What On Earth Was the Chicago Tribune Thinking?

The Chicago Tribune leads its editorial on Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s job poaching campaign in their state with this appalling paragraph.

Laugh all you want about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign to recruit businesses from Illinois to the Lone Star State. We don’t know whether Perry will succeed in prompting a commercial exodus from the Land of Lincoln to the land of droughts, fire ants and deadly fertilizer-plant explosions. Yet Perry’s stunt is another serious wake-up call for Illinois politicians and the inhospitable business climate they’ve created.

Emphasis added. How insensitive and frankly stupid a line that is. The disaster in West killed 14, which includes 12 first responders who gave their lives trying to save their town. The stricken community will recover, with help from fellow Texans. The Lone Star State has a very large heart.

As some commenters have pointed out on the editorial’s page, Chicago’s gangs kill more people in a given week than the West, TX fertilizer plant explosion killed. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has no idea how to stop that. He asked them to play nice. Chicago’s disarmed citizens are sitting ducks.

Illinois’ businesses are sitting ducks to the greedy, grabby politicians in Springfield. The state has a habit of electing functionaries and hacks who end up being sent to prison on federal corruption charges. While the gangs inside and outside politics run unchecked, Chicago tried banning a legal business for not being politically correct. The Land of Lincoln is at the mercy of policies that align with Marx and has the high unemployment to show for it.  Illinois is close to being incapable of governing itself.

Why doesn’t the Tribune call Illinois the land of jailbird governors, insane tax policies, and murderous drug gangs? Probably because all three are true, and say a lot more about the state and its people than any weather, wildlife or accidents say about Texas.

After West and Boston, I wrote about the different reactions seen between first responders, who acted heroically, and first reactors, who jumped on one or both disasters just to score political points. But at least the first reactors had the excuse of living in the heat of the moment. The Tribune’s editorial comes half a week after West. We’re no longer in the heat of the moment. What’s their excuse for kicking the good people of West when they’re down?