Chicago: The Land of Al Capone

The Chicago Sun-Times reports:

Mayor Daley bristled last week at the suggestion that he might be friends with a mobster. The rest of us shrugged off the possible mob ties, just like we shrugged off a series of stories that suggest the Chicago area's reputation for corruption is well-earned.

It's not so much that we like our mobbed-up reputation, although some of us treat it as entertainment and revel in our infamous history. Corruption seems embedded in our culture here, even a source of pride, as if to say we're not another vanilla, Midwestern city. We have big-city problems here, like rats and cockroaches, and we're not so naive to believe that they can ever be fully eradicated. Maybe that's why corruption in this city never will be eliminated.

Our tolerance for graft was on full display last Thursday. As the gruesome secrets of Al Capone's mob descendants were being exposed at a federal trial, prosecutors were busy unveiling a host of corruption indictments. Former Ald. Edward Vrdolyak was hit with more fraud charges in a kickback scheme. The former police chief of Melrose Park was charged with shaking down local businessmen. The former head of Illinois prisons was indicted for allegedly taking bribes in exchange for contracts. And a white businessman was charged with gaming the system by using a minority firm as a front to win a Chicago Public Schools landscaping contract.

High taxes,high crime.