It's no secret that Chicago is turning into a socialist hellhole. 

Which, if you think about it, is pretty amazing. The amount of money floating around in the city is astronomical. But when you have horrible leadership, greedy public employee unions, prosecutors determined to pat criminals on the head, and an ideology based on pillaging the populace, you can run anyplace into the ground. 

See California. Or Portland. Or Los Angeles. Or San Francisco...you get the idea. 

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson is about as lefty as you can get. He combines insanely liberal policies with the socialist-style rapaciousness that Manuel Ortega or Hugo Chavez would envy. His political strategy, if you could call it that, is destroying the city and making the people who haven't decided to leave utterly dependent on the government. 

These types of stores are commonly found in socialist countries like Cuba and Venezuela. Ask their citizens how that’s worked out for them.

— CryptoAcid (💙,🧡)🦇🔊 (@CryptoAcid) January 7, 2025

He certainly is making progress on destroying the city, and one of the persistent problems created by liberal governance is the unwillingness of grocery stores to serve certain neighborhoods because they are unsafe to do business in. Even when grocery stores have been subsidized under previous mayors to address the problem, the stores close and leave because the subsidies don't compensate for dealing with the dysfunction. 

Johnson's proposed "solution" is government-run grocery stores, and there is (believe it or not) a state subsidy to get this plan going. But the Johnson administration, giving a preview to how well the stores will be run, can't get its act together enough to apply for the grant. 

Socialism in action. 

Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration passed on applying for state funding for a city-owned grocery store, raising questions about the future of the bold proposal the mayor floated more than a year ago.

Johnson first raised the idea of a publicly owned grocery store in September 2023. He framed the idea as a way to improve food access on the city’s South and West sides, where supermarket closures have left many residents with limited access to fresh groceries in their neighborhoods.

Activists who see groceries as a public good akin to a city water department or post office have long supported the concept. Still, the grocery business is notoriously tough, and critics have expressed skepticism that the city, lacking in-house grocery expertise, could pull off the project.

There is no indication that the Johnson administration has dropped the idea. There was a full-court press to apply for the grant as recently as August of 2024, and the city was working with consultants who are major proponents of socialist-style grocery stores. 

In a memo sent to top City Hall staffers Aug. 28, the mayor’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, said she was coordinating efforts to apply for a state grant.

Staff would be expected to work on tasks like site evaluations and financial analysis to ready the city’s application for state funding, Pacione-Zayas wrote in the memo, which the Tribune obtained.

In the memo, Pacione-Zayas said HR&A Advisors, a consultancy that authored a feasibility study on the municipally owned grocery project for the city, would lead and support city departments in the application effort.

HR&A had highlighted the state grocery program as a possible source of funding in its study, which found a public grocery store to be “necessary, feasible and implementable” in Chicago. The city has not released the feasibility study despite previously saying it would. The Tribune and Sun-Times reported on the study in early August.

It seems more likely that even doing the work to apply for a grant is too big an ask for government bureaucrats. Work is for suckers, after all, and the $2.4 million the state was offering was peanuts to a city like Chicago. It has a $17.3 billion budget, and work sucks anyway. $2.4 million is barely enough to pay for a teacher to not teach in the city. They waste more than that in graft in a week. 

Of course, we don't know why Johnson's administration hasn't released the feasibility study or applied for the grant--it's all speculation because the Mayor's office is mum on the issue. Perhaps they need to find enough friends of Johnson to run the store poorly enough to meet Cuban standards. 

I hear Justin Trudeau will soon be available to help. 

The reasoning for going ahead are pure leftism. They create unlivable places and blame corporations for not wanting to site their businesses where employees will be robbed or their cars stolen. 

“As corporations have consolidated power in almost every industry, including grocery store operations, they’ve put profits over people, leaving families with chronic diseases and shorter life spans,” Saheb said in the statement, adding that the state program “gives municipalities the tools they need to create viable public options.”

Supermarket closings have plagued the city’s South and West sides for years, making it difficult for many residents, especially those who don’t have cars or are elderly, to buy fresh groceries.

It's the public housing story all over again. Societal dysfunction creates a need that "only government can fill" and so Cabrini Green gets built. They dysfunction doesn't go away, and the government is totally incompetent and everything decays and falls apart at lightning speed. The developers make money, but the people lose out. 

Soon enough, you blow it up and try again. Rinse, repeat. 

The problem is leftism, not greedy corporations. After all, greedy corporations seem to serve people well enough in less dysfunctional areas. It's only where liberals rule the roost that everything falls apart. 

Funny that.