TIME TO SEND THIS TRAITOR AND HIS SUCK-UP SIDEKICK TO JAIL

 

EXCITED TO BE SPEAKING WITH TODD HEISER AT WORKTECH 21 - CHICAGO ON OCTOBER 12

 

John Kass

 

It’s not Chicago Covid Mr. President, it’s Chicago violence

By John Kass

When President Joe Biden visits Chicago this week—reports are that he’ll be here Thursday to avoid the specter of Democrats scratching their eyes out in Washington over his failing multi-trillion-dollar socialist spending spree—some smart aide might whisper in his ear about what’s really killing Chicago and Illinois:

It’s not the Covid, Joe.

It’s the violence, stupid.

Chicago Democrats are scratching their eyes out here, too, in a Democrat city all but floating face down in a river of violent anarchy and chaos.

More than 600 people have been murdered already this year, and thousands upon thousands shot, in a dying city, in a failing, corrupt county, in the worst run state in the nation.

Democrats paved this road to hell over the decades. The public schools fail minorities who need help the most, but the government schools enrich the teachers’ union that gets out the vote. Hundreds of thousands of Black residents have fled for safety, and better schools and others from all demographic groups join them. They vote with their feet.

The criminal justice system is broken, minority poor are overwhelmingly the victims of violent Chicago crime, but now even downtown becomes a war zone and no neighborhood is safe. People in all neighborhoods, and tourists with money to spend, are afraid to walk the streets at night or drive lest they’re carjacked, and on Chicago expressways some 185 people have been shot this year.

All of America can see.

And President Biden comes to Chicago to applaud himself on his Covid mandate?

Get real for once in your life Joe. Behold Chicago.

Mr. President, sprinkle some “It’s the violence, stupid” on your ice cream cone and I’ll tell you about the the politics of violence in Chicago.

Democrat and Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, the George Soros-backed prosecutor, is calling Democrat and Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot a liar. Why?

Because Lightfoot dared called out Foxx, whom she foolishly endorsed for re-election, for not filing charges in a series of deadly street shootings, including one caught on video, with cops as witnesses.

 Even U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee says he was almost a victim, relating that the other evening, after having left a restaurant, he and his wife were almost shot in a street-gang battle on DuSable Lake Shore Drive.

“I heard a popping sound,” Durbin said. “I didn’t know what it was, but the driver of the car said, ‘Those were gunshots.’ And it turned out to be the car next to us, and the driver was leaning out the window and shooting a gun in the air. He could have just as easily been shooting a gun at us.”

What has happened to Chicago? Here’s what happened:

The Democrats happened.

The George Floyd riots happened. Democrats wanted their voters whipped to a frenzy in 2020, and got what they wanted. Lightfoot and other liberal Black mayors across the country stood back as their administrations, and the rule of law in their cities were devoured by BLM and other elements of the hard Jacobin left that now rules the Democrat Party, with Biden as its empty, titular, wobbling head.

Democrats let the Floyd protests drive chaos. Lightfoot and Gov. J.B. Pritzker, our very own Gov. Commodious Maximus, didn’t want the National Guard in the city at first. They were worried about the optics, they wanted the left wing good and angry, and Donald Trump out of the White House. Chicago has never recovered.

Police were demonized, assaulted and seriously injured. The sense of lawlessness in urban America grew. And unlike the Jan. 6 capitol rioters, most of the violent in Chicago and other Democratic urban centers were excused. The BLM rioters were not condemned as terrorists and hunted down. Instead, there was a deal:

The deal was the Democrats would buy off the left with that $3.5 trillion Biden/Pelosi spending spree (or is it really $6 trillion?)—the neo-Marxist fantasy that is now failing in Washington.

Federal bailout money came to the cities, and (no surprise) they spent it without imposing structural controls on public worker pensions and other aspects of bloated government that sucks the life out of taxpayers. And through all of this, the criminal justice system was failing.

At least Foxx made good on her leftist rhetoric. She dropped more felony murder cases than her predecessor and Soros got what he paid for.

Foxx also stopped prosecuting shoplifting cases, and as a result gangs of boosters hit high-end stores, adding to the general feeling that the city succumbed to lawlessness.

And just the other day, just minutes after Mayor Lightfoot and her Police Supt. David Brown posed for photos at an anti-crime event, telling residents they had control over the violence, there was another gang shooting right where they had posed for publicity pictures.

And then came another shootout, when five suspects in a deadly street gang battle on the West Side—all of it on video—were released with Foxx’s prosecutors saying there was insufficient evidence.

The rationale was that both sides were “mutual combatants,” an assinine line of reasoning used by Foxx in the past.

I hear that the same idiocy was used when no charges brought against two cars of shooters on the Dan Ryan expressway. Their victim was  Denise M. Hugelet, 67, a retired special education teacher, a grandmother from the Southwest suburbs, who was killed in the crossfire while going home from a White Sox game.

If someone prominent were shot, say a U.S. Senator, would Foxx have been so dismissive and cavalier? Not bloody likely.

Foxx and the cops have clashed over numerous cases, where detectives say they develop evidence, and Foxx declines to charge. A recent example among many was the Aug. 15 murder of seven-year-old Serenity Broughton. She and her younger sister Aubrey were shot while sitting in the back of their parents’ car on the city’s Northwest Side. The little girls were found hugging each other.

Detectives pushed for charges. They reportedly had the suspects phones pinged at the scene. Foxx denied the charges. The outraged detective commander tried to override the prosecutor and failed when City Hall stepped in on Foxx’s side.

One like this after another, street gangs carving up Chicago, blood in the streets, anarchy and chaos, until finally, this week, Lightfoot lashed out.

“It’s complicated, for sure, but we really urge the state’s attorney herself to get personally involved, look at the evidence,” said Lightfoot. “And I believe that there are charges that can be brought at a minimum against the individuals who initiated the gunfire. We can’t live in a world where there’s no accountability.”

But we live in a world where there’s no accountability. It’s called Illinois. Foxx called Lightfoot a liar, saying some  statements Lightfoot made about tthe West Side case “simply weren’t true.”

“I was quite honestly mortified by what happened yesterday,” Foxx said, “particularly because the mayor as a former prosecutor knows that what she did yesterday was inappropriate.”

That’s rich, coming from Foxx, who forgets her star-obsessed role in her Jussie Smollett fiasco, and so many other roles she’s played, like the one she played in not charging the attacker in the murder of a Chicago cab driver.

His murdered cab driver was Anis Tungekar, and I wrote about it. He died of blunt force trauma to the head after a fight downtown in September of 2018. He wasn’t a celebrity like Smollett. He didn’t have important friends in politics  or in Hollywood. He didn’t know Kamala Harris.

Tungekar was a hard-working cabdriver, an immigrant from Pakistan, a proud law-abiding American citizen, a father. Tungekar was kicked in the back of the head as he walked away from a confrontation, kicked by an Uber driver, a flying kick delivered by someone trained in martial arts.

There was video of the Uber driver, Fangqi Lu, delivering the kick. There were witnesses. Lu allegedly attacked someone else a few weeks before. Lu didn’t have a valid driver’s license. Detectives feared Lu  would flee back to China if he wasn’t charged and put into custody.

He wasn’t charged. He fled, presumably back to China.  I suppose Mr. Tungekar didn’t count with Foxx. He wasn’t a star like Smollett.

Now Lightfoot scraps with Foxx and the eyeballs hit the floor.

 But having already endorsed Foxx for re-election, it won’t save her. Lightfoot has lost the city. This fight isn’t about the safety of the people, or chaos.

This is political, about Lightfoot finally realizing that Foxx’s protector, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, will make a re-election effort difficult for the mayor. And meanwhile, the Obama/Rahm Emanuel machine is rolling out their own savior,  Arne “The White Shadow” Duncan, who won’t dare criticize Foxx or Preckwinkle.

And you? You’re treated as if you’re all a bunch of chumbolones.

What about Foxx? Who knows? Does it matter? She’s in. There is no Republican Party here to challenge Foxx or her protector, Democrat Boss Preckwinkle. This is a Democratic city in a Democratic run county in a Democratic state, with the Democrat Big Boy governor high up on his hill. Many who’d vote against them have already gone.

And local media is, for the most part, woke, and hesitant to criticize Foxx and Preckwinkle and their lackey, Cook County Chief Judge Tim Evans, as the three of them empty the county jail and release the violent upon the streets with low or no bond and electronic monitoring.

Ken Griffin, the multi-billionaire Citadel Hedge fund boss sees what’s happening. He’s one of the few business leaders in Chicago who dares speak up about the mess the city has become. He criticized Gov. Pritzker for not bringing the National Guard to Chicago when it counted.

“I mean Chicago is like Afghanistan, on a good day. That’s a problem,” he said.

And the fat boy governor on the hill called Griffin a liar

As veteran journalist Jay Levine wrote in a recent column on this website, it’s the violence, stupid.

Biden is little more than a meat puppet now. But those of you who are reading this aren’t stupid. You see what’s happening in Chicago and other towns where catch-and-release prosecutors were elected. You get it.

And you’re not chumbolones.

-30-

(Copyright 2021 John Kass)

NEW MURAL BY JEFF ZIMMERMANN AT ART LOFT

 

NEW TULLMAN PIECE IN MAIZE MAGAZINE - ITALY

 

THE BRIGHTEST PROSPECT of the coming year is that we’ve been afforded a moment and an opportunity to take the time to take stock and to determine what in our businesses and in our lives is both something we want to do and something that’s really worth doing. 

Without apologies or excuses, as we enter the post-pandemic period, we’re at a point where we can simply and swiftly shed portions of our past actions and behaviors without paying any real social or emotional price. 

I think that many of us who were lucky enough to survive the past year physically, mentally, and financially without our businesses being totally destroyed definitely feel like we dodged a bullet, and now’s the time when we need to make changes and take steps to move away from our past. It’s not a matter of returning or restoring or even rebuilding the old; it’s a time to reinvent and reimagine the future of what our firms can be. 

The trick for tomorrow will be to learn how to strip down and simplify our products and services to get more done with less. It couldn’t be more important to get back to basics and to focus on solid execution and on delivering on the promises you’ve made to yourself, your employees, and your customers. 

It’s a time to ask, not just how and when, but why as well. If there’s not a compelling reason to offer, do or provide something, maybe there’s no need at all, apart from sheer inertia, to keep doing certain things because that’s the way things have “always” been done. 

The greatest single failing of most entrepreneurs is that they rarely know when to stop. Sometimes you just need to take a breath, take the win and stop selling. For many established businesses, this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to simplify, shrink, and get rid of old rules, processes, and commitments that make little or no sense today in the new global economy. 

For example, the pandemic taught us that speed and access, not space and travel, are clearly the drivers of the digital world. Somehow many of the excesses of the past which seemed so essential now feel unnecessary and wretchedly extreme. 

As sad as it may be for some, these days, we no longer respect tradition or even history; it’s all about innovation and novelty, and in far too many companies traditions are simply costly encumbrances and nothing more than excuses to avoid change. Over the years, just like ships, businesses develop barnacles and accumulate things that they ask their people to routinely do even if no one remembers exactly why. 

In the age of DocuSign, hunting down and paying a notary public to sign off on certain legal documents is just one of many stupid remnants of times gone by which need to be put down and done away with. 

For startups, the post-pandemic “pause to reflect, refresh, and redo” is an even more critical chance to course-correct and fix things before they solidify, and you get stuck with them as you rush to return to business as usual. 

Now’s the time to get out from under commitments you made that no longer make any sense, promises that were premised on powers you’ve learned you no longer possess (and maybe never had), and plans to grow and scale which require radical reappraisal. Anyone can make a mistake, but if you continue down the wrong path, you run the risk of internalizing and institutionalizing the bad behaviors and making it exponentially much harder to ditch them down the line. 

Where you came from and where you were headed is still relevant, but being a prisoner of the past serves no one and makes no sense. Don’t be afraid, wherever you’re at in your company, to ask why and occasionally to question and challenge even some of the “feel-good” things you see around you. And, of course, losing sight of reality and practicality aren’t limited to business choices and decisions.

 Overdoing just about anything is now an omnipresent part of our life and times and too much apparently is never enough for some people. 

WHAT A CLOWN AND A SAD JOKE ON US....

 

NEW INC. Magazine Column by Howard Tullman

 

Let the Office Go to the Dogs

Working from home became, for many people, WFH with pets. As we slowly return to the workplace, employers need to make more room for our four-legged coworkers. 

 

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

 

Many businesses are now struggling to develop the appropriate internal rules and material changes they need to promulgate as their employees slowly (and often grudgingly) return to their workplaces -- even if that's just part time. Seems that everyone has their own ideas about what it's going to take to handle what is likely to be a yearlong transition back to the new normal.  And this, of course, assumes that there are no new, "helpful" or even coherent guidelines from state, local or federal governments. We're pretty much going to be on our own here although anyone not moving toward mandatory vaxxing for onsite employees is definitely headed in the wrong direction.

Striking the right balance between working from home and being at the workplace won't be easy. Managers are searching for the right tradeoffs between the many comforts, cost savings, and other benefits we've come to value in WFH scenarios -- including certain clear productivity boosts -- and the traditional rationale we've always relied upon to justify our daily, expensive, and time-consuming pilgrimages to the "office," where we allegedly gather with other team members to commingle, collaborate and converse around the water cooler. How much of these additive and culturally beneficial community activities and serendipitous interactions allegedly leading to great new innovative approaches actually happened in millions of stratified, siloed and carefully separated companies is a question for another day. But in any event the great RTO (return to office) debate is hard upon us and there's really no way to avoid it.

I realize that in some ways this is a much different and more complicated issue and concern for our millions of "essential" workers in hotels, hospitals, factories and retail stores, even though those businesses have always used variable shifts and flexible hours to manage their workforces.  So, in some respects, it's less of a new and different set of plans and calculations for them, but it's going to be much more complicated this time around because certain of the proposed changes and solutions are never going to be "one size fits all."  And in many cases, it will be the essential workers who will likely, once again, end up getting the short end of the stick. This is not simply a case of the decisions being made by senior white-collar workers - it's really embedded and inherent in the nature of the work that various groups of employees perform. But that doesn't make it go down any easier with the folks in the clinics or on the factory floor.

And even for the men and women who grew up in the typical 9-to-5, five-days-a-week-and-most-Saturday mornings office world, these are going to be somewhat uncharted and perilous waters. You don't want to break down and bribe or beg your team members to come back  but you are definitely going to need some concrete plans to ease and incent their return. We're seeing new in-office initiatives around childcare, concierge services, and subsidized commuting, but these are fairly complex and costly efforts.

Interestingly enough, one of the relatively easy solutions (adopted long ago by companies like Google and Amazon) is to make your offices pet friendly and let your employees bring their pets to work. Most employers haven't the slightest idea of how many of their workers now have pets at home. Just to give you some idea, consider that almost 13 million homes got a new pet after March 2020 according to the American Pet Products Association. In 2020 alone, there were almost 275,000 pet adoptions from animal rescue groups. Remarkably, and much to the relief of these non-profit groups, the feared rush to return adopted pets once the world began to get back to work hasn't materialized. And we know why.

While there's no question that all of the additional time at home due to the pandemic has been good for many families and put new emphasis on the importance of balancing our home and work obligations, it's been absolutely great for pets and their owners. In fact, we may be closer than ever to our families, but we're really, really close to our animals. Every day I hear some new crazy dog or cat story about long walks, hand feeding, excessive grooming, new tricks, and separation issues. Kids may be nice and even loving, but dogs are loyal and grateful and nothing's better than that. A dog is the only thing on Earth that loves you more than he loves himself. I'm not sure what to say about cats. They seem more uppity and entitled, but then to each his or her own.

The bottom line and the moral of the story is simple. If you want to get ahead of the game and anticipate the forthcoming demands as you try to pry your people away from their pandemic pets, now's the time to start thinking about setting aside some space and making a plan to accommodate a whole new four-legged population to the office. Now would also be the time to talk to your landlord because, unlike the big tech firms, which generally own their own spaces, you're gonna need the building's permission and assistance in making the appropriate changes -- including who gets to ride in the elevators and when. Finally, just when you thought you could get rid of some of the excess air cleaning and filtering machines littering your space, remember that dogs don't need clothes because they come with fur coats. And plenty of your employees will have allergy issues with all the pet fur and dander floating around.

Doggone it, this is gonna be fun.

 

 

BLAME THE SUPREME COURT AND KIM (LET 'EM GO) FOXX

The Supreme Court gutted Chicago's plan to control gun violence. 

It used to be illegal to keep or carry a gun in Chicago without a special permit.  Anyone stopped carrying a gun, was charged with a felony.  

This largely worked because gang members and other criminals only carried guns for brief periods when then expected to need them and they also assumed that others would be unarmed.   When arguments arose, they resulted in fist fights or knife injuries which were usually survivable.  

When someone robbed a store, they might hit the clerk in the face with the butt of a gun, but there was no need to shoot him, because he was not going to shoot first.  

When the Supreme Court decided that the rights of individual's to keep and carry guns for supposed self defense were more important than the safety of the larger population, guns flourished and gun crimes shot up.  

No one has figured out how to put the genie back in the bottle.  The same gangs are still around and the same criminals, but now they are all armed.