Rats Are the Tip of the Iceberg

By Rich Kozlovich 

My regular readers know I was an exterminator for over 40 years, and owned my own company. The pest control industry, just like the rest of the world, without really paying attention to what's going on has been going woke, slowly but inexorably.  We're now Pest Management Professionals, Entomological Consultants, and Environmental Specialists, many embracing and specializing in Integrated Pest Management or Green Pest Control, which is a lot of hooey.  

But Mike Royko, the legendary Chicago journalist,  wasn’t impressed with anyone’s image of professionalism unless they “kilt” the bugs saying:

“I preferred exterminators because that was specific. Pest control could mean anything from a school teacher to a tavern bouncer.” 

On April 22, 2024 Milt Harris published this piece Politicians Are Not The Only Dangerous Rats In New York City saying:

We can only pray that in future elections, the memory of these deliberately deceitful and politically motivated money dumps will be remembered, and more responsible people will be elected.

Well Milt, while I think everyone agrees, I also think that's a prayer that's going to be wasted as this is New York City, and it's a mess that can't be fixed. His article deals with the massive rat infestation that has always .....always ..... plagued NYC, and every major city in the world.  The sewer systems are nutrient rich environments, and the sewers give them totally unrestricted access to every street and every building in these cities, and so what did NYC do to fix this?  They banned rodenticides.  

The National Pest Management Association has an annual Legislative Day in Washington D.C. and I went the year after the city passed a ban on rodenticides and guess what.   There were rodent burrows in the lawns everywhere.  Imagine that.  

Well, now NYC is facing a public health issue, and we need to outline a bit of history and reality.   The bubonic plague.  We have plague cases every year in the United States, and if diagnosed correctly and quickly, it can be treated effectively.  If not, people suffer, or even die.  But that's not the biggest concern.  There's a genetic difference between the form of plague the world is now experiencing and the Black Death, which is far more virulent.  Harris writes:

In October 1347, the second pandemic, also known as the Black Death, arrived in Messina, Sicily. It is believed to have spread from Central Asia through fleas on rats that were on board Genoese ships. This caused a rapid and widespread wave of plague infections that swept across most of Europe like wildfire.

Rats carry diseases, and fleas!  Fleas transmit those diseases such as typhus.  In 2018 it was reported there were "57 cases of flea-borne typhus in Los Angeles County.... nine cases of flea-borne typhus associated with downtown Los Angeles, and six of those cases were in people experiencing homelessness."

All these anti-pesticide initiatives come at a cost, and that cost is in human life.  

Multiply that with the vast amount homelessness in these major cities, combined with mass unrestricted immigration the Biden administration is imposing on the nation, many of whom are bringing diseases with them, and we're going to see very real pandemics, not like the false covid pandemic which had a 99.7% recover rate.   As Kelli Ballard reported:

Diseases that had been eradicated in the US  are going through shelters and into neighborhoods once again.  The swarms of migrants flooding into the US are bringing much more than just financial problems and a rise in crime. They’re also causing a resurgence in diseases that America has mostly eradicated. Sanctuary cities are reporting outbreaks of measles and tuberculosis among the undocumented in shelter facilities and schools, where illegal immigrant children are not required to be vaccinated. Some officials are concerned that this is only the beginning..... 

As of April 5, there have been 57 confirmed cases of measles since March, Newsweek reported. “The majority of cases have been linked to the city’s largest migrant shelter in the Pilsen neighborhood.” The Chicago Department of Public Health (CDPH) said there are plans to give second doses of the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine to affected shelters and that of the 57 cases, 33 are children under five years old.

In Chicago they're now seeing cases of TB.  Understand this.  In the rest of the world they face a more virulent and vaccine resistant variety of TB, and I have no doubt that's the form they're facing now. 

In New York, TB and measles aren’t the only diseases to worry about. Polio is popping up, as well. The last confirmed case, prior to last summer, was in 1990. Commissioner Ashwin Vasan said only about 50% of migrants arriving in the Big Apple are vaccinated, but when it comes to polio, the vaccination isn’t the only concern, it’s how they received it.   In the US, polio vaccines are injections, but a lot of other countries use an oral vaccine that has the live virus and can be spread through feces into the sewer system.

 “When we see one case of paralytic polio, that means there are probably hundreds and hundreds of cases that are out there in the community but not diagnosed, because 75% of the cases are asymptomatic”...... In the Big Apple, the TB rate is 6.1 cases per 100,000 and is more than double the national rate, detailed The Post. “Close to nine out of 10 (88%) of these TB cases are people born outside the United States.”.....We have open borders with all sorts of people coming in from countries from all over the world bringing in various illnesses, viruses, disease and bacterial infections.”

We need to stop being stupid and recognize all these leftist agendas are abject failures, unless of course the goal is to eliminate 7.5 billion people in the world.  If that's the goal, then they're right on track.  

Democrats Want to Save the Rats

Los Angeles isn’t the city of angels: it’s the city of rats. 

By Daniel Greenfield  @ Sultan Knish Blog 

 Last year, LA shot up in the rankings of the “rattiest cities” from third to second place, and it’s closing in fast on Chicago. What is its secret? There is the fetid filth of the junkie vagrant camps where typhus, a medieval disease spread by rats, made a comeback almost as fast as crime once city officials legalized the ‘homeless’ trifecta of street living, drug use and shoplifting.

And like criminals and junkies, the rats have Democrats on their side.

In the fall of last year, Gov. Newsom signed into law a bill that banned more forms of rat poison after a previous rat poison ban in 2020. Newsom and other advocates for taking Los Angeles back to the rats pretended that the rat poison bans were about protecting mountain lions, but then two California Democrats put forward a bill that exposed the real ‘rats rights’ agenda.

Rep Ted Lieu of LA and Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank introduced the Glue Trap Prohibition Act which bans glue traps because they’re cruel to rats. It’s understandable that Lieu and Schiff would feel for the suffering of their fellow rattus americanus and Lieu moans that glue traps are “among the cruelest ways to eliminate rodents”. (The least cruel is electing them to Congress.)

Rep. Lieu serves on the advisory council of Democrats for the Protection of Animals which campaigns against eating turkeys on Thanksgiving, pony rides for children and glue traps for rats. So expect a congressional bill on banning turkey sandwiches and pony rides up next.

Rep. Lieu agonizes that rats in glue traps “that do not escape die of blood loss, suffocation, or dehydration.” He didn’t bother listing the symptoms of hantavirus, for which there is no known cure, typhus or the bubonic plague: among the rat borne diseases making a comeback.

But while Rep. Lieu cares about the suffering of rats, he doesn’t care about human suffering.

It’s already illegal in California to remove rats from your property. If you trap a rat, you either have to “euthanize” it on the spot or let it go. And rats rights activists are campaigning to expand the ban on ‘trapping’ larger animals like coyotes to also apply to rats which, between the bans on effective varieties of rat poisons and glue traps, would make it impossible to stop the rats.

West Hollywood, an LA County “city” of 16 blocks at its tallest and 5 blocks at its shortest, where PETA has a great deal of influence, led the way in banning glue traps within the 5 supermarkets in its borders forcing residents to drive 3 minutes extra to the Ralphs on Sunset Boulevard, and what goes in West Hollywood must now also be imposed on all of America by Rep. Lieu.

Rather than kindness to animals, LA’s love of rats began killing man’s best friend. Ever since Los Angeles began cracking down on rat control measures, dogs began sickening. Leptospirosis, one of the diseases spread through the waste of Rep. Lieu’s best rat friends, caused an epidemic among dogs in the county.

“It’s the rats,” Dr. Alan Schulman, a veterinary surgeon, explained. “They urinate places, they defecate places, dogs get it from them.”

Given a choice between protecting rats and killing dogs, Democrats killed the dogs.

But in New York City, Democrats went one better, killing people to protect rats.

In 2021, former ACORN boss Bertha Lewis pushed through a ban on rat poison. Leptospirosis cases jumped from 57 in 14 years to 15 in just one year. Over a dozen New Yorkers contracted leptospirosis and suffered from liver and kidney failure. One of them died. The symptoms of include fever, aches, and jaundice. Even those who survive can end up with brain damage.

But at least New York City Democrats had banned cruelty to rats and killed people and dogs.

Rather than end the ban on rat poison, Mayor Eric Adams appointed a Department of Education bureaucrat “rat czar” at a salary of $155,000 a year.

“Rats are smart, they are resilient,” Mayor Adams argued. “Many of us live in communities where rats think they run the city.”

Since the rat poison ban remains in place, rats actually do run the city. When people suffer and die for the convenience of rats, it’s not a human government, it’s a government of rats.

The New York Post warned that, “rats as big as bunnies are roaming the streets in broad daylight, nesting in trees and chewing through car engine wires”

Mayor Bill de Blasio, his predecessor, had tried to demonstrate that there was no need for rat poison by dumping dry ice on rat nests, only to have a rat run right through his demonstration. $30 million was spent when thousands of dollars spent on rat poison would have done the job.

Without rat poison or traps, state and city governments dump the burden on property owners to practice what they call “prevention and exclusion” by sealing everything. But as everyone who has dealt with rats knows, they’re smart and, like leftists, can sneak in through the smallest crack and, also like leftists, once they get inside, it takes determined efforts to get rid of them.

Especially if, like leftists, you can’t put out a glue trap with a copy of Das Kapital, then release them in their natural habitat of Cuba or North Korea, and count the problem over and done with.

From New York City to Los Angeles to Vancouver to San Francisco, rat poison bans led to explosions in the rat population. And the Democrats pretended they had nothing to do with it.

Democrats have been running out of victim groups to protect, and they were bound to eventually turn to rats. Not only can’t you spell ‘Democrats’ without “rats’, but the rattiest cities in America are Democrat enclaves. Now the Democrats and the rats are finally teaming up.

So far no Democrat has figured out how to get them to vote, but give them time.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation. Thank you for reading.

They Said Rat Poison Was Racist. Now New Yorkers Are Dying of Rat Diseases

Daniel Greenfield  October 31, 2021 @ Sultan Knish Blog

On Earth Day, New York City’s leftist environmentalists succeeded in pushing through a ban on rat poison. The ban on efforts to fight rat infestations in city parks was championed by The Black Institute, founded by former ACORN boss Bertha Lewis, claiming that rat poison was racist.

Over a dozen New Yorkers contracted leptospirosis and are suffering from liver and kidney failure. One of them is already dead. The symptoms of leptospirosis include fever, aches, and jaundice. Even those who survive can end up with brain damage.

In the last 14 years, there were only 57 cases in the Big Apple. Now there’s 15 in one year.

While leptospirosis is common in the third world, it's rare in the United States and was mostly seen in rural areas among farmers who work with livestock. That's because leptospirosis is spread through contact with animal urine and we don't live in cities infested with vermin.

Or at least we didn't until the Democrats and their radical environmental lobby got its way.

The takeover of the Democrats by radical activists backed by billionaire leftist foundations means that major blue cities are now governed by every lunatic leftist idea under the sun from critical race theory to the denial of the existence of women to allowing the rats to thrive.

Baltimore, one of the few major cities with a leptospirosis outbreak back in the 90s, has a notorious rat problem, but despite that decided to ban some rat poisons. Democrats were outraged when President Trump condemned Charm City's rat problem when they should have been outraged that the city not only has a severe rat problem, but that they’re making it worse.

California's Governor Newsom signed a rat poison ban last year even though the state's rat problem had already led to the spread of typhus, a medieval disease, through rats. Now Los Angeles vets are warning about the rise of the "rare" leptospirosis disease in local dogs.

Once the dogs pick it up, it's a lot easier for their owners to get it too.

The story notes that leptospirosis is a “bacterial disease associated with the waste from rats; it is usually seen in rural areas where rats are more abundant.” But these days rats are running the show in Democrat cities which legalized homelessness and banned rat poison.

While many Democrat cities have a rat crisis, no city has gone as quickly to the rats as NYC.

New York City's rat complaint calls shot up from 16,000 to 29,000 in one month. COVID shutdowns killed the weakest rats but led to the rise of so-called "Mega Rats". Viral videos show rats the size of small dogs frolicking around apartment kitchens and biting small children.

And even climbing on a sleeping man on the subway.

The New York Post warned that, "rats as big as bunnies are roaming the streets in broad daylight, nesting in trees and chewing through car engine wires".

With rats overrunning New York City, the spread of rat urine also spreads leptospirosis.

While Democrats and environmentalists fight to ban modern century rat control technology, New Yorkers are returning to the dark ages and hunting rats with dogs. Amateur rat hunters like the Reynold's Ryders Alley Trencher Fed Society (RATS) use terriers to hunt down and kill rats in Manhattan. While the medieval approach has made for great publicity, using dogs to kill rats just leads to a greater risk of the dogs and potentially their owners contracting leptospirosis.

Chinese and Russian state media however enjoyed regaling their viewers with the spectacle of America’s leading city overrun by rats and reduced to hunting them at night with dogs.

Environmentalism destroys societies and kills people.

Rachel Carson’s crusade against insecticides may have led to millions dying of malaria. The green crusade against rat poison is beginning to claim lives in New York and Los Angeles. Modern sanitation helped stop the insects and rats that spread medieval plagues, but as environmentalists put bugs and rats ahead of people, the diseases are coming back.

Environmentalists claimed that they were banning rat poisons to protect dogs and minorities. But rat urine threatens dogs and the spread of leptospirosis is concentrated in minority areas where residents are being terrorized by the giant rats unleashed by their Democrat rulers.

While Mayor Bill de Blasio's wife Chirlane McCray can't account where $850 million from her mental health program went, his administration cut millions from its rat control budget. His wife's staffers alone account for the $2 million cut from fighting rats. But there is more than one kind of rat and the two-legged kind of leftist Democrat is far worse than even the giant “mega rat”.

After banning rat poison, Democrat city bosses have embraced the environmentalist strategy of controlling the rat population through “prevention”. And in New York City and San Francisco that meant buying solar-powered trash cans. The cans, which cost $7,000 in New York City and $20,000 in San Francisco, won’t solve anything in cities overrun with homeless vagrants.

Prevention strategies penalize homeowners and small businesses while leaving homeless encampments infested with colonies of rats intact. Spending thousands of dollars on solar-powered trash cans won’t make a dent in New York City’s 2 million rats.

If the Democrats want to have giant junkie tent cities covered in trash and human waste, they’re going to have to aggressively fight rats instead of pretending that they can cut off their food supply rats with expensive trash cans. And if they want to ban rat poison and resort to prevention strategies, the first step is cleaning up the homeless tent cities and their waste.

But the Democrats want junkie tent cities and a ban on modern rat control methods. And so the “rare” diseases we used to associate with medieval times or the third world are no longer rare.

The first leptospirosis cluster in New York City claimed three victims in 2017. In 2021, it’s already up to thirteen. Around 10% of the infected develop the serious version of the disease requiring hospitalization and around 10% of those die. That means over a hundred are infected. Worldwide annual death rates for the disease are in the tens of thousands indicating how high the potential for serious infections and deaths can be as our cities become third world hellholes.

But rats don't just carry leptospirosis.

A study of New York City's rats found that they carried a “a vast diversity of microbes that may affect human health" including "Seoul hantavirus, which causes Ebola-like hemorrhagic fever and kidney failure in humans", bacterial pathogens that can cause "life-threatening gastroenteritis", and two novel hepatotropic hepaciviruses which can infect humans with hepatitis.

Rats may “serve as mixing bowls”, some researchers warned, “providing an environment in which pathogens may interact and even exchange genes”. While Americans have sneered at Wuhan’s bat soup, American cities are maintaining horrifying breeding grounds for disease.

While New Yorkers studiously wear face masks and show off vaccination tattoos, the next pandemic may be breeding in their parks, their sewers, their subways, and their kitchens.

Face masks don’t stop rat urine.

Like Rachel Carson’s malaria millions, the next pandemic may be due to the assiduous efforts of environmentalists to cripple our ability to fight disease. Democrats are unleashing a rat explosion in major cities and as the rat populations grow, more people sicken and die.

The “mixing bowls” of rat populations are breeding viruses that exchange genes and become deadlier. The rats will survive them, but humans may not. Today’s pandemic came from China, the next one may come out of New York City or Los Angeles, not out of a lab, but a sewer.

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.

Click here to subscribe to my articles. 

Thank you for reading.

Rats-on-a-stick: Cuba touts 'nutritious' rodent meat as healthy, 'sustainable' food

December 26, 2020 By Monica Showalter

Socialism, it seems, always boils down to being forced to eat some kind of rat.

That was the case in Chile during the early-1970s Salvador Allende period, where my old Chilean college roommate told of seeing canned rat meat imported from Maoist China on store shelves there.

Now it's true in Cuba.

According to a detailed report from Frances Martel, writing in Breitbart News:

In an alleged attempt to promote nutritious eating on Tuesday, a news broadcast on Tele Mayabeque, a Communist Party-approved network, revealed that the Castro regime had organized a meeting with chefs to design meals featuring guinea pig meat. The broadcast also encouraged Cubans to “socialize the experience of raising the guinea pig” by the entire family.

Cuban officials, the reporter explained, sought to promote the alleged health benefits of eating rodents “to incorporate this animal protein to the family table.”

“According to the experts, the average protein content [of guinea pig] is 19 percent, superior to porcine and bovine meat. Its consumption is a clear ally against anemia and malnutrition,” the reporter claimed.

To “elevate the culinary culture” around eating rodents, the report detailed, the government asked a group of Cuban chefs to design new meals around guinea pig as a core protein. One chef noted that they designed 11 dishes, but ran out of time. Ideas left on the cutting room floor included rodent meatballs and hamburgers.

It's barbaric. Guinea pig is not a Cuban food, as Martel notes. Cuban food, now largely unavailable in communist Cuba owing to socialist mismanagement, revolves around pig and cattle. Guinea pig meat is simply cheap rodent being put forth as an alternative to actual Cuban food, which the government can no longer provide.......To Read More....

Democrats Run America’s Rathole Cities

Daniel Greenfield December 02, 2020 @ Sultan Knish Blog

Last year, President Trump called Baltimore a "disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess".

Speaker Pelosi responded by calling Trump’s comments “racist attacks”. Vox claimed that Trump was using “racist tropes” and US News conducted a fact check accusing him of racism.

Now the rat race numbers are in. Orkin, the past control company, ratted out the "rattiest cities" and Baltimore has broken through into the top 10 for the first time. Like a rat clambering after a piece of moldy cheese, Charm City leaped up four places to be America’s 8th rattiest city.

Baltimore has never been able to deny that it’s a rat-infested hellhole. But Democrats and their media are good at deflecting with false accusations of racism and then changing the subject.

"If there are problems here, rodents included, they are as much his responsibility as anyone's, perhaps more because he holds the most powerful office in the land,” the Baltimore Sun had retorted in an editorial after President Trump’s criticism of the terrible conditions in the city.

But there’s one thing that the rattiest cities in America have in common. And it isn’t Trump.

In Chicago, rated as the rattiest city in the country six times in a row, 83% of residents, dead or alive, legal or illegal, human or rat, voted for Hillary. The last time Chicago had a Republican mayor was 1931 and the ratty city has no official Republican members on its city council.

It does however have multiple socialist city council members.

Despite promises by Democrat officials, the city’s rat problem only keeps getting worse.

In May, rat complaints nearly doubled even as officials insisted that there were no more rats.

“It doesn’t mean that there’s a lot more rats. People are seeing them, and they are calling,” Josie Cruz, the Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau of Rodent Control, argued.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel had created the bureau with 120 employees and a $10 million budget.

Cruz has been on this job for at least two decades and tens of thousands of rat complaints keep coming in. Chicago has tried dry ice, spears, and rat birth control. The one thing it hasn’t tried is getting rid of the Democrat rats that have burrowed deep into its municipal government.

The number of rat complaints in Chicago rose from 32,855 in 2014 to 50,963 in 2017. That’s 1,876 complaints for every 100,000 people. And since exterminator folklore has it that there are 10 rats you don’t see for every rat you do see, that means Chicago has half a million rats.

If they just registered to vote, the Democrats would never lose Illinois.

What makes Chicago so much more rat-infested than other cities? The answer lies with a corrupt Democrat system in which trash pickup and rodent removal was controlled by local aldermen who could use it for political patronage. The system was finally abandoned in 2013 but the rats had gotten too much of a head start and have burrowed throughout the city.

But that’s just what happens when a city votes for Democrats. First Democrats, then rats.

Hillary Clinton became the first Democrat to get over 70% of the vote in Los Angeles County. Not coincidentally, Los Angeles is once again in second place as the 2nd most rat infested hellhole in the nation. In New York City, Hillary Clinton won 79% of the vote. It’s unknown if the rats voted, but if they did it was probably as a bloc because the city is 3rd in the rat race.

The rat problem in Los Angeles and New York is easily traceable to its vagrant population.

Democrat politicians had embraced living on the street as a protected and subsidized activity. A typhus outbreak followed in Los Angeles. The disease, which is carried by fleas living on rats, centered around Skid Row, the epicenter of the city’s homeless population. The ban on evicting vagrants or preventing them from covering the streets in filth has been a boot for the rats.

And Los Angeles Democrats even took special steps to protect the rats by banning rat poison.

Like every other quality of life problem, New York City’s rat crisis turned critical under De Blasio.

According to Open the Books, there were 44,850 rat sightings in Brooklyn and 33,553 in Manhattan alone. Despite spending $32 million and a trap that drowns rats in liquor, there’s no end in sight. A 2014 study estimated that there were over 2 million rats in New York City. At the rate at which rats reproduce, there will soon be more rats than Democrats in the Big Apple.

In Washington D.C., the 4th rattiest city in America, Hillary Clinton won 86% of the vote. In San Francisco, the 5th rattiest city, 84% of residents voted for Hillary.

It's only fitting that the rats should be overrunning D.C.

When visiting the Lincoln Memorial before President Trump's inauguration, I saw a rat scurrying up the stairs. Even the Washington Post, the city's official rat paper, has run headlines like, "I saw 13 rats in 20 minutes. D.C., we have a rodent crisis."

Rat complaints in D.C. rose from 2,443 in 2014 to 4,097 in 2019.

Mayor Muriel Bowser responded with rat tours dubbed "Rat Walks". They haven’t helped.

To no one’s surprise, Capitol Hill has the third highest number of rat complaints in D.C.

Meanwhile, San Francisco had legalized public vagrancy, resulting in streets that were covered in human waste. Like Los Angeles, Democrats banned some forms of rat poison making it all but impossible to kill them. Exterminators are so in demand that they have waiting lists.

"Poop. Needles. Rats. Homeless camp pushes SF neighborhood to the edge," the San Francisco Chronicle headlined one story. And then there are San Fran locals like "rat girl" who breeds and releases hundreds of rats in the city.

No wonder, San Fran has as many rats as Democrats.

Detroit is once again the 6th rattiest city in America. Motor City rats are also car enthusiasts and have been known to crawl into cars, chew up the fuel injection system, or nest in the dashboard. One mechanic reported 15 cars damaged by rats in six weeks.

And that might not be the only thing the rats are chewing up.

Too many votes were registered in 37% of Detroit's precincts during the 2016 election, but it wasn't enough to hand Hillary a win in Michigan. This time out there might be more rats.

Philadelphia rose 3 places to become the 7th most rat-infested city in the country.

"They look like cats to me," one resident complained. Another neighborhood described “jumping rats” operating in broad daylight.

82% of Philadelphia residents voted for Hillary Clinton and only 15% for President Trump.

While there isn’t a firm statistical correlation between the number of rats per square mile and the number of votes cast for Democrats, any city infested with rats is also infested with Democrats.

And vice versa.

It’s no coincidence that the most rat-infested cities in the country are also the places where Hillary, and any Democrat with a pulse, will walk away with at least 70% of the vote.

Minneapolis, unsurprisingly, Denver, and Baltimore round out the rest of the top 10. What unites all of them is an unswerving allegiance to the Democrats and a massive rat problem. Of the 20 rattiest cities in America, only two have Republican mayors.

Baltimore does indeed have rats. It also has two kinds of elected Democrat officials: those who have already been convicted of a crime and those who have not. Charm City is unique in the number of city officials who have been arrested and tried for assorted forms of corruption.

As long as someone rats them out.

The Baltimore City Council consists entirely of Democrats. Baltimore's last Democrat mayor won three quarters of the vote. Baltimore's rat problem has been growing with its Democrat problem.

A Baltimore City Health Department report conceded that “the rodent infestation rate in Baltimore is six times the national average.” And, unlike other cities, Baltimore has mostly given up. Rats are the city’s unofficial mascot, showing up on souvenir t-shirts and sweatshirts.

From “Charm City” to The City That Reads” to “The Greatest City in America”, Baltimore has tried out many slogans. But there’s only one that really fits it.

Rat City.

Meanwhile the fallout from Mayor Pugh's arrest, conviction and sentencing on fraud and conspiracy charges, continues to reverberate through the Democrat establishment.

Rat City has many rats, but maybe they aren’t Baltimore’s biggest problem. Democrats are.

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

 

Tags: Baltimore, Democrats, Los Angeles, New York, recent

 

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About Daniel Greenfield
Daniel Greenfield is a journalist investigating Islamic terrorism and the Left. He is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center

 

Save California, Ban Environmentalists

Hold the straws, legalize the rats.

September 9, 2019 Daniel Greenfield 

The 6-foot-tall man dressed as a giant receipt stood on a stool next to the emblem of the State Capitol in Sacramento. He was there because Assemblyman Phil Ting of San Fran wanted to ban receipts............Ting had his aide wear a giant receipt to show how bad receipts were for the environment. And how better to crusade for the environment than by printing up a receipt 100,000 times normal size?

According to Ting’s people, receipts not only wasted trees and water, but were actually toxic. The San Francisco Democrat explained that receipts were coated in chemicals that weren’t allowed in baby bottles. It’s probably a good thing then that receipts don’t go inside baby bottles. Or inside babies...................Perhaps Ting ought to consider raising awareness about the 16,000 complaints of filth and waste in his own city. The human waste spread by his constituents is a lot more toxic than paper receipts. The same Democrats who shrug at a hepatitis outbreak gasp at the toxicity of store receipts..................

Nobody in Santa Monica, Allen’s home turf, has actually died of plastic poisoning. Instead, its homeless population is dying of drugs and alcohol, meth, PCP, and a beating with a bolt cutter by Ramon Escobar.............And, if you’re an environmentalist, people dying of preventable diseases is good for the environment,...........Killing babies is the only thing that can’t be banned in California...............To Read More....


My Take - The Little Black Book of Communism claims the socialist monsters of the 20th century killed 100 million innocent people, and that started in 1917.  It's estimated the environmental movement, which really got started in the 60's, killed 100 million people from malaria with the ban on DDT alone, and that's only in the 20th century.  That doesn't count all the other preventable diseases DDT and all the other pesticides they've managed to have removed from the market.  When you examine all the position taken by environmentalists you find the death toll keeps climbing. 
To be green is to be irrational, misanthropic and morally defective.

The Insanity of Protecting Rats

By Alan Caruba

Going back to the 1980s I have worked professionally with elements of the pest control industry providing public relations services The process of educating the public is necessary because new generations must be informed of the threats pests pose to health and property.

Back when it was still known as the National Pest Control Association, I even received a beautiful certificate of appreciation that hangs in my office. At some point several years ago, it and state organizations changed their name to “Pest Management” presumably to divest themselves of the image of actually killing the creatures that annually spread disease and do millions in property damage.

In past years environmental organizations devoted a lot of time and money to convince the public that the real problem was the pest controllers, not the pests. If they all changed their profession next Monday, the entire nation would be totally over-run with roaches, termites, rats and mice in a month. The work is not glamorous, but it is utterly essential to society.

A case in point is bed bugs that have emerged in a few short years into a full-fledged pest problem from coast to coast. Thanks to the Environmental Protection Agency, the lack of pesticides registered to exterminate them has facilitated this new plague. There is, I believe, only one.

I have watched as the EPA has, since its founding, insanely strip pest control professionals and consumers of access to pesticides that formerly had protected their parents and grandparents, as well as their homes and businesses.

When you take away the pesticides, all you have left are the pests.

The modern pest control industry had its beginnings in the Middle Ages with the emergence of “rat catchers”, men who had developed a variety of poisons to rid homes and other properties of the ubiquitous rodent. Even the kings and queens of England had a royal rat catcher.

They were such a part of life in those times that the story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin has been passed down to us. It was, of course, the combination of rats and fleas that spread the Black Plague in the Middle Ages, killing a third or more of the population of Europe.

So why, one must ask, have the burgers of Washington, D.C., responsible for passing the laws, passed the truly insane one titled the “Wildlife Protection Act” that requires pest control operators to not only capture rats in a fashion that does not harm them in any way, but to transport them twenty-five miles away to be set free?

As Dr. Don Boys noted in a recent Canada Free Press article, “Ken Cuccinelli, Virginia’s Attorney General, said D.C.’s new rat law is ‘crazier than fiction’ because it requires vermin not be killed but rather captured, preferably in "families", and transferred to a ‘wildlife rehabilitator’”, presumably living in Virginia!

Here are a few facts about rats:

# Rats have a life span of approximately nine months.

# Rats are ready to breed within three months. Their gestation period is 22 days and they have an average little of eight. An average female rat will provide 20 offspring.

# A single pair of rats has the potential, mathematically, of producing 359 million descendents in three year’s time.

# The average overall length of a rat is l6 inches, with a body measuring 9 inches and a tail of 7 inches. The average weight of a rat is l ¼ pounds. Their color can range from reddish brown to black.

# A rat’s sense of smell is excellent, as is its sense of taste. They are particularly suspicious of food. This results often in “bait shyness.” Rats will leave a poisoned bait untouched for almost a week. Other members of the pack will avoid food not eaten by other members and often warn other rats away by sprinkling it with their urine or feces.

# Rats can gain access to virtually any structure. They can climb 15 feet up a rough, surfaced vertical wall. They can jump vertically one foot from a flat surface and they can easily traverse telephone wires and ropes. They are, in addition, good swimmers.

Virginia and other states contiguous to Washington, D.C. do not want the District’s rats. They have plenty of their own. They also have a complete host of other rodents and wildlife that require the ministrations of pest control professionals.

There are a host of very good reasons why every American city and town has extensive laws regarding the control of insect and rodent pests, as well as wildlife that, in my home state of New Jersey, includes raccoons, opossum, squirrels, turkeys, coyotes, deer, and bears!

Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that rats must be killed to protect people and property, but not the idiots on the Washington, D.C. city council who were more intent on protecting the rats than their constituents.

A lot of Americans have concluded they need protection from Washington, D.C. and its incessant and insane production of laws and regulations that pose the greatest threat of all to our personal freedoms and to the nation’s economy, security, and future.

American Council on Science and Health, 2011: Week Three

By Rich Kozlovich

I was supposed to post this on Saturday, but I have been sick. This week's edition the ASCH's Daily Dispatch really goes all over the place, including one of my favorite topics....DDT. I think you will find the insights on these diverse issues worth exploring. As I have said in the past....this is one of the groups I consistently turn to for the answers. There may be times that you will disagree with them, but at least they have a very simple philosophy; data in search of conclusions versus so many of the groups you will see featured here who have a philosophy of conclusions in search of data,

Enjoy!

New study pregnant with anti-chemical quackery
An outlandish study from professors at the University of California, San Francisco, published today in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, reports that almost all pregnant women harbor at least one out of 163 different "potentially harmful" chemicals in their blood, urine or serum .

Can you see me now? Incidence of AMD declines
The incidence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), the leading cause of vision loss in people over the age of 50 - a result of damage to the center of the retina – has decreased in the last 15 years.

Trials for new malaria vaccine instill hope
After reporting yesterday on the looming threat of the spread of a drug-resistant form of falciparum malaria, we now bring brighter news of two phase II trials indicating that a leading candidate malaria vaccine (RTS,S/AS01E ) provides protection against the parasitic disease for at least 15 months after inoculation.

Prescription drugs face acetaminophen restrictions
\Acetaminophen, the key ingredient used in over-the-counter (OTC) drugs like Tylenol and Nyquil, will be limited only 325 milligrams per dose in prescription painkillers such as Vicodin and Percocet, the FDA announced yesterday.

Another u-turn in the controversy over antibiotics for ear infections in children
To prescribe or not prescribe? That is the question that pediatricians have been grappling with over many years as they debate whether to use antibiotics to treat acute otitis media, or ear infections, in toddlers or whether to adhere to the "watch and wait" approach.

ACSH Presents: Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health
In response to the growing level of chemophobia - the irrational fear of chemicals - among the American public, ACSH held a press conference today to announce the release of its newest position paper, Scared to Death: How Chemophobia Threatens Public Health.

NYT offers remedy for “toxic headlines”
An excellent dash of science-based reassurance was administered over the weekend by New York Times columnist Andrew Revkin in his Dot Earth & blog.

Rude awakening: Sleep aid Ambien leaves some older users groggy and clumsy
Talk about waking up on the wrong side of the bed - results of a new study suggest that the popular sleep aid Ambien, sold generically as zolpidem, can leave folks over 60 temporarily groggy and clumsy when awakened abruptly.

Another health tenet stricken: Fruits and veggies don’t decrease cancer incidence.
Consumers looking to take dietary steps towards cancer prevention might want to hold off on a daily V8 regimen. The British Journal of Cancer reports that increasing fruit and veggie consumption has little impact on cancer prevention, at least among well-nourished populations.

Green drugs down the toilet
The "Green" movement has set its sights on a new consumer market: green pharmaceuticals.

Chemophobia and Chicken McNuggets
The Montreal Gazette published an article by Joe Schwarcz, Ph.D., director of McGill University's Office for Science and Society, on the subject of McDonald's Chicken McNuggets.

Possible risks of combining calcium-channel blockers and antibiotics
Monday brought word, first reported in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, of possible risks for patients simultaneously taking calcium channel blockers and erythromycin (E-Mycin) or clarithromycin (Biaxin) - both macrolide antibiotics.

Congestive heart failure: Where you go matters a lot
The Annals of Internal Medicine has just reported on a large-scale study at more than 4,000 U.S. hospitals which showed that thirty-day survival rates for patients diagnosed with congestive heart failure were more than twenty percent better among those who went to hospitals more accustomed to providing care for the condition.

Genetic screening: Should the government stay out?
Yesterday's Science section of The New York Times included an intriguing article by columnist John Tierney on whether the government has a proper role in regulating commercial sales of DNA analysis tests to the general public.

Anti-depressants and hot flashes: Connection isn’t so war
Last week brought word of a study which claimed that the anti-depressant drug known by the trade name Lexapro (escitalopram) could reduce the incidence of hot flashes among menopausal women.

A cheap remedy, period: Tranexamic acid for excessive bleeding
The same drug used to reduce heavy menstrual cycles may reduce the risk of complications from hemorrhage associated with trauma, Reuters; reports.


Alcohol benefits skip a beat? Potential atrial fibrillation link
Moderate alcohol consumption may be a double-edged sword when it comes to heart health, according to; recent meta-analysis published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

ColoPrint: A new way to predict progression of colon cancer?
Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd. Has developed a genetic test that may predict which stage II and III colon cancer patients are most likely to experience a recurrence following surgery.

Younger women should be screened for osteoporosis
Perhaps the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) had Gwyneth Paltrow in mind when it updated the guidelines for assessing osteoporosis to recommend screening younger women who present the same risk factors as 65 year-old white women.


Follow-up lymph node dissection may not be necessary for breast cancer patients with negative “sentinel node” biopsy
Sometimes the first time's a charm, at least when it comes to breast cancer biopsies.

NYT op-ed is a shot in the right direction
ACSH staffers were pleased to read an op-ed by Michael Willrich in today's The New York Times promoting the notion already long upheld by scientific communities that vaccines are a safe and extremely effective public health measure.

Don’t wean too early: Surgeon General recommends six months of breast-feeding
In a report issued Thursday, U.S. Surgeon General Regina Benjamin reminded mothers about the importance of breast-feeding their children for the first six months while also outlining plans to expand and improve community programs that provide support and peer counseling for moms.

Rats are to humans as phthalates are to abnormal development: no relationship
Environmental Health News reports on a new study published in the journal Reproductive Toxicology alleging that exposure to the phthalate DINP (di-isononylphthalate) causes developmental abnormalities in rats.

Counting down to eliminate obesity, or not
Much like counting sheep won't get you to fall asleep any faster, counting calories at Taco Time won't get you to change your order from the Big Juan burrito combo meal to a bland garden salad any sooner either.

Anti-DDT campaign has no meat, unless you count baloney
The underlying science used by a coalition of global public health groups to promote the restriction and ultimate banning of DDT use for eradication of malaria is false, dangerous and misguided, a new study published in the journal Research and Reports in Tropical Medicine says.

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If there is a health scare today, the American Council on Science and Health will most likely have the answer by tomorrow; and for members it will appear in your e-mail. No effort on your part, except to read the answer. All that the ACSH is interested in are the facts and they are prepared to follow them wherever they lead. Who can ask for more?  Please Donate Now!

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