My Blog

Category: Society

  • CPD Cop Shoots Puppy; His Buddies Intimade Witnesses

    While FOX 32’s Larry Yellen was interviewing the dog’s owners, two police officers drove by the home. 90 minutes later, they came back, asked why Phillips why he had contacted the media and gave him a ticket for not keeping Colonel [the puppy] on a leash.

    via FOX 32 News.

    So on the same day that the City of Chicago determines it wants to settle a lawsuit and set aside the verdict that the CPD has a Code of Silence (which in the Abbatte case was not just silence but actual harassment of witnesses,) there’s another story about how CPD officers are out actively protecting their own.

    This is abuse by CPD.  No doubt about it.

  • Cops Want Your TXTs

    Cops to Congress: We need logs of Americans’ text messages

    State and local law enforcement groups want wireless providers to store detailed information about your SMS messages for at least two years — in case they’re needed for future criminal investigations.

    via CNET News.

    I find this rather troubling.

    Cops addicted to power.  Congress too dumb to know better.  This bill has a fair chance of passing.

    Of course it will not help fight crime at all.  Not in the least.  Criminals will simply use “burner phones” which are untraceable.  Pay cash at Wal-Mart and as the song sez, F#!^ the police.

    Writing that I’m thinking something needs to be made clear:

    Individual police officers are heroes; as are firemen.

    Police departments are jack-booted thugs who actually believe that if you’re not doing anything wrong you have nothing to hide.

    Your privacy is at stake here.  You may want to do something.

  • New Faces Of Meth

    Eight years ago, the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office launched a campaign called “the Faces of Meth” to address Oregon’s methamphetamine problem. The images showed the jarring effects of meth on addicts’ faces through before-and-after pictures from their arrest records.

    Rehabs.com recently followed suit with this infographic. Warning: these images are disturbing.

    via Business Insider.

    Ugh.

  • $55 Million Paid to Kids to Do Nothing

    Records provided to CNN show that $54.5 million was spent on the NRI program, mostly through the governor’s discretionary fund, which doesn’t require legislative approval.

    The only data on the program’s accomplishments come directly from the Illinois Violence Prevention Authority. The NRI states that it created more than 3,484 jobs, provided counseling for more than 3,100 children, and helped 1,175 ex-cons.  …

    NRI participants were paid $8.75 an hour, first to receive mentoring from adults, and then go out to pitch positive messages and hand out fliers in their neighborhoods.  …

    [S]tudents earned $8.75 an hour to visit the DuSable Museum of African American History and to the National Museum of Mexican Art.

    What the ??

    Why would taxpayers pay for kids to attend mentoring?  It would be like paying them to play basketball or video games or go to school.

    $54.5 million / 3,484 jobs / $8.75 / hour = 1,787 hours & $15,642.94 per person.  This is nothing more than paying kids for doing the right thing.

     

  • Who Would Rather Not Work?

    This first came up (recently at least) with the Hostess workers:

    Interviews with more than a dozen workers showed there was little sign of regret from employees who voted for the strike. They said they would rather lose their jobs than put up with lower wages and poorer benefits.

    “They’re just taking from us,” said Kenneth Johnson, 46, of Missouri. He said he earned roughly $35,000 with overtime last year, down from about $45,000 five years ago.

    “I really can’t afford to not be working, but this is not worth it. I’d rather go work somewhere else or draw unemployment,” said Johnson, a worker at Hostess for 23 years.

    via Reuters.

    Yes, old news.  But I came across this today:

    welfare cliffs

    In the recent past we noted the somewhat startling reality that “the single mom is better off earning gross income of $29,000 with $57,327 in net income & benefits than to earn gross income of $69,000 with net income and benefits of $57,045.”  …  the painful reality in America is that: for increasingly more Americans it is now more lucrative – in the form of actual disposable income – to sit, do nothing, and collect various welfare entitlements, than to work. … there is an earnings vacuum of around $40k in which US workers are perfectly ambivalent toward inputting more effort since it does not result in any additional incremental disposable income.

    via ZeroHedge.

    An interesting note is that the graphic comes from the PA Dept. of Public Health.  It’s a slide from a whole presentation about welfare’s failure.

    I recall a story from a friend of mine who used to run a mechanical company.  He had a nice lady working at the office whom he gave a raise.  She took her new pay stub and dutifully notified social services.  As a result of the modest raise she was going to lose her housing voucher.  So she had to go back to work and say, “Thank you very much but can you please take your raise back.  I need to keep my housing voucher.”

    The system is broken.  Very very broken.

  • A General Lack of Regard for Einstein’s Brain

    There’s a story about Einstein’s brain over at the Washington Post.  It’s your basic nature vs. nurture about how this guy got to have this unique piece of gray matter between his ears.

    It appears quite a few Wash. Post readers don’t think much of Ol’ Albert or his accomplishments.  One particular genius wrote:

    He didn’t invent, or come up with, relativity. That has existed since time began … he was the person that first -realized- it existed and then fashioned working mathematical relationships to describe it. If it wasn’t Albert Einstein, it would have been someone else that first put 2 and 2 together ….

    Brilliant!!  Because yes, yes, the work Einstein did is really nothing more than 2 + 2.

    This leads another commenter to write something I’ve thought for a long time:

    So amusing to read the pronouncments of our typical modern day (Obongo supporting) clueless clowns with a little knowlege passing judgment on one of mankind’s greatest thinkers. Utterly underserved confidence in the most meager of abilities has been the only discernible triumph of the US liberal dominated dysfunctional education system in the last 50 years.

    via The Washington Post.

    The combination of arrogance and ignorance is very dangerous and  has infected a significant portion of the population.  People — you know who you are — have become so enamored with themselves that they either cannot or simply refuse to see real genius in others.

    I’ve taken four college semesters of calculus ending with differential equations.  These classes would not begin to cover the mathematics that Einstein did without the assistance of a computer or even a hand-held calculator.  To imply that just anyone would come along and discover 2 + 2 shows just how little the average person walking down the street actually knows about math.

    It’s very very sad.  Ignorance is truly bliss; but at least years ago people knew enough to keep their trap shut when they didn’t know anything.

  • Racists Blacks Fret About Sole White Lady

    Black leaders are growing increasingly worried that a white candidate might seize the seat of former Democratic Rep. Jesse Jackson in the upcoming Illinois special election.

    With a host of black candidates announcing their intention to seek the seat, the concern is that they could split the African-American vote and provide a plurality to a white contender. The worries escalated this week after former Rep. Debbie Halvorson, a white Democrat and veteran of suburban Chicago politics, threw her hat into the ring.  …

    “There’s a great deal of concern that Debbie Halvorson would win because the black vote would be split 18 ways,” said Delmarrie Cobb, a longtime Democratic political consultant in Chicago who formerly worked for Jackson Jr.“The battle we have is that we can’t afford to lose a black voice in Congress,” she added. “It would be a terrible loss in many ways.”

    via POLITICO.com.

    Where’s MLK or even Malcolm X when we need them?

    It’s just so sad.  I fear we’re heading backwards.  This attitude is not going to help blacks and whites get along.  It’s politics of division.  It’s only making the problem worse.

  • Everyone Wants a Drone – Zero Concern For Your Privacy

    Are unmanned aircraft, known to have difficulty avoiding collisions, safe to use in America’s crowded airspace? And would their widespread use for surveillance result in unconstitutional invasions of privacy?

    via SFGate.

    Yes, and no seem like pretty straightforward answers to these questions.

    But the elected idiots who man the Congressional Unmanned Systems Caucus have taken over $8 million in campaign contributions from drone developers.

    So do you feel safe yet?

     

     

  • Black Friday Gun Sales Hit New Record High

    Black Friday gun sales hit an all time record high last week with demand for new firearms so overwhelming that it caused outages at the FBI background check center on two separate occasions.

    Fueled by fears that the Obama administration will go after gun rights during a lame duck term, the FBI reported 154,873 background check requests on Friday – a 20 per cent increase on last year’s record total of 129,166 checks.

    via Infowars.

    Good time to be in the gun manufacturing business.

  • Ineptocracy

    Ineptocracy
    Ineptocracy