Some Love for Chicago From Freeport

By Prescott Carlson in News on Nov 7, 2010 8:00PM

Seems like the Southern Illinoisian wasn't the only paper grumbling about that goddamn Chicago and its "choke hold" on deciding who occupies the Capitol Building in Springfield. Eric Petermann, the managing editor of the Journal-Standard in western Freeport, Illinois, also piled on, complaining that "if not for Cook County, where 64 percent of more than 1.2 million votes went for the incumbent, the outcome would have been different." Petermann also managed to work in a reference to the "graveyard vote" in and around Chicago.

But not all the residents of Freeport feel the same way, especially one, Keith Ammann, who vehemently stuck up for Chicago and Cook County, echoing sentiments made by some of Chicagoist's own commenters:

If not for Cook County, Illinois would lose nearly half of its population, its residents with college degrees and its taxable income. It would lose 37 percent of its manufacturing jobs, 48 percent of its information technology jobs, 47 percent of its financial jobs and 53 percent of its professional and scientific jobs...

All told, Chicagoland comprises two-thirds of Illinois’s population and three-fourths of its economic activity. Without it, Illinois would be nothing but an extra-large Iowa with a flat income tax and less education. If that’s your ideal, then by all means, start working on that secession referendum. But if you want the revenue Chicago generates, I’m sorry — you have to take the people that come with it.

Perhaps Chicago is appreciated more in other parts of the state after all.