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.
How Corruption Dug In
Modern progressivism isn't the mother of Chicago corruption. Political machines formed in the late 1800s, when favors were traded for loyalty and guaranteed protection in exchange for votes. The corruption tractor was set in motion, and it continues to run.
As if born from Lake Michigan, reform waves came and went, yet changing language and preserving control protected the structure.
It's a culture that favors loyalty over competence, where accountability remains scattered because there are no penalties for failure.
Three Ways Out That Don’t Involve Slogans
No options exist for Chicago that promise comfort, but it takes the complexity of a Rube Goldberg machine to shmaybe work.
Power needs to be decentralized. Reducing the centralization of power over zoning controls, taxation, and licensing lets neighborhoods compete for growth rather than beg and grovel to City Hall for it. Keep accountability at the local level, which sharpens judgment.
After that, impose spending caps that are tied to population and inflation. By creating those automatic limits, it forces prioritization while restraining ideological excess. If families can live this way, cities can too.
Finally, reform how elections are structured. Nonpartisan primaries and broader turnout requirements weaken the dominance that the machine has grown to depend on, while rewarding competence over loyalty.
There are myriad solutions to crack Chicago's corrupted nuts: none offer miracles, and all punish failure. Again.
Final Thoughts
When leadership respects arithmetic as much as ambition, cities can survive. Chicago still has tremendous talent, geography, and history worth protecting.
Contempt for growth guarantees a city's decline; after all, running toilets never fix themselves. Either somebody turns the shut-off valve or keeps praying forever.
It's a sound that keeps going; the water continues to drain, and bills pile higher and higher.
Chicago needs to choose repair or denial. Until the city stops choosing the easy way, the running toilet will bring the floor down, and people will have to live with what's left.
Urban decline doesn’t announce itself with alarms. It advances quietly, protected by excuses and leaders who never pay a price for failure.
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