For Wal-Mart, the Best of Times; for Kmart, the Worst!

“It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” -- 

“A Tale of Two Cities,” Charles Dickens

For Rock Island’s Kmart, it was the worst of times. On July 31, that city’s Kmart will close its doors. The 84,000 square foot business, which has served the people of Rock Island since 1976, is being closed by its parent company:

“Today’s announcement follows a comprehensive evaluation ... that took into account historical and recent store performance, and the time of lease expiration.”


Rock Island Mayor Dennis Pauley is quoted as saying, “The city didn’t see the closure coming.” Perhaps not. Perhaps the city was too busy trying to package additional incentives to induce Wal-Mart to locate on the former Watch Tower Plaza site.

For Wal-Mart, it’s the best of times. For a $4.5 million purchase price, Wal-Mart expects to acquire land recently purchased and cleared by the city at a cost of 15 million taxpayer dollars!

In addition, by a May 9th deadline (now extended), under its agreement with Wal-Mart, the city was to secure a series of incentives for the development, including property tax rebates with the city and the Rock Island/Milan School District, investment tax credits, a retail sales tax waiver and a job tax credit.

The city, for its investment, “expects to recoup $1.4 million annually in estimated sales tax, along with adding 400 new jobs to the city.”

While it went unsaid in The Dispatch’s April 22 account of the July 31st Kmart closing, it is fair to ask why the mayor and council couldn’t see this coming.

Didn’t Kmart’s parent company earlier announce that 68 Kmarts and 10 Sears stores would be closed this summer? Couldn’t city officials see that if a gleaming new Wal-Mart were situated just down the road from a struggling Kmart, the Rock Island Kmart would be one of the 68 stores closed? If the Kmart (38th Avenue – 46th Street), was experiencing weak profitability, would building a shiny new Wal-Mart just down the road signal Kmart’s death knell? Did they care?

RI is making an $11.5 million “gift” of land to Wal-Mart. “Gift,” because RI is “selling” land that it acquired and prepared at a cost of $15 million to Wal-Mart for $4.5 million.

Kmart served the community faithfully for 40 years. What has the city given Kmart to induce it to keep its doors open? To keep providing jobs? To keep providing sales tax revenue to the city?

Has Kmart been offered property tax rebates with the city and the Rock Island/Milan School District? Investment tax credits? A retail sales tax waiver, or a job tax credit?


If not, how is Kmart supposed to compete with the new Wal-Mart? Why is it good policy to offer incentives to attract a new business, while offering zilch to assist a business that has been important to RI and paid taxes for the last 40 years?

“Crony capitalism” is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism.

What’s going on in RI seems to fit that definition. Even without a single additional “incentive,” Rock Island has already offered Wal-Mart $11.5 million to come to the city.

If Wal-mart says, “No,” will RI then offer Kmart the same $11.5 million to stay?

As Kmart management watches RI’s mating dance with Wal-mart, how do the Kmart execs feel? The price of every item sold at Kmart reflects all the taxes Kmart pays. How can the retailer keep its prices competitive with a Wal-Mart which gets tax rebates, credits and waivers?

With crony capitalism it is the best of time for Business “W,” while being the worst of times for Business “K.”

Crony capitalism means that government picks the winners and the losers. In RI, Wal-Mart is the chosen winner; Kmart, the loser.

Posted, May 19, 2016. QCOnline.com

Copyright 2016, John Donald O'Shea

Why Emptying Prisons Will Empty Pockets

Every few months, there is a call in Illinois to reduce criminal penalties for what advocates label nonviolent felonies, non-serious crimes, minor drug offenses, etc.

California's Proposition 47 was passed to do precisely that. Californians for Safety and Justice members were ecstatic. Crimes, such as "simple drug possession, or property crimes involving less than $950, such as theft, shoplifting, burglary to a motor vehicle, writing bad checks, or receiving stolen property, are now misdemeanors.

Misdemeanors carry jail time of one year or less.

Additionally, California felons previously convicted of those offenses are now eligible to have their felony sentences reduced to misdemeanors, unless they have a prior conviction for murder, rape or child molestation, etc.

Emptying and closing prisons, was ballyhooed. It would save California up to $200 million a year. Sadly, there seem to be a number of unintended consequences.

The Los Angels Times quotes of new member of the "misdemeanor class," Semis Sina, who has gone into the business of stealing bicycles (16 arrests!) to support his meth habit:

"Now, you can get away with it because of Proposition 47!

"It's cool ... I can go do a [commercial] burglary and know that if it's not over $900, they'll just give me a ticket and let me go."

After a May 7, 2015 arrest, Sina spent two months behind bars. Released on July 9, he immediately returned to work. On July 31, he pleaded guilty to stealing a bicycle at a shopping mall. A judge sentenced him to nine months behind bars.

Four months later, he was released from jail to finish his sentence in a work program.

Sina has been sentenced to drug rehab five times in 2015; he has not reported for a single session. "I know it's up to me to change. I wasn't ready. I probably still am not."

Sina personifies the principle: without the threat of a felony conviction and serious prison time, fewer California drug offenders are enrolling in court-ordered treatment. Why? Because there is no hammer to force meth, cocaine and heroin addicts to enter and complete treatment.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Terry Smerling states that judges have long used the threat of a significant time behind bars to encourage offenders to enroll. With the passage of Prop 47, many drug offenders have declined to enroll, preferring a short stint in jail to the longer treatment program. Across Los Angeles County, enrollment in specialized drug court programs has plummeted by 50 percent.

The fact is that repeat offenders, like Sina, make it their profession to break the law; they have no fear of the consequences. So, while the state saves money releasing prisoners, the cost of their continuing criminal activity is shifted to the law-abiding citizens of California -- its storekeepers, auto owners, bike owners. Since the passage of Prop 47, LAPD has reported a double-digit increase in property crimes.

The March 18 San Francisco Chronicle reports the FBI states that San Francisco is "the city with the highest increase in property crime rates in the U.S."

In San Francisco, increased crime rates, for the first six months of 2015, cost the public more than $120 million. In Los Angeles, County, more than $250 million.

"In truth, Prop 47 and the other reckless experiments in criminal justice reform such as prison realignment, merely shifted the cost from society at large -- which funds the criminal justice system -- to individual victims." (sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/An-explosion-of-California-property-crimes-6922062.php)

California was already an advanced practitioner of social justice and income redistribution. Prop 47 has, in effect, eliminated the need for the state to act as a middleman. The state itself no longer needs to tax and redistribute. The new misdemeanants are now redistributing directly to themselves any property they covet.

If you are foolish enough to leave your golf clubs valued at less than $950 in your car, expect them to be stolen. If you’re a store-owner, it's help-yourself-time for shoplifters.

To avoid being robbed blind, you must ensure that every item you offer for sale, is marked $951 or more!

Posted: May 7, 2016. QCOnline.com

Copyright 2016, 

John Donald O'Shea

Drug Cartels Wouldn't Exist Without Recreational Pot Users

In Illinois, any person who knowingly manufactures, delivers, or possesses with intent to deliver any substance containing cannabis commits either a misdemeanor or a felony. (Referred to below as “delivery”.)

Delivery of not more than 2.5 grams is a class B misdemeanor. More than 2.5 but less than 10 grams is a class A misdemeanor.

Delivery  of more than 10 but not more than 30 grams is a class 4 felony. More than 30 but not more than 500 grams is a class 3 felony. More than 500 but not more than 2,000 grams is a class 2 felony. More than 2,000 but not more than 5,000 grams is a class 1 felony. More than 5,000 is a class X felony. (6-30 years mandatory).

A class B misdemeanor carries imprisonment up to 6 months and/or a fine up to $1,500. A class A misdemeanor, up to one year and/or a fine up to $2,500. But jail time is not mandatory; both offenses are probationable. And if jailed, a 30 day sentence, with routine day-for-day credit, means just 15 days.

In Illinois, it is also “unlawful for any person knowingly to possess cannabis.” Possessing not more that 2.5 grams is a class C misdemeanor (maximum imprisonment -- 30 days). Possessing more than 2.5 but not more than 10 grams is a Class B misdemeanor. Possessing more than 10 but not more than 30 grams is a Class A, but a subsequent offense is a Class 4 felony.

Recently, the Illinois Senate voted to decriminalize “minor marijuana possession,” “replacing the concept of incarceration with a monetary slap on the wrist,” according to High Times. “Under the new legislation, anyone caught possessing 10 grams of marijuana or less would be issued a ticket with a fine of somewhere between $100-$200.”

Common arguments in favor of decriminalization run as follows:

-- Illinois spends way too much money imposing costly criminal penalties on people who are found in possession of a personal amount of marijuana;

-- Serious penalties should be reserved for people who commit serious crimes; not used to punish marijuana consumers;

-- Nobody should face a life-long criminal record simply for possessing a substance that is “less harmful than alcohol.”

I suggest those arguments fail to look at the entire picture. It is crucial  to inquire as to the source of the pot. If it’s home-grown, that’s one thing. If it’s drug cartel pot, that’s an entirely different thing. For purposes hereof, assume that it’s Mexican drug cartel pot.

Mexican drug cartels would cease to exist if nobody smoked pot. There would no point in paying mules to deliver cannabis from Mexico to the Quad-Cities, if nobody bought/used it once it arrived here. Without users, including “recreational users,” small street-corner dealers would have no customers -- no business. And if the small dealers  have no business, the larger dealers up the chain, including the Mexican cartel bosses, would have no business -- no motive to sell pot.

It is small street-corner sales that keep the cartels in business, and with them, the drug violence.

Fox News Latino recently headlined is “Cartel drug war erupts in Acapulco; Gunmen attack police headquarters, hotel.”

On April 24, the Wall Street Journal headlined, “Texas Murder Trial to Shed Light on Mexican Drug Cartels -- Authorities charge men with killing lawyer in 2013; allege wide-ranging criminal operation in U.S.”

On April 17,  Reuters wrote, “Mexico Drug-Related Murder Rate -- From 2006 to 2010, for every 100,000 people living in Mexico, an average of nearly 31 were murdered in drug-related killing.” (reuters.com/subjects/mexico-drug-war.

So is purchasing 10 grams of cannabis from your friendly street-corner dealer really just a harmless recreational thing? No worse than liquor?

Hardly!  Not if it’s purchased from a dealer who purchased it -- directly or indirectly -- from a Mexican drug cartel.

So is it fair to say the our “poor little recreational user,” who purchases Mexican drug cartel pot, is morally complicity in the murderous violence of the cartel? I think so. Without users, the cartels would lack their reason for being.


Posted April 1, 2016, QCOnline.com

Copyright 2016
John Donald O'Shea