Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
In the NYTimes, Nicholas Kristof asks why leftists give less to charity [h/t Instapundit] than do those on the Right. Why do the people who collectively advocate redistributing wealth from producers to the poor donate so little as individuals to the same cause?
I think the reason simple: Leftism isn’t about compassion. Leftism is about control. Leftism is about freeing the individual from personal responsibility for anything, including charity.
If you get invited for a ride on someone’s boat, and you use the toilet, which is of a type that you have never used before and has a pump handle that you have to turn to the left, and then pump, and then turn to the right and pump again, or something like that, do not, whatever you do, pump the handle even more vigorously if it does not immediately appear to be clearing the bowl.
As I was walking at Grand and LaSalle today doing some Christmas shopping the guy next to me pointed out something in the snow right next to us. It was the nozzle from a gas station that someone had apparently driven off with and which ended up here. If you look in the picture to the upper right you can see the BP gas station from whence it came…
Weirdly enough, what I thought of immediately was not that someone absently drove off with that nozzle still attached to their gas tank, nor that they stole the gas and drove away in haste, but that they (might have) drove off with that nozzle still attached in fear from attack from aggressive vagrants.
River North is a very wealthy area of Chicago, but since we are near downtown and filled with (well meaning) tourists, our neighborhood is filled with the homeless, bums and panhandlers. Here is a helpful schematic post that I created to identify their various types. That BP gas station is notorious – I won’t go there at all if I can possibly avoid it, because they so aggressively try to pump your gas for you and you can’t really get away from them if you have to stand there while your tank is filling.
The situation was documented when an off duty policeman was stabbed by a homeless person while filling his gas tank at that very station. Here is a link to a story about that stabbing. You’d figure that an off duty policeman is likely to be an intimidating figure, so it would be much worse if you were a woman or elderly.
Or it could have been a drive off, or someone who is absent minded. Either way I’d recommend that you find a different gas station.
Salon on Blagojevich and Obama via Instapundit.
I just want to take this opportunity to say, “I told you so.”