Archive for May, 2010
Boystown Mystery: The Case of the Unticketable Car.
BMW parked at Newport and Halsted, in yellow curb zone, that never gets a ticket on Friday and Saturdays.
Who owns this car, and why are CPM agents afraid of giving this person a ticket?
Can you help us solve a mystery here in Boystown that we’re calling “The Case of the Unticketable Car”?
Mayor Daley sold the City’s parking meter collection and ticketing abilities to a private company called Chicago Parking Meters LLC, on a 75-year lease for $1.15 billion. Since then, the “meter maids”, both male and female, walking the streets of Chicago checking parking tags on cars in their chartreuse cautionary vests have been privately employed, taking their orders from CPM, LLC.
They are the most overly zealous meter maids anyone in Chicago has ever seen — often writing bogus tickets in their mad dash to ticket every car possible, even if that car’s meter is not up or parking permit is still valid. Usually this revolves around the issue of the date on a parking permit: in Boystown, for instance, because of the Cubs games and other events, residents buy parking permits from their Alderman’s office in books of $15. Each permit is good for 24 hours. The permits are little sticky slips of paper that a driver writes the date on, and the sticker is then adhered to the inside of the car window. If it’s written out for 8:21 am 5/29/10, for instance, that permit is good until 8:21 am 5/30/10. However, CPM meter maids walking Boystown are NOTORIOUS for writing a ticket on a car anytime after midnight on 5/30/10, not bothering to look at the time on the permit. Someone has until 8:21 am, in our example, to put a new ticket on the car for 5/30/10, but more likely than not if that person walked down to his or her car at 7:00 am on 5/30/10, there would be a ticket waiting on his or her car. We believe this happens far too often for it not to be deliberate on the part of CPM — the company must instruct its meter maids to do this, because some study must have shown that enough people won’t fight these bogus tickets to make the whole scam financially advantageous to CPM.
It’s the most aggressive and rapid-ticket-writing operation we’ve ever seen. Very quickly, it became known to every driver in the City that if someone parks illegally anywhere in Chicago, that person will receive a parking ticket licketysplit…even in many cases where that person is not parked illegally at all. CPM agents appear out of nowhere. They are legion.
So, considering all of this, we’ve noticed a BMW parked illegally in Boystown every Friday and Saturday night for the past several months — and it never gets ticketed for parking in a yellow curbed no parking zone.
At first, we thought it just possessed some sort of Q-designed, automatic cloaking device that concealed the car whenever CPM meter maids walked by, making it invisible to them, and thus unticketable. Perhaps instead of wickedly effective tech, this car is instead protected by powerful juju, with some dark spell cast on CPM’s employees to make them blind to the BMW’s existence. Another possibility was that this particular patch of yellow curb, located at the intersection of Newport and Halsted, across from Gerber Auto Glass Repair and diagonal from Buck’s and Halsted’s, exists in a fold in the space/time continuum and that the BMW slips out of our dimension and into a parallel one, but only when CPM agents are around. Sort of like how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear in the 80s, but with the intended and sole audience being those writing these parking tickets.
But, two weeks ago, we witnessed two CPM meter maids working Halsted and saw the two approach the BMW, with one of them clearly being a trainee. The lead meter maid looked directly at the BMW, so that shot down the theory CPM can’t see that car. It did not vanish before our very eyes into BizarroWorld. The trainee started to write a ticket for being parked in the no parking yellow curb zone, but the other CPM agent stopped him, and we clearly heard the woman say to her subordinate, “No, you can’t ticket THAT car, stop filling that out”.
Curious, we followed the meter maids up the block, and when the trainee was separated from his boss at one point, we ran up to him and asked why that BMW gets to park in a no-parking zone without ever getting a ticket. We told the CPM agent that we see this car parked there every single weekend, on Friday and Saturday nights, and that according to all the signage in the neighborhood, that car should have racked up tickets every time it parked there.
“I know that should get a ticket, but she won’t let me. I’m not allowed to write up that car, but I asked her, and she won’t tell me why,” is what the trainee told us. “I don’t know why I’m not allowed to write up that car, but she punched the license number into her box and it came up DO NOT WRITE”.
We assume the meter maid was talking some kind of computer his supervisor carries when he mentioned this “box”, because otherwise that could read anywhere between ridiculous and vulgar depending on what this “box” is. But, whatever it is, it’s assigned that particular BMW as “DO NOT TICKET” and we’re wondering WHY.
In Chicago, the first thing we think of is that this car belongs to someone Daley is protecting for some reason, but the car could also belong to someone who works for CPM, which is a private company, so perhaps CPM grants some sort of parking immunity to certain people, for whatever reason.
Maybe there’s a lottery for parking ticket immunity, in fact, that we just don’t know about, and the prize is a lifetime (or maybe just a year, like the reign of Miss America or something) ability to park wherever the Hell you damn well please in Chicago, with no consequences for yellow-curb parking.
Maybe this particular make and model of car is assigned “DO NOT TICKET”, just because someone, or “the box” itself, thinks it’s just a really pretty car.
We’re stumped.
But, we walk down this street every single day, multiple times a day. We’re out every Friday and Saturday night and pass the corner of Newport and Halsted many times in the course of those nights, and that BMW is there every Friday and Saturday, never getting a ticket. We saw, with our own eyes, meter maids talking about giving this car a ticket, but one of them using “a box” to determine the car is unticketable.
We want to know WHY.
Can you help figure this out?
The car’s license plate is: X55 0474
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UPDATE: This BMW disappeared really early in the morning on Saturday 5/29/10, where we assume the owner ran errands or something, and then the car was parked at the same exact spot again — in that yellow curb section at the corner of Newport and Halsted — at 11am 5/29/10 when we walked by on our way to meet our friend Althea for breakfast at Nookie’s Tree. Then, throughout the day, we kept finding reasons to walk up and down Halsted, and that BMW was in that same space every time we passed it. Althea thinks this person parks there because no other drivers will park in the yellow curb zone, so this person always has a reserved spot waiting — if it’s true the city won’t ticket this car because it’s a Daley or other VIP. Althea drives regularly here in Illinois, and she told us she’s been ticketed — almost immediately — for parking in that yellow curb zone by a corner. In fact, the last Saturday she met us for lunch in Boystown, SHE parked in a spot similar to this, and she got a ticket not 30 minutes later. And she only parked there for a few minutes to run over to Buzzquarters to drop something off before driving down the street to park in a garage and meet us for lunch.
Here are more shots of this car in the day time:
This is the tag that is on the car.
This is where Althea parked once and got a ticket. It's the OTHER corner of Newport and Halsted, in front of the hair salon that's there. Althea is black, and she said she's willing to stand up and scream RAAACISM! over all of this if she got a ticket for parking in that yellow curb zone at Newport and Halsted but the owner of the BMW isn't allowed to get tickets. Why did Althea get one and not that person, for doing the same thing?
Another shot, from the side, clearly showing that car in the yellow curb zone, which Althea assures us is no parking.
Another shot of this car, around 4pm or so 5/29/10, still parked there. You can see in the distance, near where the man in the white shirt is walking, the spot where Althea once parked and got a ticket. That's the other Newport/Halsted corner that is in front of the hair salon.
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Thanks to Second City Cop for doing a write-up on this mystery. All of us do this when we see cops in person, but thank you for all that you do for the city. It’s the most corrupt and mismanaged city in the country, but we are sincerely thankful, every day we live here, that we are lucky enough to have one of the best police forces in the world doing all that it can to hold things together. Everyone on the job that we’ve ever met has been stellar…and even the crime problems in Boystown as of late are clearly not the cops’ fault, but the bureaucrats high above them who are behind the policies that make all these bad things happen. If you wear a uniform, or ever wore one, we can’t ever thank you enough for doing all you can to keep us all safe.
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UPDATE #3: Our friend Justin, who teaches in Chicago Public Schools, says that Ron Huberman, the openly gay head of CPS, and Daley darling, has a leased BMW paid for by the City that looks suspiciously like the car in the photo above. Justin’s seen him drive it in Boystown, but never got the license number.
This COULD be Ron Huberman’s car, and the reason it doesn’t get a ticket is because it’s RON HUBERMAN’S car. It would make sense for this car to be in Boystown on Fridays and Saturdays, if it indeed is Huberman’s, because he’d be going out in Boystown to have fun…and he’d be parking far enough away from Sidetracks, MiniBar, Scarlet, and other bars he’s frequently spotted in so that there would never be any cell phone snaps of him getting into his car after having too much fun — or possibly too many drinks. That would not be good PR for the head of the school system.
This is speculative, but it sure makes a lot of sense.
The other idea that was floated in the Second City Cop thread was that the car belongs to someone like Alderman Tom Tunney, and that’s the reason it’s on the “Do Not Ticket” list.
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UPDATE #4: Here are the comments from that Second City Cop thread…maybe they will give some of you ideas on who this car could belong to. It’s sure been an eye-opening and revealing bit of insight for us:
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UPDATE: 5/30/10
Car parked in yellow curb zone again, starting at about 630pm, and still parked there at 400am 5/31/10.
No tickets on the car. Yet, meter maids had ticketed other cars on Halsted in that duration.
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UPDATE: 5/31/10
In comments someone posted that:
The plate is registered to
Edward Davis
923 W Margate Terrace
Chicago 60640
2002 BMW
Who is Edward Davis and why is he allowed to park in a yellow curb zone without getting a ticket?
And if Davis is the owner of the car, look how far he lives from where this car is being parked:
At the bottom is the corner of Newport and Halsted where this car is being parked. At the top, is 923 Margate Terrace where Edward Davis apparently lives. Why is he parking his car so far from home?
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Thanks to TheExpiredMeter site for picking this issue up as well.
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5/31/10 — What we need now:
(1) Verify that Edward Davis of Margate Terrace is the owner of this car
(2) Research who Davis is and why he is exempt from parking tickets at the juncture of Newport and Halsted
(3) Figure out who else, besides Davis, has this immunity from tickets
(4) Determine how EVERY Chicagoan can get on this “No Ticket List” with Davis
Can you add to this thread and help…or, if you don’t want to post, you can email us anonymously at HillBuzz@gmail.com
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UPDATE: 5/31/10
The BMW was parked at the corner of Newport/Halsted again for most of the day on Memorial Day. It was finally moved at around 745pm and two of our friends, who were having drinks in Buck’s bar across the street, caught a glimpse of the driver.
Edward Davis appears to be in his mid-40s, and was described as “looking like Martin Short, but taller and with darker hair, but his hair sticks up like Martin Short’s does”.
Also according to our friends, the car WAS ticketed yesterday, because they observed Davis pull a ticket off his driver’s side windshield, crumple it up, and toss it onto the floor of the passenger side of the vehicle.
According to the parking ticket records, Davis had a consistent, regular string of parking tickets between 2007 and December 2009…and then he hasn’t had a single one since then. That seems statistically anomalous for him — why did he suddenly stop getting parking tickets, when he’d had an established proclivity for acquiring them before then? What changed…and why has he gone six months without a ticket now?
"What you talkin' bout, Nancy Reagan?" RIP Gary Coleman
Sad news from Hollywood, with yesterday’s passing of Gary Coleman, a very troubled man whose childhood was taken from him, so we could all be entertained by the TV show Diff’rent Strokes.
Panda met Coleman once, during his surreal campaign for Governor of California in the recall election against Gray Davis that put Arnold Schwarzenegger in the governor’s mansion. He said Coleman was kind, soft-spoken, and incredibly friendly — and he knew he didn’t have a chance in Hell of being Governor, so he wasn’t insane, just someone goofing on a ridiculous situation. He knew he’d become a running joke, so he leant that ridiculous persona to an absurd and ridiculous process.
As a child, Coleman was adorable playing Arnold on his TV show — watch the clip above from the episode guest-starring Nancy Reagan and try to come up with a child actor with comedic timing, line delivery, and talent as strong as Coleman’s.
We remember when this episode aired originally. It prompted discussions about drugs in all of our grade schools. Some people lampoon Mrs. Reagan for her “Just Say No Campaign”, but you know what — not a single one of us here at HillBuzz has ever tried any kind of illegal drugs. None of us have ever smoked. Two of us don’t even drink, and those of us that do have maybe two Pilsners or Guiness when out in Boystown, tops.
Maybe “Just Say No” didn’t work for every boy growing up in the 80s, but it worked for us.
That episode of Diff’rent Strokes was brilliantly crafted, actually. We hadn’t watched it in years, but found the clip above with highlights. We’re struck by not only how wonderful Mrs. Reagan looked — in classic “Nancy red”, too — but how persuasive she was in reaching out to children and telling them to avoid the perils of drug use. It was a marvelously well-done piece of television…something we wish there was more of today…in a world lacking an American First Lady as caring and committed to helping people as Mrs. Reagan was.
We can’t even imagine what it must have been like for Coleman to co-star alongside the First Lady in an episode like this, on what was at one time America’s favorite show, and then to fall so far from the limelight the way he did. To have all of that fame taken away, and all of his promise squandered. It must have been crushing. But, according to Panda’s firsthand report, Coleman was a kind and gentle, friendly man — despite all that loss. There was no bitterness in him. No statements that he was only proud of his country when things were going his way. We can’t remember a single interview he did where he blamed other people for his problems, or called anyone RAAACIST for not giving him what he wanted.
The guy had it all, as a child, then lost it, but never cursed America for his misfortune…not even for his diminutive size.
We hope his soul has found peace, and that all of you find a moment today to say a little prayer for him.
Saturday Open Thread: May 29th, 2010
Moon over Boystown, as snapped by Panda's cell phone, 5/28/10
What’s on your minds this Saturday?
What are people talking about in your part of the country?
Mitt Romney's main strategy in the GOP primaries of 2012 is to hammer Sarah Palin as "a quitter". Message to Mittens: it's not going to work
Yesterday, I was interviewed by a reporter for CBS, for a story on the diverse groups of people supporting Sarah Palin online. The reporter authored a book on Palin last year, after being embedded with her vice presidential campaign, following a stint covering Mittens Romney. I can’t imagine how many cucumbers-and-mayonnaise sandwiches this guy had to eat on the Romney Express (to nowhere), but I gave him the same kind of awed respect I grant anyone who’s ever spent more than half an hour with Tim Pawlenty — and didn’t succumb to T-Paw induced narcolepsy.
We (the reporter and I, not Tim Pawlenty or Mittens) met up at Nookie’s Tree in Boystown and talked about Sarah Palin over coffee. Doing enough of these interviews over the course of the last few years, and being interviewed by some great people like Andrea Shea King and Tammy Bruce, I can usually spot the story the reporter wants to tell by the way his questions unfold and what he keeps coming back to whenever I take the conversation on one of my tangents about how terrible the current administration is. The story CBS wants to do on Palin’s supporters appears to be something in the realm of “an unthinking, personal, and emotional defense of a woman they love”. It’s not a negative story, and the reporter doesn’t seem like the kind who would write a hit piece, on either Palin herself or on me as a Palin-supporter, but the impression I got from him was that he’s projecting the Left’s Obama cult of personality onto Palin supporters — when nothing could be further from the truth.
Most of the questions asked of me were in the vein of how I felt whenever Palin was attacked, and what makes me defend her.
I stopped the reporter on that one, because I don’t think Sarah Palin needs to be defended ever — she is more than capable of doing that for herself, far better than I personally could ever do. See, for example, her Facebook ninja throwing stars, and marvel at the sublime and politically deadly effectiveness of her patented personal brand of self-defense.
The role I see Palin’s supporters playing is, as we’ve said consistently here on HillBuzz, of Scoobies to Palin’s Buffy. She’s the slayer. She’s got far more strength, smarts, power, and voice than any of us. She leads, we follow. We’re her support team, whose mission is to make sure the public at large knows about all the good things she’s doing — and that her supporters never succumb to Eeyorism and listen to the Lamestream Media as it tries, desperately and pathetically, to foist Mittens Romney, T-Paw, John Thune, Mitch Daniels, or the rest of the born-losers in the cucumbers-and-mayonnaise soggy sandwich club upon us as the 2012 Republican nominee.
In talking about Romney, the reporter gave me a little insight into him as a man, which confirmed what I know firsthand from all the Romney guys here in Chicago: he will never accept being VP, to anyone, and believes he is destined to be president. I’m amazed no one surrounding Romney, not even his wife Ann, has the clarity or good sense to tell this man how delusional he is. Romney believes the “it’s his turn” mentality of the Republican Party is going to hand the 2012 nomination to him, the way this same thinking gave the GOP the stellar campaigns of Bob Dole ’96 and John McCain ’08. ”It’s his turn” is a steaming pile of moose droppings.
Sarah Palin is running for president, folks. She will be the Republican nominee in 2012. I personally am going to do everything I possibly can to help her in every way possible. Everyone here at HB feels that way, and we’re all committed to giving up another two years of our lives for a presidential race — which is something we didn’t want or expect to do, but we all believe in the Governor and believe she’s the one woman out there who can turn this country around and defeat Obama.
The reporter, who is a very nice guy, and handsome in that nonthreatening Sears catalog model sort of way (he actually looks a lot like the actor who played Brighton Sheffield on “The Nanny” in the 90s, and for the entirety of the interview I was convinced it really WAS that actor, because I heard somewhere that kid grew up to become a journalist), believes Obama will have his second term, and couches everything he asks in terms of that. Such as questions about whether Hillary Clinton would stay on as Secretary of State in Obama’s fictitious second term, etc. Me being me, I never let those slips go, and kept reminding him that Obama is not going to have a second term, because Sarah Palin is going to clean his clock in 2012. He’d smile at that, which made him look even more like the kid from “The Nanny”, but Wikipedia indeed maintains they are not one and the same.
Both the reporter and the Romney Guys here in Chicago believe it’s an effective attack on Palin to criticize her for leaving the governor’s office last summer. These guys are CONVINCED of this, and they honestly believe Republican voters in 2012 aren’t going to support her because she made the executive decision to remove herself as a target for Democrats nationwide to attack in our northernmost state. Palin removing herself from the governor’s mansion eliminated a means for DNC-funded lunatics like Andrea McCloud to file nuisance ethics complaints against her office every day, in a clear effort to cost Alaskan taxpayers an enormous sum of money and prevent the governor’s office from doing the work the people of Alaska needed the Governor to do. Resigning to save taxpayers so much money took a lot of guts — and it’s one of the things I most respect about Sarah Palin on a personal level. She’s forever in a position of being damned if she does, and damned if she doesn’t, and every day she’s attacked for something ridiculous. Leaving office was a hard decision to make, but it was the right decision for Alaska, and I believe for Palin personally (because she would not be able to travel the country and give speeches so often if she was tied to Juneau and Anchorage…and that means she would not be able to fulfill the role of Shadow President the way she is doing now, living rent free in the Obama White House and occupying a choice niche in the current president’s nightmares).
I can guarantee you Mittens Romney gives no one nightmares. The White House doesn’t care what Romney thinks or says. When Romney holds an event, all of 12 people attend, and no one’s particularly enthused to be there. Not even Romney himself.
When Sarah Palin gives a speech, the atmosphere is electric. I’ve seen big, beer-bellied, bearish men sporting pink PALIN 2012 shirts, as excited as school girls at a Jonas Brothers concert to actually hear the Governor speak in person. I’ve spotted fathers bringing their daughters to see “the next president”, Sarah Heath Palin. This excitement, support, and enthusiasm actually exceeds what I experienced at Hillary Clinton’s own events in 2007 and 2008.
If Palin wants that nomination and wants to be president, she’s going to win. I do not believe Mittens or T-Paw can stop her. And I don’t believe she’ll pick any of those boring, soggy losers as her VP. I think she’ll go rogue, and choose an Alan West, a Michael Williams, a Michele Bachman, or someone else incredibly awesome and give the GOP establishment and “It’s His Turn” club the shaft. Alaska-style. You betcha.
But, I don’t want Palin supporters to ignore what the Romney people are up to. Though I don’t think the “she quit as Governor!” nonsense is going to have any traction against her, I wanted to communicate just how absolutely CERTAIN this reporter was about this “ending her campaign before it begins” and how the khaki-pants, blue-blazered Romney Guys here in Chicago think Palin is a “non-starter” because of this.
I think these guys are all nuts, but I want all of you, and everyone at Conservatives4Palin especially, to start thinking about ways to diffuse this attack before it can even be made. If you love this country and want to prevent Obama from having that second term the media believes is guaranteed to him, then you need to work hard every day on ways to prevent the GOP from running Mittens, T-Paw, or any of the other members of the cucumbers-and-mayonnaise brigade in 2012.
I have no idea when this piece for CBS is going to come out, but if I hear more about it, I’ll be sure to let you know. As I said, the reporter was a very nice guy and showed great respect for the Governor, but it was very clear to me he voted for Obama and wants to see him get a second term — though I don’t think he had an Obot agenda with the article he’s writing, or I would not have agreed to sit down with him here in Boystown.
- K.
Confront City Union Employees Loafing on the Job With Video Equipment At Every Possible Opportunity — It Makes Them Scurry Like Rats
H/t DK for illustrating this union mentality perfectly
Last night, something remarkable happened at the Belmont Red Line stop around 330 in the morning.
We had just left a party at Hydrate, where DJ Chi Chi LaRue (shee-shee, like “fancy”, not Chee-Chee, like the defunct Mexican restaurant) was spinning, Cyon Flare was holding court (as always, and looking FABULOUS in a leopard catsuit and tribal pom-pom wig), and just about everyone interesting in Boystown was on hand for the pre-Memorial Day-pre-party. This is similar to the way that Boystown starts celebrating Halloween on October 1st, with pre-pre-pre-parties just about every night until the 31st. A good time was had by all, and Panda got to play his favorite game, which is spot and identify the porn stars in the room incongruously wearing clothes — he’s like Rain Man with this, and can not only ID all of them, but knows their real names, all of the titles they’ve been in, and is generally on hugging terms with all of them (“Well, the rest of you can do that with all those people in Congress, and you know who they are and stuff, so I know who people are too”).
Panda had to take the Red Line downtown that late because he’s dogsitting for someone in the Loop, so we walked onto the platform to wait for the train with him, just to be safe.
What we saw was absolutely amazing in a City that constantly claims it’s broke, with a Transportation Authority that is forever threatening more Doomsday service cuts because it swears it has no money.
Yet, at 330am on the northbound Belmont Red Line station, we saw a team of five union CTA workers, standing there in their chartreuse caution vests and hard hats, watching one of them sweep the same spot of concrete with an old-fashioned push broom.
One man sweeping something that didn’t need to be swept, four men SUPERVISING.
Here’s where things get even more remarkable.
For some reason, every time we’ve spotted union crews like this “working”, we’ve been disgusted by the waste that goes into all of this standing around — though we never thought about doing anything about it. These guys easily make $30-40/hour. The supervisors probably make more. For doing nothing. But, growing up in big cities, we’re so used to this kind of waste and union-mentality that we usually forget about it if we notice it, or just completely ignore it to begin with.
Last night, things went differently.
Sebastian started talking about how much money was being spent sweeping and supervising said sweeping by that crew in front of us — we figured these guys would probably bill at least two hours for this job, at a rate of $30/hour per guy, times 5 guys, so that’s $300 right there. We thought about union crews doing this all over Chicago, and marveled how easily massive amounts of tax dollars could be saved if only the public stopped accepting this sort of thing as acceptable reality.
That’s when Sebastian decided to get loud.
He called across the train tracks at the crew and asked, “Why are there five of you needed to sweep one small section of this platform over and over again? Why is the Union assigning one of you to work and four of you to supervise? How can the CTA cry about needing more tax money when it has four guys loafing and one guy pretending to work?”
One of the union guys, who was leaning against the metal railing, quite comfortably, yelled back, “We’re doing safety control”. Then he and the rest laughed a little.
Sebastian then whipped out his phone and pointed it at them, as if he was taking a video. Unbeknownst to them, his phone was dead, the battery drained hours ago, but it still made an effective prop.
Sebastian repeated his questions to the union crew, this time while pretending to take video of them standing there.
The response was instantaneous, and very reminiscent of bugs or rats scurrying away from a light that’s startled them. They saw the camera and collectively these men all left the platform as a group, disappearing down the stairs. There was no more talk about being “safety controllers”. Once they were challenged, and feared they’d end up on YouTube loafing and wasting money like this, they broke up their gang and left.
What if the public did this to every union crew working in the city?
What if citizens took out their camera phones and taped all the “supervising” that’s being done on the City’s dime?
What if people started challenging the need for a five man crew to sweep one small part of a platform over and over again?
Today, we’re going to buy extra batteries for all of our phones, so that we’re never in a situation like the one above where we can’t take video like this. We’re going to start posting this stuff to YouTube, and with your help maybe we can open the public’s eyes to the amount of waste committed by unions every day in cities like Chicago.
We’re beyond furious that several bus lines were recently cut, and buses and trains run less frequently in general, because the CTA claims it didn’t have the funds to operate properly. Well, maybe things would run better if the union wasn’t operating the way it’s always run.
Increasingly, we’re coming to understand a very simple truth: for America to prosper, labor unions need to be smashed. To smash them, regular Americans need to start documenting union waste and exposing these people as the crooks that they are.
Just calling them out isn’t enough, as evidenced by our example above. Sebastian called them out, and they just laughed, and made a joke about how worthless they are with that “safety control” crack. But, once these guys thought they were being videotaped, they had a Ruh-Roh moment and knew they were in trouble, so the joking ended and they hid downstairs until we’d left the platform. No doubt, they went back to their scam after Panda got on the train and the rest of us headed home…but we wonder what great footage we could get if we regularly staked out the Belmont Red Line at night.
What else is the union up to?
What other scams could we expose?
Better question: what could you expose the unions doing to waste tax dollars in your own cities?
Friday Open Thread: May 28th, 2010
What’s on your minds this Friday?
What are people in your part of the country talking about?
STRATEGY NEEDED: How to help Sarah Palin and her family with their stalker, and new neighbor, Creepy McGinniss
We want you to put your thinking caps on today, and to help think of ways to defeat the Palins’ stalker, Creepy McGinniss — an author who has rented the house next to theirs so he can peep into little Piper’s window, spy on the Governor as she works in her garden, and generally be gross and stalkerish for the next five months. Maybe he’ll even pose for Playgirl, too. That’s what the louses who normally stalk the Palins do.
Here’s the dilemma: our gut is that book publishers love controversy, so Random House, which is funding this misadventure, would love any publicity it can get for McGinniss’ upcoming tome. Therefore, we don’t know how much good a big letter writing campaign to Random House would do…especially if it makes the execs there think they’ve got a hit on their hands, with all these people generating buzz about the project.
Our next thought is to maybe go a side route here, and organize some kind of boycott of Rand House’s current titles…to show the company that its support of McGinniss is detrimentally impacting the sale of other Random House authors.
But, boycotts are hard to launch and manage, and Random House has so many titles in print, we don’t know how effective this would be in terms of targeting which particular authors.
Can a lease be ended early if a homeowner wants to end it?
That’s our next thought: who owns the house next to the Palins…perhaps that person can be shamed into evicting McGinniss, for being so creepy.
Maybe THAT’S who should be receiving mail from thousands of people coast to coast…the person who rented this house to the creep.
Because the creep isn’t going to budge on his own. We doubt Random House is going to budge on its own. So, we need to find a creative angle upon which to apply pressure if we want to help the Palins have a decent, Wasilla summer free from peepers and whackadoodles next door.
Any ideas?
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UPDATE: The part that really bothers us about all of this is that this man, Joe McGinniss, has been seen with binoculars trying to peep into Piper’s window.
Random House SHOULD have a real problem with that.
Does McGinniss have any family that could possibly talk to him about how this whole project is coming off?
What does McGinniss’ family have to think of him peeping into a prepubescent girl’s window?
Can’t someone he know talk some sense into him to abandon this effort, just to end the impression he’s up to something truly very creepy like this?
