Author Archives: Dana Pico

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Will the Kentucky General Assembly stand up for our rights?

As 2020 thankfully ends, for Kentuckians that means that the General Assembly will shortly be in session. Our state legislature is a part-time one, which is just the way the people in the Bluegrass State like it. Our state representatives and senators have other lives, and the pay for legislators does not allow them to be professionals at it. Legislators earn a salary of $188.22 per day, when the legislature is in session, along with a per diem expense allowance of $163.90. In even-numbered years, sessions may not last more than 60 legislative days, and cannot extend beyond April 15. In odd-numbered years, sessions may not last more than 30 legislative days, and cannot extend beyond March 30.

If you think, hey, that’s not much, until a constitutional amendment was passed by the voters in 2000, the legislature was restricted to meeting only once every two years.

We have previously mentioned Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) dictatorial orders, and his refusal to involve the General Assembly.

Beshear was asked at Friday’s (July 10, 2020 — Editor) news conference on COVID-19 why he has not included the legislature in coming up with his orders. He said many state lawmakers refuse to wear masks and noted that 26 legislators in Mississippi have tested positive for the virus.

Though the Governor is supposedly very popular, and the public supposedly approve of his handling of COVID-19, the November elections increased Republican control over both chambers of the state legislature. The GOP increased their majority in the state Senate from 28-10 to 30-8, but, more importantly, in the state House of Representatives from 61-37 (with 2 vacancies) to 75-25. While the state Senate held a veto-proof Republican majority prior to the election, such was not the case in the state House; now, there is a veto-proof Republican majority in both chambers.

And so we come to this, from the Lexington Herald-Leader:

The legislature wants to curb Beshear’s executive powers. What does that look like?

By Daniel Desrochers | December 31, 2020 | 11:45 AM EST

After adding to their existing supermajorities in the Kentucky General Assembly in November, Republicans in Frankfort laid out a clear mission for the 2021 legislative session: scale back the executive powers of the governor of Kentucky.

“We’re going to refine,” said Senate President Robert Stivers, R-Manchester, days after the election. “There’s no doubt that chief executives of any state or at the federal level need types of powers in an emergency. We all agree with that. What’s the extent and duration? How do you apply [it]?”

Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, Republican lawmakers have chafed at executive orders passed by Gov. Andy Beshear aimed at stemming the spread of the coronavirus. Some have attended rallies against the orders, others have spoken out in favor of lawsuits challenging them, nearly all have said there hasn’t been enough communication between the governor’s office and legislators.

In particular, they’ve decried now-expired orders that temporarily banned all gatherings, including church services, and stopped private schools from holding in-person classes.

There’s more at the original.

Technically, Mr Desrochers, the article author, is incorrect: the executive order which prohibited private schools from holding in-person classes does not expire until Sunday, January 3rd, though, as the United States Supreme Court noted, the order would expire at the normal end of the Christmas break for schools.[1]In Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Supreme Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot. On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order … Continue reading

While I suggested that the Governor would renew his school closure order, but wait until January 2nd to do so, to give the private religious schools little time to appeal it, renewing that order would only anger the legislature. However, the Herald-Leader reported, yesterday, that “Kentucky has 7th-highest day for new COVID-19 cases. Positivity rate back above 9%.”

Wednesday’s tally of new cases is the seventh-highest single-day increase the state has reported since the beginning of the pandemic.

In a written update, Beshear noted the mid-week increase was “higher than it has been for a number of days,” adding, “The progress we have made is fragile.”

If the Governor concludes that he has no chance of avoiding the restriction of his emergency powers, he might well simply issue the edicts, hoping to get away with them for another month.

Six bills restricting the Governor’s emergency powers have been pre-filed in the General Assembly, but one commonality is that all require the calling of a special session of the General Assembly if the Governor issues an emergency decree which lasts for longer than a month.[2]Kentucky is one of only a few states in which the legislature cannot call itself back into session.

Mr Desrochers again:

Beshear has indicated he would like no approach at all. He has criticized the effort to restrict his ability to issue executive orders, painting it as a potentially “catastrophic” attempt to limit his ability to deal with COVID-19, and one that would hamstring future governors if another unforeseen emergency arrives.

“I hope when they show up, making a lot of noise, let’s take a breath, let me get on through this and afterwards, have at it,” Beshear told the Herald-Leader when asked about the legislature’s effort to limit executive power. “Then we can go to court or anything else.”

“Then we can go to court,” huh? The Governor is an attorney, and he knows that going to court costs time and money. If he issues another of his decrees, appeals of those decrees could take months by the time they work their way through the courts. The state court challenge to his decrees were consolidated by the state Supreme Court, last July, when the Court issued a stay of the lower court injunctions against the Governor’s decrees, and then the Court decided it would hear oral arguments two months later. The United States Supreme Court, when it finally dismissed Daniel Christian Schools v Beshear, did so based on the practical expiration of the challenged executive order, but that Court sat on the case for two weeks, taking it to less than a week before Christmas break began.[3]Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, noted: (I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November … Continue reading

But the General Assembly must do more than just time limit the Governor’s emergency powers. It must also make clear that those emergency powers do not and cannot infringe on our constitutional rights. We are guaranteed, under the First Amendment, the right of peaceable assembly and free exercise of religion, both rights on which the Governor’s executive orders have restricted. The state does not and cannot have the power to somehow just suspend our rights, and the state legislature must make that clear, in terms that our partisan state Supreme Court cannot choose to ignore.

COVID-19 is serious, but the violation of our constitutional rights, by Governors across the country, is far, far worse.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 In Danville Christian Academy v Beshear, the Supreme Court did just as I guessed it would: it let the case go moot.

On November 18, the Governor of Kentucky issued a temporary school-closing Order that effectively closes K–12 schools for in-person instruction until and through the upcoming holiday break, which starts Friday, December 18, for many Kentucky schools. All schools in Kentucky may reopen after the holiday break, on January 4. . . . .

The Governor’s school-closing Order effectively expires this week or shortly thereafter, and there is no indication that it will be renewed.

Uhhh, yes, there is! Governor Beshear has already ‘recommended’ that schools delay opening another week, until January 11th, and while he did not make that an order, quite possibly because he knew it would impact the case and it contradicted his own Court filing, he is now free to make it an order.

Under all of the circumstances, especially the timing and the impending expiration of the Order, we deny the application without prejudice to the applicants or other parties seeking a new preliminary injunction if the Governor issues a school-closing order that applies in the new year.

In other words, the Court would entertain a new case, should the Governor issue another executive order, but all of that takes time, and money. With Christmas break about to start, the Governor could easily wait until Saturday, January 2nd, to issue another executive order.

↑2 Kentucky is one of only a few states in which the legislature cannot call itself back into session.
↑3 Justice Samuel Alito, in his dissent, noted:

(I)n my judgment, it is unfair to deny relief on this ground since this timing is in no way the applicants’ fault. They filed this action on November 20, 2020, just two days after the issuance of the Governor’s executive order. And when, on November 29, the Sixth Circuit granted a stay of the order that would have allowed classes to resume, the applicants sought relief in this Court just two days later, on December 1. It is hard to see how they could have proceeded more expeditiously.

Justice Neil Gorsuch also dissented:

Nor should a Governor be able to evade judicial review by issuing short-term edicts and then urging us to overlook their problems only because one edict is about to expire while the next has yet to arrive. Come January 4, a new school semester will be about to start, and the Governor has expressly told us that he reserves the right to issue more decrees like these if and when religious schools try to resume holding classes. Rather than telling the parties to renew their fight in a month, asking the Sixth Circuit to resolve the case now, under accurate legal rules, would be better for everyone—from the parents who might have to miss work and stay home should decrees like these be upheld, to the state public health officials who might have to plan for school if they are not.

Courts have a broader equity at stake here too. In their struggle to respond to the current pandemic, executive officials have sometimes treated constitutional rights with suspicion. In Kentucky, state troopers seeking to enforce gubernatorial orders even reprimanded and recorded the license plate numbers of worshippers who attended an Easter church service, some of whom were merely sitting in their cars listening to the service over a loudspeaker.

Recently, this Court made clear it would no longer tolerate such departures from the Constitution. We did so in a case where the challenged edict had arguably expired, explaining that our action remained appropriate given the Governor’s claim that he could revive his unconstitutional decree anytime. That was the proper course there, as I believe it is here. I would not leave in place yet another potentially unconstitutional decree, even for the next few weeks.
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C’mon, Philly, you can do it! 500 homicides for 2020 is within range!

I spent a good deal of time yesterday on an article about the murder rate in Killadelphia Philadelphia, but it sort of petered out, because, well, just because. But the first three paragraphs were decent:

I will admit to having taken an almost perverse pleasure in checking the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, which tells us that, as of 11:59 PM on Tuesday, December 29th, 494 people had lost heir lives on Philadelphia’s mean streets. That was up two from the previous day, which had been up three from the end of the Christmas weekend.

And the Christmas weekend itself? The 24th through the 27th, four days, saw seven homicides.

On Friday, December 11th, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.” As of the day prior to publication, there had been 466 killings in the city. In the 19 days since the publication of that article, 28 people were sent to their eternal rewards, 1.47 per day, which is a faster rate than the rate for the entire year, 1.36 per day. At a time celebrated in song as The Most Wonderful Time of the Year, times don’t seem quite so wonderful in the City of Brotherly Love.

With ‘only’ 494 homicides, and two days left in the year, the numbers were against the city reaching 500 for 2020, or so it seemed until I checked the Current Crime Statistics page this morning. And there it was: 498 homicides as of 11:59 PM EST on December 30th. Only two more people need to be slaughtered to make it happen!

OK, OK, I’m getting pretty morbid here. But in 2019, there had been 353 homicides through December 30th, but 356 for the entire year, meaning that Philadelphia saw three more people killed on New Year’s Eve last year. This year has seen a 41.08% increase over last year, and New Year’s Eve parties can be boisterous. And the weather forecast has temperatures in the low 40s to mid 30s through midnight, with relatively mild winds, and a low probability of precipitation, which shouldn’t keep the gang bangers holed up inside. Partiers will want their molly or blow to celebrate the New Year, and that’s always a chance to get people interacting with the sellers of recreational pharmaceuticals, and that is always a chance for gunfire.

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Government ‘remote education’ orders driving people to the private schools Or at least that's happening for those who can afford it

The private religious schools have been fighting Governor Andy Beshear’s (D-KY) orders to close; the public school teachers’ unions are fighting to keep the schools closed . . . at least as long as they are still getting paid. The only surprise to me is that the enrollment decreases are so small.

Think about this: these aren’t parents just looking for daycare. Enrolling your kids in private school costs serious money. Home schooling takes time out of your day that could be spent earning money, and once you start home schooling, it’s not that easy to say, well, the public schools just reopened, so I can send my kids back there.

From the Lexington Herald-Leader:

COVID-19 cutting school enrollment? Hundreds of kids leaving Fayette schools.

By Valarie Honeycutt Spears | December 29, 2020 | 10:51 AM EST

Morgan Dezarn is moving her first grade daughter in January from Fayette County Public Schools to private school. She is among hundreds of Lexington parents leaving the district during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our daughter missed several months of kindergarten when schools closed in March and I just do not have faith in FCPS at this point to put a plan in place that gets kids back to school five days per week,” Dezarn said. School district officials have said they won’t return to widespread in-person learning, which shut down in March, before Jan. 11. Gov. Andy Beshear has recommended that no Kentucky school in a critical “red zone” county resume in-person classes before Jan. 11.

As we have previously noted, the Supreme Court denied the private religious schools the injunction they requested, stating that the Governor’s executive order was set to expire on January 4th anyway, and there was “no indication that it will be renewed.”

Uhhh, yes, there is, and was at the time, such an indication, as the Governor ‘recommended,’ but did not actually order, schools to remain closed for another week, until January 11th. The Governor may be vindictive and venal, but he isn’t stupid: he knows that he can make it an order on Saturday, January 2nd, and it would once again force the private schools closed. The Supreme Court said that, if the Governor renewed his order, they could appeal once again, saying:

Under all of the circumstances, especially the timing and the impending expiration of the Order, we deny the application without prejudice to the applicants or other parties seeking a new preliminary injunction if the Governor issues a school-closing order that applies in the new year.

That, of course, just costs more time and money, and allows the Governor to keep denying the people’s constitutional rights. Back to the Herald-Leader original:

Numbers obtained under the Kentucky Open Records Act show that after growing in all but one of the last six years, Fayette County Public Schools has seen a decrease in enrollment in the fall semester of 2020 that officials are attributing to COVID-19.

Enrollment dropped from Dec. 1, 2019, to December 1, 2020, by 730 students, from 41, 251 to to 40,521.

With the exception of the 2017-18 school year, when Kentucky’s kindergarten entry date changed from Oct. 1 to Aug. 1, enrollment in Fayette County grew every school year since at least 2014-15. . . .

What is happening in Lexington is similar to a national trend. The Denver Post reported recently that public schools enrollment in that state is down for the first time in 30 years.

Enrollment in Missouri and North Carolina for example, are down 3 percent to 5 percent. “At New York City Public Schools, the country’s largest district, 31,000 fewer students — a 3.4 percent drop — are on rosters this year, according to Chalkbeat.” And in a survey of more than 60 districts, NPR found the average kindergarten enrollment dropped by 16 percent, the Post reported.

Remember: taking your children out of the public schools does not mean you get to stop paying property or other taxes to support the public schools. Mrs Dezarn, from the original story, will still be paying taxes to support the public schools, while, according to Private School Review, the average private elementary school tuition in Lexington is $9,216.

That’s not cheap. With a median household income of $54,896, the median tuition rate works out to be 16.8% of that, which makes the private school option out of reach for most Lexington families.

‘Remote education’ has been going on since the middle of last March. With Governor Beshear’s orders, as they currently stand — and I would be more surprised if he didn’t extend them than if he did — that’s eight solid months out of a ten month school year, months that have basically been lost, as student failures in schools have doubled and even tripled. And with Anthony Fauxi Fauci, the grossly overhyped director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, having claimed that even with the vaccines, if the coming vaccination campaign goes well, we could approach herd immunity by summer’s end and “normality that is close to where we were before” by the end of 2021, there’s no guarantee that the public schools will open for in-person classes for the rest of the current school year.

COVID-19 is serious, and it can be fatal, but it is not the only serious thing out there. Losing an entire year of education is also serious, and that is what our oh-so-very-concerned governors have cost us.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Congratulations to Philadelphia! 2020 has won the silver medal!

In 1989, the City of Brotherly Love set a new record for homicides, at 489 souls. The record didn’t last long, as 505 people gave up the ghost in Philadelphia’s streets the following year, but, after that, the number of murders started declining, and 1989 still holds the silver medal.

Well, not anymore: as of 11:59 PM on Sunday, December 27th, Philadelphia tied that 489 number, with four days left to go in 2020. With a current average of 1.3508 homicides per day, Philly ought to easily move past that number, and end up with 494 or 495 homicides. Mayor Jim Kenney (D-Philadelphia), District Attorney Larry Krasner (D-Philadelphia) and Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw ought to be really proud of the jobs that they have done.

Really, it wasn’t easy for them. When Mayor Michael Nutter (D-Philadelphia) and Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey retired in first week of January, 2016, they left a city which saw 280 homicides in their last year. The year before Messrs Nutter and Ramsey took office, 2007, Philly had suffered through 391 killings. In their first year in office, the number of homicides dropped by 60, to 331.

In 2007, the homicide rate was 27.3 per 100,000 population. By 2013, it was down to 15.9. A bad spike in 2015, their last year in office, saw the murder rate jump to 17.9, as there were 280 killings that year, up from 248 the previous year.

In 2017, it jumped to 21.1, and then to 22.2 in 2018 and 2019. All of the progress under Messrs Nutter and Ramsey had been undone.

Now, at the end of 2020, projecting 494 homicides, and with the city’s population last guesstimated at 1.556 million, the homicide rate figures out to 31.75 per 100.000. Even if the last four days of the year pass with no more killings, the rate works out to 31.43. Either would be the highest number since 1997. Mr Krasner has accomplished what he set out to do, with his cockamamie social justice version of law enforcement.

Everyone hears about Chicago, where murders have skyrocketed under laughable Mayor Lori Lightfoot. According to The Chicago Tribune’s Tracking Chicago Homicides page, last updated following Sunday, December 20, 2020, the Windy City had seen 753 murders. That’s a lot of blood running into the gutters. But with a population of 2.706 million, the homicide rate there is 27.83, pending, of course, the final blood tally for the year. That’s a lot lower than Philadelphia’s! If Philly had Chicago’s murder rate, there’d be about 60 fewer people murdered in the streets. That’s how bad Philadelphia has become.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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Oh, life on the farm is kind of laid back Ain't much an old country boy like me can't hack

When I was graduated from high school, in 1971, I just couldn’t wait to get out of small town Mt Sterling, Kentucky, and move to what passed for a big city, Lexington. After stops in Hampton, Virginia and the suburbs of Wilmington, Delaware, it was 2002 before I finally realized how good I had things in a small town, and we bought a house in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania, population 4,659.

In 2014, we bought our retirement home, a small farm in rural Estill County, Kentucky.

OK, OK, maybe our place isn’t quite like Green Acres, but we have 7.92 acres, 500 feet of frontage on the Kentucky River, and we bought it for the ridiculously low price of $75,000. The house is a bit of a fixer-upper, but yes, it is being fixed up! We have one neighboring family, who mostly keep to themselves.

Life is good.

From The Wall Street Journal:

Want to Move to the Countryside?

The pandemic offers a unique opportunity to fix the housing crisis plaguing rural America.

By Kerry Thomson | December 25, 2020 | 2:58 PM EST

With the Covid-19 pandemic has come the rise of remote work, and rural America is having a moment. Searches on RedFin and Zillow show upticks in interest in rural areas, as more Americans determine to flee the cities for greener pastures.

Finding a house in rural America, however, may be easier said than done. Consider Orange County, Ind.—population 19,840 in 2010—which is in many ways a model for rural America. It has a thriving arts community, a local food co-op and a farmers’ market, interesting ecological and natural features such as the Rise at Orangeville natural spring and Hoosier National Forest, and a rich history, with a name deriving from the Dutch Protestant House of Orange.

And it has wide open spaces—too wide open. There simply isn’t enough housing for the people who want to live there. This counterintuitive housing shortage is having a devastating effect on rural America’s economy.

At first glance, Orange County’s housing shortage doesn’t make sense. One would think building in rural America would be easy. There is plenty of cheap land; zoning rules are generally less restrictive; and employers are struggling to fill job openings. Yet the housing crunch is an enormous struggle. In 2017 there were a mere 79,000 single-family home starts in all of “nonmetropolitan” America, compared with 223,800 in 2005.

One explanation is the unwillingness of banks to extend loans to contractors or developers looking to build housing where there are no comparison properties nearby. And given the relatively small, sometimes stagnant housing markets in rural areas, there are often few such “comps.” Without them, there can be no loans. Without loans, there can be no building.

It isn’t often that we see a huge error in economic thinking in the Journal, but this is one of those times.

The second issue is a lack of investors who see adequate potential return on investment in rural areas. The average home value in Orange County is a little over $100,000. In Bloomington, 50 miles away, the average price is more than twice that. It isn’t hard for contractors to figure out where they can earn a bigger return.

Finally, there is a lack of skilled labor. In the fallout of the 2007-09 financial crisis, which crippled the construction industry, 2.2 million construction workers out of roughly 5.3 million left the industry and never returned. This is a national problem, but given the higher potential return on investment for construction in urban areas, rural areas are lower on the list of destinations for contractors.

On its face, this makes sense, but dig deeper, and you can see the mistakes. Some of those 2.2 million construction workers are still out there, and would be willing to return to work if there was work for them. Twelve years is a long time, and some of those workers have passed retirement age, but a lot of them are still out there.

More, with the huge number of unemployed, there will be many who would happily take a try in the construction industry, if given a chance. Yes, they are mostly unskilled in the construction trades, but the only way to get those skills is to start working, and learn your way up from the bottom. That’s how I did it!

The Journal article simply assumes that there are no construction companies in small towns or rural areas, but that isn’t the case by any means. A lot of the construction companies in small towns and rural areas are small, and not currently very profitable, but given the opportunities to grow, most would certainly take advantage of them.

The housing shortage aggravates many of rural America’s other crises. One is the aging and dwindling population—a trend that could potentially reverse as people find greater flexibility through remote work and the pandemic diminishes the appeal of coastal cities. Who wouldn’t want to live in an affordable community where you know your neighbors and maybe have a national forest as a backyard? But talented young professionals—the type who start businesses that hire people and offer upward earning potential—aren’t going to relocate to rural areas if they can’t find a place to live.

What the Journal article is suggesting is that there is a potential demand for housing in small towns and rural areas. If there is an actual demand, two things will happen: prices will rise, as competition in a reduced supply market pushes prices higher, and those higher prices will spur a greater profitability in construction in those areas.

Kerry Thomson, Executive Director, Center for Rural Engagement, from her LinkedIn profile.

And that will lead to a third thing: other economic development in those areas, as people living in smaller areas and working from home will need more grocery stores and want more restaurants.

Kerry Thomson, the article author and executive director of the Center for Rural Engagement at Indiana University, Bloomington, draws the conclusion that government need to push things, but she has missed the point. If there really is a demand for more small town and rural housing, that demand will push everything that is needed. And if she is incorrect, and that demand really isn’t there, then the government programs she is pushing will be just another pointless government expenditure. She wants the government to push things by “offering a time-limited expansion of rural-specific loan guarantees to banks and lenders. This would provide an incentive to lend to builders in rural areas.”

More, what Miss Thomson wants to do is, in effect, apply large city thinking to small towns and rural counties. She wants to provide those areas with “local government zoning and planning information” and “a tax model to help communities determine the cost and benefit of new homes, among other resources.”  She would add governmental costs to building projects, as planning and zoning commissions require review and approval of construction projects, and add layers of inspections that we normally do not see in small towns and rural areas, things which raise costs, and prices, but do not add value to homes.

New design prototypes could also offer answers. A project to design a prototype for cost-effective, modestly sized homes that appeal to both young professionals and older residents is being piloted in southern Indiana. The homes appeal to both young and old because they are moderately sized and modern, with open floor plans and energy-efficient design features.

One of the great things about small towns is their diversity of housing design. What Miss Thomson has proposed sounds awfully cookie-cutter to me! I spent the better part of a year, through the winter, pouring basements and garage slabs in a subdivision called Quail Hollow, outside of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. The whole subdivision was a project by Ryan Homes, and there were five floor plans, each of which could be reversed, from which buyers could choose. A huge, cookie cutter subdivision, and yes, it’s experiences like that which influence me today.

Housing, the author wrote, is one of the most serious issues in rural areas, but she sees it as the “driver” of many of rural America’s problems. In that, she has it all wrong. The primary problem in rural America is the lack of good jobs! What is needed is for manufacturers and entrepreneurs to choose to build their projects in less densely populated areas. That’s not only direct employment, but such creates subsidiary jobs as well. Decent jobs attract decent people, and decent jobs provide the money for people to fix up their existing homes as well as build and buy new ones.

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O, their precious little feelings are hurt again!

A Philadelphia building mural by artist Michelle Angela-Ortiz, painted in a tribute to “LGBTQ activist and Latinx community icon Gloria Casarez,” Philadelphia’s first director of LGBT affairs, was painted over on the “former site of the 12th Street Gym in the Gayborhood.”

Why? The building had been sold to Midwood Investment and Development, a developer from New York City, which planned to build a 30-story housing complex. The new owners planned to demolish the building. Painting over the mural cost the developer money, but would spare the local “gayborhood” from seeing the mural being visibly knocked down.

And now, it’s an act of violence!

Whitewashing Gloria Casarez mural is a violent act against Philly’s LGBTQ community | Opinion

By David Acosta | December 24, 2020 | 12:41 PM EST

On Wednesday, Midwood Properties, a New York-based real estate developer who bought the property which used to house the 12th Street Gym, whitewashed the Gloria Cazares mural before demolition was set to start to make way for a 30-story housing complex. The act was not only deliberate, but it was also done in bad faith without consulting either the artist who created the mural, Michelle Angela Ortiz, or Mural arts.

For months, a group of us — including friends of Gloria; Gloria’s wife, Tricia Dressel; the artist; Mural Arts and concerned neighbors who opposed the project — had been working with Midwood Properties to try and preserve the mural and if not salvageable, to create a new project that honored Gloria’s legacy as well as the legacy of the Black abolitionist Henry Minton who lived on the property and was part of the underground railroad. It is believed that the property still contains tunnels used at the time, a fact that should be investigated so that the property can be designated as historically significant and so as to prevent its impending demolition.

The erasure of the mural feels particularly painful as it was the only mural depicting a Latinx LGBTQ woman of color in a city with 3,600 murals to date and counting. The mural’s position in the heart of the Gayborhood was also significant to the LGBTQ community who see the neighborhood as an important location with historical ties to business, and community-based organizations, and as a place where the LGBTQ community has for decades celebrated not only our community festivals but also some of our most important civil rights achievements.

There’s more at the original, including all sorts of tropes of the #woke:

The optics of literally painting over the mural with white paint is not lost on those of us whose lives oftentimes feel invisible because of the color of our skin, our economic conditions, our sexual orientation and our stories as immigrants.

It was difficult to keep from laughing at all of that. The building was scheduled to be torn down! If the “Gayborhood” wanted the mural saved, they should have gotten the money together and bought the building themselves, before it was sold to a developer.

In what has already been a difficult year for so many, the destruction of the mural is a violent act against all of us who saw our lives and our work represented on that wall.

A “violent act,” huh? The City of Brotherly Love has seen 486 people killed in the streets; that’s violence! But the “Gayborhood” is worried that someone painted over a mural that was going to be destroyed anyway. When the “Gayborhood” gets together to try to work at stopping the slaughter of primarily heterosexual, young black males in Philly, I’ll start to be impressed with their abhorrence of violence.

I have to admit it: when I see the name “Gayborhood,” and realize that the old 12th Street Gym catered primarily, though not exclusively, to homosexuals, and that a 30-story housing complex will be built there, I have to wonder just how much of this is a concern that the population required to support a housing complex of that size will change the complexion of the area. Once the complex is built, there will be a lot of normal people moving in. Being in Center City, they’re likely to be mostly white and mostly liberal, and unlikely to be ill-disposed to homosexuals, but they will still be primarily heterosexual.

If a neighborhood tried to preserve its character by exerting political pressure to stay primarily white, it would be denounced as shockingly racist. Yet, when depressed, minority neighborhoods try to fight ‘gentrification,’ which involves primarily white, well-to-do individuals buying and fixing up run down properties, no, that isn’t racist at all. And if a ‘gayborhood’ is trying to preserve a primarily homosexual culture in their area, is that somehow illegally discriminatory?

The gym closed almost three years ago, because “the gym would have had to pay at least $500,000 to address fire-code violations found by the Department of Licenses and Inspections. He also said real estate taxes on the property have surged in recent years.” I have to wonder: how much degradation did a building vacant and (probably) unheated for almost three years suffer? Had it been broken into and seen homeless squatters camped out inside? It couldn’t be pretty.

The local patrons thought that a liberal government might save it:

But, of course, politics doesn’t somehow erase half a million dollars, or more, of fire code violations. Every commercial building in Philadelphia is subject to those kinds of inspections; do the “LGBTQ community” somehow think that their favorite places should somehow be exempt?

Every community is, and ought to be, subject to the same rules, the same laws, and the same economic laws. There ought not to be some special considerations for one particular group, due to race or sexual orientation or sex, that somehow overcome local building codes or economic problems. And if a mural gets painted over because the building got sold, well, too bad, so sad, but that’s life.

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Killadelphia * Updated!

The Philadelphia Police Department only updates its Current Crime Stats page on normal business days, so the numbers are current as of 11:59 PM on Wednesday, December 23rd, where they show that 482 souls have gone to their eternal rewards due to homicide in the City of Brotherly Love in 2020. Uncharacteristically, The Philadelphia Inquirer has told us the tales since then. Yesterday, there was this:

Shootings leave two young men dead on Christmas Eve, police say

by Catherine Dunn | December 24, 2020 | 9:11 PM EST

A 20-year-old man who was shot multiple times died Thursday morning, Philadelphia police said.

The shooting occurred in the city’s Overbook section, on the 1800 block of Wynnewood Road, about 11:30 a.m., according to police. The man was taken to Lankenau Medical Center, and pronounced dead at 11:46 a.m.

In a statement, police said that a preliminary investigation indicated the victim was outside recording on social media when another man approached him, started a verbal altercation, and then shot the victim. When police arrived, authorities said, they found the victim lying in the grass, with multiple wounds to the torso. . . .

Hours later, at 1:42 p.m., a shooting in Philadelphia’s Kensington section led to the death of another young man.

The victim was about 20 years old, police said. He was shot five times on the 3200 block of G Street, according to information provided by police.

In neither case was an arrest made or weapons recovered. The Inquirer noted that no motive was determined in the first shooting.

Assuming those were the only two homicides on Christmas Eve, well 482 + 2 = 484.

Today is Christmas Day, a day of peace and love and brotherhood, right?

Philly police fatally shoot gunman accused of shooting into a crowd, killing teen and injuring another

by Diane Mastrull | December 25, 2020 | 2:51 PM EST

Christmas morning got off to a grim start in Philadelphia when a street fight escalated to one man firing a gun into a crowd, striking two teenagers in the neck before officers fatally shot him, according to police.

A 15-year-old male whose identity was not released was pronounced dead at Temple University Hospital, where a 17-year-old remained Friday in stable condition, police said.

The alleged gunman, 43, was shot in the torso and pronounced dead at Temple, police said. Police did not disclose how many times he was hit, just that two officers fired at him about 12:30 a.m. on the 3300 block of Emerald Street in the city’s Kensington section.

The officers had responded to a call about a disturbance or fight at that location. They were attempting to defuse the situation, police said, when additional family members of the feuding people came out of their houses and gathered on the sidewalk and in the middle of the street. Pushing and punching ensued between the original combatants, police said, when a man pulled a gun from his right rear waistband and fired it, hitting both teenagers.

The officers immediately pulled their service weapons and shot the “alleged” gunman, and I have to wonder if we’ll see protests such as the ones following the shooting of Walter Wallace, because the police killed a violent criminal.

484 + 2 = 486. Yes, the dead criminal counts as a homicide, even though it was obviously justified.

And Christmas Day isn’t even over yet.

Philly’s record is 505 killings in 1990, with 1989 coming in at second place with 489. With six more days remaining in 2020, the city has a very good chance to make second place.

By the time the Philadelphia Police Department updates its figures, on Monday, December 28th, the city might have already moved into second place!

The left will cry for more gun control, as though the guns somehow killed people by themselves. But the 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun used was reported stolen from Virginia. Shockingly, it appears — though I hate to judge a thing like that before all of the facts are in — that a criminal misguided gentleman broke the law in obtaining his weapon.

Updated: December 26, 2020 | 8:45 AM EST

Well, how about that? It turns out that the Christmas Day shooter, Jesus Perez, killed his own son, and wounded a nephew. From the updated version of the Inquirer story:

The family of the man, identified by CBS3 as Jesus Perez, denied that he was armed or would have fired at his own child. “He would obviously never do that,” his brother, Noris Cueva-Nova, said in an email. “He was a respectable, hard-working man who cared deeply for his family.”

The family denied that the guy, from whose warm, dead fingers the police pulled a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun, was armed. I guess it was just imaginary bullets which killed the guy’s son.

Pretty soon we’ll hear that the police shot the two boys, then planted the stolen 9mm in Mr Perez’s hand.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

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This is why I have no sympathy for the Palestinians!

Given the chance to build something, and some of the best beachfront property in the world — the Palestinians could have created a real tourist Mecca to bring in literally billions of euros into an otherwise poor land — the irredentists decided that what they really wanted to do was continue to attack Israel. They didn’t care about their families, they didn’t care about Palestinian poverty, they didn’t care about anything but their own seething hatred of the Jews.

The Hamas terrorists are actually few in number, but like guerrilla fighters everywhere, they depend upon the support, tacit or otherwise, of the larger populations around them. The Hamas terrorists live among the Palestinian people, are housed and clothed and fed and supported by them; they are no different from the inner-city thugs in Chicago and Philadelphia and St Louis, hiding from the police and destroying their own neighborhoods with destruction and death.

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Big Brother is watching you, and the left think you need to be watched more closely

In George Orwell’s 1984, every home was fitted with a Telescreen.

The voice came from an oblong metal plaque like a dulled mirror which formed part of the surface of the right-hand wall. Winston turned a switch and the voice sank somewhat, though the words were still distinguishable. The instrument (the telescreen, it was called) could be dimmed, but there was no way of shutting it off completely. . . . .

The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it; moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment.

After nine months now of increasingly draconian controls of our society and our economy in the huge governmental response to COVID-19, we are now being told that the one place into which government cannot reach, our homes, is the place in which our leaders need to exert the most control.

Where COVID-19 spreads most easily, according to experts

The most likely place to contract the virus is not at work or at school.

By Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey | December 24, 2020 | 6:08 AM

COVID-19 is a highly transmissible disease, but evidence shows that small indoor gatherings and households are where the novel coronavirus is spreading the fastest.

For nearly a year, public health officials across the globe have grappled with how to reduce the spread of COVID-19. At times, travel has been restricted, schools and gyms have closed, and some cities, such as San Francisco, are under lockdown. But despite these restrictions, the number of COVID-19 infections and deaths continue to reach record highs.

“I think we want to be careful about blaming one particular environment and scapegoating one particular setting for generating transmission,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor, epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.

However, there are some settings where COVID-19 is more easily spread. In New York, for example, contact tracing has shown that 70% of new cases come from small gatherings and households.

“Informal gatherings may have played even the biggest role,” Brownstein said, “because they are harder to police, they’re harder to enforce, and people are probably more lax when it comes to recommendations of mask wearing and social distancing.”

I will admit to some amusement at Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey’s, the author’s, choice of language, that informal gatherings, meetings between friends and family, “are harder to police, (are) harder to enforce” restrictions. In the end, of course, policing things, enforcing rules, is precisely what Our Betters want to do.

Pennsylvania’s Secretary of Health, Dr Richard Levine[1]Dr Levine is a mentally ill male who thinks he’s somehow a woman, calling himself ‘Rachel.’ The First Street Journal does not go along with such foolishness, and always refers to … Continue reading issued orders that individuals must wear masks and practice social distancing inside their own homes if guests are present. The credentialed media were also full of similar recommendations.

When people gather in small groups with friends and family, they are more likely to let their guard down, not wear their masks and stay together indoors for longer periods of time, which makes it easier to transmit the virus.

In a recent study at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, researchers found that for children and adolescents who tested positive for COVID-19, it was small social gatherings — not school — that was the most likely place they were exposed to the virus.

The children who tested positive in the study were more likely to have attended social gatherings outside of their homes, had playdates or had visitors at their home where mask wearing and social distancing precautions were not taken.

Gladys Kravitz

As we have noted previously, various officials know that they can’t just send the gendarmerie into your house, so they want your neighbors to peer into your windows and snitch on you. Of course, Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-New York City) does seem to think that he can send the sheriff’s deputies to your home, so perhaps other of our government officials will try to make my statement that they can’t send the police to your homes a false one. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that Dr Smalls-Mantey’s article is just something to condition the public into thinking that such is regrettably necessary, so that the sheeple will simply accept it, at least if it only happens to their neighbors and not themselves.

Governor Andy Beshear (D-KY) issued executive orders limiting gatherings in your home of more than eight people, from more than two separate households. I am happy to say that we didn’t obey the Governor’s restrictions any heed on either Thanksgiving or Christmas. Three households, no masks.

If only the government had those telescreens, they wouldn’t have to depend on those Gladys Kravitzes to peer into your windows![2]I had to put a descriptive link to Gladys Kravitz in the article, because my good friend Donald Douglas pointed out that you have to be older than dirt to get the reference.

If we allow authoritarianism to continue for this emergency, in what other emer-gencies will it be used?

Am I just being paranoid here? In 1984, sexual activity is regulated by the government, and Winston Smith’s and Julia’s sexual life is a form of rebellion. And in 2020, Dr Levine issued ‘guidance’ about your sex life, ‘suggesting’ that you must ‘limit’ your number of sex partners, and always ‘discuss’ COVID-19 with any new potential inamorata. Mayor Muriel Bowser (D-Washington, DC) did the same.[3]The left had always claimed that it was evil reich-wing conservatives who wanted to regulate sex, even referencing 1984, but it doesn’t seem to have been conservatives doing this now, does it?

People with actual governing authority have been telling us how we must live our lives, interfering in our jobs, our businesses and trying to impose their authority even in our homes, justifying it as an emergency, of course. But if they are allowed to get away with this for the COVID emergency, just what other ’emergencies’ can they use to justify restricting our rights? The September 11th attacks wound up justifying the PATRIOT Act, and, sadly, that was done by Republican congressmen and senators, and signed into law by a Republican president.

Benjamin Franklin put it best, saying, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” We have surrendered some of our essential liberty, and far too many of our people have agreed with this, because it’s just so necessary, or, as the law would put it, “a compelling government interest.”

This is where we must say, nay, scream, that government cannot do this, and the people will not allow it. More than just scream, we must protest, we must take political action, to unseat the would-be tyrants and petty dictators. If we do not do this, now, we insure that it will happen again, and again, as those who believe they should run our lives for us can always find something to justify it.
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Cross-posted on RedState.

References

References
↑1 Dr Levine is a mentally ill male who thinks he’s somehow a woman, calling himself ‘Rachel.’ The First Street Journal does not go along with such foolishness, and always refers to ‘transgender’ individuals by their birth names and sex.
↑2 I had to put a descriptive link to Gladys Kravitz in the article, because my good friend Donald Douglas pointed out that you have to be older than dirt to get the reference.
↑3 The left had always claimed that it was evil reich-wing conservatives who wanted to regulate sex, even referencing 1984, but it doesn’t seem to have been conservatives doing this now, does it?