It’s a sound we all dread: the toilet keeps running long after the handle drops. Water drains, money slips away, and the bill still comes. Anyone standing there nodding, pretending the noise signals progress, must live in Chicago politics—ignoring the damage quietly spreading beneath the floor.
A Mayor at War With Arithmetic
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson keeps insisting he likes business while governing as though payroll offends his values, despite policies that act like our running toilet: employers leave, investment slows, and taxes rise to plug holes, all while policies are openly hostile to growth.
Revenue is treated as an abstraction by leaders rather than wages earned by people who can still pack up and go. Budgets never care about slogans, because when employers exit, residents pay the difference. No matter how well-written, no speech fixes arithmetic.
A City Built on Strength, Undermined by Control
Once, in a time that seems like a galaxy far, far away, Chicago once stood for grit, industry, and upward mobility. Railroads, stockyards, steel, and trade rewarded their leaders’ effort and risk. Governance, consolidated power, and narrow decision-making did something that should never happen: they flushed that spirited grit away, leaving a political structure that rewards insiders and punishes independence.
It’s a script that never changes: predictable election outcomes, concentrated turnout that allows the machines to endure. Leaders hostile to growth arrive preselected rather than challenged.
When Rhetoric Replaces Revenue
The latest version of leadership talks endlessly about equity while ignoring flight. Taxes increase not by choice but by necessity after revenue leaves. Businesses respond to pressure the same way families respond when their neighborhoods become dangerous.
They move.
When each person or entity leaves, their departure tightens the vise on those left behind. Leadership talks endlessly about equity while ignoring flight. Taxes rise not by choice, but by necessity after revenue leaves.
Businesses respond to pressure the same way families respond to unsafe neighborhoods. They move. Each departure tightens the vise on those left behind. With rising property taxes, multiplying fees, and already-weakened services, officials scold rather than adjust, blaming greed rather than reading the trail they’re leaving.
Hellbound and Down 