After a brief investigation, officers learned that a man wearing a mask walked into the arcade with a gun and demanded that everyone get on the ground.
An armed security guard at the business fired a single shot at the man before he fled the scene.
Not only was there armed security, but what would make you think you were the only armed person in a group in Florida?
He was hit in the back. Cops caught up with him, and after a vehicle pursuit he was arrested, and airlifted to a trauma center.
He will face charges of armed robbery with a weapon and fleeing police.
The Laffer Curve tells us that there exists a rate of income taxation at which increases to the tax rate will not generate any additional income for the government. Beyond that point, increases in departures or decreases in work or reported income will outweigh any revenue increases from the higher rate. Before Prop. 30, California was not over the top of the Laffer Curve—yet.
Prop 30 raised marginal tax rates from 10.3 to 13.3 percent. It passed in 2012 and took effect in 2013. "Tax the Rich" is popular in CA, but the rich can, and do, leave.
In 2018, the federal Tax Cut and Jobs Act capped state and local tax (SALT) deductions at $10,000. Another surge in departures from California ensued, as high-income taxpayers suddenly had to pay a lot more of their SALT bills themselves, rather than having taxpayers from other states pick up the tab for almost 40 percent of it. The upturn in departures was similar in magnitude to that following the 2013 spike, and it was concentrated among people who, tax simulations reveal, were particularly hard-hit by the SALT cap. Potential net outflows of taxable income from California hit nearly $4 billion in 2018—and this time, as I found in another analysis, the elevated departure rate persisted into 2019 as well.
California has apparently been over the Laffer Curve since 2018.
And since math is hard, I will point out that if you get $4 billion in "taxable income" to leave the state, that is a decrease of taxes, under a 10 percent rate, which isn't quite the case here, that is $400 million in taxes you are NOT collecting because people have left your jurisdiction. That continued in 2019. Now maybe fewer people left in 2020 and 2021, but I know some people fled the COVID insanity in California for places like Florida and Texas, because their businesses were decimated by lockdowns. Do you think that the exodus is going to be reduced this year or next?
The tax rate is set to increase again in 2024.
There is some analysis of where those wealthy Californians are going. Mostly to low-tax states. Hardly surprising, given that one of the reasons they are moving is because of taxes.
The author of that article says the American Left is tyranny in slow motion. Pol Pot is not a role model I would want to emulate, but then I'm not on the Left for a reason.
Just like cars and individual liberty, the food will have to go. New Yorkers will look back nostalgically for the days when Mayor Bloomberg merely wanted to cut salt and ban soda. They’re coming for your meat, fish and eggs.
Next up, they will want to decrease the population.
Just wait until the “private sector” does its part to eliminate meats, poultry, fish, eggs, and dairy the way it’s doing its part to push critical race theory in the workplace and sexual grooming into public schools.
Enjoy your soylent green. Don’t ask what it’s made of. The important thing is it’s saving the planet.
On Monday, Chicago police confirmed that a couple was attacked and robbed by a group of people in the 100 block of [Wabash] Avenue around 8 p.m. Saturday. The 22-year-old man and a woman, whom police said is between 18 and 24 years old, were near Millennium Park when the group attacked them.
The offenders struck both victims repeatedly, took their property, and fled, a police spokesperson said. Both victims were taken to the University of Illinois Hospital for treatment of minor injuries, according to CPD.
Originally reported as being on Michigan Avenue, it has since been reported to be Wabash Avenue.
In a video that has since gone viral, a couple walking in downtown Chicago was brutally assaulted by a large group of people Saturday night in the Loop, and they’re sharing the story of how a Good Samaritan may have saved their lives.
The couple, Ashley Knutson and Devontae Garrisson-Johnson, say they had just left Nordstrom and were walking through the Loop looking for a place to eat when they were caught up in a large group of teens and young adults Saturday.
As Megyn Kelly points out in the embedded video, if cameras captured a mob of white kids beat the crap out of a black woman, or an interracial couple, this story would be all over the news. Since it was a mob of black kids doing the attacking it is memory-holed.
The mayor-elect of Chicago, basically says that Chicago needs to institute Bill Clinton's "Midnight Basketball" program. It is not their fault. They are not responsible. Is anyone responsible for anything according to the Left? You can find the details of that reaction in the video below.
Apparently Everything causes Global Warming. (I thought it was Climate Change?) Rice causes global warming
There is a war on food.
No, that is not an overstatement. It is a fact. A fact for which the evidence is so overwhelming that only a liberal could deny it.
You already know about the war on beef…all meat, in fact. That’s the reasoning behind the push to normalize eating insects.
There is a war on farming as well. What do you think those Dutch farmers are protesting about? The forced closures of farms, which is justified by the effects of farming on global warming.
Now they are going after rice, the staple that feeds 1/2 of the world's population, and the 3rd most produced agricultural product.
Nobody in power is seriously talking about reducing rice production…yet. We are still at the first stage of the process, where scaremongering and regulations are being introduced to make rice production more difficult and expensive. As usual, the solutions being proposed are sold as ways to make things more efficient and even profitable, but the same was true for recycling. Remember when recycling was going to be profitable? That worked until the market was flooded by everybody recycling paper and glass, and suddenly it became a huge net negative.
They won't be happy until they control every aspect of life, and then they will "decrease the surplus population" because they know best.
Rice is bad. Beef is bad. Your affordable gas car is bad. The Davos/WEF crowd’s private jets? They’re good. And insect protein is very good. But just for you. For the elites, it’s Wagyu at 30,000 ft + a $100 glass of vino, as they belch more carbon into the atmosphere than you… https://t.co/gsCCpfg01M
— Brett Craig (@bac37) April 17, 2023
California Democrats have made it impossible for local law enforcement to actually enforce the law. Top officials from Riverside County noted that because of the changes commercial burglaries in the city of Riverside have increased 31 percent this year.
Tulare County District Attorney Tim Ward used the example of 31-year-old Timothy Bethell of Winchester, who has 39 felony convictions ranging from burglary to vandalism. Ward said the 31-year-old began terrorizing businesses in 2021. Bethell pleaded no contest to 14 felony charges and was sentenced to four years suspended state prison time, but that’s not what happened.
“He was convicted, as I said, in Tulare County and was released, as is so common, to a residential treatment program at which he immediately absconded from,” Ward said. “Within days, he is captured in Tulare County breaking into yet another business and he’s convicted of that additional felony count as well.”
Keep not enforcing the law. Let the situation deteriorate. More businesses will close. More people will leave. Rinse. Repeat.
I'm not sure that The Wraith qualifies as a cult movie. I always think of cult movies as being a good movie that isn't well known, or at least wasn't well known when it came out. Smoke for example. The Wraith is more like a trainwrek; you want to look away, but you can't. Randy Quaid and Clint Howard almost make it worth while.
In any event, click thru for "Where's The Fire." It is a classic bit of '80s music.
California’s Cautionary Clean Energy
Despite their advocates’ urgent claims, renewable energy sources are still intermittent, unreliable, and far more expensive
Matt Vespa at Town Hall gives kudos to Matt Taibbi in Progressive Reporter Highlights the Gross Hypocrisy Surrounding the Pentagon Leaker. Matt himself at Racket, The Press is Now Also the Police
3. Canadian Censorship Bill Inches Closer to Reality
4. Brazil following Democrat playbook, investigate Bolsonaro for protests following rigged Brazilian election:
ITEM 6: Kane at Citizen Free Press reported, “Child molester arrested after stealing Audi with baby inside.”
You have to go to the bottom of the story to find that out, but that is what the story says.
Trudeau’s Canada: Apparently inflation only impacts Muslim businesses (CBC). Leftists have no sense of humour.
Today In Islam: A trans Mohammad trading card (JW).
Proposed legislation will make it possible to arbitrarily shut down sites and make the use of a VPN punishable by “fines of up to $1 million or 20 years in prison, or both.”
A man pulled into the bank to withdraw money from the ATM when the armed suspect came around the corner and ordered him to hand over money, according to police.
Detectives said the victim reportedly began to comply until the suspect began to pistol-whip him.
That's when police say someone driving by saw the crime happening and pulled out a gun to defend the victim.
And it wasn't just one crime this guy will face charges for.
On Sunday, ABC13 learned that the suspect was wanted for murder out of Louisiana.
What happens if you tell all girls who love sports that they are really boys? (Of course then you make them try to compete against actual, biological males, but that's another story.)
This is one woman's story of growing up as a Tomboy.
There are still a lot of tomboys, only it is not acceptable to describe us as ‘tomboys’ anymore, and the most genuine ones — the short-haired, trouser-wearing girls who trade their Barbies for action figures — are often told they are boys instead.
Is that really where we are?
Why assuming tomboy-girls are transgender is problematic
I was first introduced to this concept when I stumbled across the article: ‘The New Little Women Basically Proves Jo March is Queer’. Fearless, loud, and wonderfully herself, Jo March is my all-time favourite literary character because of her disregard for the gender roles attempting to trap her. Her power resides in her being a girl who — by viewing herself equal to boys at a time when the world told her otherwise — shows other girls that they can be whoever they want to be.
But now, she’s being called a boy — an assumption which solidifies the gender stereotypes we should be dismantling.
Social Media does serve some purpose.... aside from raising my blood pressure. I found today's song via Twitter. It was some time ago; things get stuck in the draft status.
This song is "Stand By Me" by Florence + The Machine. It was released in 2016 as a single; it was part of promotional EP, Songs From Final Fantasy XV.
Keeping violent offenders is jail is unfair. They just turn them loose again and again until they kill, or try to kill, someone.
You may be wondering, what does it take to put someone in prison nowadays? Because here we have a registered sex offender who got arrested three times in the span of barely two years — including charges of possessing a firearm as a convicted felon — and we might imagine that at least one of these arrests would have been enough to put Derrick Gathers away for more than a few months at a time. But, no, because here at last is the crime that led to the mug shot at the top.
What he did was shoot Highway Patrol Lance Corporal B.A. Frazier in the side of the face. Lane Corporal Frazier is said to be making progress in his recovery.
If a white highway patrolman shot a black criminal the media, the White House, Sharpton, and dozens of others would be up in arms, but because a black criminal shot a black highway patrolman, no on the Left seems to care.
I checked the White House press office page to see if President Joe Biden has said anything about this case, but apparently not. Every time a shooting makes the national news, Biden issues a statement blaming the NRA and Republicans for opposing “commonsense gun safety reforms,” but when a convicted sex offender who’s been in and out jail repeatedly for the past three years shoots a state trooper, where is Joe?
All the gun control laws in the world only serve to constrain the law abiding. If the Left really cared about reducing crime - they do NOT - they would be all for putting violent criminals in jail. But that is apparently unfair or something.
Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods addresses this task by explaining to the media and others witless enough to need to be told that no, guns are not responsible for crimes committed using guns.
I am Asian-American (half Japanese-American on my father’s side) and grew up in Half Moon Bay, California. The coincidence of this with the mass murder of 7 people in Half Moon Bay by an Asian man led to a conversation recently with Randy Miyan on the Liberal Gun Owners podcast.
That's the same U.N. that was wrong 34 years ago when Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, said that “entire nations could be wiped off the face of the earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.”
An estimated 65 million Chinese died as a result of Mao’s repeated, merciless attempts to create a new “socialist” China. Anyone who got in his way was done away with—by execution, imprisonment, or forced famine.
Mao killed more people than either Stalin or Hitler during World War II. And it all began after he took away the guns.
The big choices: retirement age, the shape of benefits (COLAs, taxable?, etc), and more… but there was a choice made before all these that influenced how all of these will turn out: total fertility rate.
Yesterday the NY Times published an article about angry parents, activists and teachers who are pushing school boards to adopt phonics-based reading curriculums. The Times correctly points out that evidence strongly suggests phonics is the best way to teach reading, even if some teachers don’t like it.
Investigators say [James Young, Jr., 40,] had "a prior domestic relationship" with the unidentified woman living in the home, and traveled to the duplex armed with a gun to "confront" the woman.
She shot him dead instead. So I guess you can file this under, "He suffered a failure of the victim-selection process."
No charges have been filed, because Florida is not New York City, though the investigation continues.
Though Chicago saw some snow on Monday morning, the temperatures on Saturday were more like summer.
Two teenagers were shot Saturday night as hundreds of people descended on the Loop, jumping on vehicles, getting into fights, and overwhelming Chicago police resources for the third consecutive night.
The victims, boys ages 16 and 17, were standing in the crowd on Washington Street near Michigan Avenue when someone fired shots at 9:05 p.m., according to a CPD statement. The younger boy was shot in the arm, and the other boy was shot in the left leg. Chicago Fire Department ambulances transported them to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in fair condition, CPD said.
An alarming new video has emerged that shows a woman being attacked by a group of young people in downtown Chicago. The footage, posted at the end of this story, is included in a sort of “mix tape” featuring social media clips purportedly from a “large group” incident in the Loop on Saturday night.
It wasn't that long ago that people from other parts of the city and from the suburbs (me included) would view a trip downtown as a treat, as long as it wasn't part of your daily commute. Museums, coffee-houses, restaurants, and more were downtown. Shopping on the Magnificent Mile, or State Street was amazing. No longer. I literally haven't been in the city in decades, even when I visit family, we never venture into the city? Unless I fly. (O'Hare is technically in the city.) It is not worth the risk of insanity.
Three house fires in MA, and a fire at a Big Box store in New Jersey. All of those coming in less than one week.
How often does this kind of thing happen? No one is tracking it.
And it appears rooftop solar fires in general might happen more often than we know — no one is officially keeping track.
I am all in favor of solar panels if you live somewhere that they make sense. (I have used solar panels in the past - not in Ohio - for a portion of my daily electrical needs. I am NOT in favor of putting solar panels on your roof, and not just because I don't like the way they look.
I am also completely opposed to the use of lithium-ion batters for residential battery power. We use lithium-ion batteries in cars and phones because we need the batteries to be light weight. Unless you are planning on driving your house, the batteries don't need to be light. They need to resist catching on fire, and they need to affordable, or the need to last a damn long time. That comes down to either good-old-fashioned, lead-acid batteries (invest in an automatic watering system) that are properly vented to the outdoors, or Edison Iron batteries, which last a very long time, but are expensive up front. That doesn't even cover the slave labor in Africa used to produce cobalt, or environmental devastation that comes with lithium mining South America.
Maybe someone should start checking into this fire issue? Of course that would fly in the face of the narrative. And it would also cut into Tesla's profits if people stop using their lithium-ion batteries.
No one is officially tracking solar fires
From 2002 and 2022, the Office of the State Fire Marshal received 16 reports of solar fires reported by local fire departments
In most of those, information about the manufacturer was not available or not provided, but neither Tesla nor SolarCity were among them
Boston25 News found there have been at least 15 residential fires in Massachusetts linked to rooftop solar installations between 2017 and 2019
When I suffer from insomnia, and I have been battling against it recently, I turn to late-night YouTube video watching, and one of the things I watch are reaction videos. Some of them are stupid. Some of them are funny. Some of them are entertaining. And a trained vocal coach recently discovered European Metal, and has been working her way through a lot of songs, some of which I knew, and some that were new to me. Anyway, I hadn't listened to the album that produced today's song in a very long time.
You will be happy to know that although Lacuna Coil hails from Italy, they sing in English. Because I know that foreign languages tend to make Americans' heads explode.
Here is a link to the lyrics. I don't think you will need them, but I like to be complete.
This is "Heaven's A Lie" by Lacuna Coil. It was originally from their 2002 album Comalies. This is the version that was included on the 2022 reissue Comalies XX.
Massad Ayoob is a long-time trainer to both the public and police. Joyce Wilson is executive director of the International Defensive Pistol Association.
We're living in a time when we are seeing a very strong spike in the number of women buying a gun for the first time, and carrying guns for the first time.
Has it been nearly two months since I gave readers an Aspiring Rapper Update? Wow, getting slack in my old age. However, the long wait will be worth it, because this week we’ve got a splendidly complicated tale that involves two Texas rappers getting shot dead, and a third rapper on his way to prison for a drive-by shooting to avenge the first rapper’s death, a justified homicide about which the second rapper had boasted.
First, I must remind you of the Urban Dictionary definition: ...
You won't be disappointed if you click thru. Though one of a photos is a bit graphic, and the description of the guy dying is also a bit graphic.
