Local News
Last week--before my inability to access Blogspot to work on this posting threw me into Ludditish panic--there was a lot of news about the impact of the economy on Chicagoland. This week the media has officially transited from woe-is-me over the economy to better-days-are-on-their-way and yet the news reported by the media last week included a sudden flush of layoffs worth consideration and comment.
First, a number of Chicago communities announced that they are laying off teachers because the state is not subsidizing school districts as it did in the past. Revenues from income tax are down. The state doesn't have the money to spend on education.
The school boards still hope to recall some of the laid-off teachers if funds materialize over the summer, but right now it looks like classroom sizes will go up. Naturally some parents are freaking at the thought of classrooms of thirty children. There were at least thirty children in every Chicago classroom I attended as a small child, so I am not so much worried about the children as I am at the thought of all those unemployed teachers.
Second, a few poorer suburbs disbanded their police departments for lack of funds on the assumption that the state police could fill in to handle law and order in their communities.
Those unpoliced suburbs include one near my home, a suburb with high poverty rates and a fair number of drunks and druggies. That suburb's economy is based on rich people coming into town to go to the restaurants (and sometimes, I suspect, to buy drugs). How long people will continue seeking entertainment in a community with a fair amount of crime, lots of gang graffiti and no police department is a giant question mark.
Third, and this is the one that felt like a kick to the gut for me, the state police announced that they would layoff or retire-without-replacement more than one-fourth of their force.
WHAT?
I don't have any friends who work for the state police or any friends whose children are state police, so I have no specific person whose welfare I'm concerned for. But what does it say about our society that we plan to cut more than a quarter of the state police force while communities are eliminating local police departments on the assumption that the state police will take over for them? And what about life in an age of terrorists in the state where they plan to move terrorists from Gitmo? Does anyone recall why first responders are called FIRST responders?
One could make the argument that we're already living in a lawless era and have been for some time; if that is so, what does cutting the police force say about the direction our government intends us to go? What sort of civilization do we intend to promote? And what will the backlash be if we go in the direction of increasing lawlessness for any length of time?
And then I find myself thinking about something the state is spending on: Illinois has a large illegal alien population and any illegal can put her American-born children on state aid by claiming the children are really the bastards of some man living abroad. In a specific family I know, the real father--who lives in the home and appears to be a good husband and father to his children--has a glamorous job that many Americans would envy. He isn't paid as well as a citizen or a real immigrant and that has numerous implications for him and for all of us. But because his children are on record as another man's, we are subsidizing his lifestyle to the benefit of his rich employer.
I'm told that one of the local business owners employs a man in another country whose sole job is to sign off as father of all the American-born children of all of this American man's employees. In fact this business owner is said to require his employees to commit this fraud in order to shift the cost of their employment from his profits to all the rest of the citizens of Illinois. If we could end this fraud, how much money would there be for police and teachers?
And what other similar kinds of fraud are going on in Illinois that I can't write about because I'm not yet aware of them?
It is not as if this state has a record of good government? When one hand washes another, you get a few richer citizens but you don't get clean government. When the nation was rich, perhaps it didn't matter. Now we're not so rich. What is the real cost of this kind of fraud?
First, a number of Chicago communities announced that they are laying off teachers because the state is not subsidizing school districts as it did in the past. Revenues from income tax are down. The state doesn't have the money to spend on education.
The school boards still hope to recall some of the laid-off teachers if funds materialize over the summer, but right now it looks like classroom sizes will go up. Naturally some parents are freaking at the thought of classrooms of thirty children. There were at least thirty children in every Chicago classroom I attended as a small child, so I am not so much worried about the children as I am at the thought of all those unemployed teachers.
Second, a few poorer suburbs disbanded their police departments for lack of funds on the assumption that the state police could fill in to handle law and order in their communities.
Those unpoliced suburbs include one near my home, a suburb with high poverty rates and a fair number of drunks and druggies. That suburb's economy is based on rich people coming into town to go to the restaurants (and sometimes, I suspect, to buy drugs). How long people will continue seeking entertainment in a community with a fair amount of crime, lots of gang graffiti and no police department is a giant question mark.
Third, and this is the one that felt like a kick to the gut for me, the state police announced that they would layoff or retire-without-replacement more than one-fourth of their force.
WHAT?
I don't have any friends who work for the state police or any friends whose children are state police, so I have no specific person whose welfare I'm concerned for. But what does it say about our society that we plan to cut more than a quarter of the state police force while communities are eliminating local police departments on the assumption that the state police will take over for them? And what about life in an age of terrorists in the state where they plan to move terrorists from Gitmo? Does anyone recall why first responders are called FIRST responders?
One could make the argument that we're already living in a lawless era and have been for some time; if that is so, what does cutting the police force say about the direction our government intends us to go? What sort of civilization do we intend to promote? And what will the backlash be if we go in the direction of increasing lawlessness for any length of time?
And then I find myself thinking about something the state is spending on: Illinois has a large illegal alien population and any illegal can put her American-born children on state aid by claiming the children are really the bastards of some man living abroad. In a specific family I know, the real father--who lives in the home and appears to be a good husband and father to his children--has a glamorous job that many Americans would envy. He isn't paid as well as a citizen or a real immigrant and that has numerous implications for him and for all of us. But because his children are on record as another man's, we are subsidizing his lifestyle to the benefit of his rich employer.
I'm told that one of the local business owners employs a man in another country whose sole job is to sign off as father of all the American-born children of all of this American man's employees. In fact this business owner is said to require his employees to commit this fraud in order to shift the cost of their employment from his profits to all the rest of the citizens of Illinois. If we could end this fraud, how much money would there be for police and teachers?
And what other similar kinds of fraud are going on in Illinois that I can't write about because I'm not yet aware of them?
It is not as if this state has a record of good government? When one hand washes another, you get a few richer citizens but you don't get clean government. When the nation was rich, perhaps it didn't matter. Now we're not so rich. What is the real cost of this kind of fraud?
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