Free Republic

Good news. Crime is down in Chicago. Walk the streets late at night. Carry your wallet in your back pocket. It’s safe. Homicides dropped 18 percent in Chicago last year and crime overall was down 16 percent, according to statistics released by the police department this morning.Shootings across the city dropped by 24 percent from 2012 and 16 percent from 2011, according to the department’s numbers. Sexual assaults were down 6 percent from last year, robberies down 12 percent, serious battery down 16 percent, burglaries down 22 percent, motor vehicle thefts down 23 percent, thefts down 3 percent. How was...

Amidst ongoing corruption trials, a scandal involving top cops who've been changing crime statistics to show crime going down when it’s not, and an economy reeling from the twin salvos of runaway tax increases, and a public pension mess, Chicago has come up with a solution to their economic woes and maybe to their crime fighting woes as well. The city is going to fund giant street performing puppets, some as high as 50 feet tall, for merely millions of dollars. Yes, apparently the performing puppets that they have at City Hall, at police headquarters and crawling all over...

Since the beginning of 2014 Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy have been touting a declining crime rate in the Windy City, but according to a new report by Chicago Magazine, they may be cooking the books. "City leaders manipulated crime statistics to create the appearance of a rapidly decreasing rate of crime."

Other than hitting the perfect tee shot, nothing is more gratifying than the sight of liberals hoisted on a petard fashioned by their own corruption. In May of 2011, anti-gun lunatic Garry McCarthy was named Chicago Police Superintendent by mayor and former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel. Though making all of the usual promises about reducing the city’s crime rate, during his first full year–2012–Chicago recorded 507 murders, the most since 2008 and more than in any year since 2003. Of course, more important than 507 dead was the fact that Emanuel’s approval rate seemed to decline another notch...

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, told CNBC on Thursday he gave President Barack Obama a "contrary opinion" on the early stages of the Affordable Care Act, which debuted with a glitch-ridden website and troubled exchanges.

Talk about a guy who could pick a fight in a phone booth—if there were phone booths anymore . . . On today's Daily Rundown, in a conversation about charter schools, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel repeatedly insulted host Chuck Todd, suggesting he was ignorant about charter schools, was "backward" looking, and that being in Washington had affected "your brain." Todd generally took it in stride, but after one insult couldn't suppress a "wow" of amazement at Rahm's rudeness. View the video here.

When these four teens were trying to come up with something to perform in Louder Than a Bomb, a youth poetry festival that reaches teens through after-school programs, they took their task seriously. Through their spoken-word performance of “Hide Your Schools, Hide Your Homes, Hide Your Children, Cause He’s Wrecking it All,” they unabashedly slammed Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel with a passion you can both see and hear. …

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)The recent Conservative Political Action Conference provides a forum for big names. But it’s also a platform for the murmurs and asides from political strategists who’ve been everywhere and done everything, and like to speculate. Such is the case when the potential presidential candidacy ofHillary Clinton was parsed by a pair of insiders. Would she run? Maybe, if her health and vigor remain strong. But is she holding a place for someone else? Could be. The take-away suggestion: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is seriously being groomed as a White House contender. “Maybe in the lead role, maybe the running mate....

First-term Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel could face a challenge from the mentor of his old boss, President Barack Obama. Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle may have her sights on the job, the Chicago Sun-Times reports, though she insists she is running only for re-election this year. […] Emanuel has alienated the black community, the Sun-Times’s Carol Marin notes, by closing neighborhood schools while opening charter schools. He also has angered police and firefighters in contract talks. …

Top Illinois politicians say a multimillion-dollar institute bound for Chicago will be the nation’s flagship research site for digital manufacturing. Democratic U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Gov. Pat Quinn on Sunday publicly heralded Chicago’s selection by the Defense Department as the site of one of two manufacturing institutes. …

Has the mayor of Chicago reinvented the city’s notorious political machine – and does he covet the White House? When Rahm Emanuel became mayor of Chicago in 2011, he proclaimed: “I will not be a patient mayor.” It was an understatement. The former chief of staff to Barack Obama returned home with a near-legendary reputation for his take-no-prisoners style of operating. That is how he acquired the nickname “Rahmbo”. He once famously mailed a dead fish to a pollster with whom he had fallen out. There are few significant Washington figures who have not felt the lash of his tongue....

Chicago Public School officials say they’re canceling classes ahead of Monday’s bitter cold temperatures, after first saying they would be open. The reversal comes after withering criticism from the Chicago Teachers Union, though officials say they made the decision after (they) “evaluated the situation again.” …

On Thursday, a town hall meeting hosted by Al Sharpton and the National Action Network to address gun violence exploded into a revolt against “Chicago Machine” politics, Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and the aldermen in City Hall, with panel and audience members calling to vote out their elected officials. One 82-year-old preacher even called for “Tea Party” style meetings in some of Chicago’s south side communities such as Altgeld Gardens and Trumbull Park.

In a recent long-form article on the troubles that the banking and investment sectors have had with the destructive policies coming out of the White House, unnamed Democrats told Politico that Rahm Emanuel and, most especially, Valerie Jarrett were not only entirely unresponsive to their concerns, but they actually lacked any knowledge about the industries for which they were tasked with crafting policy--and earned no "respect" because of it. Things got so bad that representatives of the financial sectors just stopped having meetings with the White House because any such meetings were pointless. The December 11 article, "Lament of the...

<p>CHICAGO (AP) - It's not the vision of a world-class city that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel typically likes to portray.</p> <p>More teachers losing their jobs, thousands fewer police and firefighters on duty, less frequent trash collection and miles of potholed roads going unrepaired - all as property taxes soar.</p>

Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed Monday to shave a quarter off his 75-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes to appease African-American aldermen concerned about the illegal sale of loose cigarettes. The decision to reduce the tax from 75 cents a pack to 50 cents continues Emanuel’s pattern of tinkering at the margins of his city budgets to appease critics without giving away too much............. ........Last week, the mayor appeared to slam the door on compromise. He called the 75-cents-a-pack increase that would have left Chicago with the nation’s highest combined state and local tax on cigarettes a “health care feat” on par with...

October was another bloody month for the city of Chicago, as the city suffered 34 homicides, 29 from fatal shootings, and 98 more shot and injured. Seven more people have been killed thus far in November, bringing the murder total for the year to 387. That number remains below 2013, however, as of October 27; the Chicago Police Crime Data Portal shows the murder rate unchanged from 2011, and a 20% spike in murders for the previous four weeks. “If Rahm Emanuel and Garry McCarthy want to stop this, they can stop this,” Ward claimed. “They can stop it with...

<p>President Obama's aides went to extraordinary lengths to uncover the identity of a senior official who was using Twitter to make snarky comments about White House staffers.</p> <p>Jarrett, an old Chicago friend of both Barack and Michelle Obama, appears to exercise such extraordinary influence she is sometimes quietly referred to as “Rasputin” on Capitol Hill, a reference to the mystical monk who held sway over Russia’s Czar Nicholas as he increasingly lost touch with reality during World War I.</p>

At this point this is still speculation with little confirmation, however it is highly suspect. I urge anyone to look further into this for more info. *Note Balkisson is not the PM's son, as written below, but rather an MP's son. ... B. Facebook Page: Now we know why a company in Canada got the contract for Obamacare:::::: "Michael D. Harbison via Dutch Valkema Dutch Valkema

Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday called federal prosecutors’ efforts to crack down on gun crime “horrible” in Chicago when compared to other cities like New York or Los Angeles. “But that does not absolve us from our responsibility. It doesn’t absolve Springfield. There is a lot that needs to be fixed specifically on guns, both on the prosecutorial side, the gun prevention side and other aspects,” [Chicago Mayor Rahm] Emanuel said. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) have been encouraging the [federal prosecutor] to take on street crime, too.