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I agree, it's a beautiful city with a lot to offer - but I wouldn't live there again.
If they don't straighten out their financial mess, who knows what will happen? For a while they weren't even paying out on large lottery wins, until a couple people took them to court.
The higher crime areas are saying they want more of a police presence, the cops don't want to go because the superintendent has made it even more difficult for them to do their jobs, the teachers are always striking. All of this needs to stop.
And the Superintendent of the CPD just met with Black Lives Matter members whose takeaway to the press was, 'our demands were met'. What kind of message does that idiot in charge think that's sending??
Both the city and state have very serious unfunded pension liabilities which have nothing to do with the current Mayor or Governor. Illinois is one of 7 states with Constitutiins that guarantee pension benefits and nothing can change retroactively. Auditors have been warning about these liabilities for nearly 70 years.
The state, not the city, has delayed payments to lottery winners twice in the past 2 years.
Chicago has a serious problem with corruption within the Police Department that supersedes the current Mayor and superintendent. And then there's the rash of unjustified shootings by cops, financial settlements and a revolving door of superintendents.
Most of the gun homicides occur in 5 of 25 Police Districts.
Teachers are always threatening to strike which does not mean they do. The last strike occurred in 2012 and the one before was 1988.
The current head of the teacher's union intended to run against Emanual. Unfortunate,y for her, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Her surrogate was no match for Emanuel. She is on the mend and seems to be stirring the racial pot, rich whites vs poor blacks. The wealthy whites are the ones paying property taxes. The schools are a reflection of the student population. In some areas the kids have been raised by wolves on the street and do not expect to live to age 25.
It is, for the most part a beautiful and relatively safe city. Unlike Detroit, it has never been dependent on a single business sector.
I sometimes think if I were mayor, I would fall on my sword. Let the teachers strike as long as it takes to break them. The union has been the long time glue that has held the machine together for serious decades and they despise Emanuel. The state majority leader has been in office longer than I have been voting and it's all about the machine.
Wasn't Rahm Emanuel a star in the Obama Administration? I thought he left to manage Chicago properly and these years later crime is spiralling out of control and the quality of live is going into the gutter.
What the heck happened with him?
Crime is cyclical in the US. Gun homicides have been spiking in many cities throughout the US. As bad as the numbers are, it's a fraction of what they were in the 80's- early 90's.
Guiliani never fails to take a bow for reducing crime in NYC.
Never mind that crime suddenly and dramatically declined throughout the US, despite very different municipal approaches to fight crime.
Experts have very different theories why this happened.
Crime is cyclical in the US. Gun homicides have been spiking in many cities throughout the US. As bad as the numbers are, it's a fraction of what they were in the 80's- early 90's.
Guiliani never fails to take a bow for reducing crime in NYC.
Never mind that crime suddenly and dramatically declined throughout the US, despite very different municipal approaches to fight crime.
Experts have very different theories why this happened.
Gun crime hasn't come back at all in any meaningful way in NYC, or in LA. Chicago is a massive outlier far worse than even Baltimore and not even in the same discussion as LA/NYC/Philadelphia/DC/etc...
He's a cocky self-serving egotistical dictator who is part of the machine here. He hasn't changed, this is who he is. It runs in the family. His brother is the Hollywood agent Jeremy Piven's character in Entourage is patterned after.
There's a reason people are moving out of the city and state. It's a mess.
Actually property values in most areas of the city are doing quite well. Some areas are going exceptionally well especially for not being a coastal city with an endless supply of foreign investors.
Little black children in Chicago are getting shot in the head in alleys, at lemonade stands, doing their homework in their own bedroom...but Rahm is out here stumping for foreigners breaking the law.
Most of the homicides occur in 5 out of 25 Police Districts within the city. I don't think you will find kids in these communities selling lemon aid off a street stand. More likely to run into children on bikes acting as lookouts for relatives running dope in the open air drug markets.
Most of these homicides involve at least one gang member. Used to be that Police were eventually able to broker peace between rival gangs. Now gangs have splintered into thousands of small factions without central leadership.
Social media makes it too easy to "disrespect" someone. It's a sign of weakness to back down. Some Gang initiations require recruits to shoot one or more random people and take credit for it.
The state, not the city is responsible for sentencing and parole standards. It's a revolving door. The state's position is that it's a city problem.
There's no fixing hood rat.
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