* Data shows more Illinois residents live in poverty
New data shows about 240,000 more Illinoisans lived in poverty in 2008 compared with 2000 and researchers say those statistics don’t fully reflect the current recession.
According to U.S. Census data made public Tuesday, the state’s poverty rate was 10.7 percent in 2000 and jumped to 12.2 percent in 2008.
The median household income in Illinois dropped from $60,203 in 2000 to $56,235 in 2008.[…]
The poverty rate, a set of federal measures, means that a four would live on $21,200 or less.
* Applause for Mayor Daley’s Olympic effort
* PJSTAR: An Olympian effort from the Windy City
* Chicago delegation leaves for Copenhagen
* Olympic countdown: Long night’s journey into day
* With Games on the line, we’ve got perfect go-to guy
* Will Obama tip Olympic scales for Chicago?
* Chicagoans Protest the 2016 Bid
Many delegates for Chicago’s 2016 Olympic bid have landed in Copenhagen this morning. Meanwhile, a group in Chicago plans to protest the city’s bid later today.
* If we end up losing …
* Blame Rio site on ad exec
* Report: Fire city public safety exec
The inspector general’s office is recommending the firing of the No. 2 man at Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications for alleged contract irregularities that cost taxpayers $2.25 million.
* Sources: Ex-CHA chief, Daley ally next CTA head
Former Chicago Housing Authority chief Terry Peterson, who has emerged as one of Mayor Daley’s closest political confidantes, is the mayor’s choice to replace departing CTA Board Chairwoman Carole Brown, City Hall sources said Monday.
* Congress Hotel: Despite strike, judge allows sidewalk cafe
Judge Ronald Guzman enjoined the City of Chicago and Ald. Robert Fioretti, 2nd, from denying the hotel a cafe due to a long strike by hotel employees. Guzman wrote that “the only reasonable conclusion” was that the alderman refused to sign off on the hotel’s application because he’s a strong backer of the striking union.
In its suit, the hotel claimed that the alderman’s actions violated the National Labor Relations Act, which forbids state and local governments from trying to tip a labor dispute to one side. By the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution, a federal law takes precedence over local law — or in this case, an unwritten but real political practice, the judge ruled.
Guzman found that Fioretti was exercising “aldermanic privilege,” a long-standing pillar of Chicago politics that makes an alderman a final arbiter of zoning matters in his own ward.
* Escapee case: 2 investigators overpowered by felon may face administrative charges
Cook County State’s Atty. Anita Alvarez has notified two of her investigators that they may face administrative charges for discrediting her office after a convicted felon escaped from their custody this month and eluded police in a two-day crime spree.
* In-your-face brutality rivets and disgusts
This time, it was on 111th Street, a few blocks from Fenger High School. The cell phone video shows an honor student, caught up in a gang fight, being clubbed to death. Our hope is that the video will lead to the identification and punishment of all those responsible for the death of the boy, 16-year-old Derrion Albert.
* Tensions Flare at Vigil for Teen Beating Victim
The melee on Thursday was captured on a cell phone video. It shows a group striking Albert with boards and kicking him as he lay on a sidewalk.
* 3 teenagers charged in Chicago beating death
Three teenagers have been ordered held without bail on charges of first-degree murder in the beating death of a Chicago student who was walking home from school.
* 4th teen charged in beating death of student
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s office announced late Monday that first-degree murder charges have been filed against 18-year-old Eugene Bailey.
* Fenger High School: Fear, frustration come to campus
Days after an honor student was slain, kids list the perils of walking to school, while parents demand a halt to violence
* When school bell rings, hell can break loose
Dismissal time is perhaps most dangerous part of day for youths
* Union leader: Mayor ‘a threat’ to Rockford
Rockford police officers, who say they are already understaffed, feel betrayed by a city that intends to lay off eight officers this week, police union President Aurelio DeLaRosa writes in a letter addressed to union membership and released during Monday night’s Rockford City Council meeting.[…]
“(The union) feels this mayor is a threat to the health and well-being of every person in this city,” DeLaRosa writes. “Someone should start mayoral impeachment proceedings.”
* $2.5M going to reduce Illinois DNA backlog
* Illinois 33rd Brigade wraps up Afghanistan mission
Last members of Guard unit heading home
* Troops’ return ends Ill. Guard Afghan mission
Buses carrying 188 Illinois National Guard troops on the last legs of their trips home from Afghanistan fanned out across the state Monday, bringing to an end a yearlong deployment that cost 18 of the state’s soldiers their lives.
* Nativity scene to be back in Capitol this Christmas
* Late harvest, shorter days could mean danger for farmers
* Every 26 seconds, someone hits a deer
One in every 228 Illinois drivers will hit a deer this year, according to a State Farm analysis.
Illinois deer-car collisions are up 3 percent from five years ago, a slight uptick compared with the 18 percent increase in collisions around the country in that same time period, State Farm is reporting.
The insurance agency’s research suggests that every 26 seconds in America, someone slams a deer with a vehicle.
- Small Town Liberal - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 9:57 am:
God help the deer when the insurance companies decide to make their stand against them.
- cassandra - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 10:03 am:
Unfortunately, as I understand it, Quinn’s income tax plan when last seen would raise taxes on families making just slightly over the median income. The Democrats, in their greed for the billions the increase would generate over the decades, billions that would no doubt greatly benefit Dem pols’ “family and friends,” can’t seem to see what hardship that would cause for those on the margins, especially if they must pay for their own health insurance and pensions (such as annuities) on the private market.
Quinn’s extreme reluctance to fire any appointees in his reform government, even where they are clearly superfluous, shows that feeding those now at the trough is one of his highest prioities.
That man of the people shtick is just that.
- Lake Voter - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 10:10 am:
One of the legislators up here in Lake County, Karen May, I think passed legislation to capture and then sterilize deer in her town of Highland Park. In a reccession, why would you spend money so foolishly. I have three words for you Karen, “Cull the Herd”
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 10:32 am:
A young man from the ghetto tries to walk the line and is beaten to death because of it.
We’ve all seen it; now what the hell are we going to do about it? Why isn’t the slaughter of our young people the biggest issue of our times? Are we that cynical and numb?
If this happened in my neighborhood or yours, we’d be screaming for the National Guard.
Layoffs, deficits, elections, corruption, blah, blah, blah. Who cares? A young man played by the rules and was beaten to death in broad daylight on the street.
There is no other issue.
- 47th Ward - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 10:42 am:
How on earth can a family of four survive on $21,200? That isn’t poor, it’s dirt poor.
- Thomas Westgard - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 10:42 am:
Deer / car collisions? Reduce the deer by introducing wolves, and reduce the cars by supporting public transportation.
- Leroy - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 10:49 am:
Has the CTA upper brass ever included anyone besides city machine politicians (a.k.a Daley confidants)?
You know, like a transportation expert that may have experience running another big city public transportation network?
- reformer - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 10:56 am:
How dare Chicago backers of 2016 criticize Rio for its crime rate. How many murders are there in Chicago annually compared to Rio?
- just sayin' - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 11:01 am:
We are no match for your magic horses of steel with the bright eyes that blind us. Please slow down.
/s/ Bambi
- tony - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 11:02 am:
Rio had 5700 murders in 2008
- Brennan - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 11:08 am:
=If this happened in my neighborhood or yours, we’d be screaming for the National Guard.=
Local Roseland pastors are calling for the National Guard. It was the first reaction.
Maybe Rod can make a comeback as a cheerleader for Youth Boxing. The guy could sell anything.
- b-dogg - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 11:09 am:
i have been trying to wrap my head around this beating death situation. teenagers are killed all the time in chicago, yet this case seems to me as if it is getting more attention, i assume, because the young man was beaten to death and not shot. to me this demonstrates the de-sensitivity to gun violence that exists as compared to physical violence. why is that? i could be wrong here, becuase the murder was captured on video, which undoubtedly makes the situation much more real to people. but putting the fact that there is a video of a murder aside, the beating death of a young man should be no more shocking than the shooting death of a young man.
- Cassandra - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 11:24 am:
Didn’t I read recently that the United States is the world’s biggest manufacturer of armaments, including firearms.
And would there be as many slayings of young adults without the rampant and highly profitable (to the dealers) drug trade.
Sure, the parents have some responsibility for their kids turning out to be thugs. But given the money tied up in drugs and guns, a certain percentage of which seeps over to the political arena, they are fighting huge odds. More candelight vigils and weepy Quinn and Daley videos just aren’t gong to fix it.
- VanillaMan - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 11:37 am:
Murder is easy when societies are not civilized. When life is not considered important enough to respect, life is devalued.
All of us, and I mean all of us, respect and believe that education is important. We believe that it is important for a person to attain the highest level of education possible. We want our children to learn. We want them to succeed. We want them to climb the ladder of education so that they could live the best life possible. Now, we also know that one could succeed in life without college degrees. We know that sometimes even the most uneducated individual can attain happiness and wealth. We see folks win audiences through sheer talent and skill, regardless of their education. Yet, we still, without waver, encourage each of us to attain the highest level of education possible. Just to make sure that the chances of success are greater.
But we can say the very same thing regarding marriage, can’t we? We know that married couples do better financially, and we know that being married provides a foundation for familes that has been proven over thousands of years to work. Children with a married father and mother do better on the average, than children that do not have a married father and mother. The statistics don’t lie. Married heterosexual families work and have been proven to work for generations after generations.
But we don’t see our society encouraging marriage, do we? Instead we see modern society insulting marriages. Many of our sit-coms and dramas do not encourage marriage. We sit for hours and laugh at disfunctional marriages and disfunctional families. Now imagine substituting education for marriage in these situations and ask yourself if we would be laughing?
After nearly fifty years of anti-marriage attitudes, it shouldn’t be so surprising to discover that the lack of heterosexual marriages within some of our neighborhoods is a root cause for the destruction of civilized behavior found within them. There is not enough foundation there. Young men need civilizing, but there isn’t the basic family structure within these neighborhoods for young men to emulate, except powerful gang leaders, hip hop artists, sports stars or other poor role models.
This is not new in the United States. For over 150 years we saw frontiers settled by rough single men, hungry for money and greed. We have an entire genre of history devoted to the civilizing of these frontiers. Fortunately, these frontiers did not last long enough to spawn generations of rough young men. Within a decade, much of the American frontier was forced into churches, community groups, marriages and families - or they were abandoned to die out.
So there is no real reason for us to wonder here. We have recent history and experience to understand what is lacking in these neighborhoods. Unfortunately, we are caught in a politically correct web of lies preventing us from speaking the truth to one another. We have thousands of colleges generating thousands of granduates every year who seemed to have attained a college degree without understanding the importance of making decisions between right or wrong, good or bad. We have generations of people who believe that the best thing to ever be in non-judgemental, even when life demands that we make a decision. So the poor continue to suffer from our arrogant elitist beliefs that they cannot afford.
We didn’t get to where we were by accident. Previous generations made decisions. Some were better than others. But they didn’t sit on their hands or fingerpoint as much as we do now in the name of being “open-minded”, when all the time we are just being selfish and lazy, and don’t want to look bad by supporting proven civic traditions because our college-educated friends consider those positions to be closed-minded and judgemental.
So we see this suffering and do not reach out.
- b-dogg - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 12:00 pm:
the problem with your argument vanilla is that young women are getting pregnant before they are married. so while i agree with you that marriage is key (whether it be between a women and man or man and man and woman to woman is irrelevant to me, but not to you it seems, but hey, it is free country, think whatever you want) the next logical step of your argument, which you do not include, would be sexual abstinence until marriage. and if you look around you at the world today, that isn’t happening too often. so instead we need to be talking about birth control. part of the discussion about birth control should no doubt talk about why the act of sex should be a a special one to demonstrate your love for another, but i believe humans are animals, we have certain insticts and desires that just aren’t going to go away. better birth control would make it so kids don’t have to group without a parent becuase children having children hardly ever works out well. the divorce rate is 50% in this country, pusing people to get married simply because they are going to have a child together, is certainly not going to make that percentage any better.
- Wacker Drive - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 12:26 pm:
Rather attend and party at the 2016 Olympics in Rio than Chicago. Way more fun in Rio.
Why would any organization even consider this corrupt city and state?
- KeepSmiling - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 12:37 pm:
We value 1) what we desire and 2) what we believe we can achieve. It’s the “and” that shapes each of us individually and society over time.
- Third Generation Chicago Native - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 1:22 pm:
Cassandra,
The biggest export the US has had for years and years is armaments.
As far as Albert being beaten to death in Roseland, it is beyond sad. I just can’t understand how a group of kids could beat another to death….such a senseless and barbaric act, way too sad and scary. No human compassion kicked in with the gang of beating kids, none. Now there is one child dead, and a group that will hopefully be incarcerated for it, more young men who will be in prison only to be worse when they get out.
Yes, residents ratting on other residents would help cure this, unfortunatley there is retaliation. Even though there are many blue light cameras around, there are not enough, in some places I wonder why they are there, and other places I wonder why they are not there.
- Secret Square - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 1:25 pm:
“Why isn’t the slaughter of our young people the biggest issue of our times? Are we that cynical and numb? There is no other issue.”
You said it, Word. I could not agree more. It’s certainly way more important than layoffs, deficits, corruption, the Olympics, Blago, etc.
In fact, think about it some more, and you might be able to see where the same principle applies not just to teenagers or to gang violence.
A peace activist could say it about Iraq or any war, while a survivor or victim of 9/11 or Oklahoma City could say it about the Patriot Act or other security issues. A pro-life activist could say it about abortion. Pro- and anti-gun-control activists could say it as well (although they obviously will not agree on the solution).
Now do you see why there is “no other issue” to people who care deeply about those issues? It’s not just fanaticism (whether it comes from the left or the right) but a recognition that these are truly matters of life and death.
- wordslinger - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 1:59 pm:
Secret, a kid walked outside his house and was beaten to death by a gang for not joining the gang.
There are no shades of gray there. It has nothing to do with marriage, or social sciences theory, or GOP and Dems.
Right now, there needs to be a larger and more aggressive police presence in parts of this state so people can go out without fear of getting murdered. Let’s start simply and confuse the issue later.
- Brennan - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 4:09 pm:
=Right now, there needs to be a larger and more aggressive police presence in parts of this state so people can go out without fear of getting murdered.=
The police can’t stop everything. Ultimately people in a community have to take back their streets.
There was an event like the Roseland fight in Uptown just a few weeks ago. It was at 9:30PM. It was a weekday. It was still Summer. But there were about 25-30 teenagers in the street at 4700 N Sheridan throwing glass bottles at each other, waving golf clubs as weapons, holding 2×4s as weapons, and generally motioning at each other as if they were fighting.
It too was videotaped.
One person was arrested. A few were brought to and released from the hospital. The events could have easily escalated into a riot with as much violence as the Roseland case. The police were there within 10-15 minutes of the incident being reported.
The next day local residents found bricks, bottles, golf clubs, and 2×4s stashed in nearby bushes. There was to be another fight.
The community is now talking about having the Guardian Angels patrol the area.
I read it about on http://www.uptownupdate.com
- AA - Tuesday, Sep 29, 09 @ 5:39 pm:
“The police can’t stop everything. Ultimately people in a community have to take back their streets.”
True.
OTOH, good luck taking back the streets without the help of a strong, motivated, and constant police presence until the battle is won. As long as the people of Chicago are willing to settle for a city leadership that focuses on wrought iron fences and the Olympics instead of providing basic public services to all her citizens, the streets of the city will stay out of control.
- wordslinger - Wednesday, Sep 30, 09 @ 12:16 pm:
–Why would any organization even consider this corrupt city and state?–
It’s the Olympics, not a Boy Scout jamboree. Past choices have included Beijing, Soviet Moscow and Hitler’s Germany.
Salt Lake City bribed their way to the Winter games.
Rio’s not exactly an Amish community, either.