Abortion contributing to Chicago’s “fiscal free fall” and Rahm’s collapse
From the Investors.com article, “Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago nears fiscal free fall,” March 2:
In progressive Chicago… Moody’s has cut its credit rating to two grades above “junk.”…
The steady financial decline of the nation’s third-largest city prompted us recently to say that Chicago was well on its way to becoming the next Detroit….
[P]rospects aren’t good, as people - particularly high-income individuals and businesses - flee the city’s high taxes and stiff regulations….
People are leaving in droves, voting the only way they can in a one-party town - with their feet.
From 2000 to 2009, Chicago’s population shrank by 200,000 - the only one of the nation’s 15 largest cities to lose people. The city now has 145,000 fewer school-age children than it had more than a decade ago, according to district data, forcing the closure of about 100 schools since 2001.
Those school closures are playing a part in the embarrassing run-off election Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief-of-staff, is facing, and which he may lose:
Emanuel recently emerged from the Windy City’s mayoral primary with just 45% of the vote against four opponents, forcing Chicago’s first-ever mayoral runoff. A poll taken.. Feb. 28 showed Emanuel leading second-place primary finisher Jesus “Chuy” Garcia… by a slim 42.9% to 38.5% margin.
About those school closures, from the New York Times, yesterday:
The sky-blue paint has begun to peel on the three-story building that was once Anthony Overton Elementary [pictured below]. Window air-conditioners are speckled with rust. Doors where children used to rush in and out are sealed with plywood.
The empty shell of this school on Chicago’s largely black South Side stands as a reminder of one of Rahm Emanuel’s defining acts as mayor: overseeing the closing of nearly 50 public schools deemed underperforming, underutilized or both. It was the largest closing of schools in memory, with many of them in black or Latino neighborhoods….
“It hurts,” said Earvin Wade, 55, who lives across the street. “You used to have a lot of kids there, families around. It was at the heart of our neighborhood. Now it’s nothing but an eyesore.”…
[I]n the end, it may be the education agenda that [Emanuel] proudly, defiantly and swiftly carried out that threatens his political future.
Population shrinkage and closing schools may in part be blamed on people “flee[ing] the city,” but an equally obvious reason for the decline is abortion.
Between 1995 and 2013, the dates for which Illinois county abortion breakdowns are available, a staggering 486,743 children were aborted in Cook County, accounting for 55.8% of the 872,631 abortions committed in Illinois during those 19 years.
Those are just the past two decades, with the two decades of legalized abortion before that likely the same.
The children aborted in 1973 would have been having their own children during the 1990s, so the number of lost people is compounded beyond what we see.
It is tragic that black and Hispanic neighborhoods in Chicago are blighted by empty schools. But the people themselves killed off the students. Blacks and Hispanics have a much higher rate of abortion than whites. According to Guttmacher, five times as many blacks as whites get abortions, and two times as many Hispanics as whites.
And abortion is just one social ill contributing to Chicago’s demise.
“In Chicago, 51% of children live in single-parent homes,” notes the Chicago Tribune.
Had Democrats in charge of the city since 1931 embraced conservative social values and encouraged premarital abstinence and stronger two-parent married families, the children allowed to live would not be “underperforming” in school to the extent that they are, along with being the victims of other societal plagues.
Such as murder, which unstable homes contribute to. Quoting Pew Research:
In terms of raw number of murders, Chicago has long been at or near the top of U.S. cities, according to FBI crime statistics. In 2012, it had 500 murders, the most of any city in the country; Chicago has been among the top three cities with the most murders since 1985.
Will the people wake up? But politicians aren’t the answer. They’re part of the problem.
Churches with their theological act together are really Chicago’s only hope.
[HT gerfingerpoken on Twitter for Investors.com article; top photo via Politico; bottom photo via New York Times]
Jill Stanek is a nurse turned speaker, columnist and blogger, a national figure in the effort to protect both preborn and postborn innocent human life.
Nothing but propaganda and lies by cyber-bullies to further an agenda of stupidity and misrepresentation of the truth.
It would seem more genuine if the post pointed to some other issues – racial housing policies, education funding, the ‘war on drugs’.
When these posts leave out the other issues and just point to abortion, it seems somewhere in between elitist and naive.
Just a pointer.
Fair point Ex. The problems in minority communities go far beyond just abortion. Minority groups are hammered by all kindsa social ills, abortion rates are a huge one, but are one part of the picture. Poverty is linked with abortion, imo, so focusing on both supporting pro-life policies and anti-poverty efforts seems like it might help both problems more than focusing on either one disproportionately might. Same goes for redlining, drug policies, the ridiculously unequal treatment of non-white people in the criminal justice system, etc. All these things feed into each other and the whole mess can’t be solved by focusing on just one.
For example, it’s true that single parent households are quite linked to poverty and crime, but just looking at that fails to take into account why these households, in the black community especially, are missing a parent. Much of that is due to the problems with racism in the criminal justice system and law enforcement, as well as other problems. It can’t be looked at as an isolated thing.
It is true that no one but pro-life groups is bringing up the possible contributions abortion makes to the minority demographic problems, though, which may be why this post focuses on that almost exclusively. It isn’t really considered or talked about otherwise.
Last time I checked, this was a pro-life website.
check again. Pro-lie. Propaganda.
I’ve been a counselor at a center in north Minneapolis for several years, and have seen a steady stream of people relocating there from Chicago for most of that time. North Minneapolis is not exactly the most ideal place to live in the Twin Cities, but from what I hear it’s not the war zone that the south side of Chicago is. One grandma I talked to was so distraught about the awful conditions in the schools there that she packed up her three grandkids and moved them to Minneapolis. She said “the best school in Chicago is worse than the worst school here.” Something is very clearly wrong there, and it makes sense to me that a pervasive lack of respect for preborn people leads to a lack of respect for people generally.
Chicago and Detroit are the tips of spears.
Our whole country is suffering from demographic winter (epidemic contraception, abortion, broken families), combined with impossible and unfunded socialist promises.
As a result, taxpayers contribute just enough to pay for social security, medicare, and interest on our debt. All of the rest — 100% of government operations — are funded by debt. That’s why our deficit is increasing by $1 trillion per year…. before we buy one bullet, or sign one paycheck, or one welfare check, or $1.24-million-per-day to Planned Parenthood, we have to borrow from China.
Folks,
Be very careful of falling into the trap of arguing that there are “obvious” reasons for serious social problems. Human nature, human interactions, and social issues are considerably more complex.
We should learn from our opponents, who assured us abortion would solve social problems, that there are never “obvious” reasons and “simple” solutions.
I love this mother theresa quote:
“If a mother can kill her own child-what is left for me to kill you and you to kill me–there is nothing in between.”
We’re pretty much seeing the truth of her words play out in Chicago.
Del –
I have no idea how you got five likes on that comment. We’ve had four deficits over a trillion in this country, and haven’t had one in a few years.
Furthermore, the obligations we have are far from impossible – if we brought back even some of the taxes we had under Reagan, and adjusted the Social Security tax once in a while, we’d be more than fine.