Chicago has rarely, if ever, been known for good politics. It’s a corrupt Democrat machine. There hasn’t been a Republican mayor elected in that town since 1927.

In short, Chicago — the United States’s third-most-populated city and home of the world’s best pizza — is also a case study in why blue politics are bad for the United States.

The current mayor is Brandon Johnson. He took over from the foolish and unpopular Lori Lightfoot because the people of Chicago wanted change. Change is what they are getting, but not the sort that most sane people want. Johnson is turning the Windy City into a socialist sinkhole.

Chicago is such a terrible place to live these days that many companies are relocating to other cities. This has created a “food desert” for folks living in the south and west side of the city. But instead of addressing the “why” — high crime and unsustainable looting are driving the grocery stores away — Mayor Johnson has decided that groceries are to blame.

Retailers like Walmart and Whole Foods have a monopoly on the grocery market and are not serving these communities, according to Johnson. The real reason is never mentioned, but racism is in the implied subtext. South and West Chicago are predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods. They’re also the neighborhoods with the highest crime.

Johnson has decided that the solution to this food desert is publicly funded grocery stores. In other words, the city of Chicago is getting into the grocery business to ensure these neighborhoods have access to fresh food.

While the idea of providing fresh food to neighborhoods in need is altruistic, the practical application of it doesn’t work very well. Sure, the government can negotiate food prices, but those prices aren’t going to be able to compete with larger store chains — at least not without messing with the economy. Enter Kamala Harris’s price-control idea.

This experiment has already played out in other countries. Venezuela has government-owned grocery stores, and the shelves are nearly empty all the time. In Soviet Russia, the publicly owned grocery stores resulted in bread lines.

As Hot Air’s David Strom laments: “It’s the public housing story all over again. Societal dysfunction creates a need that ‘only government can fill’ and so Cabrini Green gets built. The dysfunction doesn’t go away, and the government is totally incompetent and everything decays and falls apart at lightning speed. The developers make money, but the people lose out.”

Johnson first mentioned public grocery stores in September 2023 and wants three of them.

There’s just one hilarious problem. Johnson’s office hasn’t made any progress in actually doing the work necessary to secure the state funding to open these stores. All they need to do is apply for a grant, and City Hall hasn’t even done that yet.

The Chicago Tribune also found that the mayor’s chief of staff, Cristina Pacione-Zayas, should have had all the motivation in the world to follow through with the state grant. According to the Tribune, “Pacione-Zayas said HR&A Advisors, a consultancy that authored a feasibility study on the municipally owned grocery project for the city, would lead and support city departments in the application effort.HR&A had highlighted the state grocery program as a possible source of funding in its study, which found a public grocery store to be ‘necessary, feasible and implementable’ in Chicago. The city has not released the feasibility study despite previously saying it would. The Tribune and Sun-Times reported on the study in early August.”

An independent consultant said a public grocery store is desirable and doable; Johnson’s staff just has to do the work. However, they haven’t because they can’t be bothered to apply for the state grant. Mismanagement and incompetence abound.

The residents of Chicago can’t win for losing, and yet they keep voting for Democrat policies. If the “solution” is for the government to fix their problems, it can’t even be bothered to do that.