Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot loves failures. David Brown, her cowpoke mercenary Superintendent of Police, is an epic failure and has been since day one. Police officers derisively refer to Brown as the Top Flop. The rank-and-file officers have no respect, trust, or confidence in David Brown.
Lightfoot’s CTA President, Dorval Carter, is another epic failure. The buses and trains do not run on time, sometimes not at all. The terms ghost buses and ghost trains entered Chicago’s lexicon. Crime is up on the CTA. Carter implemented a patchwork solution of ghost security guards to patrol the trains and stations. They are ghosts because no one can see them.
Worse, Carter snubbed his nose at the Chicago City Council by refusing their requests to appear and justify his epic failures. Under mounting pressure, he finally agreed to meet with the City Council.
Lightfoot stubbornly refuses to fire these dunderheads. No other mayor in my long memory tolerated such epic failures. Heads rolled and kept rolling until the failures returned to normal. Those past mayors did not accept excuses when public services were so poorly handled.
Aside from being an initial private business(s), public transportation was designed to get people from one place to another and back expeditiously. They designed it to transport workers to and from work on time, as Chicago was a city of major commerce and industry where time is money and money is time.
The CTA leadership does not care if people who need to be places on time are late. The apathy is appalling. An organization, Commuters Take Action, tracked late buses and trains along with the ghosts. They reported 3000 incidents over six months.
There are no excuses for poor performance by highly paid public executives. Except, Lightfoot appears to wallow in mediocrity. Under her watch, failure is not just an option, but the only option. Public safety and now public transportation are failures. The failures are because of the supposed leaders of the Chicago Police Department and the Chicago Transit Authority are out of their leagues.
Firing failure is not wrong. There is nothing wrong with replacing them with competent people. Keeping dunderheads on six-figure payrolls is a problem. There is nothing wrong with firing a mayor either. Next year Lightfoot runs for reelection. She does not deserve a second term. Lightfoot should be kept as far away as possible from the Fifth Floor of City Hall.