No Hope in Obama’s Chicago, by Michael Copeman.
This year the murder rate in Chicago is up almost 80% on last year. Yes, 80%. No misprint. And that’s compounding on a rise of 20% from the year before — a trend heading towards a total that may well exceed 800 by the time this year is done. Sure, Chicago has seen years with more murders: 970 in 1974 and 943 in 1992. But this time there’s a remarkable difference to the crime statistics: the clear-up rate for murders has plummeted. Some 70% of murders were solved back in the early 1990s. But last year it was just over 30%. Put it another way: Two out of three Chicago murderers now get away with it. Scot free. Permanently.
A bad culture has taken hold:
All this is happening on Barack Obama’s home turf, just around the corner from where he used to live in the South Side’s Hyde Park, in the second term of his supposedly “transformative” presidency. And in the city where Barack’s buddy and former right-hand man, Rahm Emanuel, is current mayor.
These killings are not mass murders perpetrated by isolated, unhinged loners. This is gang violence writ large, with retribution after retribution after retribution. It is tearing apart the mainly black suburban communities that make up the South and the West of Chicago. But more recently shootings have spread into other areas of Chicago.
The general population live in fear.
In the meantime, the afflicted suburban communities continue to scatter, regroup, mourn, depart and ultimately degenerate. Parks are emptying. People spend more time indoors, behind curtained or shuttered windows. Local shops and small businesses close. Youth unemployment skyrockets. Those that can are up and leaving Chicago for somewhere less threatening, more promising and far, far away from this mess. The most recent census data (from 2010-14) showed 150,000 people leaving Cook County (where the violence is centred), with only 70,000 moving in.
Chicago used to be a great part of the modern world.
This is where so many modern concepts of civilisation – frozen meat, skyscrapers, vacuum cleaners, zip fasteners, dishwashing machines, nuclear power, even the Pill – first emerged on to the world stage. It is the same city that nurtured the talents of Frank Lloyd Wright (along with Walter Burley and Marion Mahony Griffin), Ernest Hemingway, Walt Disney, Milton Friedman and Oprah. Vast, iconic companies that everyone has heard of — Boeing, Kraft, Sears, Caterpillar and McDonalds, to name but a few — are still based here. But one wonders for how much longer they will remain amid the growing violence.
It’s not just in Chicago that a different culture has taken hold, it’s also some other American cities, encouraged by politically correct policies.
[T]here are a number of cities in America where matters are even worse than in old Chicago. St Louis (where the Ferguson riots occurred after the death of Michael Brown), Baltimore, Detroit, New Orleans and Memphis all have higher murder rates per capita than does Chicago. All are cities with a high percentage of black Americans, high unemployment, high educational failure, and high drug use. None of them shows signs of long-term improvement.
hat-tip Stephen Neil
