Archive for the ‘crime’ Category

Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson makes $10 million “growing pains” error with e-signature blunder

Posted: June 18, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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Johnson in photo.

By John Ruberry

If I screw up at work, to the tune of $1,000 or so, I’ll get hollered at by my boss. 

And an error of mine that costs my employer $10,000 will see me filing for unemployment benefits the next morning. 

Chicago’s newly sworn-in mayor, Brandon Johnson, just made a $10 million whopper of a mistake. 

ShotSpotter, which this year changed its name to SoundThnking, is a firm that sells gunfire-detection software, has few friends in Chicago. It is blamed, wrongly in my opinion, for setting up the chain events that led to the death of 13-year-old reputed gang member Adam Toledo in a police shooting. A Northwestern University study found that 86 percent of Chicago police deployments initiated by ShotSpotter alerts led to “dead-end deployments.”

During this year’s mayoral campaign, Johnson vowed to cancel Chicago’s contract with SoundThinking. But earlier this month, a contract with his e-signature approved a $10,184,900 payment to SoundThinking, covering a contract extension approved by his predecessor, Lori Lightfoot, last autumn.

The mayor’s senior advisor, Jason Lee, says Johnson’s e-signature was mistakenly attached to the document authorizing the hefty payment. Of the contract carelessness, Lee said, “That’s not the procedure that we will have moving forward, but that’s what was done.” 

The SoundThinking snafu was a two-day story last week in Chicago. Kudos to the Chicago Sun-Times for breaking the story but had Johnson’s moderate opponent in April’s runoff election, Paul Vallas, made a similar mistake, we’d still be hearing about the $10 million e-signature debacle. And of course, the national media, which is a phalanx of the far-left, is completely ignoring this story. 

Hunter Clauss, who writes the Rundown, a popular political newsletter on behalf of Chicago’s NPR affiliate, dismissed the $10 million blunder as nothing but “growing pains” for the Johnson administration.

Chicago, because of its massive unfunded public worker pension debt, is essentially bankrupt. Its former cash cow, the North Michigan Avenue retail strip, suffered another departure last week when AT&T announced it was closing its local flagship shop there. Macy’s, Disney, Banana Republic, Verizon, and the Gap have shut down their North Michigan Avenue locations since 2020. The retail strip, also known as the Magnificent Mile, was hit by two rounds of rampant looting and rioting three years ago.

Chicago cannot afford $10 million “growing pains” errors. Don’t forget, ShotSpotter has not served Chicago well as a crime fighting tool.

Prior to his election, Johnson was a Cook County commissioner while also serving as a paid organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union. He was a Chicago Public Schools teacher before being hired by his union. 

Vallas was the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools. He was in charge of three other school systems. 

Prior to becoming mayor, Johnson was in charge of nothing of importance. Well, he does own a large home on Chicago’s West Side. But Johnson owed over $3,000 in unpaid water bills and fines until he paid up shortly before he was elected this spring. He also recently owed over $1,000 in traffic tickets.

As Barack Obama famously said many years ago, “Elections have consequences.”

John Ruberry regularly blogs five miles north of Chicago at Marathon Pundit.

Is America resembling the French Revolution?

Posted: June 17, 2023 by navygrade36bureaucrat in crime, culture
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On a recent visit to Colonial Williamsburg, I had the good fortune to listen to a speech by a Marquis de Lafayette re-enactor. He was good. He was really, really good. After his speech I chatted with him, and he recommended reading the book Lafayette by Harlow Unger. So I grabbed it off Audible and over the past two weeks it has entertained me on my drive to work.

If you need a book to read or listen to, get this one. Unger does a great job of being historically accurate while remaining interesting. He highlights not just the events that happened, but the personal relationships and how they influenced history. While I knew about Lafayette from my time studying the Battle of Yorktown, I did not know about how pivotal his financial contributions to the Revolutionary War were, nor how important he was to opening French markets to America after the war.

But perhaps the most stunning portions of the book relate to the French Revolution. Unger does not mince words describing how Lafayette blundered trying to replicate the liberty and ideas from the American Constitution into France. At multiple times, Lafayette turned down opportunities to lead his country in establishing a constitutional monarchy or a republic, which eventually fell into the hands of terrible men like Robespierre and Danton, whose bloodlust plunged France into terribly bloody revolution that likely killed over 1 million citizens and 2.5 million military in the ensuing wars. Random people were pulled off the street, beheaded and then had their heads displayed on pikes. Unger’s direct quotes from a multitude of direct sources, many of them Americans such as Thomas Jefferson. None mince words describing the horror of mob rule. While Lafayette himself would escape execution, France was never the same again.

The beheading of Robespierre, which “ended” the Reign of Terror in France

The chapters that describe the fall of France’s government were telling in that they had many parallels to modern-day America. The gradual descent into lawlessness, while good men either sat idly by or refused to take action, seems eerily reminiscent of the descent of many large American cities into chaos following BLM-related riots. The takeover of the government by the Jacobins, who seemed to lust only for more blood and power, resembles so many statements from prominent lawmakers, whether its to strike down white women from positions of authority, kill Trump supporters, or call people a threat to democracy. In French Revolution fashion, its even OK for people to display a severed head of a politician. I’m just surprised it wasn’t placed on a pike.

Anyone clamoring for revolution should read about the horrors of the French Revolution, and how multiple missed opportunities for a peaceful removal of the King resulted in massive violence that plunged France into darkness. Anyone who thinks they will run the mob should read about how Robespierre and Danton both faced the very guillotine that they used to execute thousands of their own countrymen. Anyone that thinks we should strive for this style of revolution is a madman.

This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.

Under the Fedora: Felton on D-Day+79, Haiti the future of Chicago et/al, Loomer finds spare time, Stacy on coked up Elementary principal and Dallas answers Pride flag questions.

Posted: June 6, 2023 by datechguy in crime, culture, election 2024, elections, politics, under the fedora
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Today is the 79th Anniversary of D-Day and International Treasure Mark Felton has another new video on the subject, this time about the drop of dummies to decoy the German forces:

There are very few D-Day vets still left, but long after the last one is gone Mr. Felton’s videos will be informing generations yet unborn of their deeds and the deeds of others during world war 2.

It’s not equal to the legacy as those who fought on D-Day but it’s not bad.

Apparently the folks in Haiti have had enough of Gangs and police and pols who protect them for profit and have taken matters into their own hands, rather violently:

The 14 presumed gang members under arrest were arriving at a police station in Haiti’s capital, when a group of people overpowered the police, rounded up the suspects outside and used gasoline to burn them alive.

This has continued to the point where gang members are in hiding in fear of their lives and crime has plummeted.

Coming soon to Chicago , Oakland, Minneapolis and Philly? Let’s both hope not and hope that those cities don’t reach the point where it’s considered an option.

Trump supporter Laura Loomer confronted James Comey in Illinois during a book signing event. Gateway Pundit has the details:

It’s a nice change for her going after someone who has actually done wrong rather than going after Governor Ron DeSantis in an at best unartfully and at worst blatantly false manor.

I have admit while I’m glad Loomer was restored to Twitter the way she has been alienating some conservatives you would think Musk’s move to restore her was an in-kind contribution to the DeSantis campaign.

Trump has in my Opinion been the Best record of a US president since Teddy Roosevelt if it was up to me that would be my focus.

Stacy McCain has a story that has gotten very little press concerning a couple of married elemental school principles who got a tad involved with drugs and hasn’t ended pretty although fortunately nobody has died.

You need to read the whole thing but I want to you catch his close which asks an excellent question :

The school district can’t comment, but I can. More than a month before police found Michael Griffin ranting delusionally at the local grocery store, they went to their doctor because he was already suffering with delusional beliefs caused by his cocaine habit. Here’s a question: How much cocaine does it take to induce paranoid psychosis? And how could two public school employees afford such an expensive addiction?

A cocaine habit is not cheap, and you’ve got to be doing it pretty heavily — like, the Eagles on tour in 1977 — to reach the point where you’re in a grocery store parking lot babbling paranoid gibberish with a pistol in your pocket. How were the Griffins able to do this much coke while functioning as elementary school principals and nobody even noticed?

Finally while I was writing this post I saw Dallas Jenkins finally made a public response to the gay flag controversy that has been dogging the show for a week. It is a first rate response which I’ll post here:

His basic response was he hire crew or cast based on belief or lack thereof nor does he police people’s workspaces as long as they do their job and are committed to the show, nor does he police their social media, although there was a suggestion that temperance and judgement be used in some responses that were made online, which given the crowd funding nature of the show would be wise.

His bottom line is feel free to make up your own mind but he’s going to do what he does the way he does it because he’s not doing any of it for us per se but for God

As Gamaliel once noted time will tell who this work is from but, as for myself his explanation is good enough for me.

Let’s go Brandon: a violent start to Brandon Johnson’s Chicago mayoralty

Posted: June 4, 2023 by John Ruberry in crime, News/opinion, opinion/news, politics
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By John Ruberry

By all accounts, crime was the biggest issue in this year’s Chicago mayoral election. Voters in America’s third-largest city had a choice between two Democrats in the runoff matchup in April, Paul Vallas, a moderate who ran on a law-and-order agenda, and Brandon Johnson, who until late last year was a defund-the-police advocate.

Johnson won and he was sworn in as Chicago’s 57th mayor on May 15. 

But his brief time as mayor-elect was rough. While Johnson of course denounced a late April downtown flash-mob riot, he did so with a caveat, declaring that the riotous thugs “shouldn’t be demonized,” even though they acted demonically. A few days later outside Illinois’ state capitol building, Johnson doubled down on his naivete, explaining his feelings about the rioters, “They’re young. Sometimes they make silly decisions.”

A big test for any Chicago mayor is Memorial Day weekend, the unofficial start of summer is also traditionally when violence ramps up. 

One new wrinkle for this year’s holiday weekend was implementation of yellow-vested “peacekeepers” to control the mayhem, including 30 funded by the state. While I don’t believe Johnson dispatched any of his own peacekeepers, he’s on board with the concept. 

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get it, Johnson’s not even been mayor for a month, but if Memorial Day weekend’s crime fighting results are any indication, Chicago is in for a tough four years.

The last weekend in May was Chicago’s most violent Memorial Day weekend since 2016–eleven people were shot to death, 42 others were wounded, and one woman was beaten to death. Let’s take a closer look at that last one. The deceased was brutally and fatally beaten with a baseball bat two blocks from Johnson’s West Side home–the alleged murderer lives across the street from the mayor.

The beating victim and nine of the eleven weekend shooting victims were killed last Saturday. Only Hey Jackass Chicago among the local media noticed that it was one of the few double-digit murder days in the last decade the city has suffered. 

Now, back to the yellow-donned peacekeepers. The concept is ripe for a parody. For instance, on my own blog, I noted that Leslie Barbara, one of the less imposing cadets of the motley class in “Police Academy,” was wearing a yellow blazer when he was tossed by hooligans into a river from a bridge–along with his photo kiosk. The aforementioned Hey Jackass Chicago is selling official peacekeeper T-shirts on the “Buy Crap” section of its website.

One of those real peacekeepers, whom a veteran of the Obama administration hilariously defended as someone who “mishandled the stress” of being a peacekeeper, was arrested after allegedly beating and robbing a man. The accused, an ex-con who was on parole, was allegedly in the process of removing his yellow peacekeeper vest as the cops approached him.

Okay, skeptics may object and tell me that Memorial Day weekend was just one weekend, and a long one at that. What about this weekend?

Well, as of 9am Sunday morning Chicago time, nine people have been shot to death this weekend so far and at least 33 others wounded. Included in those numbers is mass shooting in Johnson’s neighborhood in Austin, where one person was killed and six others were wounded.

Let’s go Brandon!

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

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