Billionaire Ken Griffin flees Chicago for Florida but retains the city's naming rights.
The iconic Museum of Science and Industry is now the Griffin Museum.
As in most big cities these days there is hardly a public place in Chicago without some billionaire’s name attached.
But billionaire Ken Griffin leads the pack.
He collects them like little girls and boys collect baseball cards.
Actually I don’t know if kids still collect baseball cards.
Griffin’s latest collectable is the iconic Museum of Science and Industry located on the south side in Hyde Park.
The former MSI has been there since the 1893 Columbian Exposition. It was created in 1927 with money from the owner of Sears, Julius Rosenwald, who gave the MSI $5 million but refused to have his name on the place.
That was a lot of money in those days.
Griffin is not as self-effacing.
Griffin is a Chicago boy but has fled to the billionaire-loving state of Florida, joining our former huckster of a governor, Bruce Rauner.
I have tracked the mis-deeds of Griffin for years.
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2020/11/01/ken-griffin-is-more-rauner-defeat-the-tax-amendment-and-starve-illinois/
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2020/10/01/why-is-ken-griffin-against-a-progressive-income-tax-because-hes-rich/
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/life-in-rahms-chicago-ken-griffin-speaks-state-employee-pensions-the-koch-brothers-education-and-being-rahms-pal/
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2020/09/04/ken-griffin-drops-20-million-to-stop-progressive-tax-amendment/
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2019/02/13/ken-griffins-million-dollar-message-to-the-one-percenters-bill-daley-is-our-guy/
https://preaprez.wordpress.com/2017/01/18/caught-scamming-customers-ken-griffin-settles-with-the-sec/
And there are ahalf a dozen others post about the billionaire hedge funder and head of Citadel Capital.
Griffin can be generous in his philanthropy because he pays so little in state or federal taxes.
And what’s left over from his tax-saving philanthropy and public naming rights he spends on fighting Illinois laws intended to create tax fairness.
Griffin bought the MSI naming rights for $125 million. It is the largest “contribution” to the museum in its history. But chump change for this guy.
It would be better for the people of Chicago if he just paid his damn taxes.
The public reaction has been swift and negative.
The Museum had to turn off the comments to its Instagram site.
Lee Bey, the architecture critic for the Chicago Sun-Times posted on Facebook:
Hitting closer to home, a person posting to our Logan Square “Buy Nothing” page on Facebook wrote:
She later admitted she was talking about the newly minted “Griffin Museum”.
Workers at “the Griffin” last year voted to unionize and joined AFSCME.