Data points from the Windy City

The U.S. Treasury is happy to commit $700 billion of taxpayer money to “fixing” the current credit crisis without basing the sum on any particular “data point.” (“We just wanted to choose a really large number,” one Treasury spokesman cheerily observed.)

Since there is an absence of data points in such exalted places, I thought readers might appreciate a few as they think about the upcoming presidential election. A friend who lives in Chicago sent me some arresting reflections on the Windy City, stomping ground of Barack Obama, former Community Organizer in Chicago, former Illinois State Senator, now first-term U.S. Senator from Illinois and Democratic nominee for President of the united States. In June, a newspaper carried this headline: “Obama Campaigns as Chicago Murder Rate Soars.” The email my friend sent put the numbers in perspective:

In the last six months, 292 people were murdered in Chicago.
In the same period, there were 183 Americans casualties in Iraq.

Who leads Illinois, in Chicago?

Well, there are

Senators Barack Obama and Dick Durbin, Democrats both.
There is Representative Jesse Jackson, Jr., a Democrat.
There is Governor Rod Blogojevich, a Democrat.
There is house leader Mike Madigan, a Democrat.
There is Attorney General Lisa Madigan, a Democrat.
There is Mayor Richard Daley, a Democrat.

As my friend put it, they are all blaming each other for the combat zone that is contemporary Chicago: who else could they blame? There aren’t any Republicans there.

A couple more data points:

The Illinois State pension fund is $44 billion in debt. That’s the worst in the country. Thanks, folks!
Cook County, wherein Chicago sits, not only put JFK in the White House back in 1960 by encouraging everyone, dead or alive, to vote early and vote often, but it also has the highest sales tax in the United STates: 10.25 percent.
Meanwhile, the Chicago school system is one of the worst in the country.

As my friend observes: “This is the political culture that Obama comes from in Illinois. He’s going to ‘fix’ Washington politics?”

That, a Latinist would say, is a “num” question, i.e., one expecting the answer No.