RAHM EMANUEL'S CHICAGO IS ON PATH TO BE THE NEXT DETROIT

RAHM EMANUEL'S CHICAGO IS ON PATH TO BE THE NEXT DETROIT

08/07/13, Investors Business Daily Editorials

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Cities: Chicago appears to be following Detroit's lead to financial disaster, perhaps the latest victim of decades of one-party rule by Democrats eager to redistribute wealth while driving real wealth creators out of cities.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded the Windy City's credit rating by three notches last week, partly the result of $19 billion in unfunded pension debt, leaving Chicago's lower than 90% of Moody's public

Among the nation's five largest cities, Chicago has put aside the smallest portion of its looming pension obligations, according to a study issued this year by the Pew Charitable

The condition of Chicago's four city employee pension funds is growing desperate.

The firefighter pension fund has assets to cover just 25% of liabilities, followed by police (31%), municipal employees (38%) and laborers (56%). The city's four funds for retired city

Pew also reports Chicago's retiree health benefits are exactly 0% funded, with not a single dollar against a $1 billion liability. The city's retirees could wind up in thrall to ObamaCare.

As the Chicago Sun-Times reports, year-end audits showed Mayor Rahm Emanuel, the former White House chief of staff, closed the books on 2012 with $33.4 million in unallocated cash on hand, down from $167 million the year before, while adding to the

Emanuel's recent financial forecast predicted a $369 million financial shortfall for the city's 2014 operating budget. The report also predicted a deficit of more than $1 billion by 2015,

Chicago's Board of Education recently voted to close 49 underused and underfunded public schools — the largest school closure America has seen in decades.

The city now has 145,000 fewer school-age children than it had more than a decade ago, according to district data, and the district already closed about 100 schools since 2001.

Law enforcement also seems affected by Chicago's financial decline. As the Sun-Times reports, the number of physical arrests by Chicago police officers declined from 152,740 in 2011 to 145,390 in 2012, the year that saw well over 500 murders in a city with strict gun

That continues a six-year trend that coincides with the hiring slowdown that caused a

Police made 227,576 arrests in 2006. The number has been dropping like a rock ever since, and it hasn't been because Chicago is becoming less violent.

People are fleeing in droves, voting the only way they can in a one-party town — with their feet. From 2000 to 2009, Chicago's population shrank by 200,000 — the only one of the

Of all the nation's cities, Chicago fell between Detroit, reigning champion of liberal urban decay, and hurricane ravaged New Orleans, in the number of people fleeing to greener

As Aaron Renn notes in City Journal, Chicago lost 7.1% of its jobs in the first decade of this century. Its famous Loop, the second largest business district in the nation, lost 18.6% of its

Chicago is the hometown of Barack Obama and is run by the president's former chief of

But Carl Sandburg's city of big shoulders is a bit stooped these days.