Where it belongs.
Will Chicago eventually go the way of Detroit to become a sprawling urban ghost town? If current trends persist, then yes. Not only Chicago proper, but also the near suburbs within Cook County, are losing residents apace.
People vote with their feet, or perhaps with their gas pedals. To put it simply, there are fewer and fewer reasons to stay, and more and more reasons to leave.
I left Chicago years ago, bound and determined to stay away at any cost. The reasons had been building up forever: the endlessly declining job market, the endlessly rising cost of living, the dirt and noise and filth and stench and squalor, the impossible parking and traffic situation, the ill-maintained roads, the unimaginable commute times, the rude and selfish citizenry, the rotten news media, the gang grafitti, the crime rate, the gun laws, the gasoline tax, the sales tax, the other taxes and fees and fines, the stolen elections, the bloodthirsty and crooked Chicago police, and the pervasive corruption in general.
Chicago has been sleazy, crime-ridden, and corrupt ever since it was stolen from the Potawatomi, and it will remain so until they get it back, assuming they would want it. It is flat-out impossible for anyone to hold political office within “Crook County” without being a criminal, and that’s that. Yeah, BHO, I’m talkin’ ’bout YOU.
As if all of that were not enough, there has been a Muslim invasion en masse. This is exemplified by the mosque complex in the south suburbs associated with persons having known terrorist connections, along with various unexplained incidents that were instantly buried by official spokesmen with assurances that “terrorism has been ruled out” – long before anyone could describe what had actually happened.
And don’t get me started on the loutish arrogance of the entire Daley family. When Richie Daley closed down and bulldozed Meigs Field just because he could, as far as I was concerned, that was it.
The infamous Chicago weather? That’s to be expected, but there’s no excuse for any of the rest.
As far as I am concerned, the only good thing about Chicago is that, for now, there still are a fair number of Serbs and other Orthodox Christians living there. Most likely, within a few decades, just about all of them will have moved on.
I can watch Da Bears from well south of the Mason-Dixon Line, or perhaps even from overseas.
Other than that, fuhgeddaboutit.
Chicago Population Sinks to 1920 Level
(h/t: citizen_q)
CHICAGO—A larger-than-expected exodus over the past 10 years reduced the population of Chicago to a level not seen in nearly a century.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday that during the decade ended in 2010, Chicago’s population fell 6.9% to 2,695,598 people, fewer than the 2.7 million reported back in 1920.
After peaking at 3.62 million people in 1950, Chicago underwent a half century of decline that ended only when the 1990s boom years produced a small gain in the 2000 count. At that time, the city loudly celebrated its comeback.
But the recent recession accelerated a migration both to the metropolitan area’s farthest suburbs and to the Southern U.S. Chicago nonetheless is expected to remain the nation’s third-largest city, behind New York and Los Angeles and just ahead of Houston, for which final census numbers aren’t in yet.
The exodus took a big chunk out of the city’s black population in particular, shrinking it to 887,608 from 1,065,009, according to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.
“The black decline is really powering the city loss,” Mr. Frey said, calling it “part of the great reverse migration to the South.”
Blacks remain the most-populous race in Chicago, Mr. Frey said, while the number of whites fell during the decade by about 52,000 to just under 855,000 and Hispanics’ ranks rose by about 25,000 to just below 780,000.
The population of Cook County, which is dominated by the city of Chicago, fell 3.4% during the decade. But it remained by far the state’s most populous county, with about 5.2 million people.
Update: Dream Fulfilled: Rahm Emanuel Elected Mayor of Chicago
Updated: Tuesday, 22 Feb 2011, 10:39 PM CST
Published : Tuesday, 22 Feb 2011, 7:41 PM CSTFOX Chicago News
Chicago – With 98 percent of votes counted, Rahm Emanuel led with 55 percent of the vote, and will be the next Mayor of Chicago.
[…]
Emanuel said he had spoken to the current Mayor Richard M. Daley about the sort of “world-class leadership” that Chicago needs. He thanked Mayor Daley for his devotion.“He has earned a special place in our hearts and our history,” Emanuel said. “Tonight we thank Mayor Daley for a lifetime of service to his beloved city. And we wish him, and Maggie– whom we all love– the very best in the future.”
Emanuel garnered 55 percent of the vote, and Gery Chico was in second place with 24 percent.
[…]
Miguel del Valle was in third place, with 9.3 percent of the vote. Carol Moseley Braun was in fourth place, with 8.9 percent.
Update: Sunshine Review: Illinois State Budget
(h/t: Bumr50)
…Illinois’ financial situation is worse than any other state in the country according to a study by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The state ended Fiscal Year 2010 in worse shape than any other state (the state’s general fund balance was the lowest it has ever been at negative $4.7 billion[4]) and the state’s budget situation has been called “tenuous at best.”[5]
Illinois will receive $974 million from the federal government under H.R. 1586, a $26 billion plan to give states money for Medicaid and education that the President signed into law on August 10, 2010.[6]
Gov. Pat Quinn signed a new state budget for FY2011 on July 1, 2010. The state is second only to California’s budget woes in terms of budget woes and is currently facing a $12.8 billion budget shortfall for FY 2010 and 2011, according to a January 2010 study by the Civic Federation. The budget as passed does not come close to erasing the state’s $13 billion deficit, the largest in history.[7]
Originally published on 1389 Blog.
