Mayor Johnson is not a politician playing the race card. He is a true believer in Critical Race Theory and Anti-racism. In his world view everything is about anti-black racism, all European heritage people are racists, the structure of the economy is racist, the structure of government is racist, tax and borrowing policy are racist, math and statistic are racist, any challenge or questioning is racist. Other non-European heritage people are also victims, but far behind blacks in victimhood and too prone to sharing 'white' values.
He believes that there has been no progress among whites in understanding and accepting their racism and in fact their racism was simply transformed into new methods. This makes it perfectly reasonable to equate the attitudes, issues and arguments of 60, 100, 160 years ago with any white person today.
Not buying. I don't believe in collective guilt. I sent in some comments not yet posted. My grandparents came over from Eastern Europe around 1900. They probably never saw a black person until arriving here. They didn't practice racism. They were concerned with mere survival. My grandfather took a dare and started his own trucking business during the Great Depression. Fortunately it worked. It was never a large enterprise. But it allowed him to comfortably raise a family. He wasn't in a position to discriminate against anyone. No one is arguing how badly blacks in this country have been generally treated. That doesn't make all whites guilty. And maybe there are some that understand things better than many think, although we keep talking about whites collectively.
Hmm...That had not occurred to me. It makes sense though
In that case, I the world of black and white, how would Johnson categorize Sicilians?
See Dennis Hopper's answer in his scene with Christopher Walken in the movie True Romance. I would post a link, but I think it is too raw for the forum.
I heard a Trump voter on NPR saying "He [Agent Orange] is clearly a great man. The best thing is that he says what he means and means what he says." No wonder celebrities like Jon Voight, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan and ... er ... endorse him.
Johnson will go down as the worst mayor in the history of Chicago. Johnson is more concerned about his CTU, which actually has a contract, and not our fire fighters who continue to work under no contract as well as having no budget for parts to fix fire trucks. He is the manchurian candidate of the CTU and doesn't even bother to pretend he is working for anyone else except for the benefit of the CTU. When faced with tough and legitimate questions his go-to answer is crying "racism". If he does succeed in selling out Chicago taxpayers to the benefit of the CTU, it will be a short-lived victory. In the next mayor's administration when another teachers contract comes up, the CTU will crash and burn, as any goodwill that remains with Chicagoans will be thin. The clock is running out on Mayor Stacey Gates and her puppet Brandon "I don't do raggedy!" Johnson.
Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson tops some lists as the worst major city mayor in the history of the country. I see parallels in terms of swagger, thickheadedness, bombastic rhetoric, and others pulling the strings.
Thompson actually got things built. A huge number of fire stations were built by him & are now either gone or sold off, as they were too small for the current fire trucks.
I caught a little of Johnson's press conference on the news and thought he was condescending and combative. It didn't come close to doing justice to entire exchange. Does Johnson realize there are OTHER children in CPS schools besides Black ones (and maybe brown, if he's feeling generous)? White ones, Asian ones, Eastern European? Apparently in Johnson's world, only Black children matter. He's an utter disgrace.
I visit a range of websites including yes, gasp! conservative ones. I found the item about cheating amusing, b/c on the conservative side of the aisle the same sentiment prevails, though reversed. Trump needs to win outside the margin of error in case of shenanigans on the part of the Democrats, in this case. Look at that! Something everyone can agree on as we start the slow march to the election in four long-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g weeks.
What “shenanigans”? Yes, nobody wants their political opponents to cheat, but when you take your case to court and lose dozens of times in several states as the GOP did in 2020, calling that election “rigged” is flat-out un-American. I’m voting Dem this year, but if Kamala Harris loses, calls the election “rigged” even after many court challenges, instigates an insurrection at the Capitol to halt the democratic process, then tries to call those insurrectionists “political prisoners” or “martyrs”, I’ll say the same thing about her and never vote for her or her surrogates again because she clearly would be trying to cripple our trusted electoral process for her own gain.
Also, under a rule adopted by the Hall's board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall of Fame.
I think of Ron Santo, and how he spent the rest of his life waiting to get voted in, which didn't happen until after his death. He was truly deserving of the honor. Pete Rose is not.
Not only were Johnson's remarks extremely racist towards anyone not black, but much of it was total lies.
I don't remember anyone saying free slaves would be too expensive. Or that it was fiscally irresponsible to do so.
In fact, one of Lincoln's ideas to end slavery was for the US government to buy all the slaves & just free them. The Civil War probably cost 50 times what that would've been, plus of course the almost 800,000 dead from that war!
And then his constantly bring up he's black & cares about black children, totally ignoring there are others in CPS.
I'm feeling that not only is Johnson is way over his head as mayor, but that he's also delusional & possibly insane! I would not be surprised that in the future of his term, we learn he's been hospitalized for a mental breakdown, because that bizarre speech of his surely sounded like the beginning of one!
I think that there were several emancipation movements before the Civil War that understood that if the government freed the slaves, their owners would be entitled to compensation. The value to the U.S. economy represented by chattel human capital was extraordinarily large (read "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" by Edward E. Baptiste). It was generally presumed by most politicians at the time that if slavery was to be abolished by the federal government (something the southern states would never agree to), the Constitution would require compensation to the "property" owners whose human chattel were emancipated. Even if agreed to, the cost was generally deemed to be too high. (Although, as you point out, it would have been a fraction of the cost of the Civil War.)
The stupid slave owners in the South flat out refused to take up the government's plan to buy & free the slaves. They had no understanding of economics! All of their wealth was tied up in the value of the slaves & they couldn't figure out how to run their farms & businesses without them. They just didn't have the education or imagination on how to actually pay for labor!
Free people always out produce slave labor. Slaves only do enough work to not be beaten or killed.
That was proven in the Civil War, when the free people of the North, massively outproduced the slave labor of the South & it also was of better quality.
That was repeated in WWII, when in 1945, the United States produced 50% of the world's total industrial output. Only 50 million people in this country outproduced at least 10 times that many worldwide. Because they were free people working to a goal of victory over fascism. The Nazis used huge numbers of slave laborers, had a system that figured out how long a slave would survive on minimum rations, 18 hours of work in horrific conditions & then they would die to be replaced by another slave. So of course the slaves did what they could to sabotage things. knowing full well they were destined to die, either by starvation & overwork or a bullet.
Slavery just doesn't work as an economic theory, that's been proven over & over again, but the advocates of it just can't face the simple facts of it.
Several years ago we visited Charleston, with a group of friends. We toured a former plantation which included, among other tours, a slavery tour. It was eye-opening; we saw the VERY small houses (one-room) in which 10 people could be living and heard about the rice market (and I think it was a particular kind of rice -- golden rice, perhaps? I don't recall). What I do recall is that the end of slavery killed that crop b/c landowners couldn't afford the cost of having to actually pay people to do the work, as opposed to having the slaves do it for free. I can't speak to Garry's point about it not working as an economic theory but I found it interesting that, gosh darn, it slave labor certain provided free labor.
Yes, although some folks in the Low Country are trying to bring back gold rice - see Carolina Gold Rice or Plantation Gold Rice. Not to be confused with golden rice, a genetically modified (or bred? Can't recall) product.
Garry, please re-consider some of your word choices here. Referring to millions of real human beings who had lives of love, memories, and family merely as “slaves” who acted as a predictable whole feeds the dehumanization of people from different cultures today. In a thread where a number of folks are being outspoken about the validity of race and ethnicity as a political tool, I hope we can all agree that for those who have relatives who once suffered in slavery as recently as some of our still-living grandparents, they deserve to think of those ancestors as people who by no fault of their own were victims of brutal, cruel politics of their time. Also, your post by its logic suggests that one might condone such brutality if it was more profitable, which I’m sure was not your intent.
There was nothing wrong with my word choice as I don't do politically correct bullshit!
The black people that were sold by black people to the white slavers in Africa were slaves, just as the various Europeans the Nazis forced to build the Atlantic Wall or work in the underground hellholes of Dora, building V-2s or ME-262s were slaves!
Hey Garry, we all don’t know each other personally on this thread, which the vast majority use for thoughtful, civil conversation about topics that matter deeply to us. All we have are words and symbols to make our ideas known. Swearing, using exclamation points for every comment, and name-calling might get clicks on those horrific social media sites, but they clearly don’t fit these conversations, which often include very sensitive subjects, not sports talk or pop culture or humorous distractions. Keep being you, but please re-consider how you share your thoughts here. Thank you.
As for Jesse Jetstream endorsing Fioretti, my guess is that Jetstream saw some Jews were supporting Burke, so as he's a lifelong Jew hater, he decided to endorse a wacko perennial candidate who has as much chance of winning as the White Sox!
Never forget that Fioretti cost the taxpayers of Chicago $250,000 in legal bills because he refused to let a restaurant have a sign hang over a sidewalk, because he hated the name of that restaurant! Luckily for us, the owner of the restaurant didn't sue the city over that obvious 1st Amendment violation, because he would've gotten millions in damages from a federal jury if he did sue, because he would've won, as a federal judge had already ruled it was a 1st Amendment violation & ordered the city to issue the sign permit!
Johnson's continual interjection of race into questions that had nothing to do with race on topics that have nothing to do with race was disheartening, to say the least. Is he aware that CPS serves all kids, not just Black children? Is he aware that criticisms of his actions and policies have nothing to do with his race but are about the actions and the policies? Any one who seemed to ask about fiscal responsibility at CPS received an answer that boiled down to "why do you hate Black children?" Never mind that, according to Chalkbeat, the student body makeup of CPS has 47% identifying as Hispanic, 35% as Black, 11% as white, and 4.5% as Asian American.
I loved reading about Melinda AK’s son. I have a very difficult time talking with people and get quite anxious when put in that situation. Sports is usually a non polarizing topic and one I feel comfortable enough talking to anyone about when weather conversations have dwindled. Her son sounds like someone I could debate Cubs vs. Sox with. And enjoy it.
The crowded primary field splinters Chicago voting so there is rarely a 50.x % majority. The consolidated election crowns a candidate that lacks consensus or support. This election cycle failed spectacularly for Chicago. The dysfunction in CPS is deep, and cannot be fixed with debt. Kids deserve a robust educational program. The school district should operate as other school districts do: with autonomy. This is a long term goal, but if their budget was created by the board and school CEO, with no chance of borrowing or begging for supplementation, hard choices would be made. Empty and underused buildings would be closed. Staff would be consolidated. Curriculum directors could serve more than one building. Federal funds would be efficiently applied for, state funding would be constant, and local property taxes would prioritize education. Unlike 90 % of Illinois school districts, Chicago has a gigantic corporate property tax base, in addition to its residential core. This funding is levied at a rate 3 times higher than residential rates. This detangling will never happen, I know. The residency requirements for educators means they are the new Machine. Their Boss is a particular kind of inept and Chicago kids and taxpayers will pay for it. ARE paying for it.
This is Johnson’s money quote from the conference: “ Now you actually have a mayor who recognizes democracy. Have given the people exactly what they asked for and what they voted for.”
Some of the voters and reporters remind me of the king in the shaggy dog story, who asked for the shaggiest dog in the kingdom, and when it was brought to him, he said, “Not that shaggy.”
That quote by Johnson seems to echo H.L. Mencken’s priceless “Democracy is the idea that the people know exactly what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”.
“If you don't like sports, you are missing a whole world of easygoing conversations with complete strangers.”
This tweet reads as if it's facetious but it's true. Small talk has to start somewhere. Talking about the weather is too boring. Religion and politics is third rail. Music, TV, movies has gotten more splintered and niche. Sports is probably the safest topic to talk about.
Johnson's tactics of dismissing every question with racially themed whataboutism is absolutely disgraceful and disgusting.
... and bizarre. He has no sense on how to play the race card. When I brings in race my first reaction is "what?..."
Lori Lightfoot played the gender card over how the press was critical of her. I think it did not work, but at least she was coherent about it.
Mayor Johnson is not a politician playing the race card. He is a true believer in Critical Race Theory and Anti-racism. In his world view everything is about anti-black racism, all European heritage people are racists, the structure of the economy is racist, the structure of government is racist, tax and borrowing policy are racist, math and statistic are racist, any challenge or questioning is racist. Other non-European heritage people are also victims, but far behind blacks in victimhood and too prone to sharing 'white' values.
He believes that there has been no progress among whites in understanding and accepting their racism and in fact their racism was simply transformed into new methods. This makes it perfectly reasonable to equate the attitudes, issues and arguments of 60, 100, 160 years ago with any white person today.
Not buying. I don't believe in collective guilt. I sent in some comments not yet posted. My grandparents came over from Eastern Europe around 1900. They probably never saw a black person until arriving here. They didn't practice racism. They were concerned with mere survival. My grandfather took a dare and started his own trucking business during the Great Depression. Fortunately it worked. It was never a large enterprise. But it allowed him to comfortably raise a family. He wasn't in a position to discriminate against anyone. No one is arguing how badly blacks in this country have been generally treated. That doesn't make all whites guilty. And maybe there are some that understand things better than many think, although we keep talking about whites collectively.
Hmm...That had not occurred to me. It makes sense though
In that case, I the world of black and white, how would Johnson categorize Sicilians?
See Dennis Hopper's answer in his scene with Christopher Walken in the movie True Romance. I would post a link, but I think it is too raw for the forum.
And he never really gets called out on it, so he keeps doing it
I heard a Trump voter on NPR saying "He [Agent Orange] is clearly a great man. The best thing is that he says what he means and means what he says." No wonder celebrities like Jon Voight, Kid Rock, Hulk Hogan and ... er ... endorse him.
That's the exact same reason they like Colin Kaepernick and...wait ...whu?!?!?!?!?!?
Johnson will go down as the worst mayor in the history of Chicago. Johnson is more concerned about his CTU, which actually has a contract, and not our fire fighters who continue to work under no contract as well as having no budget for parts to fix fire trucks. He is the manchurian candidate of the CTU and doesn't even bother to pretend he is working for anyone else except for the benefit of the CTU. When faced with tough and legitimate questions his go-to answer is crying "racism". If he does succeed in selling out Chicago taxpayers to the benefit of the CTU, it will be a short-lived victory. In the next mayor's administration when another teachers contract comes up, the CTU will crash and burn, as any goodwill that remains with Chicagoans will be thin. The clock is running out on Mayor Stacey Gates and her puppet Brandon "I don't do raggedy!" Johnson.
Chicago mayor Big Bill Thompson tops some lists as the worst major city mayor in the history of the country. I see parallels in terms of swagger, thickheadedness, bombastic rhetoric, and others pulling the strings.
Thompson actually got things built. A huge number of fire stations were built by him & are now either gone or sold off, as they were too small for the current fire trucks.
I caught a little of Johnson's press conference on the news and thought he was condescending and combative. It didn't come close to doing justice to entire exchange. Does Johnson realize there are OTHER children in CPS schools besides Black ones (and maybe brown, if he's feeling generous)? White ones, Asian ones, Eastern European? Apparently in Johnson's world, only Black children matter. He's an utter disgrace.
I visit a range of websites including yes, gasp! conservative ones. I found the item about cheating amusing, b/c on the conservative side of the aisle the same sentiment prevails, though reversed. Trump needs to win outside the margin of error in case of shenanigans on the part of the Democrats, in this case. Look at that! Something everyone can agree on as we start the slow march to the election in four long-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g weeks.
What “shenanigans”? Yes, nobody wants their political opponents to cheat, but when you take your case to court and lose dozens of times in several states as the GOP did in 2020, calling that election “rigged” is flat-out un-American. I’m voting Dem this year, but if Kamala Harris loses, calls the election “rigged” even after many court challenges, instigates an insurrection at the Capitol to halt the democratic process, then tries to call those insurrectionists “political prisoners” or “martyrs”, I’ll say the same thing about her and never vote for her or her surrogates again because she clearly would be trying to cripple our trusted electoral process for her own gain.
Pete Rose did not receive a "lifetime ban." The official designation for his punishment is that he was, and remains still, "permanently ineligible."
"Permanently" doesn't mean "until you die " Putting Rose in the Hall would only serve to demean it, and the honor given to its members
Also, under a rule adopted by the Hall's board of directors in 1991, anyone on the permanently ineligible list can’t be considered for election to the Hall of Fame.
I think of Ron Santo, and how he spent the rest of his life waiting to get voted in, which didn't happen until after his death. He was truly deserving of the honor. Pete Rose is not.
Not only were Johnson's remarks extremely racist towards anyone not black, but much of it was total lies.
I don't remember anyone saying free slaves would be too expensive. Or that it was fiscally irresponsible to do so.
In fact, one of Lincoln's ideas to end slavery was for the US government to buy all the slaves & just free them. The Civil War probably cost 50 times what that would've been, plus of course the almost 800,000 dead from that war!
And then his constantly bring up he's black & cares about black children, totally ignoring there are others in CPS.
I'm feeling that not only is Johnson is way over his head as mayor, but that he's also delusional & possibly insane! I would not be surprised that in the future of his term, we learn he's been hospitalized for a mental breakdown, because that bizarre speech of his surely sounded like the beginning of one!
Garry -
I think that there were several emancipation movements before the Civil War that understood that if the government freed the slaves, their owners would be entitled to compensation. The value to the U.S. economy represented by chattel human capital was extraordinarily large (read "The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" by Edward E. Baptiste). It was generally presumed by most politicians at the time that if slavery was to be abolished by the federal government (something the southern states would never agree to), the Constitution would require compensation to the "property" owners whose human chattel were emancipated. Even if agreed to, the cost was generally deemed to be too high. (Although, as you point out, it would have been a fraction of the cost of the Civil War.)
The stupid slave owners in the South flat out refused to take up the government's plan to buy & free the slaves. They had no understanding of economics! All of their wealth was tied up in the value of the slaves & they couldn't figure out how to run their farms & businesses without them. They just didn't have the education or imagination on how to actually pay for labor!
Free people always out produce slave labor. Slaves only do enough work to not be beaten or killed.
That was proven in the Civil War, when the free people of the North, massively outproduced the slave labor of the South & it also was of better quality.
That was repeated in WWII, when in 1945, the United States produced 50% of the world's total industrial output. Only 50 million people in this country outproduced at least 10 times that many worldwide. Because they were free people working to a goal of victory over fascism. The Nazis used huge numbers of slave laborers, had a system that figured out how long a slave would survive on minimum rations, 18 hours of work in horrific conditions & then they would die to be replaced by another slave. So of course the slaves did what they could to sabotage things. knowing full well they were destined to die, either by starvation & overwork or a bullet.
Slavery just doesn't work as an economic theory, that's been proven over & over again, but the advocates of it just can't face the simple facts of it.
Several years ago we visited Charleston, with a group of friends. We toured a former plantation which included, among other tours, a slavery tour. It was eye-opening; we saw the VERY small houses (one-room) in which 10 people could be living and heard about the rice market (and I think it was a particular kind of rice -- golden rice, perhaps? I don't recall). What I do recall is that the end of slavery killed that crop b/c landowners couldn't afford the cost of having to actually pay people to do the work, as opposed to having the slaves do it for free. I can't speak to Garry's point about it not working as an economic theory but I found it interesting that, gosh darn, it slave labor certain provided free labor.
Yes, although some folks in the Low Country are trying to bring back gold rice - see Carolina Gold Rice or Plantation Gold Rice. Not to be confused with golden rice, a genetically modified (or bred? Can't recall) product.
Garry, please re-consider some of your word choices here. Referring to millions of real human beings who had lives of love, memories, and family merely as “slaves” who acted as a predictable whole feeds the dehumanization of people from different cultures today. In a thread where a number of folks are being outspoken about the validity of race and ethnicity as a political tool, I hope we can all agree that for those who have relatives who once suffered in slavery as recently as some of our still-living grandparents, they deserve to think of those ancestors as people who by no fault of their own were victims of brutal, cruel politics of their time. Also, your post by its logic suggests that one might condone such brutality if it was more profitable, which I’m sure was not your intent.
There was nothing wrong with my word choice as I don't do politically correct bullshit!
The black people that were sold by black people to the white slavers in Africa were slaves, just as the various Europeans the Nazis forced to build the Atlantic Wall or work in the underground hellholes of Dora, building V-2s or ME-262s were slaves!
That's the correct term for them!
Hey Garry, we all don’t know each other personally on this thread, which the vast majority use for thoughtful, civil conversation about topics that matter deeply to us. All we have are words and symbols to make our ideas known. Swearing, using exclamation points for every comment, and name-calling might get clicks on those horrific social media sites, but they clearly don’t fit these conversations, which often include very sensitive subjects, not sports talk or pop culture or humorous distractions. Keep being you, but please re-consider how you share your thoughts here. Thank you.
As for Jesse Jetstream endorsing Fioretti, my guess is that Jetstream saw some Jews were supporting Burke, so as he's a lifelong Jew hater, he decided to endorse a wacko perennial candidate who has as much chance of winning as the White Sox!
Never forget that Fioretti cost the taxpayers of Chicago $250,000 in legal bills because he refused to let a restaurant have a sign hang over a sidewalk, because he hated the name of that restaurant! Luckily for us, the owner of the restaurant didn't sue the city over that obvious 1st Amendment violation, because he would've gotten millions in damages from a federal jury if he did sue, because he would've won, as a federal judge had already ruled it was a 1st Amendment violation & ordered the city to issue the sign permit!
Johnson's continual interjection of race into questions that had nothing to do with race on topics that have nothing to do with race was disheartening, to say the least. Is he aware that CPS serves all kids, not just Black children? Is he aware that criticisms of his actions and policies have nothing to do with his race but are about the actions and the policies? Any one who seemed to ask about fiscal responsibility at CPS received an answer that boiled down to "why do you hate Black children?" Never mind that, according to Chalkbeat, the student body makeup of CPS has 47% identifying as Hispanic, 35% as Black, 11% as white, and 4.5% as Asian American.
I loved reading about Melinda AK’s son. I have a very difficult time talking with people and get quite anxious when put in that situation. Sports is usually a non polarizing topic and one I feel comfortable enough talking to anyone about when weather conversations have dwindled. Her son sounds like someone I could debate Cubs vs. Sox with. And enjoy it.
As did I!
The crowded primary field splinters Chicago voting so there is rarely a 50.x % majority. The consolidated election crowns a candidate that lacks consensus or support. This election cycle failed spectacularly for Chicago. The dysfunction in CPS is deep, and cannot be fixed with debt. Kids deserve a robust educational program. The school district should operate as other school districts do: with autonomy. This is a long term goal, but if their budget was created by the board and school CEO, with no chance of borrowing or begging for supplementation, hard choices would be made. Empty and underused buildings would be closed. Staff would be consolidated. Curriculum directors could serve more than one building. Federal funds would be efficiently applied for, state funding would be constant, and local property taxes would prioritize education. Unlike 90 % of Illinois school districts, Chicago has a gigantic corporate property tax base, in addition to its residential core. This funding is levied at a rate 3 times higher than residential rates. This detangling will never happen, I know. The residency requirements for educators means they are the new Machine. Their Boss is a particular kind of inept and Chicago kids and taxpayers will pay for it. ARE paying for it.
The Baby Trebuchet/Catapult VQotW is clearly the best this week, although fellow voters don't seem to agree with me . . . .
Mayor Johnson is delusional, based on his presser. Wow.
“41 of 50 older people”??
This what comes of using the name of a tree to refer to city councilors.
Johnson is either the village idiot or a misunderstood genius. Time will tell.
I don’t think it’s going to take much time. He is totally under the waves.
He's the idiot that the village is missing.
This is Johnson’s money quote from the conference: “ Now you actually have a mayor who recognizes democracy. Have given the people exactly what they asked for and what they voted for.”
Some of the voters and reporters remind me of the king in the shaggy dog story, who asked for the shaggiest dog in the kingdom, and when it was brought to him, he said, “Not that shaggy.”
That quote by Johnson seems to echo H.L. Mencken’s priceless “Democracy is the idea that the people know exactly what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”.
“If you don't like sports, you are missing a whole world of easygoing conversations with complete strangers.”
This tweet reads as if it's facetious but it's true. Small talk has to start somewhere. Talking about the weather is too boring. Religion and politics is third rail. Music, TV, movies has gotten more splintered and niche. Sports is probably the safest topic to talk about.