RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://spectator.us/quick-dirty-chicago-mayoral/

On Tuesday, Chicago voters head to the polls to vote for Rahm Emanuel’s successor as Da Mayor. ‘Why vote in late February?’ you might ask. ‘Didn’t Chicago just vote in November for House members and Governor?’Oh, you naive soul. For decades, Chicago has held its elections in February precisely because it is cold, often snowy, and hard to get to the polls. When you suppress ordinary voters, who is left? For many years, it was reliable voters for the old Chicago Democratic Machine. Some of them drove city busses or garbage trucks; others shuffled papers in city offices. Some filled potholes. Many more watched their co-workers fill potholes while they grabbed a cigarette. What better way to ensure that insiders get reelected?This system is on life-support, mortally wounded by the Federal Courts, which made two crucial rulings in the 1970s and 1980s. Known as the Shakman Decrees, the first said the city could not hire workers based on their politics. The second said it could not fire workers for the same reasons. The courts knew the city would not comply readily, so they appointed monitors, who stayed for decades.

Those decrees drove a stake through the heart of the old system, where alderman and ward committeemen gave out good-paying jobs to city workers who got out the vote. It was a well-organized system. The city employees had to visit homes in their neighborhood, listen to what residents wanted (such as a stop sign or better garbage pickup), and then share that information with their boss, known in Chicago as ‘their Clout.’ The visit concluded by reminding voters who they should vote for. Often the advice was simply ‘vote straight Democratic.’ These political workers were expected to make campaign donations and were held responsible for how many of their voters came to the polls. Fail in these critical tasks and find yourself a new job.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2019/02/bernie-sanders-foreign-policy-domestic-enemies-geopolitical-stage/

In the 1980s Bernie Sanders cozied up to dictators from around the world.

In his decades-long career in politics, Bernie Sanders was never more active as a foreign-policy figure than when he was the mayor of Burlington, Vt. He owned it. “Burlington had a foreign policy,” he wrote in his 1997 book, Outsider in the White House. From his mayoral perch he fired off missives to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, demanding better treatment of IRA prisoners held in Northern Ireland. He tried to establish direct relations with the incoming Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, hoping to establish a radio channel that would broadcast the revolution to Vermont. The mayor met with Daniel Ortega to convey that many Americans rejected the Reagan administration’s foreign policy. Ortega, in the many years since, has looted his country, installed hideous light fixtures along the major roads to please his wife, suborned much of the Catholic Church to his rule, and blown past his own constitution’s term limits. The country is sliding into unrest, as the aid that used to come in from the Netherlands and Luxembourg has dried up.

As mayor, Sanders cemented a sister-city relationship between Burlington and the Russian city of Yaroslavl (he and his wife spent their honeymoon in the Soviet Union). Sanders was diplomatic during his trip. After a presentation on central planning, Sanders told his Soviet peers that health care and housing were better in the United States, though they cost much more back in America. When he came home, Sanders praised Soviet train stations and “palaces of culture.” His wife was even more effusive, almost describing the theory of New Soviet Man, when she described a cultural life that wasn’t cleaved off from work, as a mere hobby, but fully integrated into an ideal of community service. Burlington’s foreign policy, as it was then, was driven by idealism (some of it misguided), lots of easy talk about imperialism, and dislike of “Ronald Ray-gun.”