I need to vent: Richard Daly is a damned fool and a sleaze.

[TheWraith]

He's exploiting the death of a 14 year old kid who somebody murdered to prop up his own profile, by standing on his soapbox and railing about all the dangers to kids. Oh, and dragging in also the fact that he had a child die (albeit of a birth defect, not violence).

http://www.suntimes.com/news/cityhall/1481012,daley-quinn-tax-increase-031709.article

His "solution?" More gun laws (despite the fact that Chicago already has basically a blanket ban on handguns), and to "raise the penalty for shooting students."

Excuse me, but what the fuck? Isn't shooting people already illegal? Are you going to send the perps to "extra-jail?" If you can't catch and prosecute people based on the CURRENT laws against attempted murder, what possible use is this going to serve? In case he missed it, there's a small mountain of studies which say that longer prison terms are NOT a deterrent.

This entire "plan" is grandstanding, plain and simple, no different from the politicians who propose mandatory minimum sentences for drug possession. He's wasting the state's time and money trying to look like he's doing something, without the actual inconvenience of DOING something. Given the amount of money he's spending on this effort, or the $360,000 a year salary of his chief of police, or the millions he's pouring into the city's bid for the 2016 Olympics, I wonder how much could be done in terms of actual efforts that would bring down violence. More cops on the streets. Drug treatment. Neighborhood programs. But hey, all that unsexy policy stuff doesn't help keep you in front of the cameras. :mad:

[ChairmanAgnostic]

1. Al Sanchez may just take him down

if he wants to save his butt, that is.

that trial closes today, and closing arguments are tomorrow.

[TheWraith]

2. How is it that the people running cities know less about society than I do?

This isn't rocket science: the root cause of most violence in America is poverty, plain and simple. Poverty feeds the three biggest culprits, which are gang violence, drug addiction, and petty theft. Trying to fix the problem by throwing more laws at the symptoms (when violators are already using illegal guns and are not deterred by prison) is like painting over rotted wood and calling it brand new.

You've got to treat the root problem. The importance of this can't be overstated. I firmly believe that if we ever really fixed poverty in America, our murder rate would probably drop by 75% overnight.