Blaming the Wrong People

Ken Griffin is a self-made billionaire. He is a hedge fund (Citadel) founder and operator. He is worth about $25 billion dollars. In recent months he has donated about $50 million to Illinois republican candidates hoping to survive this week’s primary elections. At last review his candidates are not doing very well despite the huge sums of money they are spending to win their offices.

He has announced his plan to move his hedge fund headquarters lock stock and barrel to Miami, Florida. He claims this move is about rampant crime in Chicago. All too many people, especially the media, are jumping on that statement to blame Mayor Lightfoot for this predicament.

That is unfortunate. Mr. Griffin does not like the mayor, nor her party, her Governor or anything else about the political life of Chicago and the state of Illinois. Mr. Griffin has placed the blame on the wrong person. He is attempting to play pressure politics where it doesn’t have traction.

Is Chicago’s crime scene bad? Yes. Is it worse now than it was a year ago? No. How can that improvement be a bad thing reflecting on the mayor? She has worked diligently to control causes of crime, researching the key elements of crime, and changing the outcomes for the better. She alone cannot do this. It takes every one of us to change the crime culture of Chicago and Illinois. She is one of the movers making a difference. Not satisfied with the improvement to date, Mayor Lightfoot continues to push changes forward again and again.

And crime is not the only issue on the mayor’s agenda. Picking any topic and connecting it directly with any politician is not fair. A host of issues come with the job of mayor. Generations of predecessors predated the current mayor’s incumbency. Also, preceding environments of social decay, poor schools, and declining housing conditions coupled with the then economic environments, create the situation we are forced to face today. The mayor did not make any of those things happen. Yet she is stuck with fixing what she can.

Illinois is another case in point. Governor Pritzker has done much to save the state from financial ruin caused by many predecessors, many of them republican. He took ownership of the problems and has found a road back to wholeness. The job is not yet done, but well on its way to solutions that work.

Meanwhile, the governor is attracting new business to the state and supporting evolutions of new jobs and careers for those who lost their livelihoods caused by the pandemic. At last check, the pandemic is not over. It threatens renewal at every turn. Our vigilance is needed to control pandemic horrors of the past two years. Meanwhile, we are experiencing a reprieve from those horrors and the economy is brightening.

Is there threat of a recession? Yes. But what is the cause of that? Inflation caused mainly by supply chain disruption emanating both from the global effects of the pandemic and the war between Russia and Ukraine. Neither of those circumstances were created by the governor, or the mayor of Chicago. Both, however, must live with the effects. And they have. They continue to double down on making the best of a bad situation. And they are doing just that.

Those two situations are not the only problems on the table. The prevalent issues remain from yesteryear. They will be there for the next mayor and governor as well. The real question remains, what can we call do to help our leaders improve living conditions for us all?

Oh, and another question. What have we helped with recently?

June 29, 2022

 

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