Archive for the ‘crime’ Category

South Africa, the Future of Chicago

Posted: April 20, 2023 by datechguy in crime, News/opinion
Tags: , ,

Sir Humphrey Appleby: [discussing a candidate for a Bishopric} And he’s also against oppression and persecution in Africa.

Prime Minister Jim Hacker: So are we

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, but he’s against it when practiced by black governments as well as white ones.

Prime Minister Jim Hacker: Oh, you mean he’s a racist.

Yes Prime Minister: The Bishop’s Gambit 1986

A while back Robert Stacy McCain wrote about where the state of South Africa under the ANC was doing wrong

Property rights are the basis of all economic advancement. People will not work to create wealth unless they can be sure that they will own what they have created. The protection of private property is therefore one of the most basic functions of government. If a government begins to threaten the “rich” with expropriation (or confiscatory taxes), this will cause a shortage of capital, as those with wealth will leave the country, and foreign investment will dry up. Within a short time, a relatively rich country can be plunged into poverty, as has happened in Venezuela. The consequences of Ramaphosa’s anti-white policies are predictable: The white minority in South Africa will flee, tourism and foreign investment will decline, and South Africa will descend into poverty and violence.

About 20,000 white South Africans leave the country every year, and white people are now less than 9% of the country’s population. The Ramaphosa government’s idea that it can help black people by seizing the property of whites will yield little benefit to those it claims to “help,” since the value of farmland will decline because whites will no longer be willing to buy farms, when their purchases might be seized from them. And as net out-migration by whites can be expected to increase as a consequence of the government’s anti-white hostility, there would be fewer potential white buyers for farms anyway. Real estate values in South Africa are likely to plummet. But if socialists were capable of understanding the consequences of their policies, they wouldn’t be socialists, would they?

And where it was was heading:

James Madison here describes the origins of political division as a matter of people freely pursuing their own interests. The basic job of government is the protection of property rights, and notice that Madison assumes that “different and unequal faculties” will result in people having “different degrees and kinds of property.” No matter what the government may do, this cannot be avoided in a free society. The problem we see in South Africa is that too many people there (as here) were led to believe otherwise and, nearly three decades after the end of apartheid, the failure of the false promise of “equality” produces an irrational rage among those who feel they have been cheated out of something.

Well its five years later and and here is the report of an expat returned to South Africa after a decade and didn’t like what he saw was not pleasant

Besides no airlines, no postal service and no trains, there is a dwindling electricity supply. They have rolling blackouts, euphemistically called “load shedding” which can last as much as 10 hours per day in Cape Town. Johannesburg is worse. People survive by always keeping their thermos flasks filled with hot water, using small gas camping stoves and using rechargeable lanterns for light and a healthy supply of batteries and candles at all times. Food rots in refrigerators so one needs to purchase small amounts of groceries just for a day. Few people can afford to have a generator, let alone the exorbitant cost of diesel fuel. Without electricity there is no viable economy. Retail stores, restaurants, businesses and factories cannot operate. The employees are idle and cannot do their job. As a result they are unable to earn a livelihood. The lack of electricity is a complex topic. In a nutshell, a history of huge financial losses, mismanagement, sabotage and corruption is evident.

Well at least there is equality…of misery:

There have always been people begging on the streets; mostly blacks. Now however, they are joined by ever-increasing white beggars. I did see an entire family including small blond haired children with crude cardboard signs saying “Please help – God bless you” .

According to some reports, over 50% of South Africans live in poverty on less than $2.00 a day. Some have no access to sanitation, water or electricity.

Where is this heading? Well when Zimbabwe did the same thing you actually had people pining for the days of white rule, but the problem here isn’t race, as Insty pointed out years ago:

It’s not black rule. Botswana next door is well-run. It’s rule by leftists, which always makes everything suck. And they always use race as an excuse for their failures. You can see that in the deep-Blue parts of the United States.

It’s the type of stuff that happens when people ransacking stores in Chicago and the mayor elect is unwilling to condemn it or describe it as “A mass protect against poverty and segregation”

And it’s not just majority black cities in the US heading in this direction, Portland Oregon is going there too.

The once idyllic city has descended into chaos, and all the happy talk from 2020 has led to this. Rather than affirming the rule of law and the norms of civilization, the leaders of Oregon and Portland decided to cede the city to the savages, and the savages accepted the invitation and moved in to build their version of society.

Marxism, whoever and wherever it’s tried, the result is the same

One week ago I had this exchange concerning crime in Chicago and the DNC convention:

Less that one week later:

The meat and potatoes of it:

two teenagers were shot Saturday night as hundreds of youths streamed through downtown streets, prompting a heavy police response that resulted in more than a dozen arrests. The boys, 16 and 17, were among the large unruly crowd about 9 p.m. in the 100-block of East Washington Street when shots were fired, police said. The younger boy was shot in the right arm, and the other boy was shot in the left leg. Both were taken to Northwestern Memorial Hospital, where they were listed in fair condition.

On the bright side nobody was killed at that incident but throughout the city 35 were shot and 8 killed this weekend past

The statement of the new mayor just elected is a doozy

In no way do I condone the destructive activity we saw in the Loop and lakefront this weekend. It is unacceptable and has no place in our city. However, it is not constructive to demonize youth who have otherwise been starved of opportunities in their own communities.

And others are even funnier”

But in fairness democrats in Chicago like Mr. Peters have found something worth condemning, WALMART

You know the more I think about it there isn’t a more appropriate place for Democrats to hold their convention.

By John Ruberry

Some big news came out of Chicago on Tuesday. For the first time since 1996, and only the second time since the riotous year of 1968, the Democratic National Convention will be held in Chicago next year.

But more consequential news arrived Tuesday as well. America’s largest retailer, Walmart, announced it was closing four of its Chicago stores, half of its city presence. These outlets lock their doors for good tonight.

Chicago’s relationship with the big box giant has been a hate-love-hate one. In the early 2000s, the term “food desert” came into use to describe areas without access to fresh food, but really, what theses apologists were talking about were neighborhoods where supermarkets pulled out because of high crime, mostly shoplifting. In their place sprang small stores, family-run operations usually owned by people from the Middle East, or south or east Asia. Of course, these merchants charge shoppers more for goods because, without the volume discounts that the retail behemoths enjoy, they have to. 

And it was in the early 2000s that Walmart, and its primary big box rival, Target, wanted to open stores in major cities like Chicago. Target, even though like Walmart is non-union, got a pass from the opposition–the Chicago City Council and its union allies–because Target is a creature of the left. Walmart’s corporate philosophy was decidedly conservative then. So the City Council, that failed body that sees one of its members convicted on corruption charges every eighteen months or so, passed an anti-big box retail store ordinance in 2006, which Mayor Richard M. Daley vetoed. I believe it was his only veto in his 22 years as mayor. 

So Walmart arrived in Chicago, opening eight stores, some of them in impoverished areas. That’s the love part. 

And now for more hate. 

Widespread looting during the George Floyd riots in 2020 hit Chicago retailers hard. North Michigan Avenue, one of America’s premier luxury shopping areas, was devastated by a second round or looting two months later, igniting a retail exodus. As for Walmart, all of its Chicago stores were shuttered, four for two months. Two other stores, including one of the outlets that closes tonight, in Chatham on the South Side, were shuttered for six months. The Chatham location, a supercenter, was also set on fire. On this weekend’s edition of Fox Chicago’s Flannery Fired Up, host Mike Flannery said of the Chatham outlet, “It was virtually destroyed.”

Now it and three other Walmarts are closing.

Late last year, Walmart’s CEO, Doug McMillon, decrying shoplifting, particularly thefts conducted by organized gangs, issued a general warning. If local law enforcement didn’t do their job, “prices will be higher, and/or stores will close.” He added, “It’s just policy consistency and clarity so we can make capital investments with some vision.”

Last week, in response to McMillon’s comments, WIND-AM’s Dan Proft remarked, “That is a very vanilla way of saying ‘We can’t do business in a place that doesn’t enforce the rule of law.'”

And in Chicago and elsewhere Walmarts are closing because leftist public officials refuse to enforce the rule of law. Two weeks ago Chicago elected a neo-Marxist leftist, Chicago Teachers Unions product Brandon Johnson, as mayor. What did Johnson, then a Cook County commissioner, say about looting in 2020? He refused to denounce it. In fact, Johnson minimized it because looted businesses have insurance.

Sheesh.

The mayor-elect was a defund-the-police proponent, until this year, when he wasn’t. Johnson favors something he calls “Treatment not Trauma,” he wants to send social workers instead of cops to domestic disturbances.

In a press release announcing the closings, Walmart said, “The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago – these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years.” Hey, but at least, as Johnson pointed out, Walmart has insurance. Of course, insurance companies never lowball claims, they never raise rates, and they never cancel policies due to risk factors. Right?

As for Johnson, he’s off to a wretched start as mayor-elect. In his first national media interview after his runoff win over moderate Democrat Paul Vallas, Johnson blamed large companies for Chicago’s high crime and poverty rates. “We have large corporations,” Johnson replied when asked about criminality in the city, “seventy percent of large corporations in the city of Chicago — in the state of Illinois, did not pay a corporate tax.” That’s probably false–and while Chicago does have sales and property taxes, it doesn’t have a Detroit-style municipal income tax. Johnson claims he’s against a city income tax, but in a February Flannery Fired Up appearance, he repeatedly dodged questions on whether he supports one.

The day after the store closings were announced, Fox Chicago reported that six televisions were shoplifted from the Chatham Walmart. In a way, the five-finger-discounter was participating in a going out of business sale.

Chicago’s meddlesome priest, the obnoxious and bombastic Father Michael Pfleger, is one of the loudest voices condemning the Walmart closings. He is threatening to lead a boycott of a Walmart supercenter located just outside of Chicago’s city limits. Good lord, Pfleger is a bigger goof than I thought. If that suburban Walmart closes because of a boycott, it will mean one less shopping choice for Chicagoans–and an even larger food desert.

Tyson Foods, Boeing, Citadel, and Caterpillar are among the corporations who have recently closed offices in Chicago and its suburbs. As I mentioned earlier in this post, North Michigan Avenue is dying because stores are shutting down. Chicago’s population is declining.

The Chicago Exodus began in 2020. It’s accelerating now.

One more thought: On Saturday night a very large group of what the media called “teenagers,” thugs is a better word, descended on downtown Chicago. They smashed car windows, set some vehicles on fire, and two people were shot. I call that a riot. One woman watched helplessly as her husband was beaten by a mob. There was a similar gathering the night before at a South Side beach.

Chicago’s criminals are emboldened.

Hell has arrived. I’ve seen what an urban hell looks like. It’s called Detroit.

Let’s go Brandon!

John Ruberry is a regular suburban Chicago Walmart shopper who blogs at Marathon Pundit.

I keep reading that the polls for Trump are great since the indictment. I think that doesn’t matter. I think what matters is how Kari Lake’s lawsuit in Arizona is doing, because since the laws are being enforced selectively what is the incentive for the left to not steal the election in the same key districts that they did the last time?

Seriously even if you think the last election was on the up and up what is there any disincentive for the left to try to steal this election, seriously do you see one.


I alluded to this yesterday but let me say it bluntly. I don’t want any help for San Francisco from the feds. Not a single penny and not a single federal officer to help enforce the law.

This city and this state elected the people who made the laws there that bred what they got, let them clean it up.

Until there are consequences for their actions, consequences that require then to act, nothing will change.


I’m still trying to wrap my head around Bud Light deciding that Dylan Mulvaney is the perfect face for the brand. Cripes it’s not like there are not a million beer choices out there these days for people choose and doing so a week after a transgender shot up a Christian school speaks volumes.

In fairness to Bud lite I suspect their brand was not high on the Transgender’s customer list before today and in even more fairness everywhere I go Bud lite is the cheep beer offered at a discount. Perhaps they’re figuring that teenagers who want to get drunk cheap are more interested in price then they are politics. They’re likely right but I’d love to see how the distributers are reacting to this.


I wish I had come up with this one but I have to give credit to DaWife who saw this somewhere on facebook:

Ask not why the children shouldn’t see drag queens, ask why drag queens crave an audience of children

In fairness before Christianity took hold, the sexualization of children was the norm so the secular left is just going back to their pre-Christian roots.


Finally in the wake of the WPGA Australasian locking down their twitter account after a biological male won his first WPGA tournament I want to quote swimmer Riley Gaines concerning people’s reaction to her vocal opposition to fake women in women’s sports.

None of those people giving thanks had the courage to do what she did, speak the truth out loud against opposition. This is the goal of the left consequences for speaking the truth aloud and no consequences for pushing a lie, but a few people have the courage to fight against it.

It’s those few who prove that courage remains the primary virtue that all others depend on.