Don't Demonize

Conehead thinks there's no such thing as a bad boy, just lack of pocket money:

• Mayor Brandon Johnson on Tuesday left no doubt he remains opposed to a downtown curfew of 8 p.m. for unaccompanied minors — even after a tourist was shot while walking with her son outside a Streeterville movie theater.

  Instead of using the stick to prevent young people summoned by social media from congregating and sometimes creating havoc downtown, Johnson favors offering them the carrot of paid employment.

  That’s what the mayor was attempting to do during Tuesday’s news conference at Uplift Community High School, 900 W. Wilson Ave. That’s where he formally launched the online application process for 29,000 youth employment opportunities in this year’s version of “One Summer Chicago.”

  That’s 1,000 more jobs than the city offered last summer. Johnson had hoped to spend $50 million to create 2,000 more summer youth jobs, but was forced to cut that in half during the marathon budget stalemate during which a recalcitrant City Council refused to approve a property tax increase.

Has any enterprising investigative reporter (hahahahahaha) ever attempted to find out:

• how much money is allocated to there summer jobs, 
• how many of these yutes apply, 
• how many actually show up, on time, do a full shift, and get a paycheck

And how much is laundered back into assorted aldermanic or mayoral coffers disguised as lord-knows-what. Because after what we're seeing in Washington DC and the misappropriated billions currently being exposed makes us wonder about decades of waste here in town.