Media Blackout: Group Arrested For “Hunting Whites”



On Monday, police in Cincinnatti arrested a group of teenagers who reportedly terrorized folks in the downtown area, in a series of violent assaults.  All of the beatings and robberies took place between June 1 to July 4.

Cortez Baker, 16, Randolph Jones, 16, and Kentrelle Aldridge, 16, have all been charged with several counts of robbery and assault, and more charges are likely to be filed.

WKRC reported:

"Police say the teens essentially hunted their victims. One says the suspects were passengers on his bus when they targeted him. “They didn’t ask me for anything.”

Chad Laumann was beaten and robbed on East Fourth Street last month while on his way to work. Though outnumbered, the 23 year-old says he outsmarted his attackers by intentionally staying in view of the surveillance camera. “So as they’re attacking you, you tell them there’s a camera. Yes, I tell them there’s cameras. And what did they say? They didn’t say anything. They just took off running.”

Two of the assailants can be seen kicking and punching Laumann, while a third rifles through his pockets.

In fact, it was that same surveillance footage which was essential in the teens’ capture.  A Cincinnatti bike patrol officer recognized one of the suspects by the distinctive shirt he was wearing, which he also wore on the night of the attack.

In all, police believe the gang is responsible for at least four equally vicious attacks.

Cincinnatti Police Capt. Paul Broxterman described the string of assaults to WLWT, as “a pack of lions hunting down a wounded zebra.”

On Tuesday, another victim came forward, whose attack was also caught on video.

All three alleged assailants live in a group home operated by Kelly Youth Services and had been given an outside pass for ‘good behavior,’ the night Laumann was so brutally assaulted.

Of course, not one national media outlet has seen fit to give these racially-charged attacks any coverage, while providing nearly around-the-clock coverage to the George Zimmerman trial.

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He Votes



Snopes tried to debunk this but could not

She votes



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Would you like to fall into the hands of someone with this mentality?

Gaza man suspends animal that ate his salary by limbs and posts image on Facebook



A Palestinian man has retaliated against a mouse that chewed through some of his wages by suspending the animal by its limbs and posting an image on Facebook.

The man, who lives in Gaza but is originally from the city of Hebron in the West Bank, tied the mouse to ropes to avenge the mouse’s actions in sneaking into the Palestinian’s closet and eating 3 banknotes of 200 Israeli Shekels each (Dh200) of the man’s pay.

The man claimed he had just received his weekly salary and had hidden it from view for safety.

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Forget Cyprus.  What about Poland?

Are we sure "It can't happen here"?

While the world was glued to the developments in the Mediterranean in the past week, Poland took a page straight out of Rahm Emanuel's playbook and in order to not let a crisis go to waste, announced quietly that it would transfer to the state - i.e., confiscate - the bulk of assets owned by the country's private pension funds (many of them owned by such foreign firms as PIMCO parent Allianz, AXA, Generali, ING and Aviva), without offering any compensation. In effect, the state just nationalized roughly half of the private sector pension fund assets, although it had a more politically correct name for it: pension overhaul.

By way of background, Poland has a hybrid pension system: as Reuters explains, mandatory contributions are made into both the state pension vehicle, known as ZUS, and the private funds, which are collectively known by the Polish acronym OFE. Bonds make up roughly half the private funds' portfolios, with the rest company stocks.

And while a change to state-pension funds was long awaited - an overhaul if you will - nobody expected that this would entail a literal pillage of private sector assets.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said private funds within the state-guaranteed system would have their bond holdings transferred to a state pension vehicle, but keep their equity holdings.  The funds would effectively be left with only the equities portions of their assets, even this would be depleted, and there will be uncertainty about the number of new savers joining.

But why is Poland engaging in behavior that will ultimately be disastrous to future capital allocation in non-public pension funds (the type that can at least on paper generate some returns as opposed to "public" funds which are guaranteed to lose)? After all, this is a last ditch step which no rational person would engage in unless there were no other option. Simple: there were no other option, and the driver is the same reason the world everywhere else is broke too - too much debt.

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Chef Geoff: Wage hike would 'wipe me out'

Chef Geoff says that if tipped restaurant workers get a minimum pay raise to $8.25 or more an hour, it would "wipe me out"

Among the bevy of minimum wage hike bills introduced by D.C. Council members Tuesday is one that may destroy Chef Geoff.  So wrote Geoffrey Tracy, aka Chef Geoff, in a letter to Councilman Vincent Orange, D-At large, whose proposed legislation would raise the minimum wage for tipped restaurant employees from $2.77 to $8.75 within five years.

That hike, wrote Tracy, owner of two D.C. restaurants (one downtown and another at 3201 New Mexico Ave. NW) would cost him $494,000 a year.

“Without getting into the specifics of my finances,” Tracy wrote, “that would wipe me out. Many politicians, when posed with this will say ‘Just raise prices.’ Please, if I could have raised prices to make an extra half million, I would have done it. People already complain about prices.”

Specifically, Orange’s bill calls for a hike to D.C.’s minimum wage from $8.25 to $12.50 an hour by January 2018. The tip employee minimum, Orange said, would increase to 70 percent of the city’s standard minimum wage, or $8.75 an hour.

Tracy is chairman of the Restaurant Association of Metropolitan Washington. He told me Tuesday that restaurant employee compensation works differently than other, traditional businesses. Employees are guaranteed to earn a minimum wage, he said, either through salary plus tips, or, if tips fall short, through additional employer pay. Most workers, he said, “make a lot more than that.”  “That’s how the system works,” Tracy said.

Kathy Hollinger, RAMW president, said the industry "recognizes there needs to be a modest increase in the minimum wage," but Orange's tipped worker boost, she said, is “a little extreme.” “It’s not a 50 percent increase,” Hollinger said. “It’s significant. This was not thoughtful at any level. How are you going to do this at a 190 percent increase?”

As he introduced the bill, Orange touted the measure as a means of lifting families out of poverty. He made the same argument for the living wage bill that Mayor Vincent Gray successfully vetoed.

“The time is right for the District to raise its minimum wage,” Orange said. “The city is in the midst of unparalled prosperity and citizens who weather the bad times should also be able to afford the opportunity to enjoy the good times.”

But restaurants, Hollinger said, are generally small businesses, and at more than $8 an hour, they’ll be destroyed.

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Why Has Mahmoud Abbas Given the Nod to "Lone Wolf" Palestinian Terror?

No word of condemnation has come from any Palestinian leader for the murders of two Israeli soldiers two days apart by West Bank Palestinians: Saturday, September 21, Sgt. Tomer Hazan, 20, from Bat Yam, was found murdered in a water hole near the West Bank town of Qalqilya.

Sunday, another 20-year old, 1st Sgt. Gal Koby from Tirat Hacarmel, was killed by a single Palestinian sniper’s bullet while on guard at the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron

The silence from Ramallah is well-orchestrated, a signal that Mahmoud Abbas, chairman of the Palestinian Authority, is in favour of picking off Israeli soldiers every few days, so as to boost his hand in the US-sponsored negotiations with Israel.

Those talks have not advanced an inch, since the parties remain entrenched in their widely separate positions.

Three months into the talks initiated by US Secretary of State John Kerry, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni [pictured below] and Yitzhak Molcho for Israel and the Palestinian Saeb Erekat have not even agreed on an agenda.  On September 8, Livni proposed a working agenda of 17 items. The Palestinians countered with an agenda of six items, all them relating to the most contentious “core issues” of the dispute.

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ELSEWHERE

Key official in IRS tea party controversy resigns:  "Lois Lerner, a key official in the IRS’s tea party controversy, resigned Monday morning, according to the agency. Lerner submitted her resignation as an IRS accountability board was preparing to call for her removal on the basis of 'neglect of duties,' according to congressional aides from the House Ways and Means Committee. It is unclear whether Lerner’s resignation has already taken effect. The IRS said it could not comment further on the matter due to federal privacy rules."

States move ahead with food stamp cuts:   "Some states are already embracing deep cuts to the food stamp program similar to those passed by House Republicans in Washington, ending the food subsidy for tens of thousands of low-income Americans regardless of what Congress does. Spurred by the ballooning cost of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, the GOP-dominated House voted Thursday 217-210 to cut $39 billion in the food assistance program over 10 years. Among the changes: Ending waivers for states that during the recession allowed as many as 4 million people to collect food stamps who otherwise would not have qualified." [Note: These allegedly "deep" cuts are a whopping 5% and would take food stamp spending back to those bare-bones, small-government days of mid-2011]

Switzerland: Referendum voters choose to keep conscription:  "Swiss voters want to keep the country's compulsory military service, exit polls from the latest national referendum on the topic have suggested. Voting trends indicated a large majority of Swiss rejected plans to abolish conscription. Correspondents say the Swiss Army is regarded as costly and many young men complain that their time is wasted. But older voters say obligatory duty in the armed forces remains the best way to defend the neutral country."

Former FBI agent to plead guilty to informing public:  "The Justice Department says it’s solved one of the most significant leak cases in recent memory: disclosure of an Al Qaeda airliner-bombing plot last year that had reportedly been penetrated by western intelligence services. Former FBI agent Donald Sachtleben, 55, admitted in court papers Monday that he disclosed classified information about the plot to a journalist. The court filings don’t identify the reporter or the news outlet, but a federal law enforcement official who asked not to be named told POLITICO the leaks in question were to the Associated Press."

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