'I Am The Mayor, Goddamn It' - Municipal Corruption, Arrogance, And Racial Politics

It is hard to name any one mayor that fits the mold of arrogant overreach, arrogated authority, and a sense of political entitlement because they all do.  The mayors of Los Angeles and Chicago stand out, for more misgovernance is hard to find, but just about everywhere the scenario is the same.  For the first time, all of America's largest cities have black mayors, not surprising given racial demographics, and all are liberal Democrats, also not surprising since urban populations have consistently voted for the Left. 

This has been the perfect storm, especially in the Biden days of DEI (Diversity Equity Inclusivity) when blackness was the party's icon, public giveaways the meme, and minority rights the be-all and end-all of political policy.  These black mayors were the very images of race-card progressivism.  For years the black man had suffered under the yoke of slavery, Jim Crow, and systemic racism, and now here he was ready to take the final step up to the top of the human pyramid but ruling over the slave diaspora of unfunctional thousands below.  

This coddling white guilt enabled a whole generation of entitlement.  'It is our time', say black mayors. 'Get over it'. 

Perhaps the most corrupt American mayor - and that is saying something - in recent years was Marion Barry of Washington, DC.  Elected time and time again as a councilman from depressed, all-black Ward 8, the worst of the city's pestilential slums, Barry built on his racial persona to make his way to the top job. Barry had no qualms about pandering to the super-majority black population of DC, well over 50 percent during his tenure, nor did he, with a complaisant, adoring city council, have any trouble handing out walkin' around money, construction contracts, and social services all with white-extorted revenues. 

When he - despite his universal rejection by white voters in Wards 2 and 3 - got elected yet again, he told them, 'Get over it'.  The potholed streets, broken street lamps, desultory public services, and imaginary snow removal were to be there as long as he was mayor. 'It'll melt', he said to angry white Ward 3 voters whose cars had been immobilized for weeks by the snow. 

Barry was most well known for his 'The bitch set me up' a reference to his drug bust in a DC apartment with two hookers, a drug dealer, and an informant, a tart turned for a price who smoked crack with the mayor and just as he took a hit buzzed in the FBI. 

That incident was hard to overlook.  In an era of municipal corruption, a crack-smoking, hooker-loving, financially corrupt mayor was simply over the top.  Although Barry never disappeared, his time was finally over. 

Now, to be fair and racially sensitive, municipal politics have always been corrupt.  Think Mayor Daley of Chicago, a one of a kind political bulldog who ran the city like it was his.  He dipped into the public coffers whenever he needed some cash, doled out promises like candy, and filled his pockets with taxpayer dollars. 

 

Spiro Agnew made millions as Baltimore County Executive and Governor of Maryland. 'Entering Maryland', said a sign on I-95, 'Watch your coats and hats'.  Never had the electorate been robbed so blind by any Maryland politician.  Newark, Bayonne and all the industrial cities in New Jersey across the Hudson from New York were run by crooks.  Mayor Addonizio of Newark was found out, arrested, and sent to prison for his ruinous corruption. 

The list is long and legendary, so the modern black version is just a reflection of demographics and social dynamics; but municipal race-bating and racial entitlement has done more to set back the full integration of the black population than anything.  

One is reminded of the days of Reconstruction when the radical Congress set out to punish the South.  Recently freed slaves were made legislators of Southern states.  Of course they had no idea of governance, jurisprudence, or legislation, and their wild antic on the floors of statehouses did more to set back the racial reforms necessary in the United States than anything an unreconstructed segregationist ever could.  

The white, wealthy, landowners were furious at the North's imposition of black rule and took it upon themselves to remake the South in its former image.  Years of Jim Crow, tenant farming, and racial oppression was in part due to the fury the South felt at this defiant spectacle in their state capitals. 

White anger at the racially entitled mayors today is no different. They rule over municipalities that have inner cities with unacceptable levels of crime, dysfunction, poverty, and social chaos.  They, for all their Sturm und Drang have done little to address these problems.  Like Marion Barry, they let the slums fester while pouring unaccountable public funds into them while taking their own generous cut. 

The liberal solution to racial dysfunction has been to assume white guilt for slavery and its legacy and to offer reparations - that's what walkin' around money really is - and then forget about it.  Calls for 'taking responsibility', recognizing the endemic social dysfunction of the inner city and calling it out as the community's problem are no-no's. Doing so would be to unfairly criticize black residents suggesting that the miasma of the ghetto is not their fault. 

These mayors have added fuel to the racial fire when they denominated their cities 'Sanctuary Cities', a bald conflation of racial politics. These brown immigrants, part of liberal 'diversity' need places of refuge and solace.  Compassion, racial tolerance, and humanitarian sentiments trump the law any day of the week.  They are not illegal, for in spirit they have come to the United States fleeing oppression, and therefore they are no different from black people whose lawlessness and miscreance must be overlooked in the name of civil righteousness. 

The DC City Council passed legislation decriminalizing most misdemeanors and defunding the police, giving license to crews of young black men and women to raid high-end boutiques, pharmacies, and Apple stores with impunity.  This extension of liberal 'diversity' has only acted to further enrage the white, conservative population who cheered Donald Trump's decision to federalize the DC police and take command of it, deploy the National Guard, and put an end to the absurd policies of the city council and the mayor. 

 

Reforming municipal government is an admirable goal, and President Trump should be given credit for focusing on it; but given the nation's sorry history of local trust, reversing a century and more of corruption, indiscipline, and callous indifference will be difficult at best.