Evanston, Illinois’ use of weed taxes for reparations won’t solve deeper problems

Posted: December 1, 2019 by John Ruberry in News/opinion, politics
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By John Ruberry

If you want to immerse yourself with sanctimonious leftists then I suggest you drop everything you’re doing and head to Evanston, Illinois, which borders Chicago and is the home of Northwestern University. It’s located two towns from the suburb I live in.

I did so once at a meeting of the Evanston Democrats.

In 2016 Donald Trump gained just seven percent of the vote in Evanston.

Despite being run by liberals for decades, Evanston, the onetime home of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, will divert all of the sales tax revenue from soon-to-be-open legal marijuana shops for slavery and discrimination reparations.

Illinois of course was not a slave state. Ironically, one of my great grandfathers, Joseph Ruberry, a Civil War veteran who served on the Union side, is buried in Evanston. Also located six-feet under in Evanston is common sense.

In 2000, the African American population was 22 percent, now it’s about 17 percent. One goal of these reparation payments is to address this decline. About $500,000 to $750,000 is expected to be collected each year, which won’t be enough to pay for a stately home on Evanston’s lakefront.

In short, these reparation payments won’t make much of a difference.

As for the decline in Evanston’s black population, that’s in line with a similar fall off in Chicago. Other things are at work. While not as severe as its much larger neighbor, Evanston has a gang problem. Statewide, Illinois is becoming a difficult place to earn a living. Corruption, government incompetence, and unfunded public worker pension obligations are a millstone fighting prosperity.

While not as high as Chicago’s, suburban Cook County, where Evanston sits, has one of the steepest sales tax rates in the nation. Illinois just increased its income tax rate–many states have no state income tax. The Prairie State’s gasoline tax is the third-highest in America.

But liberal politicians love taxes–it gives them more power.

Here’s my prediction: In spite of these upcoming reparations payments, the black population of Evanston will continue to fall.

Of course leftists in Evanston a decade or so from now will argue they have another solution. And whatever that will be–it will involve more taxpayer money.

John Ruberry regularly blogs at Marathon Pundit.

Five Quick One Line Truths Media vs Trump, the London Stabbing, Pot, Education and this year’s Pats Under the Fedora

Posted: December 1, 2019 by datechguy in Always look at the bright side of Trump, education, media, nfl, under the fedora
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If the Democrats / Media had treated Donald Trump like both a regular candidate, and a regular president right from the start, they would not be in the pickle or the bubble they are in today.

Thinking of the rise of Islam in general and the London stabbing in particular, you have to go to the mid 30’s to find European governments in general and England in particular so wedded to the idea of appeasement in the face of a foe willing to supplement or destroy them.

The social costs of the normalization and/or legalization of Pot were as obvious as the social costs the normalization of porn which were, in my opinion, a feature rather than a bug to those who have pushed these results.

When I look at Universities taking big money from those who have made it their mission to bring down American society and destroy education I understand the old communist saying about capitalists selling them the ropes to hang them.

Finally, the most amazing thing about the New England Patriots record this season is that, thanks to Nick Folk emergency surgery, as of today they have field twice as many different kickers this season (4) as they have from 1996 till last year (2).

Was Secretary Spencer any good?

Posted: November 30, 2019 by ng36b in Uncategorized
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At Sea – Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer, right, speaks with Carrier Strike Group 8 Command Master Chief Petty Officer Michael Bates in the in-port cabin during Spencer’s visit aboard the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, Feb. 25, 2018. Navy photo by Petty Officer 3rd Class Kaysee Lohmann

Now that Secretary Spencer is officially no longer the Navy Secretary, I’m able to openly ask the question: why is everyone up in arms about him being fired? People (military and non-military) were hot and bothered by it on Facebook. Perhaps I’m a cynic, but I’ll ask what should be the most important question: what, exactly, did Secretary Spencer do as SECNAV for two years?

If we judge his tenure by the shape of the Navy, it isn’t pretty. US Ship Force levels have been relatively flat. This is made worse by the continued deployment of ships to respond to, basically, everything around the world. The Joint Staff uses a process called “Global Force Management,” where each Combatant Commander requests presence of different forces. Aircraft Carriers in particular are the subject of much discussion, and when one breaks (like the Harry S. Truman), you have people arguing over how to surge another carrier out, rather than discussing whether a carrier is even needed in the first place. This causes our carriers and other ships to wear out, and given we can’t build them fast enough, we are left with a Navy full of worn out ships and crews.

Secretary Spencer had to have seen this, and yet in two years, we haven’t had any change. His long range ship building plan put us at 355 ships, maybe, in 2030. We’re building 10 ships a year…maybe. While it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, China is set to overtake the US in ships by 2020. Numbers don’t account for crew readiness and weapon systems, but here again, the US is using relatively expensive weapons while China and Russia crank out increasingly cheaper missiles. Quantity becomes its own quality, and bankrupting the country to win the future fight isn’t a good option.

We could tackle this problem in a lot of ways. Building different ships, for example smaller carriers, would help get more ships to meet global requirements while saving higher-end ships for the big fight. Building a better shipyard infrastructure (getting away from having only a few places we can build Navy ships) could help lower the cost. Sharing ship designs with allies, similar to the F-35 program, could lower cost and make overseas repairs easier. Or perhaps we add in diesel submarines to help bring more submarines to the fight. Or we could build some smaller vessels, like the PCs of old, but with advanced striking power, to get a cheaper vessel that can fight in the littorals (the Littoral Combat Ship is anything but small or cheap).

But we have no innovation. The Long Range Shipbuilding plan sticks to traditional platforms, just calling for more of them. The one different platform, SSGN (converted ballistic submarines that shoot Tomahawk missiles and deploy SEAL teams) are going away, to be replaced by smaller Virginia submarines with specialized modules. Slightly innovative, but not enough to deal with China and Russia, who are designing very different Navies to fight very different wars in the future.

And how is that new carrier catapult working out? Even Bob Work was able to get LCS module price back on track.

We didn’t get much with Secretary Spencer. Our Navy isn’t in great shape, and ground wasn’t laid to make it much better. When the Secretary then decides to openly disagree with his boss, what did he expect would happen? If your boss is telling you to do something, and its not illegal, you get to disagree in private, but if he insists, then you get to resign.

For everyone mad about Secretary Spencer, I have to ask why. Is it because it was Trump that fired him? Did you really think Spencer was doing a good job? Because while I have some issues with Secretary Mattis leaving (I would prefer he stay on), I don’t see how Secretary Spencer was making our Navy great again.

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.

Chicago on the Thames

Posted: November 30, 2019 by datechguy in Uncategorized

We’ve written in the past about Chicago belonging to the gangs and pols protecting them because they provide votes.

Apparently things aren’t all that different in London:

Judah encountered a Grenadian, now a successful cocaine dealer, who recalled moving to the White City estate in West London with his mother when he was 12.
‘We pitched up for a better life, but found ourselves right in the middle of a war zone,’ he recalled.
He said the estate ‘was way more corrupt . . . way more dangerous, more full of disillusion than anywhere in Grenada. Within six months of being here, I had lost 75 per cent of my morals.’
After a few years here, and now a heavy cocaine-user, he woke up to his mother screaming. She’d found his gun in the fridge and bullets on the sofa.
She was crying: ‘Please, please, the police will kill you, the gangsters will kill you! My baby, why, why did I ever bring you to this country?’
The sex industry is another area where our flawed immigration policy has had a malign effect. Now, 96 per cent of prostitutes are migrants. In the main, Albanians have taken over.
Typically, they lure girls from Moldova with promises of modelling jobs, but then rape and traffic them.
I saw the results of this myself when a brothel opened in a house on a quiet, residential street near my son’s primary school in Hampstead. 
The mother of one of my son’s friends lived opposite. She was intimidated by the sinister men in leather jackets who sat in the nearby coffee shop all day.
She reported to the police that the girls on the top floor looked underage and never went out. In due course, her car was smashed up. 
She suspected this was done as a warning to keep her nose out of it. The police did nothing and she never raised the matter again.

If only they had been tweeting that men didn’t have vaginas, then the London police would have been all over it.

The latest terror attack might get more headlines but this is the real threat to England and it’s being ignored.

But Pam Geller and Robert Spencer are too much of a threat to let in.

Well at least it’s not happening here is it?

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