90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, April 16, 2015

In 1947 Alex “Shoney” Schoenbaum opened the Parkette Drive-In next to his father’s bowling alley in Charleston, West Virginia. Schoenbaum became a Big Boy franchisee on February 7, 1952, now calling his several locations the Parkette Big Boy Shoppes.[1][2] In May 1954 a public "Name the Parkette Big Boy Contest" was announced and in June 1954 Schoenbaum's five Parkette Drive Ins were rebranded as Shoney's.

Shoney's [the Parkette] was originally the Big Boy franchisee for West Virginia; however, Schoenbaum rapidly grew the Shoney's chain through subfranchising, expanding his Big Boy territory through the southeastern United States, excluding Florida only because the rights already belonged to fellow Big Boy franchisee Frisch's.

Schoenbaum's earliest subfranchisees operated under their own name. In 1955...

The 4th amendment is supposed to protect us from Government snooping into our private transactions and we are supposed to have access to what happens in Government.
The opposite is what happens now. This is Tyranny.

The Jackass Is Going Up The Hill!

Empowerment Series: Women With Weapons #53

Each day, #BringBackOurGirls campaigners wearing their trademark red gather at Unity Fountain in Nigeria's capital city of Abuja.

"Solidarity forever, solidarity forever, we shall always fight for our girls," they chant. "All we are saying is bring back our girls now and alive!"

They're trying to keep up the momentum in the hopes of finding more than 200 missing Nigerian schoolgirls, who were abducted in the remote northeastern town of Chibok last April — and many others who have been kidnapped before and since then.

There have been dozens of reported sightings of the missing girls and even statements by the military that they had been rescued at one point. There was also an official announcement that a deal had been struck with the extremist group Boko Haram that abducted the girls. These have raised and dashed the hopes of the girls' brokenhearted families.

It has now been a year since the schoolgirls, who were preparing for exams, were spirited away in the middle of the night. A few managed to escape as they...

SAN FRANCISCO—Wealthy liberals from across the country discussed strategy and finances this Sunday during the Democracy Alliance’s biennial donor confab, where the number of supported groups grew by more than a dozen and funding targets grew by tens of millions of dollars above previous years.

The contrasts are stark at this week’s meeting of the nation’s foremost liberal donor club. Flashy sports cars ferry climate crusaders to a luxury hotel, a private security company shields prying eyes from speeches on political accountability, and billionaire Democratic donors denounce money in politics.

The Alliance is a hub of liberal and Democratic fundraising. It steers tens of millions of dollars each year to leading political and policy groups strategically vetted and endorsed by its staff of progressive operatives.

“If there was an attack on this building, the Democratic donor base would be gone,” joked investor Joe Sanberg. “There are probably a lot of...

The New York branch of the U.S. Federal Reserve, wary that a natural disaster or other eventuality could shut down its market operations as it approaches an interest rate hike, has added staff and bulked up its satellite office in Chicago.

Some market technicians have transferred from New York and others were hired at the office housed in the Chicago Fed, according to several people familiar with the build-out that began about two years ago, after Hurricane Sandy struck Manhattan.

Officials believe the Chicago staffers can now handle all of the market operations that are done daily out of the New York Fed, which is the U.S. central bank’s main conduit to Wall Street.
The satellite office in the Midwest readies the New York Fed for perhaps the most delicate U.S. interest-rate hike ever. With rates having been near zero for more than six years, and markets flooded with reserves, the Fed will rely on...