🚨#BREAKING: Chaotic Scene Unfolds in Downtown Chicago as Teenagers Vandalize Cars and Gunfire Erupts
📌#Chicago | #Illinois ⁰ There is currently a significant police response taking place in downtown Chicago due to a large group of teenagers causing chaos. They have been… pic.twitter.com/n7xhBpsTKs
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
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”
Since I’m a glutton for punishment and I’m sure I’m gonna get the most unhinged, crime weirdo replies but:
I would look at the behavior of young people as a political act and statement. It’s a mass protest against poverty and segregation.
By a 4-3 vote, the Muncy Borough Council told the federal government to stay out of my town’s business.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, the organization that oversees national disasters, had offered to buy and tear down 19 local homes because they sat in the flood plain of the Susquehanna River.
About 40 percent of the town of 2,400 residents sits in the flood plain. The last big flood happened in 2004, with some minor to moderate flooding every five or six years.
What concerns Council President Bill Scott is that the purchased homes will be torn down, leaving the borough with an estimated yearly loss in local revenue of nearly $30,000.
“I’m not for it,” Scott said. “Half of our town floods. That’s the main issue.”
Scott said he believes it is better to look at flood control studies before removing properties from the tax base.
“That adds up,” he said. “That’s a significant amount of money over time.”
Scott and three other council members decided that it was better to stay off the federal government tax trough and see if there was a better solution.
“Being an engineer and not giving up too easily, I think it can be solved,” Scott added. “It’s not going to happen overnight. It’s a long-term thing.”
The local homeowners complain that they can’t see their homes for a profit because they’re in the flood plain.
The argument sounds a lot like the student loan issue. People who make lousy decisions want the government to pay for their mistakes.
When we moved to Muncy, the possibility of a flood concerned us—as it does many people in the area. That’s why buyers have a home inspection and an appraisal before purchasing a house.
Moreover, flood insurance isn’t cheap—an estimated $1,400 a year above basic coverage—but it comes in handy should water damage happen. It’s the cost of buying and maintaining a home.
I applaud my local leaders for saying no to the feds and trying to devise an alternative solution. More local governments should determine whether federal programs actually hurt their communities.
And this illustrates the problem that the Bud Light/Anheuser Bush people have with this business.
No matter how much they fear the Human Rights Campaign and getting on the bad side of the left in the end their product is bought by regular people and the regular people who buy this product do it at a location where they are a ton of alternatives to their product for sale.
It takes no effort to grab a case of Miller Lite or Coors lite or a dozen of other beers when you’re at the package store.
And even if you’re at a bar or a restaurant, almost nobody sells Bud Light Exclusively.
Take Longhorn’s steakhouse. They offer both Bud light AND Miller Light as a discount beer. It takes no effort to grab a Miller lite instead of Bud.
Like it or not as Budlight is now, as the wags are putting it: “tranny fluid” and while there will always be kids who will buy a cheap beer to get drunk on But has a choice.
They can either publicly disavow their actions and fire the manager involved
Or
They can settle for a smaller American market share permanently
No amount of flag waving is going to fool people, they’ve chosen to take a public side in the political /cultural debate Now they have to decide whose favor they want.
Closing thought:
The moment Donald Trump’s son called for conservative to forgive Budweiser the DeSantis for President crowd must have been high fiving themselves. This is a losing issue for the Trump campaign and I’ll bet real money you won’t see the Donald repeating that mistake.
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.
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.
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