Karen Lewis and Chuy Garcia.
In election news this weekend, the Greeks voted against crushing economic austerity and elected a Leftist government.
Things have gotten so bad for the working people of Greece that even the bullying of the European debt-holders couldn’t frighten them any longer.
That didn’t stop the bullies from trying.
“The Greeks have the right to elect whoever they want; we have the right to no longer finance Greek debt,” Hans-Peter Friedrich, a senior member of Ms. Merkel’s conservative bloc, told the daily newspaper Bild on Monday. “The Greeks must now pay the consequences and cannot saddle German taxpayers with them.”
Right.
Who has more to lose in this? The Greek people who have carried the weight of austerity for years? Or the German bankers who are threatened by the loss of billions of dollars if they refuse now to bargain the cost of the debt?
There always comes a time when the people have had enough.
Which brings me to another election.
Here in Chicago.
Rahm has collected $30 million dollars for his campaign.
One poll a week or so ago showed Rahm just over the required 50% mark to avoid a run-off.
Yet all other polls since then show him to be where he has been for nearly a year. Far short and at about the 40% mark.
The movement in the polls seems to be over who will come in second and face Rahm head to head in the run-off. Chuy Garcia or Bob Fioretti?
Both are bona fide progressives.
What if $30 million can’t buy the incumbent $30 million Mayor a first round win?
The election is a month from now.
One lesson from the Bill De Blasio win in New York is how quickly things can move and change.
Greece came as a surprise to many.
Six months before De Blasio’s win, Bloomberg’s hand-picked choice to succeed him was expected to do just that.
It’s a question of if we have had enough. If that is the case, then $30 million isn’t near enough.
Fred Klonsky 
His pandering to and buying the black voters might be working. Remember people…remember.
Susan,
His election campaign is one of total pandering. It works to a degree across communities. In fact, the polling numbers don’t show any more or less success in the Black community than in any other. Recall that Michelle Obama campaigned here for Pat Quinn and it didn’t save his behind.
Yesterday’s papers stated that he now has 51% of Black community behind him. That certainly is much higher than a few weeks back.
Nothing could save Quinn. Even the average dumb voter knew Quinn is dumber than they re.
So Fred, is it the practice in your house to borrow $ from a bank, credit card etc. and if you don;t feel like paying it back because you might have to eat hamburger helper instead of steak you tell the lender tough s__t, I ;m not paying? Welcome to Greece.
Don’t forget all that $ was borrowed to fund gov’t largess to the people, time to pay the piper and they don’t want to have to eat hamburger helper.
What’s that old saying about a “free lunch”?
Does this also apply to the State of Illinois? Did everyone enjoy the State’s largess while not making payments to the pension systems? Time to pay the piper, indeed!
anonymous,
Your analogy is not really accurate. The people of Greece were duped into paying their debt on a nearly one to one basis, whereas most countries are able to pay off old debt for pennies on the dollar. This lovely little scam was brought to you by the same folks who crashed our system. Goldman Sachs worked this deal with Greece,then created a fund for investors to bet against Greek capital. Greece’s debt to GDP was about 6% before this happened. The EU requires a 3% debt to GDP for admittance to the EU. Bankers saw this and took Greece down because they could. Most countries have the ability to deflate their own currency. When Greece could do this they flourished with their main source income, tourism. But after Goldman Sachs got their hooks into them they could not, thus making tourism to Greece very expensive and the Europeans who used to travel to Greece kept their money at home thus compounding the problem.
You hit it right on the head!!!
Agree
Agree!
Agree on all those points . I just want to add the Euro was a bad idea from the beginning and really benefits Germany by giving them a cheaper currency to export their products . Germany makes good stuff along with Japan ( then there is the us then China which makes all the cheap stuff and thanks to Chinas expansion these are the only 4 manufacturing countries left)
Separate I want to shoot down the nonsense of “Illinois is Greece ” we sometimes hear that Greece has an external debt in what amounts to a German Currency . It owes at least as much as its whole GDP 267 billion. Its is slight ly smaller in population than Illinois
Illinois owes maybe 125 billion -maybe since its actually going to be paid off by Tier 2 so we may just owe our 25 billion in bonds which carry a low interest rate against a state budget of 70 billion and a gross state product of…700 billion we face a crisis of failed leaders and it really doesn’t go beyond that .
Fioretti is an alderman. Garcia is a former alderman. One should never vote for n alderman or former alderman for higher office. It is like voting for a member of the outfit.
Yeah! And yea!
Sent from my iPhone
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