Maybe money can’t buy happiness or wisdom, but it can help buy power. JB Pritzker knows this better than most. Over the years, he has spent some $347 million of his own, largely inherited, wealth to acquire and hold on to the governorship of Illinois, the perch from which he aspires to national glory.
The Pritzker Project proves the wisdom of the cynical parody of the Golden Rule: (“Whoever has the gold, makes the rules!”) Pritzker’s only rule when it comes to wielding his powerful purse is whether doing so serves his personal ambition. He’s shameless about it, too, which is why he’s not only willing to self-finance his grotesquely expensive gubernatorial races, but also to spend millions of his own fortune mucking around in GOP primaries – smearing a moderate Republican candidate for previously being a defense lawyer, of all things.
Oh yes, all while calling for campaign finance reform. But Pritzker’s level of hypocrisy has a way of catching up to a guy. The problem is that the people of Illinois will pay the price.
Over the years, Congress and the presidents have disbursed federal spending in a manner to advance their policy goals, just as Pritzker disburses from his purse to advance his personal goals.
President Trump ran on securing the border against the influx of illegal immigrants, drugs and crime; carrying out mass deportation of illegal immigrants currently residing in the country, focusing first (but not exclusively) on hardened criminals; and reducing crime in our cities.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 80% of Americans live in urban areas, and the crime rate is higher in those areas than in rural areas. Fighting crime in America means bringing the fight to the cities.
Donald Trump won the election on this policy platform with the votes of tens of millions of urban Americans. While residents in 23 states elected Democrat governors, and residents of two-thirds of the 100 largest cities in the country live under Democratic mayors, those states and cities are not homogenous “no-go” zones for anyone but a Democrat. Nor are they exempt from the laws and policies of the United States whether the president is a Republican or a Democrat.
As President Andrew Jackson declared in 1832: “The power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, is incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which It was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”
Abraham Lincoln stated in his first inaugural that “I shall take care, as the Constitution itself expressly enjoins upon me, that the laws of the Union be faithfully executed in all the States,” pointing out that “Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some for is all that is left.”
The Civil War that Lincoln had hoped to avoid settled this question decisively. And the supremacy of federal law was used a century later during the civil rights movement to extend constitutional protections to everyone in the land. Liberals once knew this lesson – and reveled in it – but then forgot it in their 21st-century rush to establish so-called “sanctuary cities.”
Seeking to enhance his status within the Democratic Party by spearheading opposition to the Trump administration, Pritzker has stooped to comparing federal law enforcement officers deployed to Chicago as “jack booted thugs,” while equating Trump’s populist movement to Nazi Germany.
In response, the president has made it clear that he will use his lawful authority to enforce federal law and implement the policy positions he successfully ran on in 2024.
Trump has shown he is willing to use “hard power,” such as dispatching troops to quell rampant street crime, as he did in Washington, D.C., or to protect federal officers and federal property, as he is doing in Portland, Oregon, and may do in Chicago this week.
Trump also has what Democrats like to call “soft power” – the power of the purse – to implement law and policy as well, which he is not shy about using.
On Friday, the administration announced that $2.1 billion for Chicago infrastructure projects has been “put on hold to ensure funding is not flowing via race-based contracting.”
These cuts will keep coming until Pritzker stops leading the charge to annul federal law. The governor wants Illinois to go to the mat to protect illegal immigrants from being deported and prevent the feds from fighting violent crime in Chicago. To champion his misguided priorities, Pritzker is willing to sacrifice federal dollars and increased jobs, while ensuring Illinois residents will pay higher taxes.
Think about that. It’s slightly less stupid than going to war to protect slavery.
Pritzker is a crime-fighter fighter. He wants Illinoisans to be poorer, pay higher taxes and be less safe to champion the deluded minority who virulently oppose whatever Trump is for – even when it’s objectively good – because they’ve convinced themselves that Trump is evil.
How much better to get a leader with wisdom rather than one with gold? Pritzker will not pay the price for his political ambition out of his rich purse. He’ll be comfortable enjoying his mansions, luxury condos, and custom-built speedboats. It is the working people of Illinois who will pay for Pritzker’s power play – unless and until we wise up.
