Archive for the ‘crime’ Category

Chicago mayor Lightfoot’s status as a fraud solidified in her response to police raid on wrong home

Posted: December 20, 2020 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

The competition for worst big city mayor is fierce, New York’s Bill de Blasio and Eric Garcetti typically lead the pack but don’t overlook Lori Lightfoot of Chicago.

How did America’s third-largest city get there?

Lightfoot’s victory in last year’s election was a fluke. She and Toni “Taxwinkle” Preckwinkle, the president of the Cook County Board emerged as the top two candidates after a 14-candidate first round of balloting–she collected only 17-percent of the vote. Lightfoot, used her endorsement by the Chicago Sun-Times and her time as chair of the Chicago Police Department Office of Professional Standards to fashion herself as the reform candidate. Her predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, decided not to run for a third term; it’s widely believed his blocking the release of a video until after his 2015 reelection of the shameful deadly police shooting of Laquan McDonald led to his bowing out.

Now there is a another video. Late in Emanuel’s second term Chicago police officers raided the apartment of social worker Anjanette Young. But they busted into the wrong home. Guns were drawn and Young was handuffed naked while she screamed. “You’ve got the wrong place.”  She said that 43 times. Lightfoot’s campaign slogan was “Let There Be Light” and this was her opportunity to be transparent in a time of crisis. 

She wasn’t.

City lawyers sued to block CBS Chicago from airing the video of the botched raid. Lightfoot later called that a mistake. 

Let There Be Light.

Then the woman often derisively called “Mayor Beetlejuice” claimed that she wasn’t aware of the raid on Young’s home. But emails show that Lightfoot learned about the raid in November of 2019, around the time CBS Chicago began reporting on it. She says she “focused on budget issues” at that time and the could explain why she has no recall of the emails.

Lightfoot also admitted that she was wrong when she said that Young hadn’t filed a Freedom of Information Request for the video of the raid. The victim had in fact done so. 

At best, Lightfoot’s Chicago is circling the drain. Yes, she inherited a mess. Even before the COVID-19 epidemic Chicago was losing residents. Chicago’s public-worker pension worker plans are the worst-funded of any big city. But Lightfoot’s lockdown orders are best draconian, she hasn’t been taken to task as much as she deserves for that only because her fellow Democrat, blowhard governor JB Pritzker, has been all over local media almost daily trying to frighten Illinoisans into compliance with his own lockdown orders. 

Shootings, murders, and especially carjackings in Chicago are up dramatically over last year.

What are Lightfoot’s priorities? 

The day before the second round of widespread looting and rioting, deemed “unrest” of course by the mainstream media, Lightfoot followed through on her threat to close the vast Montrose Beach to visitors because she thought too many people gathered there on a gorgeous late summer afternoon. 

In the spring Lighfoot scolded Chicagoan by declaring “getting your roots done is not essential.” During that first lockdown, which closed all hair salons, the mayor got her stylist, maskless, to do her hair. 

When confronted with a predictable uproar for her hypocrisy, Beetlejuice doubled down, “I’m the public face of this city, I’m on national media and I’m out in the public eye.”

Last month a few days before imposing a second COVID-19 lockdown, Lightfoot appeared, maskless, outdoors at a spontaneous rally at an unsafe distance with many others as she celebrated the media calling the presidential election for Joe Biden.

Chicago, a failed city, has the perfect person to represent it in the public eye.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Illinois Democrats may finally eject Boss Madigan

Posted: December 6, 2020 by John Ruberry in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

I can’t track down the exact quote from Hunter S. Thompson about the end of Richard M. Nixon’s presidency, but the self-described gonzo journalist viewed it something along the lines of a football cheap-shot artist got felled by his own weapon, the dirty hit. Not that Thompson, a huge football fan like Nixon, favored dirty hits, but he delighted in his mental image of Nixon helplessly departing public life, like an NFL goon being wheeled off the playing field in a stretcher, never to return. 

We may be nearing that ignominious point with Boss Michael Madigan of Chicago. 

Good.

A refresher for those of you who are not from Illinois. For all but two years Madigan, 78, has been speaker of the Illinois state house since 1983, a national record for state legislative leadership. He’s been chairman of the state Democratic Party since 1998. Madigan has been a Chicago Democrat ward committeman since 1969. He’s been a member of the Illinois General Assembly since 1971. Hey, Madigan even managed, at great effort, to get his daughter, Lisa, elected Illinois attorney general in 2002. She was reelected three times.

Fox Chicago’s longtime political reporter, Mike Flannery, gained the scorn of other reporters when he half-jokingly asked Madigan, in one of his rare press conferences, if Illinois politicans should be limited to half a century in public office. The Boss abruptly ended the presser.

Madigan is America’s last political machine boss. And Madigan is, as I’ve noted before, the Pablo Picasso of gerrymanderers. Madigan’s maps aren’t pretty, but they achieve his goal, electing as many Democrats to Congress and the General Assembly who are beholden to the Boss as possible. Yep, beholden to Madigan–not the Democrat Party. Unloyal Democrats, in the manner of that classic Twilight Zone episode, find themselves drawn by Madigan into the empty political cornfield if they cross the Boss.

Federal investigators, led by US District Attorney John R. Lausch, have been chipping away at the Madigan machine for the last three years. I wrote about that here, here, and here. Last month the feds indicted lobbyist, former state representative, and close Madigan confidante Michael McClain on bribery and other charges. One of McClain’s biggest clients was Commonwealth Edison, the Exelon-owned electrical utility. It’s alleged that Madigan, who has not been charged and vows he is not involved in any criminal acttivity, used the utility, in exchange for legislation favorable to ComEd, to hand out jobs to members of his political organization. Also indicted for were some former top ComEd officers, including its onetime CEO. 

The cheap shot, in Madigan’s opinion, that leads to criminal charges, may still come, if someone rats the Boss of Illinois out. But Madigan, who reportedly doesn’t use a cell phone or email, will be a tough old tree to fell. Besides, he has a lot of money in his political warchest and his still has many friends, particularly among minority politicians, who of course enjoy being funnels for jobs for their cronies and constituents.

Still, according to multiple media reports there currently are enough votes in the state House to deny Madigan another term as speaker. The Blue Wave predicted by political prognostictors also was non-existant in Illinois, the weak state GOP managed to pick up a seat in the House. Worse for Democrats, the so-called Fair Tax Amendment, that would replace Illinois’ flat-rate income tax with graduated ones, was resoundingly defeated by voters. Corruption reports surrounding Madigan’s inner circle have been seen by political scribes as among the reasons the Fair Tax Amendment failed. Madigan has been a very poor steward of public monies–more on that in a bit. 

If Madigan loses the speakership he won’t be able to hold on to his party chairmanship for long. He needs both offices to remain on the balance bar. Madigan’s political idol, the first Richard Daley, who was mayor of Chicago and chairman of the Cook County Democratic Party. His yin needed the yang. Sadly, Madigan doesn’t have the public-finance chops of Boss Daley.

To use a football analogy again, the score in the game is 7-0 with Madigan trailing, but we’re early in the first quarter. Illinois has never, at least in my opinion, fully recovered from the Great Recession. The lockdowns of the state’s second-most powerful politician, Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker, have caused great damage to the Illinois ecomony. So have the two rounds of riots and looting in Chicago this year. Jobs are hard to come by here–and my guess is that Madigan still has some to hand out to the right friends. Don’t count him out.

Oh yeah, what about the money? Madigan has been at the table that drafted every Illinois budget since 1983, and probably earlier. And it was during that time that the fuse of Illinois’ public-pension bomb was lit. The phony Madigan budgets keep kicking the can down the round as Illinois’ severely underfunded public worker public pension plans continue to eat away at state prosperity. Illinois has had a backlog of billions in unpaid bills for more than a decade. The state hasn’t had a balanced budget–despite our constitution requiring one–since 2002. Coincidentally that was the last year there was a Republican majority in the state Senate. 

If only because of his fiscal malfeasance, Madigan needs to go. 

Speaking of going, many Illinoisans are doing just that. The Prairie State, as I’ve noted here at Da Tech Guy many times, has been losing residents since 2014.

Eject Madigan now.

John Ruberry, a Commonwealth Edison customer, reguarly blogs from the Chicago area at Marathon Pundit.

The Price the GOP will Pay For Allowing The Election to be Stolen

Posted: December 3, 2020 by datechguy in crime, elections, politics
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Bernard Woolley: What if the Prime Minister insists we help them?

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Then we follow the four-stage strategy.

Bernard Woolley: What’s that?

Sir Richard Wharton: Standard Foreign Office response in a time of crisis.

Sir Richard Wharton: In stage one we say nothing is going to happen.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage two, we say something may be about to happen, but we should do nothing about it.

Sir Richard Wharton: In stage three, we say that maybe we should do something about it, but there’s nothing we *can* do.

Sir Humphrey Appleby: Stage four, we say maybe there was something we could have done, but it’s too late now.

Yes Prime Minister A Victory for Democracy 1986

Yesterday I talked about the price that will be paid for allowing this election to be stolen and that Twitter is playing the prevent defense.

And lo and behold the news coming from PA:

“We are physically unable to consider any new legislation before the end of session. A simple resolution takes three legislative days for consideration and a concurrent resolution takes five legislative days to move through both chambers, which means we do not have the time needed to address any new resolutions in our current session,” which expires Monday as per the state constitution.

In other words the GOP leadership in PA dillyed and dallied until it was not able to stop the steal, this was made possible by keeping the public ignorant of these things, via Twitter’s Prevent defense.

All of these hearings we are seeing mean nothing if the GOP is just using it to let people vent without actually acting.

I don’t think they understand the cost of the Party’s decision but a fellow named Zimmerman does and I don’t think I can do better than the points Mr. Zimmerman has made. All his points are great but these are the ones that really ring out:

3. I fully believe that these state Republican leaders are lying when they say they are going to do a full review of the election process. As we have seen for decades, they are experts at failure theater. They make big noises about standing up to their opposition, but always fold like wet rags at the slightest pressure. They will do so again.

4. The result: The likelihood of a legitimate election occurring ever again in the United States is low, if not impossible. Assuming the Democrats did steal this election, the evidence suggests they were sloppy about doing it. Not only were the manipulations of the vote totals blatantly obvious, the Democrat’s unwavering opposition to any investigation suggests they knew their malfeasance would have been quickly uncovered.

They will not be so sloppy next time.

Mr Zimmerman predicts not only the abandonment of the GOP by conservatives who see no reason to fight for those who won’t stop this election from being stolen from them and let’s be clear it’s the people who this election is being stolen from as a letter writer to Don Surber explained.

“But I lay here awake now thinking about how Donald Trump did not lose the election nor have it stolen from him. The Presidency is not a prize to be won but an office to be elected to. It is not his. It is ours.

“The election was stolen from the 70 million plus voters who followed the ever changing rules, trying to do the right thing to the best of their ability.

“And the thieves did not just steal the office, in doing so they stole our present and future tax dollars. They stole the educations of every student in the education system from pre K through post grad.

“They stole our faith and trust in the government and in the system we trust to maintain the integrity of that massive government. They stole our hope for a safe and honest future.

“I hope they are caught and their wrongs are corrected.

“In my opinion, there is no punishment harsh enough for the people who seek to enslave us.

“They are not trying to steal the election from Donald Trump. They are trying to steal it from me.

Basically the GOP in PA, GA, AZ, WI & MI have become the foreign office, they will make loud protests and do nothing. As I said yesterday the left in general and the big tech folks in particular must be very pleased at the result.

I submit and suggest they will be less pleased at the violence that this will spawn nor will the GOP office holders whose feckless surrender will be the spark that lights the flame of what could be a 2nd civil war. None of these things are going to change unless there is an actual cost for this type of thing and frankly it seems to be the only price they understand is direct violent action.

I could be wrong about that and in fact hope I am, but the very fact that I’m becoming less and less upset at the prospect fills me with dread.

“Urich’s Sudden Acquisition of Guts is Cause for Organization Wide Concern”

Posted: November 29, 2020 by datechguy in crime, elections, News/opinion, politics
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There is a reason why the left / academic / media / social media has gone all in on both censoring people who talk about election fraud and magic ballots.

That reason is they needed us to fear.

They needed us to decide that this is just the way it is and that we are fools to push back against the Dem machines in Philly, Milwaukee, Detroit, Atlanta and Vegas. They need us to think that not only is it a losing proposition but that to do so will put us in severe social, financial and personal danger (and to some degree that is true). The need us to decide to run away and accept what they have done to the country in general and to us in particular by their attempt to steal this election.

I think this quote from my double down and re-endorse Trump piece after the release of the Billy Bush tape applies here.

No this is about convincing those who still have to values to allow the election of someone who not only is directly opposed to all you hold dear but will persecute you on every level.  This is about tricking you into letting go of your one chance to stop your own destruction.  They want you to lose your nerve. Furthermore they want the GOP to lose their nerve and the press will do all they can do enable it.

That’s why despite attempts to minimize what is happening in Pennsylvania noting losing PA is not enough to bring Biden under 270 this is huge.

Once one legislature and state decides to stand up to the attempt to steal the election other legislatures that has to potential to install courage in others. Like the GOP legislatures in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Georgia may follow suit.

Just as the willingness of the reporter in the Daredevil comic I quoted from the 80’s broke open the Kingpin’s plot to destroy his alter ego (Daredevil 225-233) Pennsylvania has the potential to blow this thing wide open.

If I’m write and they keep their never then the next few weeks will go badly for the left in general and the Obama administration in waiting particular…

…and yes I said the Obama administration

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