Lightfoot Resign or Just Go Away. Now
By John Kass
July 8, 2022
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot could do her city and her family a great service by walking away:
Resign Lori. Now. Just walk away. Quit. Now.
Chicago can’t survive much more of you. So, leave. Please. And quickly.
She’d probably say that this is no time for her to quit. She might feel compelled to tell us that the city needs her. But does anyone really believe that? If she resigned today, at least the government would be shocked, perhaps wake up, feel a sense of urgency instead of the bureaucratic lethargy of the doomed. Chaos and anarchy in the streets, in downtown, on video for all the nation to see, is not a growth strategy for Chicago.
It’s time Lori. Go. There is no shame in it, not really. Admitting you can’t handle the job, or don’t want the job, would be a blessing to your city. The mayor of Philadelphia has said as much. Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of England has resigned. He can’t handle the job. Philadelphia and England would be better off with different ,competent leadership. So would Chicago.
She’s got to go. Now. Every day is chaos, rhetoric, attitude. Chicago needs a competent manager, not a clown. And Lightfoot is not a competent manager. Just go, Lori. Here’s your hashtag: #LightfootOut
Update: She’s just announced she’s taking her staff and her wife on a nice trip to London and Paris. Here’s an idea. Stay there.
I supported Lori Lightfoot. We were friendly once. I defended her and she’d give me big hugs at parties. I remember that during her first campaign, when former Mayor Rahm Emanuel backed out and threw the election up for grabs, she was depressed and wanted to quit. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle had entered the race, as had Bill Daley. She thought there was no way forward for her.
I called her and heard the exhaustion in her voice. She wanted to quit. I was one of those convincing her to stay in the race and fight. I remember it was hot outside, I was on my deck in the sun telling her not to give up. So I suppose I bear some responsibility. I backed her. Though our politics differ, she campaigned as a breath of fresh air. Because she was a former federal prosecutor, I hoped that she had some respect for law-and-order. I was wrong.
Lightfoot has been a disaster for Chicago.
She should go, now, the sooner the better, if only to give the city she says she loves a chance. Because every day that she remains in office, she hurts Chicago, its people and the city’s future. She should go. Now.
There is no competent urgency vibe coming from Lightfoot’s City Hall, just a sense of the bureaucratic paralysis. Crime is up 36 percent over last year. She has broken and demoralized the police force. Cops don’t want to get out of their cars. And who’d blame them after all she’s done to them? Every day in this, her “Sumer of Joy,” the people are filled with dread. They’re shot and killed or just shot, and robbed, intimidated. Who goes downtown to spend money? Tourists? No. The middle class? No.
And the wealthy are in Montana, or Wyoming or Florida. Anywhere but Chicago.
Over the July 4 weekend, 71 people were shot, and eight were killed in the city’s never-ending violence that doesn’t show any signs of stopping. Cops are ambushed. Mobs gather downtown, and in the neighborhoods, climbing on police cars, throwing powerful fireworks into cars with cops inside, all of this on video, all of this a demonstration they don’t fear the consequence. Because there are no consequences.
According to news reports more than 400,000 911 calls for “high-priority” incidents go unanswered by police. Why? Because there aren’t enough cops to handle the calls. She’s let the police force dwindle in numbers, as senior commanders and others with experience rush toward early retirement or to the suburbs for other jobs in law enforcement, rather than work and live and stay in Chicago.
The people of Chicago they pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation. Why pay all those fees and fines when their 911 calls for help go unanswered? There is no reason for them to stay now. Because Lightfoot is not a competent manager. A hallmark of incompetent managers is that they hire more incompetents. And she’s hired incompetents police Supt. David Brown and First Deputy Eric Carter to run the police department. They’re not running anything. All they’re doing is reacting out of panic. The street cops know. So do the criminals.
But Lightfoot sure is a talker. Isn’t she a fine talker? She can throw the “F” and the “You” at Supreme Court Justices, at just about everyone who angers her. Rhetoric is her thing, talking is her thing. But Chicago can’t afford another talker. Chicago doesn’t need more rhetoric. Chicago needs competent management.
Yet from her first days in office, to her caving to BLM rioters, to her caving to the Chicago Teachers Union that locked down schools and did incalculable damage to Chicago’s young people, and all the rest, she’s proven time and again that there is one thing she can be counted on to do.
She can be counted to not manage the city.
Enough. Time to resign mayor. Time to go. You’ve done enough damage to Chicago.
After years of demonizing her police force and after endorsing their nemesis–the Soros backed woke non-prosecutor, Cook County State’s Atty. Kim Foxx for re-election, Lightfoot’s message was clear, to the law abiding, to taxpayers, to families, to police and business owners. What was that message? Get out.
And a great city hollows out. Chicago dies before our eyes.
Time to leave, mayor. Time to take your memes and your toxic attitude and leave. Chicago can’t wait for you to become a competent manager. You never were a manager. You were always only about anger, the symbolism of identity politics, and a hot angry wind. But that’s no way to run a city.
Chicago has no more time to wait for you to temper your vulgar rhetoric and your race-baiting in the hopes you might lead the city forward. Your time for you leading has passed. It is now time for you to go.
Lightfoot wins headlines in blue-Chicago for hurling the “F word” at Supreme Court justices and then she whines about the lack of civility in public discourse. Woke media applaud her pluck. Early on, they fashioned her something of a superhero. MSNBC and other left-wing media outlets love her when she curses people out who disagree with her.
But does she ever hurl the “F word” at Kim Foxx? Or at Foxx’s patron, Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle for their role in spiking violent crime helping destroy a great city? Does she dare?
No. She only sees race and identity politics now. They’re black. She’s black. They’re leftist Democrats and she’s a leftist Democrat. And the city be damned.
The immutable characteristics of race and gender, not competent management of a troubled Chicago, are the cornerstones of her politics.
And neither does she hurl the “F word” at her fellow Democrats in the state legislature and at Gov. J.B. Pritzker who signed a law eliminating cash bail, which is guaranteed to wreak havoc with violent crime in Chicago or at weakling Chief Judge Tim Evans.
She doesn’t dare hurl cuss words at JB Pritzker. He’s the political boss now. A boss of dough to be sure, a boss of weak will, but a boss who fantasizes about becoming president, an oligarch with billions in his pockets and soon, she will have nowhere to go.
“The toxicity in our public discourse is a thing I think we should all be concerned about, right?” Lightfoot said just days after shouting “F$%#& You” at Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas who disagrees with her on same-sex marriage.
“And it’s ironic obviously that we’re having this conversation and what happened on Independence Day.”
Irony, indeed.
She was referring to the mass shooting in Highland Park, not the endless mass shootings that take place in Chicago each weekend without her acknowledgement.
Mayor Phallus Maximus, your days of gaslighting the people with your worm-tongue tricks will soon be at an end.
Nothing illustrates the problem of Lightfoot’s incompetence better than a recent article by my friend Matt Rosenberg in Wirepoints:
From Rosenberg’s article:
“We’re already seen anemic rates of arrest and prosecutions in Chicago, accompanied by finger-pointing between politicians over crime and the court system. And years of no support from city leadership, anti-policing legislation and the damaging rhetoric of the “defund” movement have taken a toll on Chicago police morale and manpower.
All that has spread the police force so thin that, in 2021, one of law enforcement’s most basic functions, responding to high-priority emergency service calls in a timely manner, was regularly beyond their capacity.
New data uncovered by Wirepoints through public records requests to the Chicago Police Department (CPD) reveal that in 2021 there were 406,829 incidents of high-priority emergency service calls for which there were no police available to respond.
That was 52 percent of the 788,000 high-priority 911 service calls dispatched in 2021.
High priority calls include Priority Level 1 incidents, which represent “an imminent threat to life, bodily injury, or major property damage/loss,” and Priority Level 2 incidents when “timely police action…has the potential to affect the outcome of an incident.”
In other words, Chicago, when a thug threatens to kill or rob you and take what’s yours by force, in Lori Lightfoot’s Chicago, you’re on your own.
That the people of Chicago pay some of the highest property taxes in the nation is of no concern to the city’s entrenched political class. Most of them are worm-tongues, too. That’s how they survive.
Want to complain to City Hall? Then dial the number and wait and wait and wait…Perhaps a Fire Department paramedic will show up eventually, put you in a bag, zip it shut, and take you to the morgue.
She caved to the left that destroyed the city in the 2020 George Floyd riots. Her own inspector general’s report of how she handled the riots was absolutely scathing. Her administration was woefully unprepared. Lightfoot and her police brass were unprepared. She panicked and could not lead under fire. And who suffered? The businesses destroyed and the people and her city.
Inexplicably, Lightfoot later endorsed Kim Foxx for re-election, perhaps to keep Foxx’s patron Boss Toni Preckwinkle at bay. Buy that only further demoralized her police force and compounded the anarchy and chaos on the streets. I remember before she endorsed Foxx, Lightfoot told me that Foxx winning a second term would be a disaster for a city struggling with violent crime. Then the mayor endorsed her anyway.
Those who have Lightfoot’s ear tell me she regrets endorsing Foxx. But the damage has been done.
And now? It’s just too late.
Chicago is hurting. It cannot survive more time with Lightfoot as mayor. Chicago does not need a talker, a meme-maker, a rhetorician who is all about show-biz and personality and attitude. Chicago needs competent management. Without competent management the city is doomed. And Lightfoot, as she’s proven repeatedly, is not a competent manager.
So, Lori Lightfoot, it’s time to resign. If you care about the city and its people, you’ll go.
Just go away. Leave now. Please. Just go. Quickly and be gone.
