Those calling for more restrictions on gun ownership in the United States need only compare Chicago to Afghanistan for proof that so-called “gun control” laws don’t make Americans safer.
According to a WBEZ.org report published Dec. 28, officials with the Chicago Police Department confirmed that Chicago had reached the 500-murders milestone with three days remaining in the calendar year. Conversely, http://icasualties.org reported 309 American deaths in Afghanistan with two days to go in 2012.
Should we expect residents of Chicago, home to some of the strictest gun laws in the nation, to be moving to Afghanistan soon? Of course not! Thanks to the national news media’s anti-gun bias, most will never know that Chicago had 191 more killings than did the entire nation of Afghanistan.
SEE ALSO: I shared a similar report three and a half years ago.
UPDATE 12/30/2012 at 6:42 p.m. Central:More evidence of anti-gun bias seen in national news media’s failure to report on another Aurora, Colo.-style theater shooting that was thwarted by a good guy with a gun.
UPDATE 1/01/2013 AT 5:42 p.m. Central: According to another source, Chicago tallied 532 murders during 2012.
It’s today’s big news story: Jurors convicted former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (D) on 17 of 20 counts, including all counts related to trying to sell the U.S. Senate seat once held by President Barack Obama. To mark this momentous occasion, I’m sharing the “Best of Blago Editorial Cartoons” below that have appeared on this blog since 2009.
“PSST… HEY BUDDY…” by My Personal Litmus shows the governor peddling a U.S. Senate seat beneath a street light on a Chicago street corner at night.
“Obama’s Blago Problem” by David Donar at Political Graffiiti shows what was at the heart of the relationship between Obama and then-Illinois Governor Blagojevich [click on the image above to see the unedited version].
“Politics the Chicago Way” by My Personal Litmus features Blagojevich, Jesse Jackson Jr., Obama and David Axelrod in a gangster campaign car.
Click here to read the more than 30 posts I’ve published about the DEMOCRAT AND CONVICTED FELON.
If you enjoy this blog and want to keep reading stories like the one above, show your support by using the “Support Bob” tool at right. Follow me on Twitter @BloggingMachine. Thanks in advance for your support!
Tonight, I simply had to share the Rebel Punditvideo below that features conversations with and observations of attendees at a recent “We Are One” union solidarity protest rally held in Chicago.
Did you notice who attended the rally? Members of radical, anti-American labor unions and political parties. Watch and share, people, before it’s too late!
Hat tip: The video appeared in a post today at Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com.
If you enjoy this blog and want to keep reading stories like the one above, show your support by using the “Support Bob” tool at right. Thanks in advance for your support!
The words above appeared as the headline of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch article Nov. 27, 2005, and could be considered prophetic if not for the fact that the woman in question, Dolores Sherman, isn’t running for mayor.
Sherman, 85, is running for one of two Ward One seats on the Board of Aldermen in St. Peters, Mo., the city in which she says she was prosecuted more than five years ago for a crime she didn’t commit and dubbed, “The Potato Lady.”
A mother and grandmother who owns and operates a seasonal crafts business in St. Peters, Sherman filed for the alderman post late Tuesday morning. During a mid-afternoon news conference the same day, she detailed her belief that St. Peters city officials were involved in her unfair prosecution and other events leading to it and need to be replaced.
“I want to make people aware of what happened to me for an incident that should have never occurred,” Sherman said. “I was railroaded!
“They accused me of throwing a red potato, and I said, ‘I don’t have red potatoes, I have Idaho, six inchers, baking potatoes,’” she continued, recalling a conversation she had Sept. 24, 2004, with two St. Peters police officers who had responded her home after receiving a complaint phoned in by one of Sherman’s neighbors in the suburb 20 miles west of St. Louis. “But they gave me a citation — a peace disturbance, then the city prosecuted me.
“Why does a city, more or less, sue an 80-year-old lady for something they probably knew I did not commit?” she asked rhetorically before comparing St. Peters to a much-larger city.
“If you think Chicago is the only pay-and-play arena, huh-uh,” she said before pointing to tables in front of her and around the room that were covered with stacks of documents she said prove her case. “And if you don’t believe it, just look.”
On March 29, 2005, St. Peters Municipal Court Judge Ronald Brockmeyer ordered Sherman to serve 12 months probation, pay a $125.07 probation fee and pay hundreds more for an anger management class, she explained.
The election for aldermen seats is set for April 5. By then, residents of Ward One should be familiar with Sherman’s tongue-in-cheek campaign slogan: “This spud’s for you!”
Stay tuned for more on this campaign!
FYI: If you enjoy this blog and want to keep reading stories like the one above, show your support by using the “Support Bob” tool at right. Thanks in advance for your support!
UPDATE #2 1/17/11 at 1:44 p.m. Central: For more info about other candidates running for alderman seats, see this St. Louis Post-Dispatcharticle.
UPDATE #3 1/17/11 at 8:15 p.m. Central: This evening, I learned the 85-year-old’s fledgling campaign is off to a rough start with the help of the local newspaper. Here’s a brief rundown:
On Jan. 11, the Suburban Journals — owned by Lee Newspapers’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch — ran the story, Ex-St. Charles councilman, “potato lady” file for St. Peters alderman. In that story, Sherman received minimal-but-accurate coverage as a candidate in the race. Six days later, the newspaper’s coverage of Sherman’s candidacy took a turn for the worse.
In a story published today under the headline, Bob Morrison joins Ward 4 race in St. Peters, writer Russell Korando omitted Sherman’s name from the story. Of course, he included the names of incumbents Don Aytes, Judy Bateman, Gus Elliott and Dave Thomas as well as challengers John Durajczyk, John Scherr and Terri Violet. But Sherman’s name was missing, raising the question, “Why?”
I’ll try to find out the answers tomorrow morning — or let my readers know if a correction has been printed. City offices were closed today for the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.
With the memory of Vince Foster, the former White House aide who supposedly committed suicide in 1993, stuck firmly in the recesses of my mind, I felt compelled to float a “trial balloon” by readers of this blog: Did John Wheeler III Know Too Much?
Mental note:I know, I know! This trial balloon will probably go down in the annals of blogging history as the product of a conspiracy theorist’s mind run amok, but I wanted to make sure I put it out there just in case it turns out to be true. So let’s move on.
During the first few days of 2011, reports of dead birds and fish have filled the news wires. On Monday, I used this post to share news of more than 100,000 dead fish being discovered in Franklin County, Ark., and more than 1,000 birds — some say as many as 5,000 — falling out of the sky above Beebe, Ark., 30 miles northeast of Little Rock. Today, I came across a report that 100 tons of dead fish washed up on Brazil’s shores. Do these incidents represent an ecological anomaly or just a coincidence? I don’t know. But I digress.
At about the same time as the news from Brazil reached the U.S. via Drudge Report, I happened to catch Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney‘s appearance on Fox News Channel to talk about the mysterious death of his friend and fellow veteran, John “Jack” Wheeler, whose body was found in a landfill in Delaware yesterday.
McInerney, a retired Air Force general, told America Live host Megyn Kelly that Wheeler had worked for at least two U.S. presidents and played a key role in raising funds to construct the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C. Most importantly, however, he said Wheeler was well known as a biological and chemical warfare expert, that he thinks Wheeler was the victim of a professional hit, and that the matter should be investigated by the FBI — which leads to the question that appears as the headline of this post (and more).
Did John Wheeler III know too much? About what? Something related to his field of expertise? And was the knowledge that got him killed somehow related to the aforementioned plethora of bird deaths and fish kills? An experiment? A test run? My questions all. Not the general’s. I’m just saying…
FYI: If you enjoy this blog and want to keep reading stories like the one above, show your support by using the “Support Bob” tool at right. Thanks in advance for your support!
UPDATE 1/4/11 at 4:27 p.m. Central: Add bats in Tucson to the mix.
See no evil. Hear no evil. Speak no evil. Report no evil. That seems to be the order of things in Chicago these days after the city’s election commissioners voted, 3-0, to allow Rahm Emanuel’s name to remain on the Feb. 22 Chicago mayoral ballot.
Forget that Emanuel isn’t a legal resident of the city. Apparently, no one in the Windy City was willing to tell President Barack Obama’s chief of staff he couldn’t seek the top office in the city that is, perhaps, the most corrupt in the United States. And the national news media isn’t going to say anything of note either.
For more than a year now, the Carpenters’ District Council of Greater St. Louis and Vicinity has taken aim at Dollar Tree stores in nearly two-dozen shopping centers across the metro. Why? Because they’re miffed about the national discount retailer’s decision to use out-of-state labor to perform labor tasks at their stores.
Though union members refer to the matter a “labor dispute,” it appears to be an effort to drive the national retail chain out of business — or, at a minimum, out of town.
To help get their points across, they’ve been positioning people at the street entrances of each shopping center and having them share a stinging message — SHAME ON DOLLAR TREE — with as many people as possible as they drive into the shopping center parking lots. That message appears on one-page handbills featuring the stop sign graphic above right and is eagerly shared in conversation. It is joined by other messages on the handbills which appear below without edits:
DOLLAR TREE contracted work to an OUT OF STATE CONTRACTOR, who paid wages and fringe benefits that are below established area standards.
“What’s the matter with this picture”
Missouri has the highest rate of unemployment in almost 30 years, but DOLLAR TREE contracts work to a contractor from out of state. Yet they still want local people to shop at DOLLAR TREE.
The handbills also contained statements imploring union supporters to “Let them know you disagree by calling the District Manager at (phone number)” and to “Shop with local retailers who appreciate the local workforce.”
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
Now, let’s look at the devastating impact (i.e., the unintended consequences) the union’s campaign has had on owners of business located in the same shopping centers as Dollar Tree outlets.
During a recent visit to one such business during what should have been a busy weekday afternoon, the owners — who asked not to be identified in this post — told me they had experienced a 75 percent decline in walk-in traffic (mostly female customers) compared to the previous year.
Though they did not share their financial records with me, the fact that our two-hour conversation went uninterrupted — that is, not a single customer entered the store while I was there — had me convinced they were telling the truth.
According to the husband and wife who own the shop, their loyal customers are afraid to cross what appears to be a union picket line because many of them come from union households. Without customers, they had to let people go. In turn, they’ve been forced to lay off three employees — people with absolutely no ties to Dollar Tree.
COSTS & PRODUCTIVITY
At each of three Dollar Tree locations I visited while researching this piece, I encountered as many as five picketers stationed at multiple entrances to the shopping centers. The union folks I spoke with at the Dollar Tree location near I-70 and Zumbehl Road told me they believe the decision makers at Dollar Tree should have opted to use local union labor and pay around $26 an hour for the service. But are they right?
Click to read IBJ article.
Because I was unable to reach anyone at CDC or Dollar Tree for comment, I turned to something I saw written about Terry Nelson, a senior official with the CDC, for help in getting to the heart of this dispute.
According to a piece in the May 2010 edition of the Illinois Business Journal, Nelson admitted that it costs 28 percent more to construct a building in St. Louis than it does to erect the exact same building in Chicago. The reason he cited for the difference: Lack of productivity of the St. Louis building trades workforce.
If Dollar Tree had opted to hire local union workers at their going rate, they would have had to pass along the increased labor costs to their customers, many of whom do not earn $30 an hour. By hiring less-costly out-of-state non-union workers instead, Dollar Tree was able to keep their overhead costs down and, in turn, save their customers money.
YOU DECIDE
Is anyone at fault in this situation?
Are small business owners at fault for choosing to locate their businesses in the same shopping centers as Dollar Tree outlets?
Are the folks at Dollar Tree at fault for opting to keep their overhead costs down — and passing the savings along to customers — by contracting with less-expensive out-of-state labor sources? or
Are the folks at the Carpenters’ District Council at fault for thinking they deserve to get every construction contract that comes along because they are “local” — even if they represent the most-expensive option available to Dollar Tree?
My hope is that the CDC will change the tactics being used in their labor dispute with Dollar Tree so that small business owners, like the one highlighted above, can survive in this tough economy and not have to lay off any more workers or, even worse, close the doors of their business.
UPDATE 8/20/10 at 9:38 a.m. Central: Tune in to The Dana Show on St. Louis’ 97.1 FM News Talk at 2:35 p.m. Central today for a discussion of this story and the follow-up to it (“One Battle Ends, Another Begins for Salon Owner“) published last night. It should be lively. To call in, dial 314-969-9797. To listen, click the “LISTEN LIVE” button on the station’s home page.
Bob McCarty is the author of Three Days In August: A U.S. Army Special Forces Soldier’s Fight For Military Justice, a nonfiction book that’s available in paperback and ebook via most online booksellers, including Amazon.com. His second book, The CLAPPER MEMO, is coming soon.
