Great perspective on advantages of growing up in region...

[Tex?Il?]

Originally Posted by westburbsil

I would tend to disagree with the kid in the article. Having lived in the city my whole child and early adult life and all over the area since then, Chicagoans are good people. We have good values and it is true, live in the most american of american cities. Chicagoland is an excellent place to grow up.
I know on this forum, it is basically the most expensive places listed alot with the Top school districts(i.e. northshore and hinsdale area), but from Orland Park to Vernon Hills, all the way out to Geneva, there are a lot of very good schools communities, festivals, etc.

Back to the article, being "tough" from the northwest burbs or hinsdale is pretty laughable and being able to make it because they are from Chicagoland's most hedge fund heavy, trust fund area is just dumb. There are lots of big cities int this country where people go to Hollywood to make it.

If I ever were a movie star and having literally lived all over the city and Chicagoland this would be my response.

It is a place with the best people, food, and values of any region in the U.S. It is not glitzy, it is not hyped up like many other cities, it is not "coastal", it is a midwestern metropolis with a lot of hard working down to earth folks. I would not live anywhere else!

Excellent post. I actually am from the northwest suburbs and I now live in LA. Although not to make it big as an actor or entertainer. But yeah, I basically tell me that life in the Chicago suburbs is a very straight up average American lifestyle (but in a good way). Its where my roots are.

Especially the above bolded. Someone coming from the Chicago suburbs to make it out in Hollywood, is no different from someone from Detroit, Cleveland, or Cincinnati making it out in Hollywood.

[linicx]

Every little bit helps. One thing for sure, it is costing someone some money. Here are a couple of examples pulled from the news:

Border Patrol agents seized nearly 23 bundles of cocaine worth nearly $1M hidden in a gas tank at the I-10 checkpoint near Las Cruces.

Border Patrol Agents working at New Mexico checkpoints seized over $560,000 worth of cocaine and marijuana in two separate incidents

El Paso Sector Border Patrol Agents in New Mexico and Texas arrested four drug smugglers and seized nearly 850 pounds of marijuana in three separate seizures during a 48-hour period.

U.S. Border Patrol agents seized more than a half-ton of marijuana in Santa Teresa from a truck.

What is effective is NOT knowing in advance when or where a checkpoint is located. I didn't expect to be stopped on I-25 at 2am, but I was. Until this happened, I did not know it existed. I hadn't seen a checkpoint since California stopped looking for houseplants. And no I am not kidding.

Originally Posted by JacksonPanther

What is effective and productive about this strategy? Unless you're shutting down the road 24x7, you're only capturing a small portion of the drugs being sent down that route.

Maybe you're getting 5% of the drugs on that highway. The manufacturers aren't stupid, they factor in 5% lost product in their pricing. So your strategy has done nothing but raise the price of the drugs slightly, resulted in the arrest of some low-level mules, and lets the local police go on the new every month with a "big drug seizure."

Your strategy solves nothing.