Decline In Obama's Chicago Clue To His Second Term

Urban Decay: Another weekend of violence in the president's hometown, now run by his former chief of staff. If you want to see the fruits of a presidential second term, look at the decline of his city.

President Obama and Rahm Emanuel, current mayor and former White House chief of staff, brought the "Chicago Way" to Washington in more ways than one. Not only did they bring a style of bare-knuckled backroom politics of intimidation and cronyism, they brought a statist philosophy of government knows best that has left America's Second City a second-rate city with nowhere to go but down.

Last weekend was all too typical in Chicago these days, with four dead and 29 wounded throughout a city that's been home to one of the nation's toughest gun laws. Chicago has become the murder capital of America with a 50% increase in violence for the past year.

Obama recently paid his hometown, where he maintains a residence, a visit. As Wayne Allyn Root, writing on FoxNews.com, noted, 35 were injured and seven killed in gun battles with the president home that weekend. Included in that violent mess was a 16-year-old girl. Three of the murder victims were killed in one hour on Sunday morning. It was the third weekend in a row with gunshot murders and injuries in the double digits.

The Windy City briefly shone during the recent NATO summit, held in a cordoned-off high-security enclave on the city's postcard Lakefront . The local Fraternal Order of Police took the occasion to erect billboards around town reminding people that for a decade the city has been 1,000 police officers short of complying with the legal minimum for police protection.

What you write is true - in a general way. Obviously there are exceptions and sadly, many of those exceptions are maligned as "Uncle Toms" which is not only cruel and unfair but intimidates others who might otherwise rise up and make a real life for themselves.

What really gets me going though is the blind allegiance of most Blacks to the Democrat Party - which has done virtually nothing to help them and in fact, has done them great harm by institutionalizing welfare which results in low self-esteem, hopelessness, fosters criminal behavior among the youth, creates a victim mentality and greatly limits and even eliminates potential for many of them to rise up out of the ghettos that so many of them have been stuck in for generations.

What exactly has Obama's much ballyhooed "hope and change" done for these people? Absolutely nothing. And they owe him absolutely no loyalty this November. In fact, all the Obama administration has succeeded in doing was adding yet more Americans to the non-working welfare class. So instead of allowing people to rise above a bad situation, the Obama Administration has allowed more people to sink to a bad situation.

The only way out of this morass (and I agree it will be painful and cause a lot of street violence) will be to remove government "assistance" programs like welfare, food stamps, subsidized housing, etc."

This needs to be combined with improving public education - starting with expelling all students with discipline issues for a full year so that we can focus more on teaching and less on babysitting juvenile delinquents. When expelled students are re-admitted the following school year, expel them again if they act up. But I think you might be surprised how better behaved the majority of them will be upon their return.

Lower the tax burden (which will be easy to do if welfare is eliminated) and eliminate all the needless regulations and red tape currently required to open a small business. If this is done, watch entrepreneurship flourish in our currently crime-ridden communities.

Take the inner city police out of their cruisers and put them on foot. Have them be friendly with the law-abiding citizens and get them involved in keeping the streets safe - you will see crime start to dry up.

Raze the ugly eyesores that are subsidized housing (eliminate HUD completely as a federal agency). Encourage home ownership and eventually, the inner cities will be as safe as any tree-lined suburb. Nobody takes pride in living in a government dump which is why these public housing projects are such disasters.

I can go on and on. And no, it won't be easy. But in order to improve the situation, we need to change the culture, get the government out of our lives and allow our citizens to reach their fullest potential.

You should look at the history of Chicago before jumping to a bunch of erroneous conclusions about life here. It has ALWAYS been known for its violence. The murder rate is actually 1/3 of what it was a couple of decades ago so there is no real epidemic of violence going on. It is being publicized now to gin up support for more taxes to hire more police.

Gangbangers have been shooting, stabbing and beating each other to death as long as there has been a city.

Politics here started in the saloons and the Democrat Machine was once entirely under the control of saloonkeepers, gamblers and brothel keepers. During the era of the “Levee” there were entire neighborhoods which were almost entirely brothels of every description sporting live sex shows and any kind of sex you could imagine and some you could not.

One of our most famed and distinguished citizens was the infamous “Mickey Finn” probably the most well-known name, other than perhaps Al Capone and maybe Michael Jordan, in Chicago history.

In spite of its sordid history, revolting politics and less than enchanting present it is still a great city and I have never regretted moving here almost fifty years ago. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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