The arrogance of Alderman Joe Moore - and the willingness of the Commander Caluris to play along with Moore's dictatorial power trip with Soo Liquors - is disturbing.Banning cheap small cigars will not curb the use of marijuana or other drugs in the neighborhood any more than the citywide ban on spray paint has stopped graffiti. Banning the local sale of "cheap booze" will not prevent boozers from walking to the next ward to get their fix.
Taken to its logical extreme, Moore's efforts would lead to a dry ward. We Chicagoans tend to laugh at dry counties, don't we? Yes, "those damned Christian fundamentalists, so righteous, always telling us what we can and cannot do."
49th Ward Alderdictator Joe Moore is doing the same thing. One step at a time, Moore and his gang of liberal fascists are curbing the rights of merchants selling completely legal merchandise. That unfairly takes money out of Soo Liquor's hands and only redistributes it to other liquor retailers. Problem not solved, but a business and its employees will suffer.
Soo Liquors is not the problem. The merchandise it sells is not the problem. The problem is the scum that hangs in front of the store, getting drunk and high. The problem is generational, scum raising scum begetting scum. You can ban alcohol in Rogers Park altogether, and problem of fatherless children with no moral guidance will remain. Cocaine, crack, marijuana, meth, and all the rest of it is illegal in Rogers Park, and there is no sign that the usage or sales of it is any less because it is not legal.
Joe Moore's hastily applied Band-Aid of curbing Soo Liquor's sales may give us a temporary psychological sigh of relief. But the wound, decades in the making, still festers. Soo Liquors did not cause the wound, and Soo Liquors did not infect the wound.The wound was inflicted by the equivalents of Joe Moore, when the Great Society decided to - in effect - reward people for not working, for having more and more children out of wedlock, and to misbehave. Soo Liquors is, at worst, a pinch of salt on the wound. It stings, but that's it. What is really needed is for people like Joe Moore, Jan Schakowsky and the rest of the uber-Liberal crowd to get out of the way and stop coddling the criminals, stop rewarding irresponsible behavior, and face the reality of the consequences of the not so great "Great Society" of the 1960's.
