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The Disaster which is Illinois


Have you ever driven through Illinois? Better than 90% of the state is like a flatter version of central Kansas. Basically, the Chicago area is about the only interesting part of the state, but its also known for terrible winters.

If you look at which states are growing the most over the last 20 years, it's basically places where you would want to live in terms of climate and scenery: The Southeast, the Pacific Northwest, and the Mountain West (excluding Wyoming, but again, the climate is so harsh there).

The states not doing so well in terms of population growth are basically states with long, cold winters that lack a lot of natural beauty, or states that are just ****holes (like Mississippi). The exception here being New York, state with harsh winters, but also very beautiful, and North Dakota which is like America's Siberia, but brought in a lot oil jobs.

My point is that yes, Illinois is poorly ran, but even if it were the best ran state in the country, its total lack of scenery and climate would still make it a hard sell for attracting new residents these days. The best thing to happen to the South, and the worst thing to happen to the Midwest was the invention of air conditioning.

The only higher population northern state that is seeing decent growth is Minnesota (a high tax state btw), and that is because it is a beautiful state with a wealth of outdoor recreational opportunities. The summers there are so nice, that it makes the harsh winters tolerable.
 
Have you ever driven through Illinois? Better than 90% of the state is like a flatter version of central Kansas. Basically, the Chicago area is about the only interesting part of the state, but its also known for terrible winters.

If you look at which states are growing the most over the last 20 years, it's basically places where you would want to live in terms of climate and scenery: The Southeast, the Pacific Northwest, and the Mountain West (excluding Wyoming, but again, the climate is so harsh there).

The states not doing so well in terms of population growth are basically states with long, cold winters that lack a lot of natural beauty, or states that are just ****holes (like Mississippi). The exception here being New York, state with harsh winters, but also very beautiful, and North Dakota which is like America's Siberia, but brought in a lot oil jobs.

My point is that yes, Illinois is poorly ran, but even if it were the best ran state in the country, its total lack of scenery and climate would still make it a hard sell for attracting new residents these days. The best thing to happen to the South, and the worst thing to happen to the Midwest was the invention of air conditioning.

The only higher population northern state that is seeing decent growth is Minnesota (a high tax state btw), and that is because it is a beautiful state with a wealth of outdoor recreational opportunities. The summers there are so nice, that it makes the harsh winters tolerable.

I grew up in Indiana and spent three and one half years in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in graduate school. All the states bordering Illinois are growing. From the link:

Preliminary numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau released Monday demonstrate once again the shrinking state of Illinois. For the sixth straight year, the state’s population dropped while every bordering state’s population grew.
 
I grew up in Indiana and spent three and one half years in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois in graduate school. All the states bordering Illinois are growing. From the link:

Preliminary numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau released Monday demonstrate once again the shrinking state of Illinois. For the sixth straight year, the state’s population dropped while every bordering state’s population grew.

Missouri is hardly growing despite being a low tax state. The only part of the state seeing significant growth is the Kansas City area. In fact, all of Illinois border states are growing slowly. The closest states to it with a good population growth rate are Tennessee (a low tax, beautiful state with a mild climate), and Minnesota (a high tax, beautiful state with a harsh winter climate).

Point being, even with the best government in the country, Illinois at best would be growing around 2.5 to 3.5% every decade.

I think a better example of a terribly ran state would be West Virginia, a beautiful state (well least before they let the coal mining industry scar so much of it), that is still losing people. Alabama, a state with mountains and beaches, but has only grown 2.5% in the last decade. That is you pure bad government. New Mexico, the only Southwestern state with a slow growth rate at just 1.5%. Wyoming, a state with some of the most beautiful mountains on earth, yet it lost population the last 10 years.
 
Missouri is hardly growing despite being a low tax state. The only part of the state seeing significant growth is the Kansas City area. In fact, all of Illinois border states are growing slowly. The closest states to it with a good population growth rate are Tennessee (a low tax, beautiful state with a mild climate), and Minnesota (a high tax, beautiful state with a harsh winter climate).

Point being, even with the best government in the country, Illinois at best would be growing around 2.5 to 3.5% every decade.

I think a better example of a terribly ran state would be West Virginia, a beautiful state (well least before they let the coal mining industry scar so much of it), that is still losing people. Alabama, a state with mountains and beaches, but has only grown 2.5% in the last decade. That is you pure bad government. New Mexico, the only Southwestern state with a slow growth rate at just 1.5%. Wyoming, a state with some of the most beautiful mountains on earth, yet it lost population the last 10 years.

Nonetheless, all the states bordering Illinois are growing in population; Illinois is shrinking.
 
Guy I went to grade school with was a homicide detective, in a near Chicago suburb. He retired in his 40's. Now, he collects roughly $120K per year, plus COLA, for the rest of his life.

You have got to be ****ing kidding? Retired in his 40's collecting a $120,000/year pension? If that is why they are in this mess let this state go belly up as far as I'm concerned!
 
[h=1]Thoughts On The Latest Census Data[/h]January 03, 2020/ Francis Menton[FONT=&quot]
  • On December 30, the Census Bureau issued its latest population numbers, going up through July 2019. Here is a link to the press release; and here is a link to various charts and graphs of statistics.
  • The long-time official spin on U.S. population changes has been that people are leaving the cold North and East in favor of the warmer South and West. Hey, people like warmer weather!
  • But while there may be something to that, a closer look supports a strong inference that what people really like is lower taxes, even if accompanied by a lower level of government spending and services. In other words, the news is not good for “blue model” governance.
  • Some ten states are estimated to have lost population in the year from July 2018 to July 2019; they are Alaska, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Jersey, New York, Vermont and West Virginia. Many of those declines are small, and perhaps based on special circumstances (e.g., the decline of Alaska’s North Slope oil fields).
  • But two states stand out for remarkably large losses. The leader is my own New York, with a loss of about 77,000 residents — 0.39% of population in one year. . . .
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An update on Illinois' corruption saga:

Martin Sandoval - pled guilty to bribery and tax evasion near the end of Jan.
Luis Arroyo - pled not guilty to bribery charges earlier this week.
 
You know that dun dun dun dun bit that follows the shark in Jaws everywhere? Well, i'm betting Mikey Madigan's going to be hearing it a lot when the Fed shark comes around:


ComEd will pay $200 million to resolve a federal criminal investigation into a bribery scheme in which investigators say the utility company admitted to arranging jobs and payments for associates of an elected official, referred to only as “Public Official A," for nearly a decade, prosecutors announced Friday.

The court filing identifies that elected official as "Speaker of the Illinois House and the longest serving member of the House of Representatives," a description that seems only to fit Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan. A spokesman for Madigan did not immediately respond to request for comment.
Read Court Documents Filed in Bribery Investigation Into ComEd That Appears to Implicate Madigan – NBC Chicago
 
[h=1]Chicago, Circling The Drain[/h]August 11, 2020/ Francis Menton[FONT=&quot]

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  • My first blog post on the subject of Chicago was way back in 2012. In that post, I placed Chicago in the special category of American cities that I called the “basket cases” — places with declining populations, astoundingly high rates of violent crime, in every case mostly black on black, and, of course, uninterrupted rule by leftist Democrats for generations.
  • The violent crime rate also clearly qualifies Chicago for the label of basket case. Murders hit a peak of 756 in 2016 (about 28 per hundred thousand people, compared to a rate for the U.S. as a whole of about 5 per 100,000). After a few years of modest declines, murders are on track to equal or top the 756 this year, with 440 through July. In fact, July 2020 just set a new record for most murders in a month, with 105.
  • Of course, Chicago has been ruled entirely by Democrats for generations. Its last Republican mayor left office in 1931. Of 50 alderman in the city, 46 are Democrats and the other 4 are Independents. In the 2016 election, the city of Chicago voted for Clinton over Trump by 84% to 13%.
Which brings us up to the last couple of days. . . .
READ MORE[/FONT]
 
Night sticks, fire hoses, and flailing batons.....the only way to bring Chicago back.

Between Lightfoot, Foxx, or fat boy, Boss Hogg, Pritzker -- I don't know how we got the perfect storm of dumb assery but we did.
 
[h=1]Chicago, Circling The Drain[/h]August 11, 2020/ Francis Menton[FONT="][URL="https://www.manhattancontrarian.com/blog/2020-8-11-chicago-circling-the-drain"]
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[*]My first blog post on the subject of Chicago was way back in 2012. In that post, I placed Chicago in the special category of American cities that I called the “basket cases” — places with declining populations, astoundingly high rates of violent crime, in every case mostly black on black, and, of course, uninterrupted rule by leftist Democrats for generations.

[*]The violent crime rate also clearly qualifies Chicago for the label of basket case. [URL="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/12/31/us/chicago-murders-drop-2019/index.html"]Murders hit a peak of 756 in 2016 [/URL](about 28 per hundred thousand people, compared to a rate for the U.S. as a whole of about 5 per 100,000). After a few years of modest declines, murders are on track to equal or top the 756 this year, with 440 through July. In fact, July 2020 just set a new record for most murders in a month, with 105.

[*]Of course, Chicago has been ruled entirely by Democrats for generations. Its last Republican mayor left office in 1931. Of 50 alderman in the city, 46 are Democrats and the other 4 are Independents. In the 2016 election, the city of Chicago voted for Clinton over Trump by 84% to 13%.
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Which brings us up to the last couple of days. . . .
READ MORE[/FONT]

What a joke. Heres a guy comparing what he wrote in 2012 with now.

Chicago's population in 2010 and 2019 declined by.....0.1% - less than 1500 people out of 2.7MM

The horrific violent crime? Well, that was dropping in 2012, and continued to drop until 2016 where it skyrocketed to.... 2012 levels.


041118-pic2.png


The murder rate has increased, but this was due to a few things... housing projects were torn down, dispersing gangs into the neighborhoods who had to fight for new turf, and a giant roundup of the dominant gang had set off a gang war that continues to this day. Now the war continues and is compounded by intense unemployment and poverty that can be directly traced back to our esteemed President and his handling of COVID. Another factor is that SCOTUS overturned Chicago's handgun and CCW ban, making getting a gun a and carrying it a whole lot easier, as well as guns now being imported in large quantities from Indiana and sold illegaly, which is more prevalent now than in the past.

Murder numbers have increased, but remain far below the per capita levels of many cities,which makes all the whining about democrat rule a bit precious.
In fact, the whining about democrats being associated with more crime is specious, at best.
When you look at the state level, its very obvious that GOP controlled states have much higher rates of violent crime than Democratic controlled states. I think 9 of the top 10 states for violent crime, and Oklahoma is #11.

Another failure of a post
 
What a joke. Heres a guy comparing what he wrote in 2012 with now.

Chicago's population in 2010 and 2019 declined by.....0.1% - less than 1500 people out of 2.7MM

The horrific violent crime? Well, that was dropping in 2012, and continued to drop until 2016 where it skyrocketed to.... 2012 levels.


041118-pic2.png


The murder rate has increased, but this was due to a few things... housing projects were torn down, dispersing gangs into the neighborhoods who had to fight for new turf, and a giant roundup of the dominant gang had set off a gang war that continues to this day. Now the war continues and is compounded by intense unemployment and poverty that can be directly traced back to our esteemed President and his handling of COVID. Another factor is that SCOTUS overturned Chicago's handgun and CCW ban, making getting a gun a and carrying it a whole lot easier, as well as guns now being imported in large quantities from Indiana and sold illegaly, which is more prevalent now than in the past.

Murder numbers have increased, but remain far below the per capita levels of many cities,which makes all the whining about democrat rule a bit precious.
In fact, the whining about democrats being associated with more crime is specious, at best.
When you look at the state level, its very obvious that GOP controlled states have much higher rates of violent crime than Democratic controlled states. I think 9 of the top 10 states for violent crime, and Oklahoma is #11.

Another failure of a post

Keep your head under the covers. Maybe the monsters will go away.
 
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