The White House isn’t saying no to the ATF; the Whitehouse is saying yes to People like Larry Pratt’s “Gunrunners of America”.

OK, Pratt’s origination is “Gun Owners of America” but what they DO is run guns. The drug war in the US and Mexico is financed by US citizens through drug sales and small arms sales from “legitimate” gun dealers. I think the National Rifle Association and especially Pratt’s Gun Owners of America are just thin-skinned fronts for international gunrunners and the international drug dealers that benefit from gunrunning.

White House says no to emergency AK-47 regulation

By MARTHA MENDOZA, AP National WriterWed Feb 9, 9:48 pm ET
The White House says tracking the bulk sale of high-powered rifles from border states gunshops which legally sell thousands of assault weapons that end up in Mexico each year is not an emergency, and has rejected a request from the U.S. agency that monitors weapons sales to do so without public review.Instead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives' proposed requirement that firearms dealers near the Mexican border to report multiple purchases of high-powered rifles will undergo a standard, three-month review period, opening it to public comment. 

Pat Sellers is one of our local connections to Larry Pratt:

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 12, 2011

 Larry Pratt and Coatesville's Pat Sellers

 You might remember Pat Sellers for his “Referendum” designed to protect the “Saha Farm” from eminent domain and as a rigorous campaigner for the infamous “Bloc of Four” Coatesville City Council. Pat Sellers allegedly has a connection to Larry Pratt.

It’s easy to buy a Chinese AK-47 in an American gun shop for about $400.00 and then buy aftermarket products to modify it to fully automatic with a 30 round magazine, flash suppressor, bayonet mount, grenade launcher and night fighting sights. I wonder how many of them are stored on the properties of our local extremists. 

Some other local connections to Larry Pratt are Colin Hanna and the Valley Forge Patriots, Let Freedom Ring, and the Coalition for Advancing Freedom; all of them Christian Nationalist pro-militia groups all of them here in Chester County. Larry Pratt’s followers are not just into alleged gunrunning, there are also right wing extremists among them that could turn into violent domestic terrorists. I believe that Sellers and Hanna and the groups they feed need to be watched, not for what they do but what their followers may decide to do.

Also see:

Organized Crime: The World's Largest Social Network ·         By Patrick Di Justo, Adam Rogers, and Allison Davis  ·         January 31, 2011  |  

Coatesville RDA February 22, 2010 Velodrome-Hotel

John Pawlowski had a question concerning surveyor’s flags at the Marriott Courtyard Coatesville Hotel site.
 

RDA Hotel construction comments.mp3

Rob Barry gave a brief update: “I received an email today from Pulver Group. They are out on site. As you probably noticed there is a job trailer on the site. There will be a second one coming, hopefully on Thursday. The steel is being delivered to the site to begin construction of the hotel project. The concrete subcontractor is scheduled to begin work tomorrow.”

John Pawlowski suggested that: …we contact the Daily Local News and ask that we can have a photographer here as some of that steel is being delivered. This is a monumental thing for Coatesville.” 

Coatesville RDA Executive Director Rob Barry explains the Community and Redevelopment Grant Sub-recipient Agreement for additional studies for the Flats property.

RDA CED grant for flats additional studies.mp3

There was a discussion and vote for a cooperation agreement with ArcelorMittal Coatesville for the Brandywine Dam for repair or to get grant money for the removal of the dam. I noted that the dam is a liability for City of Coatesville because “Those low head dams, they kill people on a fairly regular basis.”

RDA CED grant for flats additional studies.mp3

RDA Chair Joe DiSciullo:  “Three items related to the Velodrome are being taken off the agenda because there are additional changes and modifications to that agreement being worked on and it was not ready for tonight. So we’re going to extend their option to buy until March and by then we should have something. Our next meeting is March 21^st .  Watch the paper we may have a meeting between now and then, hopefully there will be another special meeting called before that and then we’ll proceed with some of the items we had deleted from our agenda.”

National Velodrome ext.mp3

Vincent Love RIP

Vincent Love’s death may resonate loud and far in Chester County. He had a very wide circle of friends.  

Coatesville man shot and killed

Saturday, February 26, 2011

By JIM CALLAHAN
Staff Writer

The Republicans want a world without unions.

I know from my parents what that world is. My father worked in the steel mill 70 hours a week. 12 hours a day 5 days a week and 10 hours on Saturday. Unless he “worked an extra”. Working an extra was a regular 12 hour day, time for dinner, and another 12 hours “extra” and then a regular 12 hour day. That’s doing very dangerous work 36 hours in a row. He sometimes had to work two 36 hour stretches a week. 

My mother worked 12 hours a day in the silk mills after her father died when she was 14 years old. They needed children to get into the small gears in the machines.

The 40 hour work week, vacations, overtime pay, weekends and the American Middle Class are the products of unions.

Wealthy Ultraconservative gangsters like the Charles and David Koch are using Republican Whores like Governor Scotty Walker and former AG Alberto Gonzales’s boy, Chris Christie to eliminate unions and the American Middle Class.

The Republicans are entirely about money and power. They are building a two class society, a gangster ruling class and a poor class; a new kind of Dark Ages. 

Police departments in the United States may have a role to play in the developing democracies of the Middle East.

“A key to a thriving democracy is strong democratic policing that respects human rights, protects minority rights, and combats widespread systemic corruption. The clearest sign of a struggling democracy is a police force that is poorly trained, poorly paid, and often corrupt. Instead of preventing crime, officers are themselves engaged in crime, whether it’s kidnapping of drug dealing of facilitating others who are involved in those illicit trades. These corrupt and ineffective police organizations threaten the very survival of the struggling democracies. Interestingly, many of the government officials and businesspeople of those countries look to the United States for guidance and assistance.”

John F. Timoney from “Beat Cop to Top Cop a Tale of Three Cities” page 315-316

John Timoney, as Chief of the Miami Police Department,  and Mayor Diaz created an "Institute for Democratic Policing within the MPD Police Academy." -"Beat Cop to Top Cop"

INTERNATIONAL POLICING INSTITUTE
For years, police departments in the Latin America and the Caribbean region have sought assistance from the Miami Police Department to develop partnerships and facilitate training of their personnel in modern crime fighting techniques. They have also welcomed our expertise in responding to threats and emergencies that might arise in their communities. The International Policing Institute will provide police managers with the necessary training, in theory and practice, in various law enforcement concepts. The department’s subject-matter experts, many fluent in Spanish and Creole, are eager to teach their counterparts abroad with the objective that upon completion of their training program, they will be able to impart their new knowledge to officers under their supervision in their respective countries and revise policies and procedures to reflect their lessons learned. HARVARD UNIVERSITY John Timoney Fall 2010 Resident Fellow

Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) on Congressman Joe Pitts anti-woman amendment

Rep. Moore Tells Anti-Choice GOP Where to Shove Black Genocide Lie

Organized crime and Wall Street-Or maybe it’s organized crime mimicking the big time criminals on Wall Street

From the Las Vegas Sun:

 AG: 200 companies under investigation for mortgage fraud

By Cy Ryan (contact)

Monday, Feb. 21, 2011 | 11:12 a.m.

“Masto said that while investigating these mortgage cases, authorities have uncovered other illegal activities in some cases, such as links to child pornography, fake Social Security cards and in one case and individual on the United Kingdom’s mafia top 10 wanted list.

‘In one case there was a blood diamond exchange … a diamond from Africa,’ Masto said.”

What I wrote in 2009:

sUNDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Long live the Regan Revolution! The one that inspired Nicky Scarfo and Oleg Deripaska.

Whether it is Sicilian, Russian or Mumbai Indian; organized crime knows a good way of making (stealing)money when it sees it. 

Salvatore Pelullo and Nicodemo S. Scarfo and associates were attracted by the new thing called “investment banking” and mortgage derivatives. 

The Phoenixville "Flats" site-"Steel Site Parcel"

Lifting the Curse: DeMutis Group Hopes to Develop Steel Site Parcel

Dormant for decades, the parcel features 400 linear feet on the 100 block of Bridge Street.

By Lynn Jusinski | 

VELODROME NIGHT AT COATESVILLE RDA MEETING ON TUESDAY

"Coatesville auditor mailing inquiries"-It’s a sleeper

This seems like a routine sort of request but it’s a sleeper that will wake up if most of the unpaid bills turn out to be paid.

A lot of people who are getting these letters paid their bills and if they were in cash may have kept a receipt. The next question to ask is; if the bills were paid and the city has no record of payment, where did the money go?

Coatesville auditor mailing inquiries

Published: Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Unenforceable laws?

Parking tickets and code violations are already ignored by a few connected people, but they mostly are paid.  Coatesville Police can’t handle extra duty serving warrants.  There are outstanding warrants in Coatesville for more serious crimes.  So are we stuck with unenforceable laws until we have a mechanism for municipalities to use State Constables? Does anybody know how to do it?

County changes warrant collection system

I believe Judge MacElree, consulting with no one, made a thoughtless decision that if not quickly rescinded could have disastrous consequences for the entire County. I wonder how the Republican Party will spin this one.

Building up in cities makes the preservation of countryside and history possible.

Building up in cities makes the preservation of countryside and history possible.

Our Chester County Planning Commission has correctly theorized in Landscapes that to preserve our countryside, we need to build and develop in our existing municipalities.

Coatesville has about 12,000 residents. It once had 20,000. That’s because a family of 4 was average, now about 1.5 is average. But the infrastructure is in place to support 20,000 residents.

Right now Coatesville has the best real estate bargains in Chester County. That’s going to change rapidly. Coatesville is on the way to becoming the most desirable place to live in Chester County. Real Estate companies are already trying to buy up properties near the future SEPTA train station at 3^rd Avenue and Fleetwood Street.

I think we can get to or top 20,000 residents with our current 6 or 7 story height limit to residential buildings and avoid gentrification. But if development pressure continues because more people want to live here we are going to need skyscrapers to keep Coatesville from becoming an upper class/upper middle class only place to live. (The "Flats" zoning overlay allows unlimited building height.) 

Skyscrapers are expensive to build but height has its own economies of scale. And most importantly, although skyscraper condos and offices may have high prices they keep the rest of a desirable area more affordable.

Ideally cities are places to live, work and play where people from all backgrounds can interact.  A cosmopolitan city is the ideal but building height regulations and making areas “historic” as a means to limit development can make a city exclusive to the wealthy.   That’s what I got out of this article in “The Atlantic”:

How Skyscrapers Can Save the City

Besides making cities more affordable and architecturally interesting, tall buildings are greener than sprawl, and they foster social capital and creativity. Yet some urban planners and preservationists seem to have a misplaced fear of heights that yields damaging restrictions on how tall a building can be. From New York to Paris to Mumbai, there’s a powerful case for building up, not out.

By EDWARD GLAESER

AGENDA CITY OF COATESVILLE CITY COUNCIL MEETING Monday, February 14, 2011

Unless Democrats step up West Chester is getting an extremist dominated school board.

The comments to the Daily Local News article are from normal people. A political article normally like this one usually has comments from extremist elements. I guess the comments from normal people might be a sign that people have noticed the Chester County Republican Party’s shift to the Extreme Right.

GOP committee passes on West Chester Area's school board president

Snakes and Worms-Dictators and Corporations/Organized Crime

The Tunisian & Egyptian revolutions were brought about by revelations on the WikiLeaks cable leaks.

The information spread on Twitter and Facebook on the World Wide Web on desktop, notebook and cell phone networked computers. 

News from the street was seen by millions of people worldwide in real time.

Information is power. When secrets are on electronic media they can be accessed worldwide by millions of people. It’s nearly impossible for governments to operate in total secrecy.

Dictatorships will soon be a relic of the past. Dictatorships are by their nature top down organizations.  Once the snakes head is cut off the snake is dead.

On the other hand corporations/organized crime are now utilizing digital communication for drop shipping packages and transferring funds. Corporations and organized crime can operate bottom up and top down. Corporations/organized crime are like worms; cut them anywhere and they grow back.

There was always a thin line between organized crime and legal corporations. You only have to go back to the “Robber Baron” days of the 19^th and 20^th Centuries to see it.

Electronic money laundering is a universal part of international banking. “Too big to fail” international bankers continue to operate worldwide Ponzi schemes that will need to be bailed out again in a decade or so.

Legal corporations and organized crime operate in an international grey area free and independent of the laws of any one nation. It’s not that the scales of justice are tipped in favor of corporations/organized crime, the scale is in a landfill.

Oppressive governments are no longer the real danger to a free society. The real threats to a free society are from corporations/organized crime.

US embassy leaks: 'The data deluge is coming ...'

WIRED Organized Crime the world’s largest social network

Check out Matt Bakers post concerning the new RDA Executive Director

Coatesville Redevelopment Authority names new executive director – A couple of clarifications

Posted on February 10, 2011 by MattBaker

Single Payer Health Care in Vermont

Gov. Peter Shumlin: The man who'd bring single-payer health care to Vermont

By Ezra Klein

"Peter Shumlin, the newly elected governor of Vermont, has a plan for health-care reform: Rather than repeal it, he wants to supercharge it. His state will set up an exchange, and then, as soon as possible, apply for a waiver that allows it to turn the program into a single-payer system. You can read a summary of the plan here (Word file). I spoke with Shumlin this morning, and a lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows."

MORE HERE:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2011/02/gov_peter_shumlin_the_man_whod.html

After a career saving lives, politicians want to take away Police and Firefighter’s life savings.

Beef-n-Beer fundraiser for Dowds Family

Real CSI Coroners as professional politicians

Our Chester County Coroner is elected and is a family practice physician. The last one was a cardiologist. I think we should only have qualified forensic pathologists. That would probably exclude the Coroner's office from elections and involve a search for qualified pathologists as employees of the County.

Is the position of Chester County Coroner just a political plum? If so why would a medical doctor soil his reputation by running for Coroner?

The Real CSI: How America's Patchwork System of Death Investigations Puts The Living At Risk

Organized Crime: The World's Largest Social Network

The WIRED MAGAZINE issue about organized crime is now on the WIRED website. It's the magazine that I referred to in this post:

NATIONAL DISGRACE: We fully fund both sides of an all out war between Mexican drug cartels and the Mexican government

You can find the statistics and articles but the graphic way organized crime is presented in this WIRED MAGAZINE brings a new level of understanding. 

Organized Crime: The World's Largest Social Network

By Dunkin Jones  January 31, 2011  |  12:00 pm  |  Wired February 201

Also see WIRED MAGAZINE:

THE UNDERWORLD EXPOSED