🤝 Crain's offers Mayor Johnson an unmissable deal

"Trash your ideals and abandon your political convictions." Go Sox! [View this email in your browser]( [READER Logo]( Daily Reader | February 27, 2024 I was enjoying a friendly give-and-take with a liberal friend, when she said something I’ve been frequently hearing from my liberal friends. “You’re too tough on the mainstream media, Ben.” And, “They’re not as biased against Mayor Johnson as you say they are.” And . . . “Deep down inside, they want the mayor to succeed. So . . . stop picking on them!” Well, liberals, as much as I love you, I must disagree. I’m not sure many people in the mainstream media, especially the owners of the outlets, want Mayor Johnson to succeed. Not to go all “Bill Clinton” on you, but I realize that my assertion depends on how I define success. By success I mean: Johnson successfully taxes the rich to subsidize programs for the poor, which was the agenda he was elected to execute. By that measure, I can’t think of many, if any, mainstream media types (again, especially the media outlet ownership) who want Johnson to succeed. Still think I’m being too hard? Well, consider a recent editorial by the Crain’s Chicago Business editorial board, entitled “For a mayor in need of a win, here’s a potential playbook.” The gist of this editorial is that Mayor Johnson can reverse his fortune by engineering handouts to the Bears and to the White Sox for building new stadiums. Yes, you read that correctly. Not just one stadium handout, but two. That’s an astounding ask, given that the Bears still haven’t officially requested how much they want—or even where they want to build their new stadium. So it sorta amounts to a blank check for the Bears. And the White Sox are seeking a staggering handout worth hundreds of millions of dollars in sales taxes, hotel taxes, property taxes, and lord-only-knows-what-other-kinds of taxes. All in all, an even sweeter deal than the one the Sox currently enjoy—and that deal is pretty sweet. All of this for a terrible baseball team that can’t fill the stadium even when they’re winning. In endorsing the handouts, Crain’s notes that it’s been a rough few months for Mayor Johnson, with many people turning against him. But . . . “If Johnson uses the leverage that came with the job,” the Crain’s editorial board concludes, and gives the Bears and the Sox the money they want, “. . . it could go a long way toward erasing the memory of his until-now inauspicious tenure.” I laughed out loud when I read this. You call this a deal, Crain’s? Tony Soprano would offer Mayor Johnson a better quid-pro-quo than that. You want Mayor Johnson to trash his ideals, abandon his political convictions and upset his strongest supporters by, essentially, taxing the poor and middle class in order to fork over billions to the rich owners of two lousy teams. In other words: the exact opposite of what people elected him to do. And in exchange, what are you offering Mayor Johnson? An editorial pat on the head? Which may be followed by an endorsement of Paul Vallas, Alderperson Bill Conway, or whatever Great White Hope is the flavor of the day come the 2027 mayoral election. Saw the same thing happen with Mayor Lightfoot. She bent over backwards to appease the downtown business community and their media allies—and they still turned on her. I think they said she was too nasty. That’s funny, given the nasty temperaments of the mayors they adored. If this Crain’s editorial is any indication, the only thing the mainstream media (or at least the owners) want Mayor Johnson to succeed at is failure. [Logo with text: The Ben Joravsky Show. Features man wearing a cap and headphones, and Chicago flag stars.]( 🎙 [Listen to The Ben Joravsky Show]( 🎙 ◈ [The Expatriates]( by Janice Y. K. Lee. 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