On this episode, we’ll be taking a tour of Chicago, and Illinois in general, showing you some of the sights. These include:

* Shootings in the city despite (or because of) strict gun control laws.
* The thousands fleeing the state due to high taxes (and how one of Illinois’ neighbors solved that same problem).
* A Democrat-controlled General Assembly that won’t pass a budget (and the results of that).
* The Chicago Public School system, that is getting a bail-out as a reward for financial mismanagement.

A better look at the “Blue State Model” of governing you’re not likely to find anywhere else. Is it a progressive’s paradise? Sadly, yes.
Mentioned links:
49 shot in Chicago over Memorial Day weekend — and that’s a sign of progress
Mayor of Chicago [Wikipedia]
CHICAGO ONLY MAJOR U.S. CITY TO LOSE POPULATION FROM 2015 TO 2016
Scott Walker, Wisconsin’s Nearly $2 Billion Dollar Governor
By the numbers: The price and pain of no budget in Illinois
S&P, Moody’s Downgrade Illinois to Near Junk, Lowest Ever for a U.S. State
ILLINOIS LAWMAKERS ATTEMPT TO BAIL OUT CHICAGO PUBLIC SCHOOLS YET AGAIN

Show transcript
We start this tour of Chicago with a feature that I’ve covered on this show before; shootings. Over this past Memorial Day weekend, 49 people were shot, 5 of them killed. This, in spite of (or, more likely, because of) the strict gun control measures enacted by the Democrats. After 86 years of a Democrat mayor, you’d think this city was a progressive’s paradise.
Sadly, it is. But here’s the point made by the USA Today article linked to in the show notes; this is progress! Yes! Here’s how they describe it:
The decrease highlights the slow progress police say they’ve made in the first five months of the year to reduce Chicago’s stubbornly high murder rate through technology that helps commanders better deploy street cops.
So it’s technology that’s saving lives, not gun control. Gun control, if it worked as well as proponents claim, wouldn’t need all the technology. The murder rate wouldn’t be so “stubbornly high”. They claim gun control reduces shootings. Instead, the criminals and gangs run the city, and the innocent citizens are barred from defending themselves.
If the murder rate is “stubbornly high”, perhaps it’s time to take another look at the measures that are currently in place. Maybe, just maybe, they aren’t working as well as you thought, or are actually counterproductive. You may need to reconsider this.
The next stop on our tour is actually the border of Illinois. Here you’ll see thousands of people leaving the state. The largest chunk of these folks are from Chicago, which was the only one of America’s largest 20 cities to lose population from 2015 to 2016. However, they’re really from all over the state.
What would make all these people leave the state? Perhaps the gun issue in Chicago is one reason, but when polled, the top reason people from all over Illinois are leaving is another one of the blue state model standard failures; high taxes. In fact,