Chicago Wins 'Most Corrupt City' Award Due In No Small Part To Its Awful Redlight Camera System
from the we-won-we-won dept
We've talked a great deal about my home city of Chicago, largely for the myriad of awful, corrupt practices it has put in place around topics that we cover here. For instance, we have an alderman trying to shore up the city budget by taxing the shit out of Uber and Lyft, our Mayor thought it was a great idea to have his own private email accounts to conduct business, and a red light camera system so hilariously geared towards bilking money from citizens that the courts have tossed out huge swaths of the tickets it generated, which led the city to decide to make it barely less corrupt by a measure of tenths-of-seconds worth of leeway for drivers crossing the intersection.
Now, you might be thinking that all of this effort to be corrupt and insidious seems like a waste. Wouldn't it be far easier, you might be thinking, to simply run the city in a sensible way? Wouldn't that actually require less effort and be better for the people of Chicago? Perhaps, but then Chicago wouldn't have received the prestigious award of "most corrupt city", as it did this past week.
A report released Tuesday ranks Chicago as the most corrupt city in the country and Illinois as the third-most corrupt state.
"What we find is a very dreary picture. In nearly every sector, whether you talk about aldermen, you talk about Chicago schools, you talk about contracts, in every area corruption is still rife in the city of Chicago," said Dick Simpson, lead author of the "Continuing Corruption in Illinois" study and a University of Illinois Chicago political science professor.
We did it! Suck it, every city in New Jersey! My hometown is the corruptest place in the land. And, as the UIC report notes, Chicago won this much sought after award in no small part to the very red light camera system we mentioned above.
Chicago's red light camera scandal sent an assistant transportation department commission to prison for bribery and extortion.
"What that means is that it's harder to get businesses to come here because of its corrupt state, we're losing population and corruption is one of the reasons we're losing population. We have undermined faith in government," Simpson said.
Asked to comment on the UIC report, Mayor Rahm Emanuel responded by noting how awesome a job he's done at not being corrupt, despite that not being the framing of the question at all. But that's the kind of response you can expect from Rahm, who has overseen the most corrupt city's government for more than seven years now. It has been under his watch that the camera system has flourished into the corruption monster it now is, not to mention it being under his watch that the Chicago Police Department has become the butt of a national joke.
So pop the champagne, fellow Chicago residents. It took a lot of hard work and effort, but we made it!
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Filed Under: chicago, corruption, illinois, rahm emanuel, red light cameras
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Chicago, the joke that tells itself
Stop electing the same leaders from that same party without trying the alternatives and watch the corruption end.
You need to shake up the etch a sketch of state and city politics by changing sides every few decades. Seems to be working for Maryland.
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Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
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Re: Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
The most corrupt city would be one where no one goes to jail for their corruption.
That's why I always roll my eyes at reports that claim that mostly empty rural states are the least corrupt. Illinois should take it as a badge of honor that they've successfully convicted so many former governors on corruption charges, instead of letting them get away with it.
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Re: Re: Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
You took the words right out of my mouth [next time, ask first :)].
I remember a long time ago someone telling me about a "bad neighborhood" because someone got mugged. I said, "nope!". A bad neighborhood is where you mugged out in the open, in broad daylight, with lots of witnesses and no justice... We've got a lot of "bad neighborhoods" these days. A situation 'we' could have seen coming.
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Re: Re: Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
Not quite true. You'll note that the convictions were based on Federal investigations, not state/city investigations. The city itself is quite corrupt, it's just that there is an entity outside the city and state that managed to get a conviction.
This whole situation makes me ask if Reynolds v. Sims wasn't wrongly decided. If downstate Illinois had adequate representation in the state Senate perhaps Illinois might be able to police the corruption in Chicago. As it stands now, Chicago calls the shots at the state level and Chicago power brokers can deflect any investigation that they find inconvenient.
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Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
1. People need to stop voting in *the other bastard* to replace the last one.
2. A pol or two hanging from a lampost every once in a while would make the rest a little more attentive.
The root problem is that politics is a route to consequence-free power. If people would interject some genuine consequences in. But pols are also really good at playing up division between groups and keeping us at each other's throats just to try to keep from getting screwed.
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Re: Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
When given a choice between the ideological heirs of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, and knowing that the vast majority of citizens vote their party even if the party candidate is horrific (so voting for a minority party candidate is a wasted vote) there is no lesser evil to choose.
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Re: Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
I'm thinking that the most important part of voting occurs at those times when we are NOT voting, before campaign seasons start. Choices become limited once politics degrade to a question of which candidate and which party. Significant power is in deciding who can run for office and what issues are important. The electorate's power is weak if that power is concentrated only on election days.
Not quite. As a society we tolerate or even promote responsibility-free power (even outside politics). The difference can be subtle, at times, but still important. Responsibility requires us to understand where power truly lies. Consequences requires us to understand where blame truly lies. The first is proactive and can help build future progress. The second is reactive and can create negative incentives... Summary?: "Consequences" as a lead motivator is an aggression, a limited use tool.
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Re: Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
Easy to say; hard to achieve.
A first-past-the-post electoral process naturally leads to a two-party system. This is sometimes called Duverger's Law.
We can't practically implement a multi-party system as long as we elect on a simple plurality.
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Re: Chicago, the joke that tells itself
Where did this stupid quote come from? That is not the definition of insanity.
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Any time I hear about corruption in Chicago, I think of the story of Meigs Field, an airport that mayor Richard M. Daley ordered demolished in the middle of the night in 2003.
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... wow. 'I don't feel like dealing with the legal hassle, so I'll just destroy it in the middle of the night and presto, no more airfield to argue over.'
Yeah, that does nicely highlight a seriously screwed up city government.
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corruption
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Re: corruption
There are 50 seats in Chicago's city council, so getting around to all of them would be somewhat time consuming, even without the presence of the armed bailiffs protecting them. And needless to say, walking into the building carrying an AR-15 while wearing a tactical vest bristling with extra magazines is guaranteed to attract attention from the guards long before you even get to the metal detector checkpoint..
In short, it's a worthless, stupid plan which would accomplish nothing, except maybe getting even more gun control laws passed.
And then why would you want to kill everyone's distant relatives? Many of us barely even know our aunts and cousins, and then may or may not even like them.
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curruption
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Congrats
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2nd thought
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Take their time
Also, the cameras should use video, and record segments 30 seconds before to 30 seconds after each incident.
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Re: Take their time
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I looked for the list but found none, did not bother with the pdf.
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California is most corrupt - Fremont and Culver City
Fremont forced their engineers to approve illegally low speed limits in order to justify too short yellows on their redlight cameras.
Culver City puts their cameras at intersections known to not have an accident problem. It's obviously just for the income.
Here is a little secret about the tickets from Culver City and the other cities in the LA area: They can be ignored!
Skeptical? Do a search on red light camera no consequence.
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Chicago Wins 'Most Corrupt City' Award
Now, I know a sample size of one yields a fairly large standard deviation, but I did want to point out that not everyone views Illinois negatively since the article and comments did veer into state territory.
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Corrupt ticket cameras
James C. Walker, National Motorists Association
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