In Chicago, Rahm Emanuel Faces a Crisis Brought on by Progressive Politics

National Review ^ | October 14, 2015 | George Will

[Cincinatus' Wife]

..........It is not Emanuel’s fault that Chicago’s three largest employers, after the federal government, are the public-school system, the city government, and Cook County’s government. Although Emanuel is a product of the Chicago politics that made Barack Obama, the crisis brought on by such politics now requires Emanuel to take many measures to make Chicago an exception to the nation’s economic lethargy under Obama. Emanuel’s task—condign punishment for any Democrat—is to salvage the blue model by making the private sector dynamic enough to generate tax revenues sufficient to fund improvident public contracts and their pension promises. Hence Emanuel’s focus on K–12 education.

A circle with a radius of 275 miles from Chicago’s Loop includes nine Big Ten campuses (and the University of Chicago, Notre Dame, and many others) that furnish a steady stream of graduates drawn to urban life. The challenge is to hold these taxpayers in the city when they have school-age children. Hence Emanuel’s enthusiasm for—scarcity can be the mother of courage—charter schools, which horrify the Democratic party’s paymasters in the teachers’ unions.

Emanuel and the city’s school system,the nation’s third-largest, want aid from the state. This is, as the Heritage Foundation’s Stephen Moore says, like Puerto Rico begging from Greece. Although state pension payments have grown from $60 million to more than $650 million since 2006, Illinois still ranks 50th among states in the lowest percentage of funded pension obligations(47.1). After 13 downgrades in six years, Illinois, which is not paying many of its vendors or even winners of the state lottery, is 50th among the states in credit rating.

After Illinois’s supreme court strictly construed the state constitution’s provision that public pensions “shall not be diminished or impaired,” Moody’s downgraded the city, raising the cost of borrowing. Because diminishment is not possible, some increased revenue is not optional.....

[Fledermaus]

Or just don’t pay them. They are nothing but promises made to liberal bureaucrats. To hell with them all.

[nascarnation]

Remember when liberal senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio moved to Florida right before he croaked to avoid the state death tax? Libs have no shame.

[Don Corleone]

By the way, the whole Chicagoland area is now loaded with illegal immigrants. Like a million plus of them.

Chicago, particularly its south side is the crossroads of drug traffic in the USA. The gang wars and shootings and random murders will never stop until that scourge is removed.It is not bloody likely under Rahm or any of his appointees. In the meantime, as real citizens emigrate Chicago's tax base declines and it devolution into a third world hell hole of violence and corruption moves ahead. IMHO its inevitable.