The Midwest’s major city, perched on the shorts of Lake Michigan, is variously known as the Windy City, Chi-Town, the Second City, and the most corrupt city in the United States.
All of these names are well-earned, as pointed out by Michael Walsh in yesterday’s PJMedia article Chicago, the Shame of a Nation. Excerpt:
It should come as a surprise to just about nobody that Chicago is the most corrupt big city in America, and long has been. The setting for the godfather of all gangster movies – Scarface, the Shame of a Nation, starring Paul Muni as a thinly disguised Al Capone, directed by Howard Hawks — Chicago has flaunted its outlaw status in the country’s face for nearly a century. And continues to do so, now that one of its own occupies the White House.
Consider this news item, which got no play in the national media beyond the Windy City, whose newspapers have long understood the criminal nature of their municipal government — even if, in the grand tradition of Jake Lingle, they occasionally act as incubators for members of the party. It seems that the former city comptroller, Amer Ahmad — a convicted criminal nonetheless hired by mayor Rahm Emanuel to oversee the city’s finances– is now on the lam; hardly a surprise coming from adherents of the criminal organization masquerading as a political party.
A colleague of mine who spent much of his life in Chicago often repeats a truism about Illinois politics, one that posits Illinois Governors serve two terms: One as Governor, one in prison. Chicago is the corrupt epicenter of a corrupt state, and it’s hardly recent; the stink of corruption in that city goes back at least to the early Twentieth century.
To be fair, Chicago isn’t alone in corruption. Generations of corrupt and incompetent government has doomed Detroit, once the cornerstone of American industry. Philadelphia has seen repeated instances of election fraud, and California – the whole state, it seems – is headed down that same path.
What is it about government that attracts the venal, the corrupt, the liars, conmen and fools among us?
