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The Nation's Pulse
Murder, Tulips, and Taxes
Chicago goes the extra mile to prettify its ugly reality.
(Page 2 of 2)
“In 2009, Chicago recorded 458 homicides and New York 471 — when New York’s population is nearly three times as large as Chicago’s,” reported the Christian Science Monitor last year.
The murders were on the sorry streets of the city where there are more prostitutes than tulips.
Even so, I doubt if a “Flowers for the downtrodden” or a “Tulips for the Fuming” planting effort would have worked to reverse the city’s escalating murder rate.
In any case, with 500,000 trees already planted and park space in the city expanded to 7,730 acres, the city is spending $10 million a year on new trees, flowers and shrubbery.
With more parks than any other U.S. city, the annual budget for the 550 parks is more than $300 million, the largest parks budget in the nation — nearly a million dollars per day.
The gardens are supposed to pull people back to the city.
In the first decade, the 1990s, the population, especially among yuppies, grew 4 percent, the first decade of growth in 50 years.
New census data, however, show the city’s population down by 6.9 percent since 2000.
What’s sure not to reverse things is the latest hike in the state’s corporate income tax rate, a 49 percent jump from 7.3 percent to 10.9 percent.
That gives Illinois, according to the Tax Foundation, “the highest state corporate income tax rate in America and the highest combined national-local corporate income tax in the industrialized world.”
That sounds like a perfect plan to drive away business, jobs and population — and the money for new tulips.
About the Author
Ralph R. Reiland is the B. Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise and an associate professor of economics at Robert Morris University in Pittsburgh.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
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R Martin| 6.1.11 @ 8:11AM
“…and our tracks are old and crooked, not unlike Goldman Sachs”
Mr. Reiland, you’re on your way to Chicago seeking a simile for old and crooked, and the best you can come up with is Goldman Sachs? Good grief! With that sort of thinking perhaps you deserve to crash through the window and end-up in the gravel beside the tracks.
You teach free enterprise and economics yet suggest a weakened financial sector will not impede the recovery of business prosperity and job growth which seem to be the subject of your narrative.
You take a cheap shot at Goldman but ignore the bigger problem that all those murders, all that crack consumption and all the ugly graffiti is perpetrated largely by recipients of government transfer payments.
Disappointing, sir.
Redstateboy| 6.1.11 @ 8:21AM
Look at Chicago, St. Louis, Wash. DC., Buffalo, Detroit, Los Angeles, Killadelphia - any major American city (or State) where the Slave (Democrat) Party has held complete sway for decades and what do you find? High taxes, poor education, ghastly crime rates, bloated bureaucracies and decay. There is No denying it.
This is the result of a timelessly failed political philosophy and this is precisely what guides Das Messiah - this is his vision for America - to turn the United States in to one big fat failed Socialist Republic because he, like so many citizens in this Nation are blinded to Biblical proportions to their own stupidity.
Pellligrino| 6.1.11 @ 4:51PM
Please add Baltimore and East St. Louis to this list.
A long, sad, ugly list of very real ongoing failures.
Dan Hirsch| 6.1.11 @ 8:41AM
Illinois is the last holdout against concealed carry. So the boys in the hood don't have to worry about the suckers (that would be you and me.) ever firing back at them.
Concealed carry is not the end of all crime in a densely populated city like Chicago. But at least, you could defend yourself and the bad guys would have to think twice.
For example, on Memorial Day, the police had to close the Oak Street Beach (Ground zero for Lake Michigan and the Magnificent Mile, sort of.) Because a 'flash mob' of young black thug types were harassing and assaulting cyclists, skaters, and joggers on the adjacent lakefront bike path. I bet that concealed carry would greatly reduce that kind of nonsense.
When confronted, one just taps his concealed weapon and says, "Don't make me shoot you!" Thug decides it is really not that much fun and goes to play elsewhere.
Sheesh - New Boss same as the Old Boss....
But don't worry in Illinois, the legislature just reaffirmed that only the criminals are armed - the law abiding citizens are just soft targets...
Vince| 6.1.11 @ 2:12PM
The msm reported the Oak Street Beach was closed due to heat.
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Pecos Pete| 6.1.11 @ 9:27AM
Chicago will become Detroit. Or worse.
Dustoff| 6.1.11 @ 10:01AM
It isn't already?
C. Vail| 6.1.11 @ 10:08AM
For godsakes, get to the point man! No one has time to read seven or eight paragraphs of set-up before you finally get to the nitty-gritty.
PolishKnight| 6.1.11 @ 10:14AM
If only there were as many prostitutes as flowers in Chicago, then the crime rate would really go down.
The welfare state created a family run by unwed mothers with the taxpayer as substitute father-breadwinner. Saint Thomas Aquinas pointed out that if you outlaw prostitution, then normal women become whores. So Chicago and other innner cities are at the forefront of women being trashy and using children as a way to get taxpayers to support them that is spreading to the rest of society.
Ironically, as this story was published, Chicago just legalized gambling in an effort to raise revenue.
This may sound wierd to people here, but I think it's "conservative" for a man to go to a prostitute and do a bit of gambling when he's young, get it out of his system, and then marry a "nice" girl. The current system where young men (and women) sleep around and then maybe marry the person they've shacked up for a while with has been disasterous.
Chris Pedersen| 6.1.11 @ 6:39PM
There are as many Prositutes in Chicago as there are Flowers.
It's called "The Racketeering Chicago City Council"
VANdevil | 6.6.11 @ 7:23AM
Interesting observation!
WayneFarmer| 6.1.11 @ 1:43PM
PolishKnight's spelling is as faulty as are his morals. If Aquinas said it, it still defies the plan of God for man & woman. And if PolishKnight repeats it, it is still ungodly and immoral. Obedience to God is neither conservative nor liberal -- it is right, vs. wrong.
Chris Pedersen| 6.1.11 @ 6:34PM
CHICAGO-A Criminal Racketeering Enterprise!
cuban pete| 6.1.11 @ 6:39PM
The Illinois legislature just drew up new districts which will further diminish GOP representation.
Now the dems can take the whole state down once and for all. I'll probably survive but it is over for my grandkids. Business will be leaving in droves.
Rahm will run the whole circus from the fifth floor of city hall in Chicago.
But there will be plenty of casinos.
Rich Rostrom| 6.1.11 @ 7:18PM
The high corporate income tax rate is a problem...
But the big increase in the *personal* income tax rate (from 3% to 5%) is a real punch in the nose.
Add Chicago's nearly 10% sales tax rate, and it's no wonder people are leaving.
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Pelligrino| 6.1.11 @ 11:51PM
You really cannot claim America to be a great place when every city/metropolotian area with a population of over 300,000 is unsafe (thus uninhabitable).
What is wrong with us?
I have written this here before and one gets nothing but website commentary shoulder shrugs that say, "C'mon, you can't fix these things. Don't get agitated about it."
Well, I am agitated. I'm more than peeved. I am FURIOUS.
Our cities should be more than places you can just visit in daylight in large groups for safety.
Trust me. There are countries in this world where an aging senior citizen can just remain in his or her inner city apartment until death. Here? No way. If you love your parent(s), you're stealing them away to an infinitely safer environment.
But on the inside your parent is very unhappy. You've just taken him or her away from the "home" they know.
We are really sick.
We collectively shrug our shoulders and say there's nothing to be done; this is inevitable.
Vast "no-go zones" called our cities. They number in the hundreds in this land.
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