OBAMA'S CHICAGO Report Card

Body count:

In the last six months 292 killed (murdered) in Chicago,
221 killed in Iraq.

Senators Barrack Obama, **** Durbin, Rev. Jesse Jackson Jr., Gov. Rod Blogojevich, House leader Mike Madigan, Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, Mayor Richard Daley.....our leadership in Illinois.....all Democrats.

Thank you for the combat zone in Chicago.

Of course they're all blaming each other. Can't blame Republicans, there aren't any!

State pension fund $44 Billion in debt, worst in country.

Cook County (Chicago) sales tax 10.5% highest in country. (Look'em up if you want).

Chicago school system one of the worst in country.

This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois.

He's gonna 'fix' Washington politics?

 

You know what will happen if people buy into the hype and elect Obama? All this stuff will be out there and people will then say, "How come no one ever told us that Obama was an empty suit?"

It's amazing to me that Obama is being insulated from this stuff by the main stream media. The media is just a bunch of people pulling for Obama. A regular love fest. Amazing!

 

I'm doing my part to spread the word!! now no one on f150online has an excuse to vote obama!

 

I'm pissed. first election i can vote in and IMO the candidates just suck. Mcain IMO is just a left over from the 00' election who could not get nominated because Bush won the nomination for his party. and now that Bush can't run again he is. and well Obama i don't think anything has to be said.

 

Didn't you take any punctuation tips from your rude teacher thread?

 

Could not agree more, but we have bigger problems than Obama.

The liberal media has found that they can manipulate the media and pick and choose what is seen, heard, believed and talked about by the American people. If it is not this election it will be next, Americans have lost control and we will forever suffer for letting the mainstream media turn the majority of Americans into brainwashed puppets.

 

While Obama was in the Illinois Senate, the number of murders in Chicago went down more than 42%. If you include the time he's been in the U.S. Senate, they've gone down nearly 45%.


Illinois' state pension fund has been in the red ever since they started relying more on investment gains rather than employer funding in 1970, long before Obama had anything to do with the state. The main problem is that no one wants to cut benefits for state workers. Obama helped work through a plan of added perks for early retirement, and while helping, it still isn't enough. The only solution to fix this nearly 40 year old problem is to raise taxes and lower benefits for new workers, but nobody wants to do that.


Cook County sales tax is 1.75% The city of Chicago has one of the most complex tax schemes in the nation, which has a combined total of 10.25%


Over the past 5 years, the students in the worst school district in all of Chicago (#299) improved their reading proficiency by more than 47%, and improved their math proficiency by nearly 67%.

 

Obama must be a dynamic guy. What did his presence in the state senate have to do with the murder rate? What was the murder rate when he was a faith based community organizer? 42% higher than when he was a state senator and 45% higher since becoming a US senator?

In the city that I live in the number of murders this year has just gone to ten. It's a smaller city than Chicago, but almost three hundred murders in less than a year?


Like most municipalities, money has been handled poorly for decades. Perks don't sound like a way to get spending in check. Cutting unnecessary spending on things like entitlement programs is the way to make sure state employees get their fair share. Raising taxes only helps politicians.



Who came up with this complex tax scheme? It's what politicians do to make a few pay for the masses. It's not fair and too many people get a, perhaps less than glamerous, free ride.




That's great that studens are making improvements. From what percentage did they improve on? What was the expense to the tax payers to make these improvemnts happen? I can tell you it wasn't cheap.

How did Chicago get to be in such poor shape for the improvements that have happend, which are on the better end of really bad, to be viewed as significant? Does the local government have anyting to do with it? If Obama was really interested in helping Chicago, and it needs help, he would have been a part of it's government. Instead he used it as a spring board.

 

I dunno, ask Chris, I didn't bring it up. The original post implied that the current murder rate had something to do with Obama, and that it was bad. I just pointed out that while he was in office, the murder rate actually dropped significantly.

In 1992, there were 943 murders in Chicago. By 2007, it was down to 435.


I agree, but again, the original post implied this was Obama's fault.

Perks actually did help in this case, only because they encouraged many to take an early retirement. Had more followed suit, the results would have been even better. Perks for remaining state employees would be pointless and a waste of money.


It's been almost 100 years in the making. I tried to get a simple understanding of it, but it really is quite complex.


The average score for reading proficiency went from just over 40% in 2003 to just under 60% in 2007, while the rest of the county averaged better than 65% (in 2007). The average score for math proficiency went from just under 40% in 2003 to 65% in 2007, while the county averaged better than 70% (in 2007). The average spending per student for 2006 was $9,108, slightly higher than the state average, and slightly lower than the county average.


He did quite a bit, especially for those that couldn't get help on their own. Politically speaking, overall, he built a respectable record, working with both Democrats and Republicans to win approval for a series of bills. They included legislation that compensated crime victims for property losses, prevented early probation for felons who committed crimes with guns, increased penalties for offenders who used date-rape drugs on their victims, established a state-funded screening program for prostate cancer, and increased spending on after-school programs, just to name a few.

 

Gee, why didn't you ask the OP that? You like the guilty by association stuff?

 

Chicago is a big city with a lot of mob and crime history. Some things have changed while other things remain true to its roots. Obama should have stopped Capone maybe? A little before his time. Chicago underworld is far from what most of us can comprehend. Yes, Chicago is a different world.

 

Well, if you haven't noticed, I tend to share the opinion of the OP that it's the sum of Obamas career that is at issue. I'm also aware of the few cities that have been under the type of leadership that Chicago has been under for years and that it tends to be counterproductive.

What I expressed to the OP is that this type of information isn't widely disseminated. If it were then we would have a clearer view of why places like Chicago are the way they are.

I was actually asking PKRWUD a question, because I didn't know. He seemed to have sourced some information that I haven't. I asked several questions, and he answered them.

If we all passed on our sources there would be fewer questions to be asked.

You're right I do like the "guilty by association" stuff. You remember all the talk about the vast right wing conspiracy? I think that the left has been insulated by the media for years. I think that as of late the media has had a harder time of concealing their intention and the intentions of a big part of the left. Most honest, most open and most ethical, my ***.

 

I'm sorry, I didn't think it was important enough, but I should have anyway. You can find most of the scholastic info here, and I probably got the annual murder numbers on wiki, I really don't remember. This page had great info on the state pension fund, and I went to several different pages trying to get all the details on the sales tax, but never found one in particular that explained it very well.

Take care,
~Chris

 

Thank you. I don't know how many people look at the sources we use. I like to check them out. We can look at the same information and see something different.

The SchoolDataDirect site does give a lot of figures. There are some notes on how they use the numbers to come up with the results but it seems like a pretty good representation.

The Business Week artical is long. A lot to read. Chicago is only a small part of the peice. It's interesting. I think that we'll be hearing a lot more about underfunded pensions in the near future. The state pension is something that should have been changed years ago. Like social security.

Wikipedia does have a good peice on Chicago There is a lot in there. The good, the bad and the ugly.

While the information about Chicago may not be a direct result of Obamas actions, the informations in these sources will give the reader an idea of the climate that his career was started in. I think that it is relevent.

 

I believe Chicago sales taxes are a combination of state, RTA (regional transportation authority, encompasses 7 counties), county (Cook), and city all piled on top of each other. Their gasoline prices are some of the highest in the country because not only does Illinois charge sales tax on gasoline, there are separate RTA, county, and city gasoline taxes on top of the state and federal taxes. Gas in downtown Chicago is around $4.50.