My Blog

Category: Politics

  • Workers Occupy Goose Island Plant

    A group of about 65 workers who occupied a Goose Island window factory in 2008 have once again locked themselves inside the plant in a desperate move to save their jobs.

    California-based Serious Energy said Thursday it is closing the plant’s doors and consolidating operations in Colorado and Pennsylvania.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    This is not good on so many levels.  Jobs leaving, union occupying, government failing… etc.

    “Ongoing economic challenges in construction and building products, collapse in demand for window products, difficulty in obtaining favorable lease terms, high leasing and utility costs and taxes, and a range of other factors unrelated to labor costs, have compelled Serious to cease production at the Chicago facility,” the company said in a statement.

    Isn’t this just a nice way of saying, ‘We can no longer afford to continue to operate this plant in Chicago where it’s incredibility expensive to due business’?

    If a company making windows can’t survive in Chicago then what kind of manufacturing jobs can we sustain here?

  • Chicago Aldermen Want Quiet Public

    Some of the City Council’s most influential aldermen proposed a crackdown today on crowd participation at council meetings that would ban everything from signs  and posters to clapping and booing in the public gallery.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    I guess they want their constituents like children; seen and not heard.

  • We’re Number One… in corruption that is.

    A former Chicago alderman turned political science professor/corruption fighter has found that Chicago is the most corrupt city in the country.

    He cites data from the U.S. Department of Justice to prove his case. And, he says, Illinois is third-most corrupt state in the country.

    University of Illinois at Chicago professor Dick Simpson, who served as alderman of the 44th Ward in Lakeview from 1971 to 1979, estimates the cost of corruption at $500 million.

    via CBS Chicago.

    Ya, that sounds about right.

  • Aldermen Push For What?

    This is just insane:

    On Sunday, Aldermen Deborah Graham (29th), Robert Fioretti (2nd), and Toni Foulkes (15th) joined members of the Chicago Teachers Union, Action Now, and a group of parents and community safety advocates for a press conference urging Mayor Rahm Emanuel to make the Vacant Property Safe Passages Ordinance a priority.

    If approved, the ordinance […] would require daylight watchmen to guard schoolchildren as they pass by vacant properties near public schools.

    “Recently, the mayor said he cares so much about student safety on the way to school that he’s installing speed cameras,” said Aileen Kelleher, Action Now communications director, during a phone interview Tuesday. “We’re saying if you care so much about safety this ordinance should be your number one priority.”  …

    This most recent push for the Vacant Property Safe Passages Ordinance comes just three months after the city passed a law requiring vacant property owners, whether an individual or a bank, to pay to register and maintain their abandoned buildings.  Similarly, last week Gov. Pat Quinn introduced a new program aimed at rehabilitating foreclosed homes in Cook County.

    With November’s ordinance in mind, those in support of the Safe Passages law say vacant property owners should also foot the bill for hiring the proposed watchmen.

    “We want the guards to be hired from within the communities where the vacant buildings are so that it’s also a job-creation program, because along with the housing crisis there’s also an employment crisis,” said Kelleher.

    Additionally, the ordinance would levy fines of up to $500 if the building’s mortgage holder fails to provide a watchman between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m.

    via Progress Illinois.

    This can never pass.  Nothing good can come of it.

    According to Illinois Statute — namely 225 ILCS 447 the Private Detective, Private Alarm, Private Security, Fingerprint Vendor, and Locksmith Act of 2004 — every one of these “watchmen” would be required to have a PERC.  The statute provides that:

     “Private security contractor” means a person who engages in the business of providing a private security officer, watchman, patrol, guard dog, canine odor detection, or a similar service by any other title or name on a contractual basis for another person, firm, corporation, or other entity for a fee or other consideration and performing one or more of the following functions:   …

    See 225 ILCS 447.

    This means that anyone who’s going to watch these houses must take and pass a 20-hour course with test.  They must also not have been convicted of a felony and submit their fingerprints for a background check.  Despite the requirements, it’s not uncommon to see these jobs listed on Craigslist for $10-12/hour.

    The proposed ordinance would require watchmen (or watchwomen I would assume) to be present between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. or 8 hours per day.  That’s $80 per day in pay for someone to basically sit on their duff and read the paper in front of a vacant building.  Of course the real cost (vacation, medical, workemen’s comp, payroll taxes, overhead, training, etc) would mean that the property owner would likely be charged more like $120/day.

    Even at $100/day, that’s $3,000/month… just to have someone watch a vacant property.  Who can afford to pay that?  The property owner will essentially be left with two options:  tear the place down or rent it out for someone well below market value.

    Given that one can get a building (single family house on a single lot) torn down and hauled away for $10,000-20,000 (depending on the size and condition of the place,) it stands to reason that anyone who expects their place to be vacant for a long time to just may be better off just tearing the place down.  The property owner can also now save on taxes (vacant land is hardly taxed) and insurance as well.  This will minimize the property expense over the long-haul.

    Equally problematic is that the ordinance may force the property owner to place anyone as a tenant in the property regardless of rent.  If you’re going to charge me $3,000/mo to keep the place empty and secured then it’s just better for me to find someone, anyone, who’s willing to stay in the place for $10/mo.  The question is then who’s renting the place for $10/mo?  Maybe someone who shouldn’t be living next to a school in the first place?

    And there’s the rub.  What makes these people think that a tenant on the property would be better than having the property vacant?  Would you rather have your child walk by a vacant property or Jeffery Dahmer’s place?

    Of course if the city was at full police strength wouldn’t there be more cops on the street looking over these places?  I’m just say’n.

    The article states there are 19,000 vacant properties in the city.  At $3,000 per month that’s $57,000,000 in new costs that would have to picked-up by property owners each month.

    That’s $57,000,000 in monthly transfer payments from “property owners” to  “guards to be hired from within the communities where the vacant buildings” exist.  Annually that a $684 million tax on property owners in the city.

    It’s a complete joke.  Just like paying mommies to walk their children to school when they should be doing it anyway.

     

  • No Tax Refund if You Owe Parking Tickets

    Really?

    Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday referred to people and businesses with unpaid city debts as “the deadbeats and the delinquents” after winning City Council approval to intercept their state income tax refunds to collect millions of dollars.  …

    At every level we have protected the taxpayers of the city of Chicago by not raising property taxes, not raising or creating an income tax, not raising a sales taxes, not raising a gas tax,” Emanuel said. …

    Under the diversion measure approved Wednesday, Illinois income tax refunds of those who owe will be redirected to the city, possibly as soon as this spring. …

    The citys measure, made possible by a state law that took effect in December, will affect individuals and businesses that received final notices for debt owed on parking tickets, red-light citations and administrative hearing judgments.  More than 100,000 people and businesses owe the city about $80 million, but refunds wont cover all of that, officials said.  About 51 percent of the debt can be traced to addresses outside the city, the administration said.

    Ald. Robert Fioretti, 2nd, one of the aldermen to vote against, described the citys administrative hearing system as “a kangaroo court” that needs to be fixed before income tax refunds are diverted to the city.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    As someone who does a little bit of legal practice over at 400 E. Superior I can attest to what a kangaroo court it is.  The process dealing with building violations is so bad that I truly believe they simply make it up as they go along.  It’s not quite as bad with parking tickets but it’s still a case of any given Sunday as to whether the judge will follow the law or not.

  • New Ward Map Confusing? Try Getting a Garbage Can

    Excellent points raised by Greg Hinz over at Crain’s.

    Ask folks at City Hall whether new or old wards apply for purposes of voting, zoning and distribution of services and the like and, after a couple of shrugs, you’ll get a multipart answer fit for an SAT test.  …

    “We’re dealing with the old aldermen,” another official says.  But, just to be safe, the city also is consulting with the new aldermen, too, in the many cases in which blocks or whole neighborhoods are being moved around.  Suffice it to say “there’s at least two aldermen involved in every issue,” that source adds.  “It’s a fairly complicated issue.”  …
    Officially, the new map goes into effect upon publication and approval of the official Journal of City Council proceedings….  But the lines on the new map are so contorted to protect incumbents and racial and ethnic minorities that doing so immediately is all but impossible.  For instance, the council majority and Mayor Rahm Emanuel pretty much hate Ald. Bob Fioretti, 2nd, a rabble-rousing independent sort with a bit of hot dog in him.  So they carved up and parceled out his current ward on the Near South and Near West sides and created a brand-new ward two miles north—not a square inch of which is in Mr. Fioretti’s current ward.  As a result, a 3½-mile stretch of Roosevelt Road that’s now pretty much within the old 2nd Ward has been divided among the new 3rd, 4th, 11th, 25th, 27th and 28th wards.  Man, I’m glad I’m not the executive director of the Roosevelt Road Improvement Association.

    via Crain’s Chicago Business.

    I have no idea how this can be permitted to stand.

  • Athens Burns

    [B]uildings burned across central Athens and violence spread around the country.

    Cinemas, cafes, shops and banks were set ablaze in central Athens as black-masked protesters fought riot police outside parliament.

    State television reported the violence spread to the tourist islands of Corfu and Crete, the northern city of Thessaloniki and towns in central Greece. Shops were looted in the capital where police said 34 buildings were ablaze.

    via Reuters.

    Does anyone think this cannot, will not, happen here?

  • Athens: Our Future?

    BBC News has a few shots of Athens.  On one of the photos there’s an interesting quote by on of the protesters.

    “Even if they eat the flesh of the people, bankruptcy will not stop.  It will just get worse.  That is why we support a write off of the whole debt and to be free of the European Union.”

    This is an interesting sentiment.  Perhaps the protester is upset that he (or she) is young and did little by way of voting to create the debt problem in the first place.  And yet they refuse to blame their parents and the voters of the previous generation who first caused and then continued down a path to bankruptcy.

    It is either that or the protester simply doesn’t believe in taking any personal responsibility for decisions made; that debt is just something that one can just walk away from at any time.  That running up a huge debt that you cannot afford to pay and walking away is  just something that is completely acceptable.

    Neither rational is good.

    Our day is coming.  How will our youth react to the misdeeds of their parents?  Will they assign blame where it belongs or will they instead believe that just simply walking away is the best option?

  • Himalayan Glaciers Lost No Ice in 10 Years

    The authors of the U.N.’s climate policy guide were red-faced two years ago when it was revealed that they had inaccurately forecast that the Himalayan glaciers would melt completely in 25 years, vanishing by the year 2035.

    Rajendra Pachauri, head of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and director general of the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) in New Dehli, India, ultimately issued a statement offering regret for what turned out to be a poorly vetted statement.

    A new report published Thursday, Feb. 9, in the science journal Nature offers the first comprehensive study of the world’s glaciers and ice caps, and one of its conclusions has shocked scientists. Using GRACE, a pair of orbiting satellites racing around the planet at an altitude of 300 miles, it comes to the eye-popping conclusion that the Himalayas have barely melted at all in the past 10 years.  …

    Some previous estimates of ice loss in the high Asia mountains had predicted up to 50 billion tons of melting ice annually, said Wahr, who is also a fellow at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences. Instead, results from GRACE pin the estimated ice loss from those peaks — including ranges like the Himalayas and the nearby Pamir and Tien Shan — at only about 4 billion tons of ice annually.

    Bristol University glaciologist Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, told the Guardian that such a level of melting was practically insignificant.

    “The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not significantly different from zero,” he told the Guardian.

    via Fox News.

    What the?!  This is the problem with some (not all) scientists.  There is the whole scientific method which is appropriate; but too many of these global warming folks seem to forget that you must rely on the results of testing (a/k/a observations) to enforce your conclusions.  When the results (i.e. observations) are not in-line with your hypothesis (i.e. conjecture) then your hypothesis WAS WRONG.

    i.e. Why is this guy — who was so clearly wrong years ago — still working at the U.N.?  And how much are we paying him to be wrong all the time?

    The problem with society and the media that they continue to give attention to these “scientists” who are wrong, and then wrong, and then wrong, again and again.  We should not pay any attention to their their kooky ideas.

    How this news story should read is:

    Disgraced scientist, Rajendra Pachauri, once the former head of the U.N.’s IPCC and who was also the director of TERI has officially been proved wrong by actual scientific observations.  Mr. Pachauri, once a prominent raising star in the scientific community is now selling cars in southern Kentucky.  When contacted he stated, “I now realize I was wrong for many years issuing false reports based on bogus data but there can be no doubt that now is the time to get into a new Ford Feista which is both cute and gets great gas mileage.”

  • Rahm Wants Handgun Registry

    Stupidity in human form.

    Mayor Rahm Emanuel today said he wants state lawmakers to approve a statewide handgun registry.  …

    Rep. Brandon Phelps, who has championed efforts to pass a concealed weapons bill in Illinois, said the mayor’s office called him Thursday morning to let him know the registration proposal would be introduced.

    “Number 1,  my first response was I don’t know why you’re trying to do this statewide because we don’t want your policies on us downstate,” said Phelps, a Southern Illinois Democrat from Harrisburg. “Number. 2, it’s never going to work. They’re trying to go after criminals. They’re never going to register their guns. They won’t pay the fee. “

    Phelps called Emanuel’s initiative a “slap in the face of every law-abiding gun owner.”

    via Chicago Tribune.com.

    It’s been shown time and time again that gun registries simply do not work.  The greatest national experience was Canada’s long gun registry.

    Department of Justice reported to Parliament that the system would cost $119 million to implement, and that the income generated fromlicensingfees would be $117 million. This gives a net cost of $2 million. At the time of the 2002 audit, the revised estimates from the Department of Justice were that the cost of the program would be more than $1 billion by 2004/05 and that the income from licence fees in the same period would be $140 million.[6]

    In February 2004, documents obtained by Zone Libre of Télévision de Radio-Canada suggest that the gun registry has cost around $2 billion so far.

    So we know that a registry is crazy expensive and becomes another government boondoggle.

    Well, maybe it’s still worthwhile because it really reduces crime.

    Former Ontario Provincial Police Commissioner Julian Fantino (who was opposed to the gun registry) stated in a press release in 2003:

    We have an ongoing gun crisis including firearms-related homicides lately in Toronto, and a law registering firearms has neither deterred these crimes nor helped us solve any of them. None of the guns we know to have been used were registered, although we believe that more than half of them were smuggled into Canada from the United States. The firearms registry is long on philosophy and short on practical results considering the money could be more effectively used for security against terrorism as well as a host of other public safety initiatives.”

    Well ok, maybe he was really really biased.  Perhaps other police really thought the registry was a great idea?

    In April 2011, a survey was conducted by the Edmonton Police Association. Its members voted 81 percent in favour of scrapping the long-gun registry.

    Well, at least law abiding citizens who do register their guns will know that their data is safe right?

    John Hicks, an Orillia-area computer consultant, and webmaster for the Canada Firearms Centre, has said that anyone with a home computer could have easily accessed names, addresses and detailed shopping lists (including make, model and serial number) of registered guns belonging to licenced firearms owners. Hicks told the Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters (OFAH) that “During my tenure as the CFC webmaster I duly informed management that the website that interfaced to the firearms registry was flawed. It took some $15 million to develop and I broke inside into it within 30 minutes.”

    The Ontario Federation of Anglers and Hunters questioned the security of the gun registry after a home invasion that seemed to target a licenced gun collector. The OFAH argues that, in the wrong hands, a database detailing the whereabouts of every legally-owned firearm in Canada is a potential shopping list for criminals.

    Given that any handgun registry would likely include all of the guns owned by police officers (& county sheriffs, state troopers, etc.) means that a whole big batch of government bureaucrats and anyone who wants to hack into the database would have the name, address, and list of owned handguns of everyone law enforcement officer in the state.

    This could be the dumbest idea from the Rahmfather yet.