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Originally Posted by Etoille  corrupt? yes. dynastic? yes. tyrant? mehhhhh i dont agree with that. like i said unemployments down, crimes down, city looks nice, its in an olympic bid race, educational scores are up, daleys trying to keep CTA prices down/the damn thing from shutting down/lobbying for the state to give it money to keep it open......etc etc
will he do anything to stay in power? yes. absolutely. is that tyranical? not when he knows the best way of doing that is keeping the population at large happy for the most part. |
I'd GLADLY turn this into Chicago political cockjoust if you insist, but the fact is that CTA reforms started looong before Daley was on the job (under Washington and some even Byrne). The decline in murder rates started under Harold Washington's reforms and the Cities beautification and massive street cleaning/snow removal systems were started by Jane Byrne (who doesn't get anywhere NEAR the credit she deserves). What mayor WOULDN'T expand the CTA and the Streets and Sanitation and the public schools? That's exactly their jobs and as far as reform and improvement Daley didn't improve on ANY of that.
His innovations have been largely shallow and irresponsible partisan pandering: Increased taxes, Expanding the Airport systems to the detriment of homeowners and businesses in the affected regions, more increased taxes, preposterous bike path faggotry on our already-congested streets, the expensive and ineffective "blue bag" recycling fiasco, increased property and tobacco taxes, the expensive (and Target-stores lobbied) Wal-Mart exclusion fiasco, and of course, more fucking taxes.
So in exchange for some new lampposts and bus sheds (LOL) we get almost triple the property taxes we'd paid in the nineties, rampant corruption and patronage in our already-incompetent city infrastructure and a bloated and corrupt police force whose greatest claim to fame is that one of them is very effectively dodging prosecution for murdering his wives and getting rid of the evidence.