The murder capital of the Midwest
What’s even more terrifying than the 109 Chicago Fourth of July weekend shootings and ensuing 19 homicides is, it wasn’t as bad as the same week last year. And even though the weekend shootings were up over last year, those Second City numbers are down a surprising 27 percent year to date compared to 2021.
But that’s a small consolation to the 19 people who lost their lives generally for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And what was Mayor Brandon Johnson’s response to this latest round of carnage? He pounded his fist on the press podium shrieking:
Let me be emphatically clear. This is a choice. It’s a choice to kill. The choice to kill women. A choice to kill children, a choice to kill the elderly. These are choices that the offenders made and they calculated.
You mean shooting someone is a “choice?” Who knew?
It’s also a choice to support policies by which your state’s attorney adamantly refuses to prosecute or remand minority offenders. It’s as if Kim Foxx and the Mayor believe that simply pretending their progressive approaches work will make them come true.
The Mayor wasn’t nearly finished, adding, “When this reckless violence ravages across our city at this magnitude, we are losing a piece of the soul of Chicago.”
No sir! Ripping out the soul of the city of Chicago is your job. And you really seem to have a knack for it. I suppose we all have to be good at something.
Beyond those useless tropes, Johnson’s “solutions” consisted of asking the federal government for more money (yawn) and begging community members to come forward with the perps’ names. Why? So, Ms. Foxx can just put ‘em back on the street? I’m sure the Mayor believes in the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, and the Great Pumpkin, too.
The only Chicago politician who had the nerve to speak the truth in this homicide regard is former Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin. He came on the Ward and Jones radio show to explain how the same 300 to 400 gang members were responsible for 80 percent of these rampant shootings. He further stipulated that the only answer was to get these irretrievable souls off the street for good.
It’s particularly difficult for this journalist, one who fervently believes in Studs Terkel’s hypothesis that redemption is always around the next corner, to dismiss any soul as irredeemable. But I’ve learned that some folks can’t be saved.
Oh! And what was Boykin’s reward for telling the truth? Losing his reelection bid to, you guessed it, one Brandon Johnson. Chicago is a lost cause, my friends.
But I paid my student loans!
Yeah! I did, too. But just like the rest of you ancient motherfuckers, I didn’t have to deal with the barely legal scammers and 24/7 in-your-face usurious loan advertising onslaught. We didn’t have to contend with absurd tuition inflation borne of these “easy money” government backed student loans, either.
Considering that so many Boomers prefer holier-than-thou sanctimony over getting it right, they refuse to engage in any form of critical thinking. If they did, they’d surely note that, with the 2024 U. S. prime rate sitting at 8.5 percent, the juice on the average undergrad student loan is an absurd 6.53 percent.
Really? On a flippin’ NO RISK loan? That interest rate should be no more than 3 percent. Though that move would likely propel college tuition to even loftier levels, but that’s another issue entirely.
Along that same two-connected-brain-cells line, it’s similarly important to note that, when I attended Loyola University of Chicago in the early ‘80s, the annual freight was a mere $6,000. But it’s an utterly irrational 50 grand today. That’s right! $50,000 a year if you DON’T live on campus. Regardless of what you brain dead MAGA morons might say, inflation hardly accounts for that 833 percent increase.
Given my general due diligence, I’d thought I’d seen it all in the student loan/tuition regard until my younger son got the following “student” loan offer in the mail. Before you take a gander at the photo, please provide your best guess as to what the interest rate might be.
“20 percent” you say? Nope! “25 percent?” “Oh c’mon! It can’t be 30 percent!” You’re right. It’s not 30 percent. It’s 35.41 percent!
The Chicago mob doesn’t get that kind of vig.
Granted, it’s not a student loan, but it’s certainly marketed that way with a happy female Hispanic student giving it two thumbs up in the promo. All our unsuspecting ADHD 20-something has to do is sign the back, march over to their bank, and deposit the check – to the tune of $631.07 in interest – on a $2,500 loan!
It’s far too easy for my morbidly obese generation to sit back in their La-Z-Boys and laugh over someone stupid enough to take scammers like Tower Loan up on their “generous” offer. But the stark reality is, with very rare exception, all college age children are stupid and you were, too at that age. Though sadly, most of you still are.
What further evidence of this form of youthful idiocy do you need other than someone willing to go into six-figure debt for the honor of a degree in Gender, Sexuality, and Intersectional Studies? I didn’t make that major up, either!
As previously postulated here, the government needs to get out of the student loan business for good. Without their backing, student loans would be a far more perilous proposition. With fewer student loans out there, artificially inflated college tuition would tumble making the prospect much more affordable. And that would mitigate the need for naïve young bleeps to go into six-figure debt.
Isn’t the government supposed to protect the more vulnerable from pyramid schemes and thinly disguised loan sharks? 35.4 percent interest? And I thought I’d seen it all!
More Quick Hits on Tuesday…
I wanted to sneak a third story in here, but unless the column contains a Rolling Stones concert review, no one wants to hear me drone on for more than 1,000 words.
I don’t usually issue teasers, but one doesn’t see a very local bank grace the CNN homepage very often. But Fifth-Third Bank managed to do just that. Apparently, they’ve followed Wells Fargo’s being very naughty lead.
Until then!
