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I grew up there & I'll continue to say that. I don't know where you're getting your statistics from, but Chicago has been doing it for a century, so they own it

I grew up there & I'll continue to say that. I don't know where you're getting your statistics from, but Chicago has been doing it for a century, so they own it. It's an unusual year there when a politician does not get indicted.

tptacek 3y ago
The stats come from the DOJ. The reason not to deploy regional slurs is because they beg for unproductive threads challenging and refining the claims. For instance: it is simply not the case that Chicago is meaningfully the "capital of corruption". It has more absolute public corruption cases, but does not lead relative to its population (you see similar things with the "most dangerous city" stuff). I'm not saying you shouldn't have pointed out public corruption in Chicago. I'm just saying you should be more careful with the words you pick. (As is probably obvious, I'm a lifelong Chicagoan).
- AlbertCory 3y ago
  Sorry, but it simply IS the case that Chicago is the "capital of corruption". It's not a "regional slur." You're entitled to your opinion, but so am I: I went to the high school (Fenger) that the real Eliot Ness went to, and so did both of my parents.
  - tptacek 3y ago
    So as long as we're clear that you're saying this because of the mythology of Al Capone and I'm saying it because I'm looking at current DOJ per capita corruption statistics, I'm comfortable leaving the thread where it is.
    - AlbertCory 3y ago
      just to amend that: it isn't just Al Capone and Frank Nitti, which was the 20's and 30's. Richard J. Daley and his son Richie continued into the 90's, with a brief interregnum.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - tptacek 3y ago
        Oh, Nitti and Richard M. Daley. Good point. I guess the DOJ stats must be wrong. It's just a super weird argument is all, like: I can see a variety of ways to make an argument that Chicago is super corrupt, but none of them involve an organized crime empire based on bootlegging Canadian Club.
        AlbertCory 3y ago
        [flagged]
        tptacek 3y ago
        First: The Jungle is a work of fiction. Second: This is primarily just a list of bad things that have ever happened in one of the 3 largest cities in the country, not a laundry list of public corruption. Third: Sacco and Venzetti were accused and tried in Massachusetts, not Chicago. Fourth: You get that the stockyards all closed by 1970, right? Chicago isn't a meatpacking city anymore, and hasn't been for over a half century. This is what I mean by weird arguments about corruption: you've managed to attribute the entire labor rights movement to Chicago. On behalf of the city of Chicago and county of Cook, I accept the flattery, but: that ain't all us. We may have helped kick things off at Haymarket Square, but the rest of the country was shooting plant strikers well into the 1950s. Might Chicago at some point in the past been the epicenter of corruption in the US? Absolutely! Is it now? No: we have numbers on this, and you can just go look them up. When you do, remember that Chicago (and the Illinois-Northern Judicial District) is bigger than most other places in the United States, so you have to scale the numbers. The numbers say that Chicago has a bigger corruption problem than NYC, which is a useful observation to make, but they don't say that Chicago is the most corrupt place in the country; the capital of corruption in the US is DC. You are older than I am, but I'm no spring chicken, sorry to say, so you won't be able to dismiss me that easily. See how this thread is going? Just find ways to make your point without declaring things "the BAD-THING-X capital of the USA".

tptacek 3y ago

The stats come from the DOJ. The reason not to deploy regional slurs is because they beg for unproductive threads challenging and refining the claims. For instance: it is simply not the case that Chicago is meaningfully the "capital of corruption". It has more absolute public corruption cases, but does not lead relative to its population (you see similar things with the "most dangerous city" stuff). I'm not saying you shouldn't have pointed out public corruption in Chicago. I'm just saying you should be more careful with the words you pick. (As is probably obvious, I'm a lifelong Chicagoan).

AlbertCory 3y ago
Sorry, but it simply IS the case that Chicago is the "capital of corruption". It's not a "regional slur." You're entitled to your opinion, but so am I: I went to the high school (Fenger) that the real Eliot Ness went to, and so did both of my parents.
- tptacek 3y ago
  So as long as we're clear that you're saying this because of the mythology of Al Capone and I'm saying it because I'm looking at current DOJ per capita corruption statistics, I'm comfortable leaving the thread where it is.
  - AlbertCory 3y ago
    just to amend that: it isn't just Al Capone and Frank Nitti, which was the 20's and 30's. Richard J. Daley and his son Richie continued into the 90's, with a brief interregnum.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - tptacek 3y ago
      Oh, Nitti and Richard M. Daley. Good point. I guess the DOJ stats must be wrong. It's just a super weird argument is all, like: I can see a variety of ways to make an argument that Chicago is super corrupt, but none of them involve an organized crime empire based on bootlegging Canadian Club.
      - AlbertCory 3y ago
        [flagged]
        tptacek 3y ago
        First: The Jungle is a work of fiction. Second: This is primarily just a list of bad things that have ever happened in one of the 3 largest cities in the country, not a laundry list of public corruption. Third: Sacco and Venzetti were accused and tried in Massachusetts, not Chicago. Fourth: You get that the stockyards all closed by 1970, right? Chicago isn't a meatpacking city anymore, and hasn't been for over a half century. This is what I mean by weird arguments about corruption: you've managed to attribute the entire labor rights movement to Chicago. On behalf of the city of Chicago and county of Cook, I accept the flattery, but: that ain't all us. We may have helped kick things off at Haymarket Square, but the rest of the country was shooting plant strikers well into the 1950s. Might Chicago at some point in the past been the epicenter of corruption in the US? Absolutely! Is it now? No: we have numbers on this, and you can just go look them up. When you do, remember that Chicago (and the Illinois-Northern Judicial District) is bigger than most other places in the United States, so you have to scale the numbers. The numbers say that Chicago has a bigger corruption problem than NYC, which is a useful observation to make, but they don't say that Chicago is the most corrupt place in the country; the capital of corruption in the US is DC. You are older than I am, but I'm no spring chicken, sorry to say, so you won't be able to dismiss me that easily. See how this thread is going? Just find ways to make your point without declaring things "the BAD-THING-X capital of the USA".