Tag: chicago

What Could Go Wrong When Governments Take Control of Food? We’re About to Find Out.

In another episode of “Have We Learned Nothing from History?” two governments in the past couple of days have decided to take the high prices of food into their own hands.

Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, wants to heap more taxes on grocery stores to punish them for high prices. And Chicago’s mayor, Brandon Johnson, has proposed city-owned grocery stores.

Some other times the government has taken control of the food supply

Historically, it’s the beginning of the end for people when the government begins to interfere with food pricing, production, and distribution. Just look at some of the rules that were established in Venezuela that led to widespread hunger.  The government took control of food production facilities. They began forcing farmers to produce food for less than the cost of growing or raising it. They rationed food to families. They even began to track people who were growing their own food. In short, every terrible decision it was possible to make, they made. And the people suffered for it.

There’s an article by a friend of mine, Scott Terry, that I always cite when talking about the collectivization of food. He wrote a concerning history of this troubling phenomenon right here in America and it’s well worth a read. His article is specifically about agriculture but the same principles hold true of other governmental controls on food.

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Zoraida Bartolomei and Alberto Rolon – the Chicago couple shot dead with their two sons and three dogs in mysterious massacre – as cops hunt gunman and the victim’s sister pleads for ‘answers’ about ‘horrific crime’

The family of four who were massacred in their Illinois home along with their three dogs have been pictured for the first time as cops continue to hunt for the killer. 

Zoraida Bartolomei, 32, her husband Alberto Rolon – also known as Roberto – and their children Adriel, 10, and Diego, seven, were shot in their family bungalow in Romeoville, a suburb of Chicago, on Sunday.

Romeoville Police Department investigators have ruled out a murder-suicide and warned the murderer is still on the loose.

Their family said they have no idea why anyone would want to kill them, and Zoraida’s devastated sister has issued a plea for answers.

Sharing a photograph of the family on Facebook, Bryana Bartolomei said: ‘I want to know what happened to my nephews, my sister, her husband, and WHY?

‘They were shot and killed in their home.’ 

The picture shows Zoraida and Alberto beaming with their two sons, one playfully holding a strand of his mother’s hair.

A fundraiser created to cover funeral expenses was created on Monday, describing their children as ‘the sweetest most innocent angels’.

Friends described them as ‘hardworking people that had just bought their first home’.

‘Their kids were the sweetest most innocent angels who could hug your worries away,’ the fundraiser says.

‘In just a few hours their lives, their family’s lives completely changed. The world is going to be a much dimmer place without them.’

They pleaded for anyone with information about the gunman to contact police.

Zoraida’s mother Lydia from Puerto Rico earlier told DailyMail.com they were ‘so happy’ and had only bought their $250,000 Romeoville home five months ago. 

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Chicago Teachers Union Boss Sends Son to Private School

The head of the Chicago Teachers Union who has described school choice as “the choice of racists” sends her son to a private school. 

Stacy Davis Gates, who was elected as president of the Chicago Teachers Union in 2022, has long derided school choice—a wide range of policies that make it easier for parents to send their children to schools other than their local public school, often by getting back some of the government funding that would have followed their child to public school—as inherently racist.

“*School choice* was actually the choice of racists,” Gates tweeted in August 2022. “It was created to avoid integrating schools with Black children. Now it’s the civil rights struggle of our generation?”

In a letter she wrote earlier this month, Gates explained her decision to enroll her son in a private school while her other two children remained in Chicago Public Schools (CPS).

Chicago classrooms are “struggling to recover from waves of school closings and disinvestment under previous mayors. Public and charter high schools in our Black and Brown neighborhoods are living and breathing examples of inequality,” she wrote. “For my husband and me, it forced us to send our son, after years of attending a public school, to a private high school so he could live out his dream of being a soccer player while also having a curriculum that can meet his social and emotional needs.”

This excuse misses key context. While Gates is right that school systems across the nation, including in Chicago, are still reeling from pandemic-era setbacks, she herself led the charge to keep Chicago Public Schools closed sporadically as late as early 2022. When CPS announced a two-week shutdown in January 2022, Gates told The New York Times that the closure was necessary for schools to “get themselves together.”

Gates also frames CPS as underfunded, describing “decades of systemic underinvestment in marginalized communities.” However, over the past five academic years, CPS’ operating budget has actually skyrocketed—increasing from $5.92 billion to $8.49 billion, despite enrollment dropping by nearly 40,000 students over the same period. 

Further, in consistently framing school choice advocates as racist, Gates also ignores the fact that minority parents are often the strongest supporters of school choice. According to a RealClear Opinion Research poll from earlier this summer, 73 percent of black respondents supported school choice, the highest of any demographic group. At least 70 percent of other demographic groups also support school choice policies.

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Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Wants to Open City-Owned Grocery Stores

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) is looking into opening taxpayer-funded, city-owned grocery stores in areas in which businesses have pulled out due to rampant crime.

Johnson announced a partnership with the Economic Security Project to look into the possibility of opening city-owned grocery stores. The first step in the partnership will be to perform a feasibility study, but the city did not provide a timeline, the Chicago Tribune reported. 

Johnson claimed his administration is “committed to advancing innovative, whole-of-government approaches to address these inequities.”

The mayor said in a statement: 

All Chicagoans deserve to live near convenient, affordable, healthy grocery options. We know access to grocery stores is already a challenge for many residents, especially on the South and West sides. A better, stronger, safer future is one where our youth and our communities have access to the tools and resources they need to thrive. My administration is committed to advancing innovative, whole-of-government approaches to address these inequities.

Economic Security Project senior adviser Ameya Pawar compared the proposal to “the way a library or the postal service operates.”

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Chicago’s mayor Brandon Johnson wants to push ‘mansion tax’ on homes that sell for more than $1 million – and members of his team want to tax households earning $100,000 or more in report named ‘First We Get the Money’

Chicago‘s mayor Brandon Johnson is pushing a ‘mansion tax’ on sales of homes of more than $1 million, as his administration continues to push higher tax on households earning over $100,000.

The newly elected mayor, who took over from his disastrous predecessor Lori Lightfoot in May of this year, wants to push a hike in taxes in order to fight homelessness in the city. 

Allies of Mayor Johnson, 47, have also announced plans to push a $12-billion plan for the city titled ‘First We Get the Money’.

The plan, seemingly named after a quote from the 1983 film Scarface, aims to build a ‘more just’ Chicago by slashing funding for the police and implementing new taxes in the city. 

Johnson believes people that own properties worth $1 million in the third-largest city in the U.S. are ‘rich, and should pay if they sell those homes’. 

The plan, named ‘Bring Chicago Home’ is a compromise from his previous plan that would have seen the transfer-tax rate triple from 0.75 percent to 2.65 percent. 

According to the National Review, Johnson is now proposing a three-tier progressive-transfer rate. 

This means that sales below $1 million would see the tax cut from 0.75 percent to 06. percent, while property owners who sell their homes for between $1 million and $1.5 million would see tax rates rise from 0.75 percent to 2 percent. 

Property sales of $1.5 million and above would see their tax rate quadrupled to three percent of the transfer amount. 

A search of real estate sites by DailyMail.com showed that it was difficult to find substantial sized properties for over a million dollars, with the majority being condos or small townhouses.  

According to Midwest Real Estate Data seen by Chicago Business, there were 2,391 homes sold for $1 million or more in Chicago last year, down 14.5 percent from the previous year. 

Zillow is also currently reporting that the average price of a home in Chicago is $287,709, which is down 1.2 percent over the last year. 

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Chicago suburb starts disbursing $10 million reparations package to black residents

A Chicago suburb has become the first city in the nation to begin disbursing reparations payments to black residents over discrimination and limited access to housing, the Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

Approximately 140 residents in Evanston, Illinois, will receive $25,000 from the city by the end of the year, according to the outlet.

In 2019, the city of roughly 75,000 residents approved a $10 million reparations package to be distributed over 10 years. So far, the city has already disbursed reparations payments to sixteen qualified residents, the Evanston Round Table reported.

Individuals must have been at least 18 years old and resided in the city between 1919 and 1969 to qualify for the payments.

The city is providing reparations in cash or vouchers, which are supposed to come from marijuana and real-estate transfer taxes.

However, the Evanston Round Table noted that the marijuana sales tax revenue slowed after the opening of a second dispensary in the city was delayed. Another location is scheduled to open in September, which will help cover the reparations program.

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Chicago police investigating whether cops had improper sexual contact with immigrants, including teen who was allegedly impregnated

Chicago police are investigating accusations that a group of officers had improper sexual contact with newly arrived immigrants.

One of the officers, assigned to the Ogden District, covering Lawndale and Little Village, has been accused of impregnating a teenage girl, law enforcement sources said Thursday.

Multiple other officers are accused of engaging in sexual acts with immigrants.

A police spokesperson said the department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs and the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability are investigating. 

As the city has struggled to accommodate an influx of new arrivals being sent from the southern U.S. border, controversy has brewed over the decision to temporarily house many of them at police stations.

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The Satanic Temple Sues Over Right To Give ‘Invocation’ at City Council Meetings

The Chicago City Council, like many other legislative bodies, typically opens meetings with an “invocation”—essentially, a prayer or moment of reflection. Clergy from a wide range of religious backgrounds have given these invocations, and a Satanist minister wants to join their ranks. But the city has refused to let him—and refused to explain the decision. Now, this minister has filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the city.

The Satanic Temple is a nontheistic religion that, as noted by the lawsuit, is “federally recognized as a church and a religious public charity.” Contrary to popular belief, members of the group don’t actually worship Satan. Instead, they follow a series of seven “Tenets” focused on broad ideas of compassion, rationalism, and freedom.

The Satanic Temple has often tested religious-freedom policies and challenged anti-abortion laws on religious-freedom grounds. Just this month, the group experienced a significant legal victory after it won its lawsuit against a school district that attempted to block the formation of an “After School Satan Club.” It also celebrated when in 2015 a large Ten Commandments monument was removed from the Oklahoma state Capitol following a protest by the group and a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union.*

This most recent lawsuit, filed on Wednesday, marks at least the third time The Satanic Temple has sued after being blocked from giving an invocation or prayer before a legislative body. Adam Vavrick, the ordained minister in the religion, unsuccessfully sought to perform an invocation at a Chicago city council meeting. According to the suit, Vavrick began his efforts in January 2020, when he spoke to Chauncy Rice, the then-chief of public engagement for the Office of the City Clerk, who told Vavrick “that he would be happy to schedule him to provide an invocation after ‘standard vetting procedures.”

“For the next several months, Minister Adam followed up with Mr. Rice approximately once a month to inquire about the status of his request to provide an invocation,” writes the complaint. “These emails went unanswered.” The same outcome occurred when Vavrick attempted to schedule an invocation with Rice’s successor.

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Newly-Elected Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Said Black People Should Not Face ‘State-Sponsored Policing’

Chicago’s new Mayor-Elect Brandon Johnson told a group organizing for a “police-free future” that black people should be removed from “state-sponsored policing” as a way to fight “white supremacy.”

During the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, Johnson came out in support of the “defund the police” movement and spoke on a panel titled “We Don’t Call Police: A Town Hall on a Police-Free Future” in which he praised organizers for pushing “an agenda that actually can transform people’s lives,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

“And part of it is removing ourselves away from this, you know, state-sponsored policing,” he said, “but also the tools that have been placed against Black folks that have been used violently, whether it’s policing, or administering standardized tests, or … around how white supremacy finds its way in every facet of our lives, that we have to fight and resist that.”

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Obama Center is displacing black families by significantly raising neighborhood’s rent, Chicago residents say

South Side Chicago residents recently revealed to the Washington Post that the construction of the Obama Presidential Center has led to a significant increase in the neighborhood’s rent, causing the displacement of long-term residents, including many black families.

In September 2021, former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama broke ground on the Obama Presidential Center in the South Side of Chicago. The center, located on a 19-acre lot, will include a public library, playground, community centers, and a museum.

The $500 million project has been largely financed by private donors. The construction, which is still ongoing, is estimated to bring $3.1 billion to the community. In addition, it is predicted to generate another $16.5 million in state and local tax revenue.

At the groundbreaking ceremony, Obama told the audience that the center would “give back to Chicago and the South Side in particular.”

“The Obama Presidential Center is our way of repaying some of what this amazing city has given us,” he stated.

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