatevers is the worst kind of insensitive and meaningless message to share. This is not the time to show off or stand out; it's the time to pitch in, throw down, and make real contributions to what's going on all around you.  

Five years ago, I was introduced to an amazing Chicago-based company founded by a former Peace Corps volunteer called Packed with Purpose that since 2017 has been creating care packages and corporate gifts that combine great goodies with social good. All of the gift products are sourced from more than 140 purpose-driven organizations which touch and positively impact more than 750,000 lives across 33 states and 16 countries. From preserving the environment, to investing in women and diverse-owned businesses, to employing adults with barriers to entry, these gifts transform futures and communities. The enthusiasm, commitment and impact of the people involved in curating, assembling, and shipping every package is clear, compelling and contagious.  It reminds me of the Flowers for Dreams team that I wrote about a while ago. 

In a time where the efforts, overhead and actual results of some of the nation's largest charities are somewhat unclear, thinly and broadly disbursed, and gray at best, it's especially important and encouraging to be able to see, share with others, and document the videos, success stories and touching testimonials of dozens of different participants on a direct and local level. Company team members, customers and clients can understand, appreciate, and connect with the concrete results and see exactly how the businesses they're a part of are making an actual and substantial difference in the lives of others. It's an opportunity to convert a mechanical and empty annual act into a memorable and meaningful activity at no extra or incremental cost but with an exponentially more material value.

The past is history, the future's a mystery and today is a gift - that's why they call it the present. And today's the time to make a simple and powerful change in the way you do business which can have long-lasting meaning and value for you, your family and friends, and your company as well. Make no mistake - people who know notice. The true excellence of a gift lies in its purpose and appropriateness rather than in its cost. Make all of yours matter.

SEP 20, 2022

The opinions expressed here by Inc.com columnists are their own, not those of Inc.com.