Crystal Wright - Michelle Obama Got it Wrong - Guns Aren’t Killing Black Kids

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PJTV Trifecta - The Chicago Flash Mob Shows America Is In Deep Trouble

Hundreds of teenagers raged through Chicago's premier shopping area, attacking pedestrians and even a police officer. The wilding incident ended with dozens of arrests. Does anarchy reign supreme in Mayor Rahm Emanuel's Chicago? Find out on this Trifecta.

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Chicago - Crime Capital of United States

Several teens were arrested after dozens of mob groups began attacking pedestrians on Chicago’s downtown Magnificent Mile area on Saturday night (3/30/13).

“You have over three to four hundred teenagers with mob action, jumping on individuals that are downtown,” said community activist Andrew Holmes. “Multiple people have been arrested and I caution those parents that get this call about your child being arrested -- maybe you need to check your child.”

It is not clear if the attacks are related to a similar mobbing of Ford City Mall last month.

Residents were concerned that this could be the first in a long line of attacks after warm weather brought on a string of similar instances last year.

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PolitiChicks - No-Holds Barred: Paul McKinley Has A LOT To Say About Chicago

Paul McKinley-isms: "I'm an ex-offender trying to prevent a next offender!" "I'm considered the shut up people; in our community, they come around with a large cup of shut up—don't say nothing back to the machine... and I had the audacity, the nerve, the courage to run against the machine without their permission!"

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Judge Jeanine Pirro - Garry McCarthy Chicago Superintendent of Police

FOX News host Judge Jeanine Pirro delivers a powerful message to Chicago's Superintendent of Police, Garry McCarthy, after he's gone on record stating that legal gun owners are corrupt and endanger public safety, as well as federal gun laws are 'racist'.

February 2013

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Star Parker - Chicago Strike Shows Why we Need School Choice

It says something about today’s public education reality that the two sides in the teachers’ union dispute in Chicago are the union and the mayor.

Allegedly the point of schools is to educate children. But which side in this dispute has sole interest in children and their parents?

The answer, of course, is neither side.

Unions are about the economic interests of the teachers. The mayor is about his budget and the economic interests of the city.

No one solely represents the interests of the kids.

It’s not to say that the union or the mayor has no interest in the quality of education being delivered. But this is just part of their agenda.

Do union members have to worry that their jobs will be gone if children don’t get the best possible education? No. Does the mayor have to worry that his job will be gone or his career over if children don’t get the best possible education? No.

In private sector labor disputes, sitting across from the union representative is the representative of a private company. The survival of that firm depends on its ability to serve its customers. Its labor cost is one line item in the cost structure of the products it sells.

The firm negotiating with the union does have to be concerned that union demands will drive it out of business – that it won’t be able to deliver the best, most competitively priced products.

This helps explains why private sector union membership has dropped dramatically. In the mid-1950’s, 36 percent of the private sector labor force belonged to unions. Today it is less than 7 percent.

Union demands that cause uncompetitive pricing or poorer quality products threaten the survival of the firm because it cannot serve its customers. The customer is king.

If the customer doesn’t like what he’s getting, that customer will go somewhere else.

But what about parents and kids? They have no where else to go. In Chicago, they are stuck with whatever outcome the confrontation between the mayor and the union produces because there is no competition.

Beyond this, even the best public school teachers have their hands tied because they cannot provide what so many of these kids need. A structure of values, discipline, and a clear sense of meaning and right and wrong.

The New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof writes, “In fairness, it’s true that the main reason inner city schools do poorly isn’t teachers’ unions, but poverty.”

But now we have a chicken and egg problem. Are kids not getting educated because they are poor or are they poor because the public schools, generation after generation, provide such poor education in these communities?

Poverty is preponderant among single parent households, and single parent households have grown dramatically in black communities over the last half century. In 1970, 38 percent of black births were to unmarried women. Today it’s over 70 percent.

Should we consider it an accident that over this same period a cultural transformation took place in this country? Court decisions removed prayer and traditional religious values from our public schools. Is it worth considering that the purge of traditional values from public schools and widespread family breakdown were two sides of the same cultural coin?

I think so. But whether you agree with me or not, parents who want their children in a school teaching traditional values, rather than the moral relativism endemic in K-12 public schools today, should have this choice in an allegedly free country.

Eighty six percent of the kids in Chicago’s public schools are minority kids from low income families. Meaning and teaching of right and wrong is what these kids need. Whatever compromise the unions and the mayor reach won’t matter to them.

What they need is school choice.

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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Related Post: Behold! Your Public Sector Unions at Work.
Related Post: Union Man - by Glen Shulfer
Related Post: The Barack Obama 'System'
Related Post: Government Union Monopolies Are Bankrupting America

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Star Parker - Can it be un-American to be a Christian?

The current hate campaign being waged by homosexual activists against fast food chain Chick-fil-A, because of the firm’s Christian values, may well turn out to be a bridge too far. The effort may prove to be a setback for homosexual activism.

The vile attacks on the firm and its owners, the Cathy family, should make clear, finally, that the “gay rights” movement is not about refining and advancing American freedom, but about rewriting American values and advancing, not freedom, but the homosexual political agenda.

Recently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke at a flag raising ceremony in Alexandria, Egypt, noting the re-opening of the American consulate there. Given the current political climate in Egypt, the Secretary of State felt behooved in her remarks to highlight principles of freedom as understood by Americans.

“….to us, real democracy means that every citizen has the right to live, work, and worship as they choose, whether they are man or woman, Muslim or Christian, or from any other background.”

Perhaps Secretary Clinton should be lecturing Americans instead of Egyptians.

Can it really be that in America today a businessman can be labeled a bigot, boycotted, and cut off by suppliers because of the crime of being a Christian?

When Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy made his now famous incendiary admission that “We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the family unit,” he was not pontificating. He was responding to a question in an interview done in a paper I expect not read by many homosexuals – the Baptist Press.

Never mind. It was sufficient provocation that Cathy publicly admitted that the Bible defines his understanding of marriage – the unique bond of man and woman – which also happens to be the standard definition in dictionaries on the shelves of every American home and library.

“Chick-fil-A’s values are not Chicago’s values,” said Chicago Mayor, and former chief of staff to President Barack Obama, Rahm Emmanuel. Emmanuel defended Chicago Alderman Joe Moreno’s threat to deny Chick-fil-A permitting in Chicago because its owner supports traditional marriage and family.

But UCLA law professor and constitutional scholar Eugene Volokh points out in his blog that “denying a private business permits because of such speech by its owner is a blatant First Amendment violation.”

The Constitution? The First Amendment? Religious liberty? Do these apply to Christians?

Volokh goes on to point out that a permit might be denied, “…if Chick-fil-A actually discriminated in their serving or hiring decisions in Chicago in a way forbidden by Chicago or Illinois law….But the stories give no evidence of such actions…”

The fact that there is no evidence that Chick-fil-A discriminates in its business practices did not deter Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank from writing that Dan Cathy’s support of traditional marriage “…implied that gay people (not to mention divorced people) had no business eating at Chick-fil-A.”

One court decision after another over the last fifty years has, step by step, purged any hint of religion and traditional values from our schools and public spaces.

Has it made this a fairer, better, freer nation? If you think breakdown of family, forty percent out-of-wedlock births, a million abortions a year, $16 trillion in national debt, and government dependence is better and freer, yes.

Of course society must embrace civility, respect and tolerance. But this doesn’t mean that the sexual proclivities of some should provide license to rewrite our language and the traditions that define our faith and virtue.

Hopefully many will respond to Mike Huckabee’s appeal to patronize Chick-fil-A on August 1 as a display of support for traditional Christian values and as a reminder that our Constitution protects religious freedom.

Have we really gotten to the point where being a Christian is considered un-American?

Star Parker

Star Parker is founder and president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education, a 501c3 think tank which explores and promotes market based public policy to fight poverty, as well as author of the newly revised Uncle Sam's Plantation: How Big Government Enslaves America's Poor and What We Can do About It.

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PJTV - Chicagoland Shakedown: Why It's Impossible to Run A Business Without Breaking the Law

Istria Cafe is a small business in Chicago, one of the most over-regulated cities in America. PJTV's Alexis Garcia interviews the Pribaz brothers, the owners of Istria Cafe, to show you how regulations are destroying businesses and jobs. Would you believe that it is almost impossible to run a business in Chicago without violating rules and regulations, and paying extraordinary fines? From utilities, to health care Alexis Garcia tells you why some businesses might not survive in the down economy.

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