My Blog

Tag: Rahm

  • Illinois Credit — Worst in the Nation

    Illinois fell to the bottom of all 50 states in the rankings of a major credit ratings agency Friday following the failure of Gov. Pat Quinn and lawmakers to fix the state’s hemorrhaging pension system during this month’s lame-duck session.

    Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service downgraded Illinois in what is the latest fallout over the $96.8 billion debt to five state pension systems. The New York rating firm’s ranking signaled taxpayers may pay tens of millions of dollars more in interest when the state borrows money for roads and other projects.

    “It’s absolutely bad news for taxpayers,” said Dan Rutherford, the Republican state treasurer.

    Illinois received its bottom-of-the-pack ranking when it fell from an “A” rating to “A-minus.”

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Well there you have it.  The Machine, the Illinois combine has driven us straight into the gutter.  The cost of the billions and billions of debt is going up and up.  The taxpayers are stuck with the bill.

    It’s old news but I’d like to review this for the record.  I have only three (3) Republicans that represent me.  Every single other elected official that represents me is a Democrat.

    Alderman Bob Fioretti – D
    Mayor Rahm Emanuel – D
    Chicago City Clerk – D
    Cook County Clerk of Courts – D
    Cook County Treasurer – D
    Cook County Assessor – D
    Cook County Recorder of Deeds – D
    Cook County States Attorney (DA) – D
    Cook County Board Member – D
    Cook County Board President – D
    IL House Seat, Derrick Smith (Current under indictment) – D
    IL Senate Seat, Patricia Van Pelt – D
    IL Governor, Pat Quinn – D
    IL Lt. Governor, Sheila Simon – D
    IL Attorney General, Lisa (I won’t investigate my father) Madigan – D
    IL Comptroller, Judy Baar Topinka – R
    IL Treasurer, Dan Rutherford – R
    IL Sec. of State, Jesse White – D
    US House, Danny Davis – D
    US Senate, Mark Kirk – R
    US Senate, Dick Durbin – D
    US President, Barack Obama – D

    What is that?  3 of 22?  If you just take the State folks it’s 2 of 17.  2 of 17.  That’s 11.76% of my elected persons are not Democrats.

    So let me ask you, if I was looking to blame someone for the mess that we’re in where would be a good place to start?

  • Shot vs. Shot & Killed – The Miracle of Modern Medicine

    This post was originally drafted in April.  Bare with me… very current story cited below.

    I’ve mentioned before that the shooting to death ratio appears very low to me. Crime stats over at Crime in Chicago suggest that in 2011 2,217 were shot, with 441 dead – 19.9% (ratio of 5:1.)  So far in 2012 we have 2,670+ shot, 532 dead – 19.9% (ratio of 5:1.)  What I have been looking for, and cannot could not find, is what these numbers were in 1975, 1985, and 1995.

    In the book Can Gun Control Work, James Jacobs writes in a footnote on pg 8 that, “Nonfatal gun injuries are complicated to compute.  Gary Kleck reasonably estimates the ratio of nonfatal gun wounds to gun fatalities at 3:1 during the 1990’s.”  Jacobs suggest we see Point Blank by Gary Kleck.  A search of Point Blank on Google Scholar does not yield that ratio.

    In 1991 Chicago has 927 homicides.  If the 3:1 ratio Kleck cites is accurate that means around 2,781 people were shot in Chicago in 1991.  That’s damn near the exact number we had last year!!

    Neat speculation but nothing scientific.

    Enter today’s WSJ:

    The number of U.S. homicides has been falling for two decades, but America has become no less violent.

    Crime experts who attribute the drop in killings to better policing or an aging population fail to square the image of a more tranquil nation with this statistic: The reported number of people treated for gunshot attacks from 2001 to 2011 has grown by nearly half.  …

    In other words, more people in the U.S. are getting shot, but doctors have gotten better at patching them up. Improved medical care doesn’t account for the entire decline in homicides but experts say it is a major factor.  …

    “Our experience is we are saving many more people we didn’t save even 10 years ago,” said C. William Schwab, director of the Firearm and Injury Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the professor of surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.  …

    At the same time [that homicide deaths are declining], medical data and other surveys in the U.S. show a rising number of serious injuries from assaults with guns and knives. The estimated number of people wounded seriously enough by gunshots to require a hospital stay, rather than treatment and release, rose 47% to 30,759 in 2011 from 20,844 in 2001, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System-All Injury Program. The CDC estimates showed the number of people injured in serious stabbings rose to 23,550 from 22,047 over the same period.Mortality rates of gunshot victims, meanwhile, have fallen, according to research performed for The Wall Street Journal by the Howard-Hopkins Surgical Outcomes Research Center, a joint venture between Howard University and Johns Hopkins University. In 2010, 13.96% of U.S. shooting victims died, almost two percentage points lower than in 2007. (Earlier data used different standards, making comparisons useless.)

    GunsShotDeaths_WSJ

    So there!!  I knew I was on to something.

    So the next time Rahm and McCarthy are out running their gums about how “safe” everything is and that “crime is down, crime is down!” Now you know that maybe some crime is down… but the odds of getting shot in this town are just about the same as they were in 1991. … Which is not very good at all.

  • UK Doctors’ Called For Kitchen Knife Ban

    Yes, seriously.

    A team from West Middlesex University Hospital said violent crime is on the increase – and kitchen knives are used in as many as half of all stabbings.

    They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

    The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

    The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.

    via BBC NEWS.

    Who’s crazy now?

    Anti-Gun laws in the UK have been an epic fail.

    Anti-Gun laws in Chicago have been an epic fail.

    Anti-Gun laws everywhere have been a failure.

    Yet the left continues to try to take away guns from honest law abiding citizens.  It’s never going to work.  It’s never worked.

     

  • 446 School Age Children Shot in Chicago

    MSM Silent:

    In Chicago, there have been 446 school age children shot in leftist utopia run by Rahm Emanuel and that produced Obama, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, etc. 62 school aged children have actually been killed by crazed nuts in Chicago so far this year with almost two weeks to go. So why isn’t this news worthy? Is it because it would embarrass those anti second amendment nuts who brag about Chicago’s tough gun laws? Is it because most of the kids who were shot and killed were minorities? Or is it because the corrupt media doesn’t want to show Chicago in a bad light? Amazingly, no Obama crocodile tears either.

    For those of you too dense to get the point of this post, it’s to make the point about gun laws. No matter how tough the gun laws are, the crazed, nut jobs will find a way to get them and if they so chose, use them. No draconian law can stop this, no matter how well intentioned the law is, or if it’s just about leftists grabbing power from citizens and taking away their constitutional rights.

    via Fire Andrea Mitchell!.

    I raised this very issue right after the Newton tragedy.  This guy poked around and found the numbers at Crime in Chicago (an excellent source of what’s really going on in the Second City.)  I found the story at Second City Cop (which you should be reading everyday.)

     

  • Newton CT – Day 3

    I wrote something short on the Facebook page of an old friend who called for more “gun control.”  He wrote back.  I wrote this response.

     

    I actually live on the “West Side” near [omitted.]  My first comment on the Newton matter was to wonder why the events in Newton & Aurora get big news while we can’t get any real media attention about Chicago killing 450 black (and brown) children ever year in this city. We may not live near Fenger but we’re touched by violence. My wife was out walking our baby (now six) in a buggy when a block away a kid was shot by Crane H.S. The wife and kid were nearly trampled in the ensuing stampede of children away from the scene. She was also out walking with the baby the day that they beat a kid to death with a baseball bat or golf club or something literally on the steps of the H.S.

    And that my old friend is the telling part – if the gang wants you dead they don’t need a gun to make that happen. The same day as the tragedy in Newton some wacko killed 20 kids with a sword at a school in China. Banning guns will not prevent crazy & will not stop mass killings.

    There are many many things that went wrong in Newton. Mom should have been a better gun owner and kept her guns in a safe (I keep my guns in a safe.) It appears that access to the school was through a broken window. Perhaps the physical infrastructure needed to be improved. Having talked to people “on the job” I know that CPD policy in Chicago is that 1st on the scene does NOT go into the building b/c they don’t know what they’re dealing with. I think this is a bad policy. You cannot have cops literally 30-40 feet away standing around while kids are getting shot. My guess is that L.E. took a long time to “secure” the building which delayed EMS from getting to the victims. And my guess is that EMS in Newton is simply not equipped to deal with gunshot wounds the way that we deal with them here (I believe the Army still trains field surgeons at County.)

    It’s just easy to blame the firearm. There are about 250 million vehicles in the country. There are about 310 non-military firearms (via CNN Aug. 9, 2012.) According to the CDC in 2010 children ages 5-9 were 6 times more likely to die in a traffic accident than by a firearm. Children are over twice as likely to drown and 1.5 times as likely to die in a fire over being killed by a gun. These are facts at the second link in my previous post. So if you’re serious about saving kids lives look at making cars and pools safer.

    As for who as access and training, perhaps you raise a point. However I have been trained. I’ve completed a 4 hour class on gun safety. A 10 hour NRA class on safety and marksmanship. 40 hours on the laws in Illinois (despite already being an attorney.) I train regularly at a local range which costs $70-80 per visit (fees + ammo.) I’m fully prepared to stop anyone who should attack me or my family yet I pray everyday that I never need to. But I’m lucky; I have the means to make this happen. It is very expensive.

    Self defense is everyone’s right. Recently there was this story: http://abcnews.go.com/US/kendra-st-clair-oklahoma-girl-12-shoots-intruder/story?id=17524438#.UM9OU3fzEyg This girl had no training and my guess is that her family did/does not have the means to send her and the rest of her family to training at $200 a head. This type of situation plays out everyday (the old man in the FL internet cafe also recently made news b/c there was security video.) Guns are used defensively far more often than offensively. There’s a good chance that Kendra St. Clair would be dead if she didn’t have her mother’s gun.

    And that is where the NRA and the so called “Gun Lobby” is coming from. Yes, the events in Newton and VA Tech and everywhere else are tragic. But for every Newton there are 50 or 60 or 100 Kendra St. Clair’s. Battered wives and girlfriends who are able to protect themselves from abusive men. Store owners who use their guns to prevent a crime from happening simply by not being an easy target. What about these people?

    When seconds count the police are just minutes away. A few years ago some kids were popping off a few shots out of a revolver in the alley beside my house. I called 911 and reported “shots fired.” It took over 15 mins for CPD to arrive. That’s the response time in an urban area to shots fired. If these kids kicked-in the door to my house we’d all be dead by the time CPD arrived… if I didn’t have the ability to shoot back (well that and our 145 pounds worth of dogs.) You can imagine what the response time would be out in the sticks. I sleep better knowing that if someone’s in the house odds are nearly perfect that I won’t need to actually shoot them. I can put two rounds into the bathroom shower and the intruder will not stick around to see where the next ones go.

    Your experience at OTSC is common. I know of parents who made their kids sleep in the bathtub for fear of a stray round coming through the wall or window. But no law is going to take those guns out of the hands of gang-bangers. A good start would be to get the Democratic machine that runs this town to turn over all felons w/ guns to the feds. 5 year min law is on the books but Ms. Anita Alveraz refused to send them over to the feds. Why?

    Ya see… there are a LOT of gun laws on the books that are simply not enforced. I truly believe this is b/c Rahm, Obama, Holder, and the rest of the Democrat cabal actively choose not to enforce them so they can demand new laws. It’s a sham.

    So to recap:
    – Guns are not the single cause of the tragedy;
    – Guns are not as deadly to kids as cars, pools, or fires;
    – Guns are mostly used defensively and save thousands of lives each year;
    – Most gun violence is caused by illegally held guns; and
    – We should start by enforcing the laws already on the books and insisting that violent offenders do real time.

  • Chicago’s New Billboard Deal All But Signed

    Kudos to Alderman Bob Fioretti:

    A Chicago City Council committee signed off Monday on Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s latest privatization deal—even though, after nearly five hours of testimony, aldermen still didn’t quite know how it added up for taxpayers, what its shortfalls might be, or exactly which companies were included in putting it together.

    In more than a few places, they weren’t even sure what the contract said.

    “As I tried to go through these documents over the weekend, I have to admit, I don’t really have the expertise to understand them,” said Ed Burke, who’s read a few contracts in more than four decades as an alderman and attorney.  …

    As they explained, the deal involves renting out public space to a private billboard company in return for some of the proceeds. The firm, Interstate JCDecaux, will pay to put up digital billboards on 34 sites along expressways in Chicago. In return, the city will collect a guaranteed $155 million over the next twenty years, with an option to extend it for nine more.The city will also get a share of the advertising revenues—though there are pages of complex formulas and footnotes that determine the exact amount. For example, taxpayers will essentially pay back some of the millions they’re receiving up front, since over time Interstate JCDecaux will recoup the costs of building and maintaining the billboards before sharing proceeds with the city.  …

    “Was there any independent financial analysis for this particular proposal?” asked 46th Ward alderman James Cappleman.”Not directly,” said Scott.  …

    But the guaranteed payouts are far below that—the most per year is $15 million, in 2013.

    And this is where the fun starts…

    But Alderman Robert Fioretti (2nd) messed everything up by asking for a head count to see if they had a quorum.

    This was a shocking development, as committee meetings regularly proceed without anything close to half their members present, which is technically what they’re supposed to have. But under the council rules it doesn’t matter unless a member of the committee raises a stink about it.

    Such stink raising is not common.

    In fact, Carrie Austin, chair of the budget committee, wasn’t deeply irked that such a disgraceful thing was happening on her watch. She tried to turn Fioretti to stone with an infuriated stare. “I find it awful strange that you would call a quorum now, after you know so many people have left.”

    “I think it’s entirely appropriate,” Fioretti replied, plopping down in his seat as if to say, what are they going to do—map me out of my ward?

    Austin recessed the committee and, along with mayoral aides, got on the phone to round up some more warm bodies.

    A half hour later the roll was called again, and 23 aldermen were counted as present and more-or-less awake—one more than needed for a quorum, and plenty more than needed to sign off on the billboard deal. It passed 20-3, with only Fioretti, Waguespack, and Pawar opposing.

    via Chicago Reader.

    This is going to be the parking meter deal redux.  Just you wait.  We’re going to have digital advertising everywhere and the city is going to get a mere $15 million a year.  JCDecaux is going to make 4 or 5 times that.

    This is a farce.  In a few years Rahm is going to ask JCDecaux for a “favor” and they’re going to do it.  It’s all connected, and corrupt.

  • Animal Farm

    This is Squealer right after they send Boxer off to the glue mill:

    “It was the most affecting sight I have ever seen!” said Squealer, lifting his trotter and wiping away a tear. “I was at his bedside at the very last. And at the end, almost too weak to speak, he whispered in my ear that his sole sorrow was to have passed on before the windmill was finished. ‘Forward, comrades!’ he whispered. ‘Forward in the name of the Rebellion. Long live Animal Farm! Long live Comrade Napoleon! Napoleon is always right.’ Those were his very last words, comrades.”

    Animal Farm, George Orwell

    Talk about not letting a crisis go to waste.

     

  • United Continental Returns TIF Money

    United Continental Holdings, parent of United Airlines, is giving back $5.6 million in City of Chicago tax incentives.

    The incentive money is tied to United’s 2007 move to its corporate headquarters at 77 W. Wacker Drive, along the Chicago River.  Because of United’s recent plans to move out of that building and consolidate its headquarters into Willis Tower where it has other operations, the airline said it was “appropriate” to return the money. However, it wasn’t necessary.

    City officials said United had so far fulfilled its obligations for receiving the money, such as maintaining a minimum employment level in the 77 W. Wacker Drive building, and that the incentives would have traveled with the company as it moved several blocks down Wacker Drive to Willis Tower.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    Well Kudos to United Continental!!

    As you (should already) know, TIF’s are evil.  United’s actions are commendable.  Abolishing TIF’s; putting as much money back into the general tax rolls as possible is the goal.  Giving the money  back to the TIF shows that it’s not needed.  That’s a great first step in getting rid of the TIF altogether.

  • CPS Pays Parents for Good Behavior

    Blatantly stolen from Second City Cop:

    Is the lure of a $25 gift card enough to persuade a parent who’s not involved in their child’s education to get involved?

    Seventy Chicago Public Schools that have struggled to engage parents are about to find out.

    At Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s request, Walgreen Co. has agreed to provide $25 gift cards to parents who pick up their students’ report cards and participate in parent-teacher conferences during report card pickup days.

    “This is a way, in my view, of incentivizing responsible parenting,” Emanuel told a news conference at Field Elementary School, 7019 N. Ashland.

    Is he serious? “incentivizing responsible parenting?” In what parallel universe is this unmitigated ass living in? If you “incentivize” (which isn’t even a real word) bad behavior, what do you get? More bad behavior.

    Every study in existence proves this. Example A is the entire welfare system – you pay someone not to work, you get a shitload of people not working. You give someone a check for pushing out babies, pretty soon the birthrate skyrockets and you have 15, 14 even 13-year-olds having babies. You know what reduced the teen birthrate back in the 1990’s? Stopping the checks.

    Emanuel said he got the gift card idea during one of his morning workouts.

    “That’s what happens when I start swimming. I start coming up with ideas,” the mayor said.

    The mayor then approached Walgreen CEO Greg Wasson, who jumped at the opportunity to “give back” to the city where the company has operated for 112 years and now has 150 stores.

    This explains part of where he keeps getting these fucked up ideas – chlorine poisoning.

    via Second City Cop.

    So that’s kinda entertaining.  But I fail to see how giving away gift cards to parents who come pick-up report cards and sit for parent-teacher conferences is exactly creating an incentive for bad behavior.  Seems like good behavior to me.

    The bigger problem with this is like Chris Rock (and Barack Obama) have pointed out that we keep setting the bar so low.

    Another comparison, though, is illustrated by an old Chris Rock joke: “People say Colin Powell speaks so well. What’d they expect him to say? ‘Ahmma drop me a bomb’?” There’s something incredibly condescending to think of saying that a man who has risen to the ranks of 4-star general or United States Senator is “articulate,” but it’s always meant as a compliment. In reality, though, it’s a backhanded one.

    Obama is more than “articulate,” of course; he’s a truly gifted orator. And he was editor of the Harvard Law Review and otherwise has some mighty impressive credentials. It does seem, though, that the bar is set much lower for Obama than most men who would be president.

    via Outside the Beltway.

    Isn’t there a soft bigotry in saying that these parents need this incentive to do things that other parents do [without the incentive]?

    I actually believe — from what I’m seen with my own eyes living on the West Side for 9 years — that the vast majority of parents want to help their kids get a good education.  They want to be a positive influence in their children’s lives.  They just simply do not know how because they were never taught by their parents.

    What we need to do is help train parents to be better parents.  Not throw $25 in gift cards at them and expect them to suddenly become Ma and Pa Cleaver.

  • CPD Brass Wasting Money Trying to Track Gunshots

    The Police Department began using gunshot detection technology early last month in two 1.5-square-mile areas to try to better pinpoint the location of gunshots, Superintendent Garry McCarthy disclosed Thursday. The sensors sometimes give officers information before 911 calls are made, he said.

    In the past decade, the city twice installed the devices but ultimately removed them because of their high price tags and ineffectiveness. Since then the technology has improved “dramatically,” McCarthy said.

    “What we can do with this is overwhelming right now,” McCarthy said at a news conference. “It’s gotten a lot better, and obviously as it’s out there longer, it’s a lot cheaper also.”

    The one-year contract for the ShotSpotter system costs about $200,000 — money that will come from drug forfeitures and other property seized by police, authorities said.

    via Chicago Tribune.

    So it didn’t work before and was too expensive.  Boy, that’s not what we were told last time.

    Given the success of the pilot program, in September 2003, Mayor Daley announced that a new phase of PODs would be deployed throughout the City. Subsequently, the number of PODs increased from 30 to 80 by December 2003. Some of the new second generation PODs were also equipped with technology to detect gunfire. Using wireless technology, these units transmitted gunshot alerts, as well as the usual video images, directly to the City’s Emergency Management and Communications Center, thereby providing crucial intelligence on criminal incidents involving guns. Several of the 30 existing PODs were also upgraded with the same technology during that time period.
    — CPD Website, dated June 15, 2003

    and

    Chicago police plan to add 50 new remote-controlled cameras in city … The new cameras will be equipped with gunshot detectors….
    — Herald & Review, dated April 7, 2004

    and

    Chicago police have installed 30 surveillance units in high-crime locales. The system uses four microphones to zero in on firearm discharges.
    — USA Today, dated June 6, 2005

    The USA Today article ends with:

    Adding SENTRI to an existing surveillance camera is not cheap, however. The system costs between $4,000 and $10,000 per unit. In Chicago, money forfeited by criminals is used to pay for both it and the accompanying cameras.

    As a result, Police Superintendent Phil Cline told a recent U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting, “the drug dealers are actually paying to surveil themselves.”

    I guess everything old is new again.