Illinois governor’s cure for Chicago teen violence: More money
Attorney General Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are in Chicago today for a pow-wow with Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley over the city’s teen violence epidemic:
U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric Holder and Education Secretary Arne Duncan will be in Chicago Wednesday to talk about what the Obama administration is doing to combat youth violence in the wake of a nationally-publicized fatal beating of a Fenger High School student.
The two Obama administration officials will hold a news conference with Mayor Richard Daley and meet privately with students, parents and local officials, including the family of 16-year-old Derrion Albert, whose funeral was Saturday.
Last week, the White House called the brutal beating “chilling” after video of Albert’s beating attracted national attention. But youth violence is not a new issue for Chicago, which already has lost three public school teens to violence since classes began a month ago.
As Chicago Public Schools CEO, Duncan highlighted the violence but struggled to get a handle on it before leaving for the Obama administration at the start of the year.
Decades of “community organizing” and welfare state spending have not saved Chicago’s children, but Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn is clamoring for mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money to throw at the problem:
Gov. Pat Quinn said he’s glad Duncan and Holder are in town but suggested what states really need to combat violence is more money from the federal government.
Quinn said Illinois isn’t alone in its struggles to pay the bills, and said among the first things states cut during budget crunches are after school programs that target at-risk youth. Quinn said the federal government should pump more dollars into these programs, or at least let states borrow money at a low rate to keep community programs running.
“If we believe in the philosophy of non-violence… then it’s important that the federal government help cities and school districts and states have the resources necessary to have programs like this,” Quinn told reporters after visiting with children in violence prevention programs at a community center on the West Side. “But in these hard times, often times state governments that are strapped for money, there are efforts to try to cut these programs, this would be very false economy. It would really cause harm to these young boys and girls who are quite fragile in my opinion and the federal government more than anything can help us with resources and we have to do that.”
Thing is, the money keeps flowing in without results. Here’s more federal funding on the way for a new profiling plan targeting the most at-risk youth:
The new chief officer of the public schools here, Ron Huberman, a former police officer and transit executive with a passion for data analysis, has a plan to stop the killings of the city’s public school students. And it does not have to do with guns or security guards. It has to do with statistics and probability…But if Mr. Huberman’s hunch is right, about 10,000 high school students with the highest risk of becoming involved the violence as victims, or even perpetrators, will be better off once his plan is in place this winter.
Financed by federal stimulus grants for two years, the $60 million plan uses a formula gleaned from an analysis of more than 500 students who were shot over the last several years to predict the characteristics of potential future victims, including when and where they might be attacked. While other big city school districts, including New York, have tried to focus security efforts on preventing violence, this plan goes further by identifying the most vulnerable students and saturating them with adult attention, including giving each of them a paid job and a local advocate who would be on call for support 24 hours a day.
I pray this latest plan works. I fear it is more of the same.
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Makes sense. We aren’t allowed to profile the criminals.
Applying discipline is cheaper and better than dollars for most anything.
James Greenidge
Queens NY
More money? What an ingenious idea!
O/T, but…It appears that the Dept of Homeland Security is out of the loop about giving money to ACORN:
I guess this money is to help ACORN douse the flames that are spreading in the investigation there in Louisiana
Throw more money at it. An American political tradition. If it still does not work, throw more money.
Rather that profile potential victims why not profile the perps and send them to Sheriff Joe in Arizona? Give him offset $$$ to pay their way. Teach the bangers a skill and then help them become human beings and working citizens.
Isn’t Giuliani the obvious person to deal with this?
wrapping crap in money won’t solve the problem, it’s still only crap. but when you consider the players who are meeting, (daley, holder and duncan) expecting anything of substance would be too high a standard, so money is the answer.
“”I pray this latest plan works.”" In Chicago? Crooked County? Illinois? It will do exactly what they want it to do–pay off cronies and feed the grift, big time. The most at-risk youth are those trying to go to school and live decent lives-THEY are at risk–the others are just Junior Scum doing their apprenticeship for the big time.
I PRAY that the Supreme Court overturns Chicago’s fascist handgun ban and allows decent people to be secure in their own homes and lives.
mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money is the prayer of the Daley Machine and the chum bucket. Illinois has property taxes that are dream killers and yet they want more. And these fools wonder where the jobs went. So will Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn be the FOURTH Illinois governor to be convicted of a felony? Amtrak should build a Peoria-Statesville Express.
I was listening to one insane woman during the top-of-the-hour radio “news,” and she was babbling about how they needed to “look into REASONS why young people turn to violence.”
Well, we know what THAT means, don’t we? Beyond throwing money at “investigating why” these thugs are murdering innocent people, it means “learning” that there’s too much ” racial inequality,” and there needs to be more “economic justice” and “leveling of the playing field.”
I’ve heard so much idiocy from these “for the public good” tyrants that my head is about to explode. When are people going to connect the dots, and realize that all of this “public good” gobbledygook and the ACORN-types are the source of their intense problems, not law-abiding citizens who have this notion that they have earned property, and that other people should not be entitled to it.
I’ve never had a sudden epiphany about whether people had a right to what they owned insofar that they earned it. I never in my life had to be told that people’s property belonged to them, and not to anyone else. I feel as though I had this understanding all of my conscious existence. The insane notions of the liberal mind are inconceivable to me, and frankly I do not WANT to understand their insanity.
Throwing money and growing local government bureaucracy to cure a thorougly dysfunctional sub-culture has been a staple solution here in DC for decades. And this Chicago initiative will end up just as effective – total failure. No matter how many times socialist solutions fail miserably, the socialist refuses to abandon the Dream.
Throw more $ at it is the answer of all politicians. We throw more $ at inner city schools, reduce drug use, reduce teen preganncies, reduce drop out rates, reduce poverty, crime, etc. What has all that spending yielded the public? Nothing. More of the same.
The excessive spending of our gov’t is going to be the downfall of the US. The dollar is sinking. Rumors that oil will no longer be priced in $’s. China jawboning us to stop incurring deficits because they hold something like $1T in reserves. There is fear the Fed can not extricate itself from the Bailout without causing hyper inflation. Obummer wants us to spend $T’s more on health care for everyone, of course, all of it will be financed with debt. If we don’t stop throwing $ at everything, we are doomed. I fear in 20 years, the dollar will be decimated in value. Everyhting I have saved for retirement will be worthless. And this does not even touch on the societal problems of balkanization brought on by the mass immigration policies of adding M’s of 3rd world destitute people.
My mother would say that if these kids were on a farm, they’d have chores to do and wouldn’t have time to get in trouble. Obviously we can’t revert to an agrarian economy overnight, but isn’t there some way to create productive work situations for these kids that would appeal to them?
Right. Because if Derrion had just had a local advocate he could have called while getting savagely pummelled…
That is the LIBs response to every problem facing todays AMERICA… Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money… To HELL with PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY, to HELL with PARENTAL LIABILITY… just throw MO’ MONEY at the situation, and it will disappear…
I thought the solution to crime was always more gun control?
Now, the solution is spending more money?
Personally, I think the solution lies back in the “Wild West”: ones appeals ran out when a convenient tree branch was found.
A father?
The police per chance? But I understand more than just a few Chicagoans fear the police as much as they fear the gangs.
Stephen Colbert, Mr President The Taliban Just Isn’t That Into You. GRIN.
Advocates for the children….Let me see, they used to be called Parents!!! I teach and administer on the South Side, I’ve dealt with black, white, brown, yellow. All children who end up doing well have one thing in common, and it isn’t money, it is a parent(s) who are involved in their child’s life as a parent! Teaching them right from wrong, instilling empathy, and administering discipline. The animals that were depicted in the videos, the ones that killed the young man, have had 15 or more years of raising themselves, that much ingrained behavior only gets changed, when they decide to change, of their own accord! Then you can support them.
So instead of cracking down on the bad guys we will put a bubble around the good guys and give him a government nanny?
Good luck with that.
The more I see Quinn work, the more I wonder, “Is Blago still running the state?” Nothing seems to have changed – not that I was expecting that.
we have been pouring money into failed nanny state gubmint crap for 40 plus years. are things better or worse? try a new plan. money isn’t the problem, fear of punishment is nonexistent.
Do these children not have parents?
I would be a lot more in favor of this plan if I didn’t know that 9 out of every 10 bucks is likely to be spent on overhead paperpushing.
Take strong, direct action against gangs and erradicate them. Patrol the problem areas on foot and take out violent opposition. Build coalitions with private business owners and all inhabitants of the area.
In other words, do what we did in Iraq. The inner city dwellers have the same mindset, they only respect force.
Well, when the old-fashioned solutions to teen-age male waywardness — e.g., having a cohesive family with a resident father who serves as a model for what manhood really means, or having a culture that clearly makes things like gang violence a source of opprobrium and shame — are now “racist” to even mention, what’s left on the table to discuss?
When you let atrophy the time-tested checks on barbaric impulses — the cultivation of personal responsibility, self-restraint, respect and consideration for others — you end up having to make more and more things illegal as an ersatz attempt to fill the void.
That, or offering the equivalent of the Dane-Geld to the youthful barbarians (bribery to behave in the form of government officials bearing large sacks of money).
Anything but demanding that the cultural sewers that produce such “inner-city youth” get their sh*t together and stop blaming others for their home-grown ailments.
Governments award failure and they call it being fair. The reality is that no politicians succeeds by solving problems, only by creating them.
The ORIGINAL mayor Daley was a gang leader of the Irish Athletic Club. He had his two henchmen became the major, chief of police and fire chief.
Chicago was built on teen violence. Mayor Daley as a youth walked around Bridgeport and bashed heads of any black person who wandered into HIS neighborhood.
Sure they do–”Uncle Sam.” The Fed monitors and controls every aspect of our lives, and oddly, that’s just the way a lot of people like it–just as long as nobody else is able to live independently. If one is able to find the means through their enterprising efforts and intelligence to live without Uncle Sam, then that person must be squashed by Uncle Sam without mercy.
That is what it all boils down to. There are people who provide the genetic material in order for a “potential human” to be formed, and it is the responsibility Federal government of the United States to make sure that these “potential humans” to reach that “potential”–in other words, to make sure that kids become good, compliant minions for good ol’ Uncle Sam, and foot-soldiers for the cause of “community activism.”
This is more insidious than “Big Brother.” It is more insidious than the United States in “Atlas Shrugged.” George Orwell and Ayn Rand, in all of their brilliance never thought for a moment how evil liberalism would become in 2009 America.
By at-risk, I hope they mean intelligent, hard working, Honor Roll students.
Funny. The same department that’s funding ACORN is also trying to neuter Sheriff Joe.
Whose side are they on again?
Lack of money didn’t create this violence; lack of self-control did. Many parents in Chicago had pathetic behavior, so the kids were not going to behave well either. I was so happy to move out of Chicago and never really wanted to move there in the first place. I felt that that I was stuck in a 60’s time warp where most of the adults behaved like middle schoolers and their kids were total brats.
***
The Olympic Games Selection Committee may have seen the 2 x 4 attacks. Or maybe they realized that by 2016 any Chicago or U.S.S.A. “promises” from President Obama (PBUH) would be “up in smoke” by the time the games occurred and our economy tanks.
***
As far as throwing more money at the problem–forget trying to protect the innocent from the gangs. Break up the gangs Dirty Harry style.
***
Bring back CAPITAL PUNISHMENT for the killers of the fine young man they murdered. One year for the mandatory appeal–and for the execution if the appeal fails. $24 million for cops and bullets–not a penny for more “civic action” programs. Let’s get off “stuck on stupid” and go with a dog that will hunt–Texas style.
***
John Bibb
***
Democrats have been in charge in Illinois for how long? Obviously, they either don’t care about this, they’re incompetent, or they’re crooked.
Anytime a politician wants to throw MORE money at a problem that has been ongoing and increasing, one needs to understand that this is their way to enrich themselves. Period!
They have been in charge of public education for over forty years. How’s that working out? Yeah, throw more money at that…every election cycle.
The have had total control over the government for nine months now. How’s that working out? Uh-huh…throw more money at it.
These people have NO intentions of fixing these problems. To them, they are SOLELY a means to enrichment. If they truly wanted resolution, they would do what was necessary to meet that end. But they don’t.
Talking to a fire doesn’t put it out. Telling the poor that you want them to be rich doesn’t make it so.
Those that can do, do. Those that can’t talk about it.
Hey, I’ve got an idea to consider. Let’s award the 2016 Olympics Games to Chicago!! Then instead of sitting around doing nothing, these kids will be inspired to train and strive for excellence. Younger kids will sit on their parents’ laps (even until they’re 20 years old) being inspired by the outstanding performances of the Olympic athletes. That’ll turn that City around.
/sarc (as if you couldn’t tell).
More “midnight basketball” or more money, siphoned off, to feed the corruption? Not knowing what to do, politicians want to still look good, by spending more money, and saying, “We’re fixing it”. Of course, nothing is solved, but the MSM has moved on to some other story.
What part of Chicago?
How ’bout just cut off all federal aid to the area cold turkey? What would happen?
I like the sound of the plan, to the degree that the plan is described. Then again, what kind of “adult attention” are these kids getting? Liberal indoctrination, or Christian morality?
Sorry, I have a bit of a fever today – I’m clearly hallucinating as I typed that…
These kids need GROUNDING. They need the security that ONLY comes from having TWO parents – preferably living under the same roof with their own moral houses in order. They need the discipline and self-respect that only parents can give.
There is no magic here. We all know that it takes parents to raise children, and not a village.
It’s just that Obama and others don’t want to face the hideous reality about what Black America has become. Why face it, when there is money to be made by exploiting it?
Young black men now face unemployment over 52%, it was reported yesterday. The rate is up from its already insane level because the minimum wage has climbed again. It will go higher still if/when healthcare reform forces small businesses to shell out more $ to cover employees.
That’s not a statistic, that’s a death sentence.
Chicago is doomed BECAUSE of Obama and his cronies. Asking them to fix it is a classic fox and hen-house situation…
What! No chauffeur!
Does this mean that “Midnight Basketball” isn’t working?
One thing’s for sure: Instead of spending money on the money-losing Olympics, Chicago is better off putting energy (not even necessarily $$) into stopping their violent youth from killing each other.
Amazing how so many of the people who are responsible for the decline in Chicago are now part of the national administration, ready to implement those same failed policies on a national level.
In a lot of cases they are just like the Dear Leader, they simply stood by passively while the decline in civility was occurring and would make a pretty speech or two to soothe the masses and then go back to drawing their taxpayer checks.
That video was “Lord of the Flies” come to life and the poor victim died at the hands of feral teenagers. They weren’t raised by anyone, just turned out on the street. So they live and think like beasts, not civilized people.
I’ll tell you what created these feral boys for free:
1. Welfare.
2. MIA fathers. Pops was likely a gangbanger himself, rotting in jail, or living beneath an overpass in a drugged/alcholic haze.
3. Mothers more interested in scoring more welfare, more drugs, or the next baby daddy than in being a responsible parent.
4. Victim culture that teaches these people their poverty is someone else’s fault and therefore someone else’s responsibility to solve.
5. A culture that doesn’t respect authority, success, or endeavor, unless it’s rising through the ranks of a gang or selling drugs. Earning good grades, dreaming of going to college, earning an honest living, and being a decent person is “acting white.” I don’t think it’s an accident at all that the victim was an honor student.
6. Churches losing their influence in the inner city because they are too busy being part of the Democratic party machinery.
7. Drugs and drug money.
8. A toxic popular culture that celebrates the “thug” lifestyle.
The problem with Pat Quinn is that being Governor is not part of his skill set. He is a Populist, very good at championing good causes, not so much at leading. He became Lt. Governor because, in a crowded field, his name was recognizable.
Government does not have the answers to human deparavity. The answer to man’s boundless capacity to do wrong was put on a cross 2000 some years ago. As we chase God out of society, we will get our wish. He will leave.
Daley’s accounting practices. 2 for me and 1 for the black youth…2 for me 1 for the black youth…
They lost the Olympic bid. Gotta get some cash to skim some how.
Just passed through one of the worst neighborhoods in the city. Lot’s of young men hanging around on corners.First thing that came to mind to solve this problem? Conscription.Solve’s Obama’s troop shortage in Afghanistan in a heartbeat. Bring back the Draft.
How about we stop paying this parasitic underclass to breed?
Forget that! Don’t dump your problems on the military- We don’t want them. As you point out, we have enough to deal with. Solve your own problems. If they were worth a damn, they would already be doing something. We don’t want them.
Better hope the NAACP isn’t reading this thread.
When you reward failure you get more of it.
When you penalize success you get less of it.
Unfortunately, that’s the Democrat’s playbook.
I hope they are. They need a reality check.
Ding Ding Ding!!!
You can blame the Federal Government for this travesty started by LBJ’s “Great Society”
It worked for over 200 years:
Cut off the welfare state for single mothers and they will stop reproducing these thugs and criminals.
Silly me. I thought Democrats always said police and firemen were the first things cut if they didn’t have enough of our money.
In order to most effectively use the additional money, they could take packs of 100 bills and double layer them to make bullet proof vests for the kids.
These are just young recruits for the Unions, Acorn, or the Czar program. The way that one “teen” uses a plank, he’s perfect for protecting the voters at the voting booths. Looks to me like a bunch of, what was that word they’ve banned?
Has anyone ever been beaten to death with a board while they had a pistol in their pocket?
This question brought to you by the Second Ammendment.