Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Black Lives Don’t Matter to The Philadelphia Inquirer

I rather mockingly tweeted, on Sunday around 11:30 AM:

At 10:33 AM EDT this morning, I checked the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, and it stated that as of 11:59 PM EDT on Sunday, May 2, 2021, there had been 176 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love so far this year. The previous update showed 169 homicides as of 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, April 29, 2021. (The site is only updated Monday through Friday, so there are no separate totals for Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Naturally, I checked The Philadelphia Inquirer’s website immediately after the Current Crime Statistics page, and there was not a single story on the rather long main page about any of the killings. Not a single one!

I’m pretty good in math, but perhaps I made a mistake. I did it twice, just to be sure, and I came up with 176 – 169 = 7. I did get that right, didn’t I?

So, if I got the math right, there were seven murders in Philadelphia over the weekend — counting Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights as the weekend — yet none of the journolists journalists or editors at the Inquirer found that newsworthy?

There was an article, “Black-owned school-lunch business moving to Philly area to create ‘culturally relevant’ meals for kids,” dated April 30th, still on the main page, and an article about a golf club agreeing to admit women as members, “Reports: Pine Valley to admit women as members, provide unrestricted access to guests,” dated two days ago, and even this large section, on Asian American and Pacific Islander activism, with some articles dating from over a month ago, but not one word about seven homicides in Philly over the weekend.

The tremendously #woke staff of the Inquirer were so concerned that #BlackLivesMatter that they forced the firing resignation of Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski for entitling an article “Buildings Matter, Too,” seem to have no concern at all for black lives lost to the carnage on Philly’s mean streets, at least not enough concern to publish a paragraph of two when they are snuffed out.

The truth is simple: there is no evidence, no evidence at all, that black lives matter to the staff of the Inquirer

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The American Free News Network

AMERICAN FREE NEWS NETWORK

Starting this morning, the American Free News Network will be opening up, and for some unfathomable reason, I have been asked to contribute to it. If the schedule holds, I’ll have an article on AFNN thrice a week, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

From Adam Selene, who started up this idea:

Welcome to American Free News Network! You have found yourself on the cutting edge of conservative resistance to social media censorship. If this is your first time on the site, please take the time to read this page before jumping in. If you are an old friend, then by all means, dive right in by following the link!

Some time ago, a group of American Patriots found themselves the targets of leftist censorship. In some instances, Big Tech was financially extorting the platforms these citizens were using to promote the Constitution of these United States and the God-given liberties it codifies. In other instances, some of the writers now helping out here, were personally attacked by not only leftist sites, but also from other allegedly conservative sites. This group of political scofflaws decided to free themselves from big tech tyranny and start up their own conservative media company.

The result is AFNN, a Non-Profit media platform conceived and created for the purpose of advancing the interests of American citizens who have been disenfranchised by legacy media, Big Tech and politicians of both parties. AFNN is the brainchild of a group of American conservative writers from all walks of life, including the military and private industry. Being very concerned about the level of censorship and in some cases, outright legal and financial coercion of conservative media and in some cases, themselves personally, they decided to do something about it. Here is how that happened.

As many of you already know, Donald Trump managed to leverage social media to bypass the traditional gatekeepers in the legacy press, thus taking his message directly to the American People. Big Tech Companies (like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon) along with the press, the Democrat Party, and even RINO Republicans, were just fine with that, when it was the young and “hip” Barack Obama, who was making use of the technology. Not so much when President Trump showed them its real power.

Donald Trump is no longer President. However, that hasn’t stopped the media and Big Tech from targeting conservative voices, especially those of us who had the temerity to vote for Donald Trump and had our votes discounted. We conservatives, along with the media platforms who voice our concerns, are now being directly attacked. There has been a drastic increase in conservative publications being financially coerced by Facebook and other tech titans. Others have been threatened with civil suits over reader comments.

This is where you come in. This website, designed to promote the ideals of conservative Americans, relies completely on voluntary donations. As of now, we accept no advertising, and we hope to keep it that way. We also are quickly moving towards being financially able to build or buy our own server farm, with unfettered access to the internet, not subject to what Amazon Web Services did to Parler.

If your personal financial situation will permit, we promise to make very good use of your contribution. If you find our platform valuable and believe in our efforts, please help us out with a gift of $10.00-$100.00 (more if you can afford it) to keep the lights on and the servers running. There are millions of disaffected and disenfranchised American citizens out there who need a voice. We believe you are one of them and we are asking for your support.

A final note: This site is in its infancy. Like all technology, it will have some ghosts in the machine. Please be patient with us as we sort through things.

Not everything I write on The First Street Journal will appear on the American Free News Network, and perhaps some of what I contribute there will not appear here; I’m still feeling my way around this as well. I’m hoping that it will be a success!

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Even in oh-so-liberal California, 20% of plug-in electric vehicle owners are trading them back in for gasoline-powered cars

We have previously noted the difficulties that people can encounter with plug-in electric vehicles, and that consumers really aren’t that thrilled with them.

Now, from good, green, but very, very blue California comes this story:

1 in 5 electric vehicle owners in California switched back to gas because charging their cars is a hassle, new research shows

Dominick Reuter | Friday, April 30, 2021 | 12:41 PM

In roughly three minutes, you can fill the gas tank of a Ford Mustang and have enough range to go about 300 miles with its V8 engine.

But for the electric Mustang Mach-E, an hour plugged into a household outlet gave Bloomberg automotive analyst Kevin Tynan just three miles of range.

“Overnight, we’re looking at 36 miles of range,” he told Insider. “Before I gave it back to Ford, because I wanted to give it back full, I drove it to the office and plugged in at the charger we have there.”

Let’s be clear here: “plugged into a household outlet” here means a standard, 110-volt wall receptacle. Those will never cut it.

Standard home outlets generally put out about 120 volts of power at what electric vehicle aficionados call “Level 1” charging, while the high-powered specialty connections offer 240 volts of power and are known as “Level 2.” By comparison, Tesla’s “Superchargers,” which can fully charge its cars in a little over an hour, offer 480 volts of direct current.

The only practical way to recharge your Chevy Dolt Bolt is if you have a dedicated 24 volt, 50 amp circuit available with which to power your Level 2 charger. As it happens, I have separate electric power in my garage/shop, and the knowledge, skills and tools necessary to add that kind of circuit. Though I do not intend to buy a plug in electric, as I am working on my shop, I’ll install such a circuit simply because it’s easier to do it with the walls still open, and, for me, it would be inexpensive.

I’ve looked at one of my sister’s garage; I could install such a circuit for her there as well, but it would be more complicated. She’s lucky that her favorite brother can do that kind of work.

But what about people who don’t have friends or family who could do that job? That means hiring a real electrician, and that could be well over $1,000, even for a relatively simple installation. If a sub-panel is required, due to the existing electric service in the dwelling, the dollars start to add up.

While I’m not poor myself, I do live in a poor, rural county in eastern Kentucky. While I have good, 200 amp service to my garage/shop, there are plenty, plenty! of homes in this area that have 100 amp service to their poorer homes, and it would not surprise me in the slightest to find some places which still have old 40 or 60 amp fused service rather than circuit breaker boxes.

That difference is night and day, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Energy by University of California Davis researchers Scott Hardman and Gil Tal that surveyed Californians who purchased an electric vehicle between 2012 and 2018.

Roughly one in five plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) owners switched back to owning gas-powered cars, in large part because charging the batteries was a pain in the… trunk, the researchers found.

Of those who switched, over 70% lacked access to Level 2 charging at home, and slightly fewer than that lacked Level 2 connections at their workplace.

They didn’t do their due diligence is what the article is saying. They got caught up with going green without asking the right questions. So much for the liberals being smart!

“If you don’t have a Level 2, it’s almost impossible,” said Tynan, who has tested a wide range of makes and models of PEVs over the years for his research.

Even with the faster charging, a Chevy Volt he tested still needed nearly six hours to top its range back up to 300 miles from nearly empty – something that takes him just minutes at the pump with his family SUV.

This is the part that the left don’t want to talk about. We have had fun with the story about Tesla TSLA: (%) drivers waiting for hours, in a half-mile-long line to top off at a Tesla ‘supercharger’ station. Even at a 480-volt supercharger, it can take more than an hour to fully recharge. And having worked with 480 volt three phase circuitry throughout my career in concrete plants, I’m not 100% certain that the general public ought to be handling them.

There’s more at the original, but it boils down to this: plug-in electric vehicles are a fine second car, useful for tooling around town, perhaps commuting to work, if you have a garage or dedicated, secure parking area in which you can have a Level 2 charging unit installed, and if you have a reliable gasoline-powered primary vehicle.

And that means: if you have plenty of money! You need to have the money to be able to afford an ‘extra’ car, and you need to have the money to afford the residence in which you can have that dedicated charging station. Somehow, some way, the oh-supportive-of-poor-people left just can’t understand that what they think everybody should do is not something that everybody can afford.

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Was it worth it?

Demond Goudy, 21, Photo released by Chicago Police Department.

We have thrice mentioned the killing of seven-year-old Jaslyn Adams in the Windy City. Chicago Police have now apprehended a second suspect in that shooting, as Demond Goudy, 21, was taken into custody Monday in the 1500 block of South Springfield following a SWAT standoff. Marion Lewis, 18, allegedly the driver, was previously apprehended.

Mr Goudy has been denied bail, because he was already out on bond awaiting trial on other charges. WGN noted that Mr Goudy’s life had been a long spiral of violence:

In recent years, violence has been a constant in the life of Demond Goudy, one of the men accused of taking part in the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams earlier this month.

Court records show that Goudy was shot and critically wounded on the West Side last October. That shooting occurred less than two weeks after Goudy’s brother was shot and killed in Humboldt Park. No one has been charged in either case.

Before he was charged in Jaslyn’s killing — a shooting that also left her father seriously injured — Goudy was already facing four separate criminal cases.

Court records show that, in addition to the murder charge, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has accused Goudy of robbery, manufacturing/delivery of cocaine, possession of a controlled substance, possession of a gun with a defaced serial number and aggravated unlawful use of a weapon. None of the charges against Goudy are more than 2 ½ years old.

According to court filings made by his attorney, Goudy was a participant in READI Chicago, “a job readiness program that provides cognitive behavioral therapy and work force training.”

Let’s face facts: young Mr Goudy was a waste case, and no ‘job training’ program was ever going to turn him into a decent and law-abiding member of society. Mr Goudy was already under electronic monitoring when he was shot in the back, just two weeks after his brother, Edward James, had been murdered. Cook County Judge Edward Maloney, asked by Mr Goudy’s attorney to loosen the conditions of Mr Goudy’s monitoring so he could go to medical appointments following his release from the hospital, instead dropped the monitoring altogether, after Cathryn Crawford of the Lawndale Christian Legal Center, Mr Goudy’s attorney, argued that, “Demond is not a threat to anyone given his condition.” Apparently neither the judge nor the defense attorney thought that, eventually, Mr Goudy would recover.

Naturally, I checked out the Lawndale Christian Legal Center’s website, and found this, on their main page:

THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM IN OUR COUNTRY IS BROKEN.

It’s costing too much and hurting us all. But we are standing at a pivotal moment where the conversation has begun in earnest about shifting power back to the community as a more effective way to ensure peace, make communities safer and provide equity for everyone.

Over a decade ago at Lawndale Christian Legal Center, we committed to providing legal defense for juvenile and emerging adult clients in North Lawndale, keeping them out of prison, surrounding each one with the right resources to address the systemic problems threatening their future, and involving the community in seeking justice. We believe it is – and always has been – the most effective way to build a system that is fair for everyone.

This is a restorative justice program supported by holistic social and legal services that walk juveniles and emerging adults through, and away from, the court system for good. Through our work, we’ve been helping transform young lives tangled in a deeply flawed system, and inspiring hope in places where hope has been hard to come by.

I get it. Everyone deserves a legal defense. But perhaps, just perhaps, Miss Crawford, their Director of Holistic Legal Services, may just have a bit too much goodness in her heart:

Cathryn is a graduate and former professor of Northwestern University’s School of Law. With a decades long legal career, she joined LCLC due to its unique community-based holistic legal representation model and the vision espoused by Cliff Nellis, Executive Director. Before coming to LCLC, Cathryn worked in Texas representing clients on death row. People like Cathryn’s mother, a single mom and tenants’ rights community activist, instilled in her a strong sense of social justice and work ethic from an early age. Cathryn hopes to reform the justice system by making it holistic instead of punitive and to eliminate the pernicious racism that characterizes it. She wants our clients to be seen as unique individuals with real strengths rather than simply the offense with which they have been charged. She is motivated by her team and by her clients.

Or perhaps she’s just an idiot. Those gang tats on Mr Goudy’s neck ought to have told her something, ought to have told her that perhaps, just perhaps, her “strong sense of social justice” was a bit misplaced when she told Judge Maloney that Mr Goudy wasn’t a threat to anyone. 

Does Miss Crawford even think about Jaslyn Adams, and how the client she helped to get released from monitoring shot her stone-cold graveyard dead?  Does she feel any responsibility, does she have any sense or remorse?

Miss Crawford did Mr Goudy no favors. If Mr Goudy was indeed one of the shooters — remember: he is innocent of that until proven guilty — at least the years he would spend behind bars for his previous crimes would have left him with some hope of eventually getting out of prison. Now, if he is convicted in the premeditated murder of a seven-year-old innocent girl, well, that’s it, he’ll spend the rest of his miserable life in prison.

How about Messrs Goudy and Lewis? The shooting was, apparently, some gang-related action. Yeah, they sure showed Jontae Adams, young Miss Adams’ father, what for, but now the 21 and 18 year olds are looking at never, ever, getting out of prison. Was it really worth it for them?

Well, assuming that Messrs Goudy and Lewis are the guilty parties, they will be held accountable by the criminal justice system.

But what about Judge Maloney, who freed Mr Goudy from monitoring, and Miss Crawford, who worked as hard as she could to see to it that Mr Goudy was out on the street, and able to (allegedly) shoot his victims? We know that, legally, they’ll never be held accountable, but morally and ethically, if Mr Goudy really was one of the men people who killed Miss Adams, Mr Maloney and Miss Crawford are at least in part responsible. This death should gnaw at their hearts forever.

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Killadelphia Four overnight homicides aren't even newsworthy as far as The Philadelphia Inquirer is concerned

Today being Friday, there won’t be any more updates on the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page until Monday morning, which means that we’ll get the weekend homicide numbers all together. Nevertheless, you’d think that even the very #woke Philadelphia Inquirer would take notice of four more homicides in a day!

Screen capture of Inquirer main page, April 30, 2021, 10:25 AM EDT. Click to enlarge

It’s possible, of course, that some of those four additional homicides were from shootings from a couple of days ago, victims who didn’t give up the ghost until yesterday, but still, as of 10:26 AM EDT, nothing but crickets from the editors of what I have sometimes called The Philadelphia Enquirer.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Last year saw 499 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love, initially reported as 502, but later amended down. Assuming that three people didn’t actually recover from death on New Year’s Eve, my guess is that a few people didn’t expire until after midnight, though, knowing what a tool of Mayor Jim Kenney Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw is, any sort of ‘massaging’ of the numbers is possible.

The numbers are stark. Last year’s 499 homicides was just one short of the record set in 1990, during the worst of the crack cocaine wars. As of April 29, 2020, ‘only’ 124 people had been murdered in Philadelphia. That was a 19.23% increase over 2019, but still ‘only’ 1.033 homicides per day.[2]With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.

Things worsened as the year went along, following the Mostly Peaceful Protests™ over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the COVID-19 lockdowns. Oddly enough, crime kept increasing in Philadelphia, despite the lockdown orders. I was just so, so shocked!

But 169 homicides is a 36.29% increase over bloody 2020, and 62.50% increase over just two years ago. In case anyone hadn’t noticed, Donald Trump isn’t President anymore — though the left will still blame him — and we’ve had a COVID-19 vaccine available, and cities and states doing everything they can to get people vaccinated, and states and cities, including Pennsylvania and Philadelphia, are reducing their COVID-19 restrictions. Derek Chauvin was convicted on all charges concerning the killing of George Floyd. At this point, the left are out of external excuses on which to blame the increased violence in our inner cities.

Not that they won’t make up something else, of course, because that’s what they do.

So, what concerns the editors of the Inquirer?

There was a seemingly endless list of articles on the Eagles drafting DaVonta Smith in the first round of the NFL draft! But there were no stories which led me to believe that #BlackLivesMattered to the editors of the Inquirer. The #woke nature of the Inquirer staff, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too, even though Philadelphia experienced plenty of damage and violence in the protests over the killing of George Floyd, would have made anyone think that #BlackLivesMatter was of ultimate importance to the staff, so important that the innocent play on words over a legitimate concerns over the historic buildings in one of our oldest cities could be torched in those Mostly Peaceful Protests™.

But if the staff believe that black lives really matter, it’s obvious that the untimely ending of black lives, unless at the hands of a white policeman, simply isn’t newsworthy.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, which brings to my mind the National Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑2 With 2020 being a leap year, April 29th was the 120th day of the year, not the 119th as it is in non-leap years.
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Hold them accountable!

I have an entire series entitles Hold them accountable, much of which is lost, or at least hidden, in a file containing whatever remains of this site prior to the reboot. However, before RedState closed itself to diarists, I had cross-posted nine of the Hold them accountable posts there, and they are still available. I have gone through the old RedState archives, and recovered those that I could, though the formatting may be poor.

My good friend — OK, OK, I’ve never actually met the man! — Robert Stacy McCain, formerly a real professional journalist, and now the site owner of The Other McCain has become quite the stupid crime blogger of late, and now he has another one:

Florida Woman Was in a Big Hurry to Reach Her Destination: Prison

by Robert Stacy McCain | April 28, 2021

The vehicle that Jennifer Carvajal destroyed, photo by Florida Highway Patrol.

Jennifer Carvajal was behind the wheel of a Hyundai Elantra clocked on radar at 111 mph headed west on I-4 by a Florida Highway Patrol trooper. It was 1:30 a.m., and three passengers were in the car with Carvajal, who did not have a driver’s license, because she had violated her probation.What was she on probation for? DUI manslaughter in 2014.

Yeah, that’s right — apparently you can kill somebody while driving drunk in Florida and you’re back on the streets in just a few years.

In 2016, Carvajal was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released in 2019. “According to Hillsborough Circuit Court Clerk records, she was then arrested in May [2020] for violating her probation with a drug-related charge and was sentenced to five more years probation.”

Did you get that? After killing somebody, then serving only three years in prison, she was arrested for drugs, a probation violation that could have sent her back to prison. But it’s Tampa, where all the judges are Democrats, so they just gave her more probation. Less than a year later, she was doing 111 mph on I-4 at 1:30 in the morning when the trooper caught her on radar. And when the trooper managed to catch up with her, Carvajal had a truly genius idea — right turn!

The result of Miss Carvajal’s right turn at 178½ KM/HR? She wasn’t driving on a banked NASCAR oval — where all of the turns are left turns anyway — but Interstate 4, so, as Mr McCain has the video, things did not go well. Miss Carvajal and twop of her passengers were seriously injured, and one was ejected and killed.

Mr McCain tends to write in a mocking and sarcastic vein when it comes to his stories on stupid criminals, and there’s more at his original, but, to me, this incident raises some obvious questions:

  • How did Miss Carvajal get just five years for killing someone? Was this the result of some cockamamie plea bargain? Was the judge just too lenient? In Florida, DUI Manslaughter is a class 2 felony, which can result in a sentence of up to fifteen years. The minimum sentence is four years.[1]Brian DeFreitas, 48, was sentenced to 12 years for the same offense.
  • How did Miss Carvajal get probation so soon, not quite four years, into her five year sentence? When she was considered for release, did no one think to ask, is she going to get drunk behind the wheel and kill someone else?
  • Who took the decision, and why, in May of 2020, to sentence Miss Carvajal to another five years of probation when she violated her existing probation rather than throwing her back in the clink?

Well, that’s the answer, of course: May of 2020. Our legal system was releasing everybody it could — and I’m surprised that Pennsylvania didn’t release Wesley Cook, the scumbag cop-killer who goes by the faux name of Mumia Abu-Jamal — due to the huge overreaction to COVID-19. In effect, the legal system in Tampa, Florida bet that it was wiser to protect Miss Carvajal from the virus than it was to protect other people from her drunken driving. The result of that bet? A 22-year-old man will never see 23, as he’s lying on the slab, stone-cold graveyard dead.

Jennifer Carvajal

As we have noted previously, some media organizations have become reluctant to post photos of criminals, for what I have come to assume are the ‘social justice’ reasons of not making it seem as though non-whites commit crimes. One of Mr McCain’s commenters, who styles himself Buffalobob, wrote:

ABC action news, “we choose not to show her mug shot because she is no longer a threat to the community. Will they show it when she is released again on probation?

Another news organization did choose to show Miss Carvajal’s photo, which Mr McCain found.

The sad story of Miss Carvajal, who has now sent two people to their eternal rewards, did not just happen. At several points, people who have sought public office and are responsible for law enforcement and trying to keep the public safe, took decisions which enabled Miss Carvajal’s deadly actions. Will the judge who sentenced Miss Carvajal to such a short sentence be held accountable? Will the probation and parole officials who decided to let her out early be held accountable? Will the prosecutors who decided, in May of 2020, not to send her back to prison for probation violations, be held accountable?

The sad, answer, of course, is that no, they won’t be held accountable. Her entire five year sentence, had it been served, would have expired before this crash, so the probation officials don’t bear any real responsibility here, but the judge, who sentenced her so leniently, and quite probably the prosecutors who arranged such a lenient sentence, do bear responsibility. The officials who decided to add another five more years probation, rather than send her to jail, bear responsibility. Everyone who played a part in Miss Carvajal not being sentenced to the maximum amount of prison time allowable under the law, and everyone who played a part in not keeping her locked up for as long as the law allowed, bear responsibility for the death of that 22-year-old man.

Until we start holding such officials accountable — which I suspect will never happen — we will continue to have stories along these lines, of how someone who could, and should, have still been in jail on a previous conviction, has murdered, mugged, raped or molested another innocent victim.

References

References
↑1 Brian DeFreitas, 48, was sentenced to 12 years for the same offense.
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Killadelphia: Philly Police arrest 16-year-old connected to four murders

We have previously noted the apparent policy of the Lexington Herald-Leader not to publish photos of accused criminals, at least of accused criminals who are not white. And now it seems that The Philadelphia Inquirer is doing the same thing.

A 16-year-old is connected to four homicides, including a man shot outside a Philly jail, police say

Officials apprehended the teenager after highlighting his alleged crimes during the city’s first biweekly gun violence briefing.

By Anna Orso | April 28, 2021

Philadelphia police have arrested a 16-year-old who they say is connected to four killings since December, including the fatal shooting of man who was gunned down after his release from a city jail last month.

Ameen Hurst, of Philadelphia, faces murder and related charges in connection with two shooting incidents: a Christmas Eve killing in Overbrook and a quadruple shooting in West Philadelphia on March 11 that left two men dead. Police said charges are also expected to be filed against him this week in connection with the shooting death of Rodney Hargrove, 20, near the front gates of the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in the middle of the night on March 18.

Just a day before the incident outside the jail, officials had publicly named Hurst as a person of interest in the Christmas Eve killing of 20-year-old Dyewou Nyshawn Scruggs, who was streaming live on social media when he was shot.

In none of the cases did police offer a possible motive for the shootings.

Ameen Hurst, 16. Click to enlarge.

There’s more at the original. What there isn’t at the original is a photo of the accused. The website of WPVI-TV, Channel 6, the ABC owned-and-operated (O&O) station in Philadelphia, had Mr Hurst’s photo, as did KYW-TV, Channel 3, the CBS O&O station, so the photo was available. The Inquirer simply chose not to display it on its website.

As I noted in my stories concerning the Herald-Leader, it wasn’t an issue of saving bandwidth, because the Inquirer story was illustrated with this stock photo of Philly cops placing numbered markers by spent shell casings. It would have cost the Inquirer no more bandwidth to publish Mr Hurst than it did the stock photo.

I will admit to some surprise that the Inquirer printed the name of the 16-year-old suspect, as he’s legally a minor. That his name was released probably indicates that he is being charged as an adult, so why not publish a freely available photo?

I, of course, don’t know why the Inquirer didn’t include the photo in the website article, but knowing how the young #woke have captured the Inquirer’s newsroom, forcing the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too,” I would not be in the least surprised if the Inquirer declined to publish Mr Hurst’s photo because the accused is black.

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#FirstWorldProblems: British writer worries about having a son who will grow up with running water and electricity

British Vogue isn’t exactly my go-to source for high-brow intellectual articles. Pieces like Oscars 2021 Red Carpet: The Best Dresses From the Night might not be the most inspirational articles on the scientific topic of Climate Change, but whatever! I’m sure that the lovely Amanda Marcotte would have approved of this article, and the author, until she revealed that she had, Heaven forfend! gotten pregnant!

Is Having A Baby In 2021 Pure Environmental Vandalism?

By Nell Frizzell | April 25, 2021

Is having a child an act of environmental vandalism or an investment in the future? Is it possible to live an ecologically responsible life while adding yet another person to our overstretched planet? Can I get away with it if I just never learn to drive, never get a dog and keep wearing the same three pairs of jeans for the rest of my life?

For the scientifically-engaged person, there are few questions more troubling when looking at the current climate emergency than that of having a baby. Whether your body throbs to reproduce, you passively believe that it is on the cards for you one day, or you actively seek to remain child-free, the declining health of the planet cannot help but factor in your thinking.

Well, not to worry, if enough people think the way Nell Frizzell does, we won’t have to worry too much about anthropogenic global warming climate change, as in a few more generations, there won’t be any more humans.

Oh, wait, I forgot. I need to stop using my sarcastic global warming climate change, because:

Scientific American magazine announced Monday that it would stop using the term “climate change” in articles about man-made global warming and substitute “climate emergency” instead.

So, what, now I have to switch to global warming climate change emergency? Sometimes it just gets so difficult to keep up!

But what got me was Miss Frizzell’s next sentence, which was a continuation of her second paragraph:[1] Miss Frizzell appears to be correct, in that her website “About” page states that she lives with “her partner, (and) her son,” which leads me to assume that she is not married.

Before I got pregnant, I worried feverishly about the strain on the earth’s resources that another Western child would add. The food he ate, the nappies he wore, the electricity he would use; before he’d even started sitting up, my child would have already contributed far more to climate change than his counterpart in, say, Kerala or South Sudan.

So, it wasn’t just a child, but a Western child which worried her. That child in South Sudan, who wouldn’t contribute as much to climate change? He’d be born into one of the world’s poorest countries:

South Sudan sits near the bottom of most human development indices, according to the United Nations, including the highest maternal mortality and female illiteracy rates.

Just how seriously am I supposed to take an article on saving the planet from a website that is also featuring “To All The White Boys I’ve Dated Before”?

So, no, he wouldn’t contribute as much to global warming climate change emergency, because he would very probably be born into a village with no electricity or running water, be more likely to be an orphan given the country’s high maternal death rate, and have a life expectancy of only 57.6 years. He would, in all probability, suffer more than Miss Frizzell’s British-born and reared son, but hey, he’d have less of an impact on global warming climate change emergency!

“(T)he nappies (her son) wore”? Well, if Miss Frizzell was all that worried about the contribution to global warming climate change emergency from those nappies, she could have bought cloth diapers, and washed them out in the toilet, as my mother, and every other American mother had to do in the 1950s. Was Miss Frizzell’s concern about the climate sufficient to encourage her to do that, or was she doing like most other First World mothers do in the 21st century, and buy disposable nappies?

But, at least in one regard, Miss Frizzell has told the truth, told a truth that so many of the climate activists either don’t realize or are reluctant to admit: to do as they say we should, they are going to have to leave London and Paris and New York, and start living that South Sudan lifestyle:

You don’t have to look into the future or to other continents to see that the world as it is organised now is dangerous for children. According to the World Health Organisation, 93 per cent of all children live in environments with air pollution levels above the WHO guidelines. Pollution now kills more people than tobacco – and three times as many as AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. Across the world, more than one in every four deaths among children under five is already directly or indirectly related to environmental risks. Even here in the UK, where our wealth and geography has so far largely protected us from the effects of climate change, children are already dying from pollution-related respiratory problems.

And yet, like millions of others, I did it anyway. I had a baby. I’d have another if my partner agreed. Is that because I am selfish, myopic or greedy? Did I simply learn to compartmentalise my thinking, choose to listen to the arguments that supported what I wanted to do anyway, or ignore what was right in front of my face? Perhaps. But I also believe that when it comes to the future health of the planet, the question is not one of whether or not we continue to have babies. People will always have babies. Here, there and everywhere. Instead, it is a question of how we raise those babies, of learning to live within our environmental means, of turning away from the fever of consumerism and overturning a political system that rewards a tiny rich minority at the expense of everyone else.

Perhaps Miss Frizzell could bring up her son, not in Oxford, with its consumerism and ridiculous real estate prices and pollution and conspicuous consumption, but in South Sudan. Living there, he would certainly grow up “learning to live within (his) environmental means”!

Miss Frizzell is a writer, her About page telling us that she has written for many august publications. Well, couldn’t she do that anywhere, and simply send her stories to Vogue over the (non-present) internet in her Sudanese village (without electricity).

Miss Frizzell appears to feel some guilt at having had the privilege of growing up in a modern, Western society. So, I have to ask: does she feel enough guilt at that to move somewhere else?

References

References
↑1 Miss Frizzell appears to be correct, in that her website “About” page states that she lives with “her partner, (and) her son,” which leads me to assume that she is not married.
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Elect #SocialJustice public officials, and watch crime soar

StJohnTheDivineWilliamPortoIt was the summer of 2007, when my younger daughter, then a rising sophomore in high school, was considering architecture as a potential collegiate major, and she and I went to New York City on an architecture tour. One of the places that she wanted to see was the Episcopal Cathedral of St John the Divine, which is located at 1047 Amsterdam Avenue, at 112th Street.

Well, we missed our subway stop, and instead of getting off at 110th or 116th streets, we wound up getting off at 125th Street. That’s Harlem!

So, my daughter, who was the whitest white girl in town, and I walked back down to our destination. The streets were clean, the people were pleasant, and we didn’t have the first moment’s trouble.

Rudolph Giuliani had succeeded the abysmal David Dinkins as Mayor of New York City on January 1, 1994, and served through December 31, 2001. From Wikipedia:

Giuliani led the 1980s federal prosecution of New York City mafia bosses as U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.[3][4] After a failed campaign for Mayor of New York City in the 1989 election, he succeeded in 1993, and was reelected in 1997, holding a platform of toughness on crime.[1][5] He led New York’s controversial “civic cleanup” as its mayor from 1994 to 2001.[1][6] Mayor Giuliani appointed an outsider, William Bratton, as New York City’s new police commissioner.[5] Reforming the police department’s administration and policing practices, they applied the broken windows theory,[5] which cites social disorder, like disrepair and vandalism, for attracting loitering addicts, panhandlers, and prostitutes, followed by serious and violent criminals.[7] In particular, Giuliani focused on removing panhandlers and sex clubs from Times Square, promoting a “family values” vibe and a return to the area’s earlier focus on business, theater, and the arts.[8] As crime rates fell steeply, well ahead of the national average pace, Giuliani was widely credited, yet later critics cite other contributing factors.[1] In 2000, he ran against First Lady Hillary Clinton for a US Senate seat from New York, but left the race once diagnosed with prostate cancer.[9][10] For his mayoral leadership after the September 11 attacks in 2001, he was called “America’s mayor”.[5][11] He was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year for 2001,[12][13] and was given an honorary knighthood in 2002 by Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.

By the time my daughter and I made that trip, Mayor Giuliani had been succeeded by another Republican — who later became an independent, and later still, a Democrat — in Michael Bloomberg, and as mayor, he kept the strict policing policies of Mr Giuliani.

But, after three terms, Mayor Bloomberg was succeeded by far left social justice warrior Bill de Blasio. From the New York Post:

NYPD union slams Big Apple as ‘city of violence’ amid surge in shootings

By Amanda Woods | April 27, 2021 | 1:09pm | Updated

The NYPD’s Sergeants Benevolent Association slammed the Big Apple as “the city of violence” amid a 250 percent surge in shootings last week, and a slew of other disturbing crimes citywide.

“Mayor de Blasio has allocated 30 million dollars to bring tourism to NYC,” the union tweeted Monday morning. “Welcome to the city of violence.”

The SBA included a screengrab showing nearly two dozen shootings across the five boroughs between Friday and Sunday.

“Shootings and Homicides plaque [sic] NYC and the numbers aren’t final,” the union tweeted.

NYPD data indicates that 50 people were shot in 46 separate incidents over a seven-day period ending Sunday evening.

The department said it logged 12 shootings with 14 victims during the same time last year — more than a month into the city’s COVID-19 lockdown, according to the weekly Compstat data.

Chicago and Philadelphia laugh! The latest weekly NYPD CompStat Report, for the week of April 12th through 18th, indicates that there had been 106 murders in New York City through the th, up from 100 at the same time last year.

As of the 18th, Chicago had seen 177 homicides, up to 185 as of the 25th, while Philly had piled up 159 dead bodies by the end of the 25th. With New York’s much larger population, their effective homicide rate is significantly lower, but it’s climbing, and getting away from the stricter policing under “Broken Windows” has proven to be ineffective.

The left have, for years, decried “mass incarceration,” but lenient law enforcement has proven to be a bad idea even for the criminals. We have previously noted how John Lewis, AKA Lewis Jordan, who slew Philadelphia Police Officer Charles Cassidy, and Nikolas Cruz, accused of the mass murders at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, were given every possible break. Had they been in jail at the time they committed their murders, yeah, they might have served a year or three, but Mr Jordan wouldn’t be on death row today, looking at spending the rest of his miserable life in prison, and Mr Cruz wouldn’t have the same kind of sentence looking him dead in the eye.

Philadelphia Police Officers and FOP members block District Attorney Larry Krasner from entering the hospital to meet with slain Police Corporal James O’Connor’s family.

Are Messrs Jordan and Cruz somehow better off today because lenient law enforcement kept them out of jail? Is Andrew Brown, with his 180-page-long rap sheet, better off today because, despite many criminal convictions, he was out of jail the day he decided to start a gunfight with several Pasquotank County, North Carolina, deputies trying to serve a couple of warrants? Was 21-year-old Hasan Elliot better off on that Friday the 13th when he should have been in jail, and would have been in jail had not Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office declined to have him locked up on a serious parole violation, and he had a shootout with police?

Treating the petty criminals seriously is better for everyone in the long run. It’s better for society, as it gets the bad guys off the street, and lowers the overall crime rate, and it’s better for the criminals themselves, because when they are locked up for crimes that leave them with hope of eventually getting out of prison, they don’t have as much time on the streets, usually in their prime crime committing ages, they are likely to commit the big crimes which will have them locked up for the rest of their miserable lives.