Life in "Progress" City - Columbus edition

During the 2012 Red, White & Boom celebration, there were dozens of police officers at the fireworks. Most of these officers were clumped in bunches near the Scioto River and simply watched the fireworks along with the hundreds of thousands of spectators.

After the show ended and people started walking back to their cars, things turned violent. A gang of approximately 30 black youths (both male and female) started walking and running down Broad Street and randomly assaulted white people — old people, children, women.

I was first aware of the violence in front of the church at the corner of Third and Broad streets. One block east of there, a man crossed the street through the traffic holding his crying son. They clearly had been assaulted. When others asked if they were OK, he said, “No, we're not OK; we got separated from my wife and daughter, and they're still over there.”

Finally, two Columbus officers were seen slowly walking toward the scene of this violence. At this point, the black youths crossed the street to the opposite side of the officers and started randomly attacking more white people on the north side of Broad Street. I know; I was assaulted by five different youths.

At this time, the police meandered to our side of the street. Some of us went to the officers and said, “Do something, innocent people are getting assaulted right here on Broad Street.” One officer replied, “We don't have enough officers.” After seeing the dozens of officers near the riverfront, I went home feeling this officer’s answer was a poor one.

And that, my friends, is why God created the suburbs

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I've tried real hard

It seems to me that the last time that I "tried hard" but turned in a stinker was when I was twelve playing baseball. I went 2 for 13 that season with 9 walks and 11 strikeouts.

I was awarded a participation trophy, a can of Shasta and an invitation to not come back.




But leave it to the democrats to redefine "trying". After a 100 rounds of golf and almost no meetings with members of congress, I guess qualifies as "trying".

Life in "Progress" City - Chicago edition

From the Windy city, where there hasn't been a republican run the city since the last insufferable heat wave where Moses saw a bush burn.....................

Twelve people, including a 14-year-old boy, were wounded by gunfire across the city Friday night and Saturday morning.

The teen was shot in the 12400 block of South Perry Avenue in the West Pullman neighborhood about 8:35 p.m. He was shot in the back and leg and taken to Comer Children's Hospital, where his condition has stabilized, police said. He was standing on the sidewalk when someone stepped out from between houses and started shooting.

Someone shot a 38-year-old man in the shin about 3:10 a.m. near Wabash Avenue and 56th Street in the Washington Park neighborhood, police said. About a half hour earlier, a male was shot in the leg in the 8200 block of South Langley Avenue in the Chatham neighborhood. Additional information about both shootings wasn't available.

A 52-year-old man was shot about 1:45 a.m. near Division Street and Maplewood Avenue in the Humboldt Park neighborhood, police said. He was shot in the shoulder and groin and taken to Saints Mary and Elizabeth Medical Center and transferred to  John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, police said. Police said the man, a "retired" gang member from Detroit, was living in Chicago and approached by members of a rival gang who walked away before returning to shoot him.

I'm going to take a wild guess and say most of these victims are African American. Out of curiosity, how many Klansmen were involved?

Read the rest from the OK Corral..........

Welcome to the team

A business leader is a little put off by the Obamunists persistent attacks on business owners..............

To find out more about where Obama stands with his potential donors, Business Insider spoke with fireworks magnate Bruce Zoldan, a prominent political fundraiser from Ohio's Mahoning Valley, where Obama campaigned Friday morning.

A major Clinton backer who has raised money for candidates from both parties, Zoldan was an early supporter of Obama in 2008, and even hosted the candidate for a fundraiser at his home in Canfield, Ohio — but he was noncommittal about whether he would be supporting the Democratic nominee this time around. He told Business Insider that he has been turned off by the Obama campaign's rhetoric on class war and income inequality, which he sees as unnecessarily divisive and antagonistic toward business owners.

"They talk too much about taxing the rich," said Zoldan, founder and CEO of the multimillion-dollar Phantom Fireworks empire. "Tax is not an issue with me — I pay my taxes and I'm happy to do it. But they are too focused on the idea that it is the rich people who are keeping down the poor." 

"I'm not opposed to Democrats on this issue," he added. "What bothers me is to hear that he is making employees — my team members — feel that I am somehow being unfair to them, like I am the bad guy." 

The attacks against Mitt Romney's wealth and record at Bain Capital fit into the message that "anybody in business who is successful has done something unfair to make them successful," he said. "I'm looking for more common ground." 

Zoldan also said that he was surprised by the Obama campaign's lack of outreach to business leaders in Ohio. He said was invited to attend Friday morning's event in Poland, Ohio, but was told it was unlikely he would get any one-on-one time with the President.  

"That doesn't happen with this administration — I don't think he has reached out to the community in the way that he should," Zoldan said, adding that "it wasn't like this under Clinton." 

"It wasn't this divisive, and I'm not sure that he [Obama] helps himself," Zoldan said. "The business community wasn't pro-Clinton, but it was never this hateful." 

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Idiot of the week

Still going Galt

The movement is growing. This from Instapundit................

I saw your thought on employers going Galt due to Obama administration overreach.

I own a small company that I downsized from nine employees to one over the course of this recession. Mostly out of necessity.

I was speaking this morning with another business owner who did the same.
His quote on this was, “I’ll be damned if I’m going to create another job in this environment.”

I have to agree. It has become more and more onerous to add full-time employees. Even if you have the work, you have to measure improvement in revenue against the additional hassle and costs. Also, you have to look at how much of that additional money you’re going to have to fork over to the government.

A lot of those things have been there for a long time, but additionally we’re being told we’re evil and greedy.
The owner is always the last one paid in a small business. Sometimes he or she doesn’t get paid, if it would hurt the business.

With all those factors, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone when business owners don’t create more jobs. They should be surprised they actually do create a single job.

Again, my request from everyone is that you simply forgo purchases of nonessential products and services until the election and let's see what happens to the economy at that point...........

I've done this for a week now and I can tell you that it's actually a good experiment in prioritizing wants v. needs.

Life in "Progress" State - California edition

They called it Paradise
The Place to be
They watch they hazy sun
Sinking in the sea


So California is going to spend billions on a rail system linking almond farms to orange groves.................

Despite voter polls turning hard against a proposed $68 billion high-speed train from San Francisco to Los Angeles (by way of Fresno and Merced), the state Senate pulled the trigger on the initial funding today.

Four Democratic senators turned against the project, but it wasn’t enough. The final vote tally was 21-16 (with three no-shows). Two of the yes votes came in the last seconds of the roll call.

Here's the wager I throw out to any proponent of these kinds of projects.

I will bet my life savings against your that this project will come in
1) Over budget
2) Under utilized
3) Once completed, will require additional public assistance to maintain.

In actuality, I'd make the bet that this project will not come in on any one of those.

Now, let's assume you are a fan of such projects, why won't you take my up on my bet? Because that's totally the point. You're more than willing to gamble other people's money at one of these boondoggles but not your own.

But then again, that's becoming the American Way isn't it?

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A libertarian dilemma

Minneapolis is running into a problem nearly all high rent/high tax ares are finding............

The fight for your lunch dollar is heating up in downtown Minneapolis. Some businesses claim that food trucks are hurting their bottom line, and they say the city is giving street food vendors an unfair advantage over brick and mortar stores.

“The trucks park in front of our doors and hijack our customers,” said Doug Sams, founder of D. Brian’s Deli & Catering. Sams says food trucks have hurt his sales by about five percent.

“A five percent drop in sales could be all of your profits, could be fifty percent of your profits, it’s a major impact on the way you’re doing business,” he said.

The biggest complaint Sams, and some other downtown business owners have made, is that instead of paying property taxes, all food trucks have to do is feed the meter. That’s an argument most food truck operators reject.

“We all have to work in a licensed Minneapolis kitchen, so therefore we are paying property taxes, just not in the downtown area,” said Kyle Olson, owner of the Get Sauced food truck. “We also do pay the meter every day for the time that we are here; we also participate in sales tax as well.”

My libertarian in me says have at it food trucks. except for the fact that they use the very (expensive at that) infrastructure paid for by the restaurants and other for profit businesses.

Years ago, one of my banking customers complained to the city of Cincinnati for the street vendors lined up all along Race Street making it inconvenient for his customers to navigate the multitudes of knock off merchandise to get to his store.

The city made his decision for him as they decided to do nothing and he moved his operation to a store in Kenwood.

Walk Race Street today and see how many of those street vendors are there. No so many since race Street is practically a ghost town.

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Question of the Day

Of course, I'm not in the media pool covering the President because if I were the president would get a question like this when blaming the sour economy on Europe and China........

Mr. President, is it possible that those economies are struggling because our economy sucks right now and not the other way around?

Feel free to pass it along to Jake Tapper.

Helping out the less fortunate

Like John Stossel

Where's The Kinks?

You couldn't find room for You Really Got Me, All Day and All of the Night or Lola?